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...

BACKGROUND Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase is one of the most common genetic deficiencies, which approximately 400 million people in the world suffer from. According to authors' initial search, numerous studies have been carried out in Iran regarding molecular variants of this enzyme. Thus, this meta-analysis presented a reliable estimation about prevalence of different types of molecular mut...

The Mediterranean and Black seas are unique marine environments subject to important anthropogenic pressures due to direct and indirect loads of atmospheric inputs of organochlorine compounds (OCls) from primary and secondary sources. Here we report the results obtained during two east–west sampling cruises in June 2006 and May 2007 from Barcelona to Istanbul and Alexandria, respectively, where...

West Nile virus causes sporadic cases and outbreaks of human and equine disease in Europe (western Mediterranean and southern Russia in 1962-64, Belarus and Ukraine in the 1970s and 1980s, Romania in 1996-97, Czechland in 1997, and Italy in 1998). Environmental factors, including human activities, that enhance population densities of vector mosquitoes (heavy rains followed by floods, irrigation...

The Mediterranean climate region on the west coast of the United States is characterized by wet winters and dry summers, and by high fire activity. The importance of synoptic-scale circulation patterns (ENSO, PDO, PNA) on fire-climate interactions is evident in contemporary fire data sets and in pre-Euroamerican tree-ring-based fire records. We investigated how interannual variability in two fi...

Globalization should have a tremendous impact on health systems, particularly with the implementation of agreements related to trade in health services. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) Member States have made rather limited commitments in the area of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), necessary adaptations are needed to cope with t...

Diversity in lifestyles and socioeconomic status among European populations, and recent socio-political and economic changes in transitional countries, may affect changes in adiposity. We aimed to determine whether change in the prevalence of obesity varies between the socio-politically transitional North-East European (Łódź, Poland; Szeged, Hungary; Tartu, Estonia), and the non-transitional Me...

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...

The genus Verbena L. (Verbenaceae) comprises 250 species mainly in tropical and temperate America. It is represented in Egypt by two species viz. Verbena ozcinalis L. and V. supina L. (Taeckholm, 1974). Verbena ozcinalis is widely distributed mainly in the northern hemisphere while V. supina is of Mediterranean, West Irano}Turanian and East Saharo-Arabian distribution (Fienbrun-Dothan, 1978). I...

The systematic status and the evolutionary biology of chub mackerel (Scomber japonicus) in the South West Atlantic Ocean is confusing with an unknown degree of genetic differentiation and reproductive isolation between units. Simultaneous genetic and morphologic analyses were made on 227 fish collected from two areas of the South West Atlantic Ocean and one from the Mediterranean Sea. The genet...