Sir, In Asia, Illicit opium and cannabis are produced mainly in Afghanistan, which makes major social and health problems for some countries, particularly Iran as the neighborhood. [1] In Iran, opium and hashish have been used for near 300 years, [2] but other drugs such as heroin, buprenorphine, cocaine, tramadol, and ecstasy are new drugs of abuse in this country. [3-6] Abuses of the new drug...

BACKGROUND Neural tube defects (NTDs) including spina bifida and anencephaly are the second most common birth defects with 2.8 per 1000 births in northern Iran. OBJECTIVES This study was conducted to determine the risk factors of neural tube defects in Gorgan, north of Iran. PATIENTS AND METHODS This hospital-based, case-control study was carried out on all NTD-affected pregnancies (n = 59)...

The population genetic structure of 278 Venturia inaequalis isolates, collected from different apple cultivars of eighteen different provinces in Iran, was investigated using 22 polymorphic microsatellite markers. Analysis of molecular variation, Bayesian clustering and Nei's genetic distance analyses based on 88 microsatellite alleles indicated substantial levels of gene flow among the collect...

in the present study, the concentrations of three heavy metals including lead (pb), zinc (zn) and arsenic (as) in 72 different honey samples collected from north-western regions of iran were investigated using atomic absorption spectroscopy method. all metals were detected in 88.88% of the honey samples. the range of metals contamination in honey samples was 0.01 to 11.09 ppm. zn was the most a...

Small shelly fossils (SSFs) are highly informative of the ‘Cambrian explosion’. Their palaeobiodiversity has been documented from lower Cambrian deposits worldwide but it remains elusive in areas such as Iran, despite this region occupying a critical position on north-western Gondwana margin during early Cambrian. This new study SSFs northern Iran provides large dataset understudied area. We re...

How the spatial expansion of a species changes at a human time scale is a process difficult to determine. We studied the dispersal pattern of the French white stork population, using a 21-year ringing/resighting dataset. We used the graph-theory to investigate the strength of links between 5 populations (North-East, North-West, Centre, West, and South) and to determine factors important for the...

ardabil province, northwestern iran, is endemic for visceral leishmaniasis of mediterranean type from many years ago. this situation might cause to underestimate other important diseases, which occur spo­radically within the same area. in this case, a 6-year-old male patient in this area was treated as in­fected with visceral leishmaniasis initially with seropositive result for visceral leishma...

This study examines the intensity change and moat dynamics of typhoons with concentric eyewalls using passive microwave data and best-track data in the western North Pacific between 1997 and 2006. Of the 225 typhoons examined, 55 typhoons and 62 cases with concentric eyewalls have been identified. The data indicate that approximately 57% of category 4 and 72% of category 5 typhoons possessed co...

it is the first time that biostratigraphic zonations of calcareous nannoplankton from maestrichtian to lower tertiary deposits of iran are reported. the required samples from the north-eastem and western parts of the country were selected from the stocks of the national iranian oil company. taxonomic descriptions were not the main objectives, although a new species and genus are apparently pres...