Using national crop and livestock production records from 1961-2003 and satellite-derived data on pasture greenness from 1982-2003 we show that the productivity of crops, livestock, and pastures in Africa is predictably associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation. The causal relations of these results are partly understandable through the associations bet...

The overall total population of the Arab nations in the world is estimated to be approximately 315 million (estimates; World Almanac, 2004). Arab populations encompass a vast geographical region that extends from Iraq in the east to Morocco in the west. They occupy the whole of Mesopotamia, Middle East, Arabian Gulf, North Africa, as well as some parts of East and West Africa. Arab populations ...

This work describes the first method to determine the tropical tropospheric ozone column directly from the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) space-borne instrument based on the physical differences in ozonecolumn detection as a function of its scan-angle geometry. Comparisons to tropical ozonesonde observations suggest the accuracy of these retrievals is ;20%. Tropospheric ozone derived f...

Worm lizards (Amphisbaenia) are burrowing squamates that live as subterranean predators. Their underground existence should limit dispersal, yet they are widespread throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa. This pattern was traditionally explained by continental drift, but molecular clocks suggest a Cenozoic diversification, long after the break-up of Pangaea, implying dispersal. Here, we des...

AFFILIATIONS: 1Centre for Human Metabonomics, Faculty of Natural Sciences, North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Potchefstroom, South Africa 2Department of Paediatrics and Child Health, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa 3Department of Paediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam, the Neth...

1 Department of Mathematics, Eastern University, Chenkalady 30350, Sri Lanka 2 International Institute for Symmetry Analysis and Mathematical Modelling, Department of Mathematical Sciences, North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, Private Bag X 2046, Mmabatho 2735, South Africa 3 Centre for Differential Equations, Continuum Mechanics and Applications, School of Computational and Applied Mathemat...

The North-South Institute (NSI) is working on an innovative project designed to bring a special resource into the picture: health professionals who have emigrated from Africa. Through a project called “The Diaspora Giving Back: Strengthening Health Care Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa”, these professionals will have the opportunity to share their expertise, experience and commitment where it’s ne...

1MaSIM Focus Area, North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, Mmabatho 2735, South Africa 2Center for Nonlinear Dynamics and Control, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 19805, USA 3National Advanced School of Engineering, University of Yaoundé I, BP 337, Yaoundé, Cameroon 4Department of Mathematical Sciences, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch 7600, South Africa 5Department of Mathematics, ...

Plague is an ancient disease of humans and animals, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and transmitted by fleas. It continues to occur in many regions of the world: in the Far East, Central Asia, North Africa, subSaharan Africa, and North and South America. However, >90 % of cases of human plague are reported in Africa. Most cases result from flea bites and take the clinical form of buboni...

BACKGROUND Relapsing fever is the most frequent bacterial disease in Africa. Four main vector / pathogen complexes are classically recognized, with the louse Pediculus humanus acting as vector for B. recurrentis and the soft ticks Ornithodoros sonrai, O. erraticus and O. moubata acting as vectors for Borrelia crocidurae, B. hispanica and B. duttonii, respectively. Our aim was to investigate the...