As opiate processing and distribution networks in East Asia source more of their supplies from Afghanistan they will need to re-organise their supply routes. The likely result will be a growing interdependence of the heroin trades in East Asia and Europe, which most analysts have hitherto seen as independent. 59 59 For example, in discussing price movements resulting from the Taliban's ban on o...

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) adopts as a final rule the proposal to amend its adjudication regulations regarding presumptive service connection for medically unexplained chronic multisymptom illnesses associated with service in the Southwest Asia theater of operations for which there is no record during service. This amendment implements a decision by the Secretary that there is a po...

The importance of wild barley from Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in the origin and domestication of cultivated barley has long been underestimated. Population-based phylogenetic analyses were performed to study the origin and genetic diversity of Chinese domesticated barley, and address the possibility that the Tibetan region in China was an independent center of barley domestication. Wild barley (Hord...

The polymorphic inversion on 17q21, sometimes called the microtubular associated protein tau (MAPT) inversion, is an approximately 900 kb inversion found primarily in Europeans and Southwest Asians. We have identified 21 SNPs that act as markers of the inverted, i.e., H2, haplotype. The inversion is found at the highest frequencies in Southwest Asia and Southern Europe (frequencies of approxima...

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. [1] Improvements in modeling mineral aerosols over southwest Asia are made to the dust scheme in a regional climate...

RATIONALE Because of increased levels of airborne particulate matter in Southwest Asia, deployed military personnel are at risk for developing acute and chronic lung diseases. Increased respiratory symptoms are reported, but limited data exist on reported lung diseases. OBJECTIVES To evaluate new respiratory complaints in military personnel returning from Southwest Asia to determine potential...

Archaeological, palaeontological and geological evidence shows that post-glacial warming released human populations from their various climate-bound refugia. Yet specific connections between these refugia and the timing and routes of post-glacial migrations that ultimately established modern patterns of genetic variation remain elusive. Here, we use Y-chromosome markers combined with autosomal ...

BACKGROUND The spread of agriculture into Europe and the ancestry of the first European farmers have been subjects of debate and controversy among geneticists, archaeologists, linguists and anthropologists. Debates have centred on the extent to which the transition was associated with the active migration of people as opposed to the diffusion of cultural practices. Recent studies have shown tha...