B etween 1986 and 1998, the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil remained quite stable, fluctuating between $16 and $42 constant 2011-U.S. dollars, with the exception of a brief spike in 1990 at the time of the first Gulf War. In December 1998, the barrel of WTI had reached a low point of $17. Almost 10 years later, in July 2008, the same barrel cost $134. By March 2009, the p...

Iraq’s agricultural sector represents a small, but vital component of Iraq’s economy. Over the past several decades agriculture’s role in the economy has been heavily influenced by Iraq’s involvement in military conflicts, particularly the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War and the 1991 Gulf War, and by varying degrees of government efforts to promote and/or control agricultural production. In the mid-1980s...

BACKGROUND: Factor analysis is one of the most used statistical techniques to analyze the inter-relationships among symptoms reported by Gulf War veterans. The objective of this study was to apply factor analyses to binary symptom data from the UK study of Gulf War illness and the US Air Force study of Gulf War veterans, and to compare the symptom domains derived from the distinct samples. METH...

This is the first longitudinal cohort study of Persian Gulf War US soldiers to examine belief in exposure to chemical and biological weapons before and shortly after combat. A longitudinal sample of n = 1250 male Persian Gulf War US Army soldiers were surveyed 3 to 4 months before and 6 to 10 months after the 1991 War. Six to 10 months after combat, 4.6% of the cohort believed they had been exp...

New record and new species of the families Melitidae Bousfield, 1973 and Maeridae Krapp-Schickel, 2008 are described from the Iranian shorelines of the Persian Gulf. Melita persia sp. nov. is differentiated from other members of M. zeylanica Stebbing, 1904 group by: the presence of two setae on inner ramus of third uropod, the setal arrangement on the telson, and a recurved proximal lobe of six...

People depend on human infrastructure for a range of activities in their daily lives, such as work and socializing. In this paper we consider three different intertwined types of infrastructures of a society that may be affected in crisis situations: the physical, technological, and human infrastructures. We argue that when the human infrastructure is damaged, e.g. in a natural catastrophe or w...

18 Ophthalmic Care of the Combat Casualty

The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) are among the world's last true monarchies. The ruler of each state enjoys unparalleled power and other members of his ruling family hold most key positions in the government, as well as enjoying many other privileges. Despite significant steps toward institutionalization and the creation of governments that are frequently responsive, ...

Two new species of Palapedia Ng, 1993, are described based on material collected from Abu-Musa Island, Persian Gulf during the present study, from Bahrain by the 1937/38 Danish Expedition, and from the Saudi Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf by Michael Apel in 1992-1995. Palapedia persica n. sp. is distinguishable from its congeners by having distinctly large denticles on the upper margin of th...