Vitamin D deficiency is associated with risk in several diseases. Vitamin D status has high heritability, yet the genetic epidemiology of vitamin D or its metabolites has not been well studied. Our objective was to identify the relationship among three vitamin D-related genes (GC, CYP2R1 and DHCR7/NADSYN1) and the levels of 25(OH)D in northeastern Han Chinese children. A total of 506 northeaste...

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variations were analyzed in a sample of 245 individuals of Bosnian-Herzegovinian population from the area of Northeastern Bosnia (also known as Tuzla region). Haplogroup affiliation was determined using RFLP method (Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism) analyzing haplogroup-specific markers of mtDNA coding region, characteristic for the main Western-Eurasian haplog...

Global nutrient cycles have been altered by the use of fossil fuels and fertilizers resulting in increases in nutrient loads to aquatic systems. In the United States, excess nutrients have been repeatedly reported as the primary cause of lake water quality impairments. Setting nutrient criteria that are protective of a lakes ecological condition is one common solution; however, the data require...

Permafrost is extremely sensitive to climate change. The degradation of permafrost has strong and profound effects on vegetation. The permafrost zone of northeastern China is the second largest region of permafrost in China and lies on the south edge of the Eurasian cryolithozone. This study analyzed the spatiotemporal variations of the growing-season Normalization Difference Vegetation Index (...

BACKGROUND Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is an important cause of liver cancer in Thailand. The highest prevalence of anti-HCV positive among Thai blood donors is found in the northeastern region. The present analysis of the genotype distribution among anti-HCV positive northeastern-Thai blood donors was conducted to provide a base for the epidemiological pattern of HCV infection in this re...

Scientists have known since the 1890s that insects are vulnerable to diseases. However, it was not until the early 1950s that field demonstrations by Steinhouse in California led to the commercial production of biopesticides. The federal government registered the first microbial product in 1948, the bacterium Bacillus popillae, to control the Japanese beetle in turf. Although many entomopathoge...

Iodine deficiency disorder (IDD) is associated with a low IQ in children and is an important public health problem in northeastern Thailand. Despite campaigns to reduce IDD in northeastern Thailand, studies showed people in this region continue to have the lowest median urinary iodine (UI) excretion and Intelligence Quotient scores. We conducted a cross sectional study of median urinary iodine ...

Sternechus subsignatus Boheman (Curculionidae: Sternechini) is one of the primary Curculionidae species that reduces soybean yield in Brazil. Initially, outbreaks were reported in southern Brazil in 1973; but, more recent, outbreaks were reported in Bahia (summer 1997-1998) and Maranhão (summer 2003-2004), two states in northeastern Brazil. A putative related species, S. pinguis (Fabricius), wa...

The identification of native sources and vectors of introduced species informs their ecological and evolutionary history and may guide policies that seek to prevent future introductions. Population genetics provides a powerful set of tools to identify origins and vectors. However, these tools can mislead when the native range is poorly sampled or few molecular markers are used. Here, we traced ...

The discovery of a new dyrosaurid crocodylomorph from the well-dated Palaeocene deposits of northeastern Brazil sheds new light on the evolutionary history of this extinct group of marine crocodylomorphs that have survived the Cretaceous-Palaeogene (K-P) extinction crisis. Guarinisuchus munizi, the most complete member of this group collected in South America so far, is closely related to the A...