OBJECTIVE The prevalence of diabetes mellitus (DM) is increasing rapidly, particularly in Asia. Asian immigrants in Western countries are a fast-growing population who carry both intrinsic risks due to their genetic background and extrinsic risks associated with Western lifestyles. However, recent trends in diabetes prevalence and associated risk factors among Asian immigrants in the USA are no...

Reforestation is needed globally to help restore degraded sites, combat desertification, protect watersheds, and provide forest products. This involves planting forest tree seedlings grown in local nurseries, but technologies to produce quality seedlings are lacking in developing countries. Modern nursery containers used to propagate seedlings have internal-surface barriers (ribs or ridges) or ...

Addressing dynamic optimization problems has been a challenging task for the genetic algorithm community. Over the years, several approaches have been developed into genetic algorithms to enhance their performance in dynamic environments. One major approach is to maintain the diversity of the population, e.g., via random immigrants. This paper proposes an elitism-based immigrants scheme for gen...

We discuss the notion of language and dialect-specific search in the context of audio indexing. A system is described where users can find dialect or language-specific pronunciations of Afghan placenames in Dari and Pashto. We explore the efficacy of a phonetic speech recognition system employed in this task.

Here we present the complete genome sequence of Providencia stuartii MRSN 2154, isolated from an Afghan national. P. stuartii is a Gram-negative bacillus capable of causing infections in a wide variety of human tissues. Because Providencia readily acquires plasmids bearing drug resistance loci, it is of growing clinical significance.

Background Immigrants from certain low- and middle-income countries are more prone to cancers attributed to viral infections in early life. Cervical cancer is caused by human papillomavirus but is highly preventable by regular screening. We assessed participation among immigrants in a population-based cervical screening programme and identified factors that predicted non-adherence within differ...

BACKGROUND A mass influx of immigrants from the former Soviet Union to western countries and Israel followed the demise of the Soviet Bloc at the beginning of the 1990s. It was expected that these immigrants would have a higher morbidity and mortality rate similar to that in the former USSR. OBJECTIVES To measure and compare self-reported diseases, subjective health and health services utiliz...

BACKGROUND It is often suggested that immigrants with long-term pain do not benefit from rehabilitation to the same extent as native Swedish patients. In this study, an 8-week rehabilitation programme was evaluated according to its adaptation for immigrants. OBJECTIVES To establish whether there is a difference between immigrants and native Swedes concerning: (i) return-to-work, the patients'...