The health consequences of sand particle inhalation are incompletely understood. This project evaluated the respiratory toxicity of sand particles collected at military bases near Fort Irwin USA, in Iraq (Camp Victory, Taji and Talil), and Khost Afghanistan. Our primary focus was on assessing the role of soluble metals in the respiratory toxicity of the sand particles using in vitro and in vivo...

BACKGROUND Recently, proposals have been made to improve mental health care for U.K. military veterans. Combat stress (CS), a veteran's charity, has provided mental health services for veterans since 1919. Since 2003, service users have included veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts; however, their pattern of help-seeking has not been evaluated. AIMS To describe the characteristics...

Following almost three decades of war, Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world. GDP per capita is estimated at about US$360 for 2007 (IMF 2007a). Life expectancy at birth is only 44.5 years (UNDP 2008), and maternal and child mortality are among the highest in the world. The literacy rate in the general population is very low (36 percent), especially for women (13 percent) (Wor...

The study examines various issues in Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations in the context that emerged after 9/11. It argues that security maintenance and various development pursuits (political and economic) of both Pakistan and Afghanistan considerably rely upon cordial and mutually cooperative relations between these two immediate neighbours. However, there exists trust deficit and the war against ...

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) is endemic in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The FMD virus serotypes O, A and Asia-1 are responsible for the outbreaks in these countries. Diverse strains of FMDV, even within the same serotype, co-circulate. Characterization of the viruses in circulation can facilitate appropriate vaccine selection and tracing of outbreaks. The present study characterized foot-and-mouth...

Hydatid disease most commonly affects the liver and lungs but no organ is immune. Splenic hydatid cyst is a rare clinical entity. Although the patients are usually asymptomatic, the disease may present with secondary infection, adhesion to adjacent organs with fistulisation or rupture into abdominal cavity. We present a 67 year old women with splenic hydatid cyst. Severe adhesions and tumorlike...

The efforts of anti-spammers and spammers has often been described as an arms race. As we devise new ways to stem the flood of bulk mail, spammers respond by working their way around the new mechanisms. Their attempts to bypass spam filters illustrates this struggle. Spammers have tried many things from using HTML layout tricks, letter substitution, to adding random data. While at times their a...

In this paper we present experimental results of an application of SAT solvers in current cryptography. Trivium is a very promising stream cipher candidate in the final phase of the eSTREAM project. We use the fastest industrial SAT solvers to attack a reduced version of Trivium – called Bivium. Our experimental attack time using the SAT solver is the best attack time that we are aware of, it i...

saffron is one of the most valuable crops and the world's most expensive spice among the plants that suit the particular climates and latitudes with low water requirements, the strategic importance of high social and economic impacts in many producing countries such as afghanistan, that has this feature in particularly high and a special influence in the international market. due to these reaso...

this article aims to explain how islamic fundamentalism in central asia could challenge afghan national security following the withdrawal of international forces. in this paper, the authors focusing on two jihadi islamists groups in central asia, called the imu (islamic movement of uzbekistan) and islamic jihad :union: (islamic jihadism of uzbekistan) believe that high adaptability in the wake ...