INTRODUCTION The plant family Musaceae, composed of bananas, plantains, and ornamental bananas, originally evolved in Southeast Asia and surrounding tropical and subtropical regions (including New Guinea). Africa is a secondary center of diversity. The two genera Ensete and Musa in the family Musaceae are covered here. Please note that this manuscript is not all-inclusive and that much of the c...

Zika virus was first described in the 1940s. During more than all of a century, less than 20 human infections have been reported. Emergence of Zika virus started with a first outbreak in the Pacific area in 2007 (Federated States of Micronesia), a second large outbreak occurred in the Pacific in 2013/2014 (French Polynesia) and subsequently the virus spread in other Pacific Islands. Zika virus ...

BACKGROUND Rotavirus vaccine is recommended for all infants in Canada. To evaluate the logistics of implementing a universal rotavirus vaccination program, we compared the effectiveness of program implementation in jurisdictions with either a physician-administered or public health nurse-administered program. METHODS All infants born between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2012 in Prince Ed...

The Size of the Shadow Economies of 145 Countries all over the World: First Results over the Period 1999 to 2003 Using the DYMIMIC approach, estimates of the shadow economy in 145 developing, transition, developed OECD countries, South Pacific islands and still communist countries are presented. The average size of the shadow economy (in percent of official GDP) over 2002/2003 in developing cou...

Aim I examined the island biogeography and metapopulation dynamics of ants inhabiting two archipelagos of small Bahamian islands. Of particular interest were measurement and comparison of turnover rates, examination of variation in relative population abundances, and the effect of a hurricane force disturbance on the ant fauna of these small islands. Location Archipelagos of small islands in th...

The subterranean environment of Christmas Island is diverse and includes freshwater, marine, anchialine, and terrestrial habitats. The cave fauna comprises swiftlets, and a diverse assemblage of invertebrates, both terrestrial and aquatic, which includes a number of rare and endemic species of high conservation significance. At least twelve species are probably restricted to subterranean habita...

Mammalian CpG islands are key epigenomic elements that were first characterized experimentally as genomic fractions with low levels of DNA methylation. Currently, CpG islands are defined based on their genomic sequences alone. Here, we develop evolutionary models to show that several distinct evolutionary processes generate and maintain CpG islands. One central evolutionary regime resulting in ...

Changes in some weather and climate extremes are attributable to human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. Human-induced warming has likely caused much of the average temperature increase in North America • over the past 50 years. This affects changes in temperature extremes. Heavy precipitation events averaged over North America have increased over the past 50 years, • consistent with the o...

Due to the lack of political consensus at the previous General Agreement on Trade on Services (GATS), negotiations on the temporary movement of natural persons (Mode 4) have stagnated. The growth in the economic literature surrounding this issue has also been lackluster; despite the large welfare gains that have been demonstrated to result from relatively small multilateral liberalizations on s...