In MENA, household food insecurity, which is closely related to poverty and undernourishment, is most severe in rural areas and concentrated within Iraq, Sudan, and Yemen. 25% of the MENA population may be poor and 7% undernourished. The key to increased national and household-level food security is pro-poor growth, driven by export-oriented, labor-intensive sectors. Agricultural sector policie...

background:   objective: to understand the changes of mirnas in endometriosis.   materials and methods: with real-time rt-pcr, we investigated the mir-143 and mir-145 expression in eutopic (eu, n=2) and ectopic endometrium (ec, n=11) (from women with endometriosis) (as well as eu+ec, n=11), along with the normal endometrium (en, n=22) (from women without endometriosis, but with leiomyoma). resu...

The importance of restructuring and privatizing the financial sector has received renewed attention in the ongoing effort of revitalizing developing economies A growing research literature has underscored the importance of banking and the financial sector to economic growth. Several studies found positive relationship between financial sector development and levels of income and growth [Levine,...

There is an urgent need to build Research and Development (R&D) capacity for leishmaniasis and other neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) in the Middle East and North Africa. The neglected tropical diseases are a group of 17 viral, bacterial, protozoan, and helminthic infections that often have high morbidity but low mortality, causing disabilities through their impact on child development and ed...

Invadopodia are specialized membrane protrusions that support degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) by cancer cells, allowing invasion and metastatic spread. Although early stages of invadopodia assembly have been elucidated, little is known about maturation of invadopodia into structures competent for ECM proteolysis. The localized conversion of phosphatidylinositol(3,4,5)-triphosphate and...

This study examines the influence of religion on the extent of intervention in ethnic conflict using data from the Minorities at Risk ~MAR! dataset. Key questions include whether ethnoreligious minorities—which are defined here as ethnic minorities who belong to a different religion or a different denomination of the same religion as the majority group in a state—attract more intervention and w...

HSV-1 epidemiology in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) remains poorly understood. Our study aimed to measure HSV-1 antibody prevalence (seroprevalence) and its age-distribution among select MENA populations residing in Qatar. Sera were collected from male blood donors attending Hamad Medical Corporation 2013-2015. A total of 2,077 sera were tested for anti-HSV-1 antibodies using HerpeSel...