• Vol 10 • August-September 2008 640 Measles is still a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in children in the Middle East. This region has many hard-to-reach populations, causing difficulties in the provision of adequate immunization coverage. There has been concern that measles vaccine may produce transient immunosuppression in malnourished children and thereby increase their risk fo...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The hypothesis of an ancient introduction, i.e. archaeophyte origin, is one of the most challenging questions in phylogeography. Arundo donax (Poaceae) is currently considered to be one of the worst invasive species globally, but it has also been widely utilzed by man across Eurasia for millennia. Despite a lack of phylogenetic data, recent literature has often speculated on...

Dendrochronological research in North-Central Europe and the East Mediterranean has produced networks of long regional oak (Quercus sp.) reference chronologies that have been instrumental in dating, provenancing, and paleoclimate research applications. However, until now these two important tree-ring networks have not been successfully linked. Oak forests and historical/archaeological sites in ...

Climatological features of mesoscale rain activities over the Mediterranean region between 5 W–40 E and 28 N–48 N are examined using the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) 3B42 and 2A25 rain products. The 3B42 rainrates at 3-hourly, 0.25×0.25 spatial resolution for the last 10 years (January 1998 to July 2007) are used to form and analyze the 5-day mean and monthly mean climatology of r...

The Mediterranean and Middle East Region (MME) is considered the most important area for the historical development and concentration of zoonoses. Besides the classical Mediterranean pattern, an urbanised pattern has emerged which is strongly influenced by globalisation. Both patterns co-exist and have many peculiarities affecting the life cycles of zoonoses and their social impact. The feature...

today, extra tropical cyclones are recognized not only for the important influence they exert on midlatitude weather conditions but also for their integral role in the earth’s climate system. (gary luckmann, 2012). extra tropical cyclones are fundamental meteorological features and play a key role in a broad range of weather phenomena. they are a central component maintaining the global atmosph...

Three species of Synaphris occurring in the East Mediterranean - Synaphris orientalis Marusik & Lehtinen, 2003, Synaphris lehtineni Marusik, Gnelitsa & Kovblyuk, 2005 and Synaphris letourneuxi (Simon, 1884) - are surveyed; and a new species - Synaphris wunderlichisp. n. - is described from southern Israel on the basis of males. The new species differs from other East- Mediterranean congeners by...

The European purple sea urchin (Paracentrotus lividus) is considered to be a key herbivore throughout its distribution range--North-East Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea. It was also abundant in its eastern distributional edge, on rocky habitats of the coastline of Israel, but its populations have recently collapsed, and today it is an extremely rare species in the region. Field and laboratory ex...

The Mediterranean region has been characterised by a number of pre-historical and historical demographic events whose legacy on the current genetic landscape is still a matter of debate. In order to investigate the degree of population structure across the Mediterranean, we have investigated Y chromosome variation in a large dataset of Mediterranean populations, 11 of which are first described ...

The MINOS (Mediterranean INtensive Oxidant Study) campaign was an international, multi-platform field campaign to measure long-range transport of air-pollution and aerosols from South East Asia and Europe towards the Mediterranean basin during August 2001. High pollution events were observed during this campaign. For the Mediterranean region enhanced tropospheric nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and form...