Fabio Nobile (Politecnico di Milano & EPFL) • AEA project " Bayesian earthquake source validation " , KAUST

We translated two Latin texts about scurvy. One is by Ambrosius Rhodius, who in 1635 published his doctoral thesis on scurvy. This contains aspects of 16th- and 17th-century folklore medicine. The other is a 1593 letter by Henrik Høyer (Hoierus), a German physician in Bergen, Norway. The letter states that in Norway grew a plant, Chamaemorus Norvegicus, whose berries had curative abilities agai...

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a food plant introduced in Africa from America by the Portuguese in 1558. The objective of this study is to establish cassava origins, production, and utilization in Burkina Faso. The investigation was carried out in the regions of Center West, Cascades, Boucle du Mouhoun, Hauts Bassins, South West, and Center East of Burkina Faso. Eighteen cassava processi...

BACKGROUND In general, no association has been found between spontaneous abortion (naturally occurring termination of a pregnancy) and the risk for breast cancer. With respect to induced abortion (termination of a pregnancy by artificial means), the results have been more inconclusive. A positive association was found in five studies, no association was found in six studies, and a negative asso...

embryonic stem cells Skene and Parker raise a number of concerns about religious doctrine unduly influencing law and public policy through amicus curiae contributions to civil litigations or direct lobbying of politicians. Oakley picks this up in the same issue with an emphasis on the Roman Catholic Church’s interest in preventing the destruction of embryos for embryonic stem cell research. Ske...

BACKGROUND This article analyzes whether the distribution or area of use of 18 medicinal plants is influenced by ecological and cultural factors which might account for their traditional use and/or phytonymy in Navarra. This discussion may be helpful for comparative studies, touching as it does on other ethnopharmacological issues: a) which cultural and ecological factors affect the selection o...

Orchidaceae constitutes one of the largest families of angiosperms. Owing to the significance of orchids in plant biology, market needs and current sustainable technology levels, basic research on the biology of orchids and their applications in the orchid industry is increasing. Although chloroplast (cp) genomes continue to be evolutionarily informative, there is very limited information avail...