Ideas about purity and contagion appear over and over again in the history of cultures. Indeed, they seem to be so pervasive that we might rightly consider them as a basic organizing principle of human action. They lurk behind primitive dietary rules and laws of ritual avoidance (Douglas 1978), and they underlie our present respect for hygiene and distaste for uncleanliness in bodily and other ...

Background Spittle bugs and sharpshooters are well-known xylem sap-feeding insects and vectors of the phytopathogenic bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Wells), a causal agent of Pierce's disease of grapevines and other crop diseases. Specialized feeding on nutrient-deficient xylem sap is relatively rare among insect herbivores, and only limited genomic and transcriptomic information has been genera...

1. Kumar R, Bumb RA, Ansari NA, Mehta RD, Salotra P. Cutaneous leishmaniasis caused by Leishmania tropica in Bikaner, India: Parasite identification and characterization using molecular and immunologic tools. Am J Trop Med Hyg 2007;76:896-901. 2. Sharma NL, Mahajan VK, Kanga A, Sood A, Katoch VM, Mauricio I, et al. Localized cutaneous leishmaniasis due to Leishmania donovani and Leishmania trop...

S ......................................................................................................56-66 HEALTH/BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS Reassessment of the role of aluminum in the development of Alzheimer's disease Strunecká A, Patočka J. ....................................................................................... 56 A Fluoride Vol. 35 No. 1 Pages 1-72 February 2002 2 Some observatio...

Recently, great demands are rising around the globe for monitoring and studying of long-term ecological changes. To go with the stream, many researchers in South Korea have attempted to share and integrate ecological data for practical use. Although some achievements were made in the meantime, we still have to overcome a big obstacle that existing ecological data in South Korea are mostly sprea...

South China is a region of remarkable topographic complexity. However, the impact of climate fluctuations in the Pleistocene on the local fauna and especially insects has not been extensively studied. We integrated mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and microsatellite data of the rice spittle bug, Callitettix versicolor, to determine the genetic structure, potential biogeographic barriers, and historica...