This review describes problems with persistent and bioaccumulative organic substances which posses toxic characteristics likely to cause adverse human health or environmental effects in countries of Central and Eastern Europe as far as human exposure is concerned. This paper is a part of a more detailed report on the subject.

It is generally hypothesized that tree growth at the upper treeline is normally controlled by temperature while that at the lower treeline is precipitation limited. However, uniform patterns of inter-annual ring-width variations along altitudinal gradients are also observed in some situations. How changing elevation influences tree growth in the cold and arid Qilian Mountains, on the northeaste...

Pocilloporids are one of the major reef-building corals in the eastern tropical Pacific (ETP) and also the most affected by thermal stress events, mainly those associated with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) periods. To date, coral growth parameters have been poorly reported in Pocillopora species in the northeastern region of the tropical Pacific. Monthly and annual growth rates of the thr...

The Kura-Araxes cultural tradition existed in the highlands of the South Caucasus from 3500 to 2450 BCE (before the Christian era). This tradition represented an adaptive regime and a symbolically encoded common identity spread over a broad area of patchy mountain environments. By 3000 BCE, groups bearing this identity had migrated southwest across a wide area from the Taurus Mountains down int...

BACKGROUND Young people in southern and eastern Africa remain disproportionately vulnerable to HIV with gender inequalities and livelihood insecurities being key drivers of this. Behavioural HIV prevention interventions have had weak outcomes and a new generation of structural interventions have emerged seeking to challenge the wider drivers of the HIV epidemic, including gender inequalities an...

the composition of essential oil of leaves of the male and female shrubs of juniperus chinensis l. (growing in isfahan) was analyzed by gas choromatography(gc) and gc-mass spectrometery (ms). the main constituents of leaf oil of the male shrub were: bornyl acetate (26.1%), sabinene (18.3%), trans-sabinyl acetate (11.1%), myrcene (9.2%), limonene (6.1%), elemol (5.5%), α-cadinol (2.3%), δ-cadine...

The relationships between the fruit features of Juniperus communis and the presence of fruit pests were studied in Sierra Nevada, SE Spain. The abundance of two insect species a pulp-sucking scale and a seed-predator wasp was surveyed with respect both to fruit characteristics and to viability of seeds contained therein. Seed-predator pressure was not significantly related to any fruit characte...