BACKGROUND Hydatid disease, a parasitic infestation of humans, is endemic in the Mediterranean region, Australia, New Zealand and the Middle East, and mostly involves the liver. Anaphylactic reactions, which sometimes are the first manifestations of the disease, frequently occur due to cyst rupture after a minor/major trauma, though they may also be spontaneously seen on rare occasions. In extr...

Tropical sprue is a well documented condition with a special geographical distribution. This paper describes five patients with unexplained malabsorption whose symptoms began during a period of residence in the Middle East or Mediterranean areas.

Before the beginning of the European colonialism era, the Persian Gulf was a communication link between Asia, Europe and Africa, through which silk, spices and other needed goods were transported into the Mediterranean. With the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope and the flourishing of the southern African routes, in order to control the trade routes, colonialists entered the arena, and worked ...

BACKGROUND In Southern Europe, smoking among older women was more prevalent among the high educated than the lower educated, we call this a positive gradient. This is dominant in the early stages of the smoking epidemic model, later replaced by a negative gradient. The aim of this study is to assess if a positive gradient in smoking can also be observed in low and middle income countries in oth...

This article introduces the themed section »Movement and Mobility in Medieval Mediterranean: Changing Perspectives from Late Antiquity to Long-Twelfth Century«. series of articles engages with ongoing debates historiography on role movement mobility socio-political frameworks medieval societies throughout Mediterranean world Iberia Near East. The papers introduced here consider a wide range c...

It is widely accepted that modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa approximately 150-200 thousand years ago (ka), but their route of dispersal across the currently hyperarid Sahara remains controversial. Given that the first modern humans north of the Sahara are found in the Levant approximately 120-90 ka, northward dispersal likely occurred during a humid episode in the Sahara within Ma...

[1] Multiyear daily surface aerosol aluminum (Al) concentration and sunphotometer measurements at Erdemli (Turkey) sampling station were used to assess the performance of Absorbing Aerosol Index (AAI) and Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) retrieved from the daily Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) over the northeastern Mediterranean. A total of 98 moderate-to-high intensity dust events with ...

The modern European climatic regime is peculiar, due to its unitary winter but diverse summer climates and a pronounced Mediterranean climate in the south. However, little is known on its evolution in the deep time. Here we reconstruct the European summer climate conditions in the Tortonian (11.62-7.246 Ma) using plant fossil assemblages from 75 well-dated sites across Europe. Our results clear...

Coastal plants are ideal models for studying the colonization routes of species because of the simple linear distributions of these species. Carex extensa occurs mainly in salt marshes along the Mediterranean and European coasts. Variation in cpDNA sequences, amplified fragment length polymorphisms (AFLPs) and simple sequence repeats (SSRs) of 24 populations were analysed to reconstruct its col...

A new Cryptorchestia species, Cryptorchestia ruffoi Latella & Vonk, sp. n. from the island of Rhodes in south-eastern Greece, can be distinguished on the basis of morphological and phylogenetic data. Morphological analysis and DNA sequencing of mitochondrial and nuclear protein-coding genes indicated that this species is related to Cryptorchestia cavimana (Cyprus) and Cryptorchestia garbinii (M...