Stipa richteriana and Galium songaricum are newly recorded species for the flora of Iran, collected from Binalood and Hezar-Masjed Mountains in Razavi Khorassan Province. The geographical distribution of both species is mainly confined to the Middle Asia. Morphological characters of two newly recorded species are compared with their close relatives. Notes on taxonomy, ecology, phytogeography, a...

The Asia-Pacific region was on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving the prevalence of extreme poverty by 2015, but recent dramatic rises in the price of rice and other staples have pushed millions of people back into hunger and poverty. This indicates that the region's food supply system is more fragile and imbalanced than what was previously believed. Proximate causes of...

Campaign costs have risen in Africa. I ask: what has driven this cost inflation? Studies of Western parties attribute it to campaign modernization as mediatization. African do not recognize advancement. They these another cause: spiraling clientelism. argue that there is a third, hitherto overlooked driver such inflation and adaptation: the hybridization rallies with capital-intensive practices...

Estimates of FAO indicate that 14% of the population worldwide or 864 million in 2002-2004 were undernourished in not having enough food to meet basic daily energy needs. Asia has the highest number of undernourished people, with 163 million in East Asia and 300 million in South Asia. Meanwhile obesity and diet-related non-communicable diseases continue to escalate in the region. The double bur...

Background Tuberculosis (TB) remains the most common cause of infectious disease deaths worldwide. What is perhaps less appreciated is that the caseload of tuberculosis patients in South Asia is staggering.South Asia has almost 40% of the global TB burden with 4,028,165 cases in 2015. This region also has a disproportionate share of TB deaths (681,975 deaths, 38% of the global burden). Worldwid...