Afghanistan
FAIRFAX, Va.--Due to regional conflicts across the globe, such as wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism, women are being deployed overseas in greater numbers than ever before. Women constitute approximately 16 percent of the 3.5 million members of the U.S. armed forces and 10 percent of present forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Soldiers who survive severe injuries on battlefields such as those in Iraq and Afghanistan can be at risk from developing infections of their wounds with multidrug resistant bacteria.
Yale researchers investigating the genetic causes of blood pressure variation have identified a previously undescribed syndrome associated with seizures, a lack of coordination, developmental delay and hearing loss.
While U.S. intelligence officials have spent more than seven years searching fruitlessly for Osama bin Laden, UCLA geographers say they have a good idea of where the terrorist leader was at the end of 2001 — and perhaps where he has been in the years since.
The Defense Department's second amputee care center is slated to open Jan. 14 at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, to provide state-of-the- art care for servicemembers who have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new center at Brooke Army Medical Center will incorporate a full range of amputee patient care at one site. This includes orthopedics, physical medicine and rehabilitation, occupational therapy, physical therapy and prosthetics, as well as social work and Veterans Affairs counselors.
A laminate that protects NASCAR racecar windshields from rocks and debris will soon give extra protection to Army helicopters flying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate at Fort Eustis, Va., started testing the concept in March and just got the green light to begin applying the Mylar polyester coating to the windshields of operational aircraft. Nathan Bordick, an engineer working on the project, said the Army borrowed the idea from NASCAR, where teams have been applying multiple layers of the peelable coatings to vehicle windshields for years to resist cracking, chipping and scratching. Periodically throughout a race, pit crews peel away a layer, leaving a clear, undamaged windshield for the laps ahead, he said.
The annual U.S. Government estimate for opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is complete and shows that approximately 206,700 hectares of poppy were cultivated during the crop season in 2004. Current cultivation levels equate to a potential production of 4,950 metric tons of opium. This represents a 239 percent increase in the poppy crop and a 73 percent increase in potential opium production over 2003 estimates.
Unmanned aerial vehicles are earning star status in the global war on terror, becoming the most-requested capability among combatant commanders in Southwest Asia and increasing fourfold in that theater during the last year alone, according to the deputy director of the Pentagon's UAV planning task force. UAVs are topping combatant commanders' wish lists. During the past year alone, UAVs' numbers in Iraq have jumped from less than 100 to more than 400.
Researchers have discovered a ''central memory'' form of ''helper'' T cells that can offer immunity to leishmaniasis, a disease that causes considerable death and disfigurement across the globe and has been found in U.S. military personnel returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. The scientists say the discovery can offer immunity to leishmaniasis, even without the persistent presence of the parasite that caused the disease. Their findings encourage a new approach to creating a vaccine against leishmaniasis and other immune cell mediated diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
For a cost of less than half a million dollars, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has completed its largest-ever campaign to fight intestinal worms, treating more than 4.5 million children in Afghanistan against the biggest cause of disease in young children in the developing world. The de-worming campaign is estimated to have reached more than 90 per cent of the targeted children - between the ages of six and 12 - and cost $476,000, or just over 10 cents per child.
With an epidemic of cutaneous leishmaniasis in Afghanistan threatening to escalate out of control without immediate action, the United Nations health agency today launched an emergency campaign combining drug treatment and insecticide-treated nets to curb the debilitating skin disease spread by sand flies. ''We must act now if we are going to have any chance of controlling the situation,'' said Dr. Philippe Desjeux, the head of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) leishmaniasis control programme. ''This is a unique opportunity to stop a debilitating disease in its tracks, and make gains in a country where people so deserve to see improvements to their health.''
Exposure to trauma and mental health symptoms of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder are prevalent among people in Afghanistan but, often go untreated because of lack of resources and mental health care professionals, according to two studies in the August 4 issue of JAMA. According to background information: ''More than two decades of war and conflict and three years of drought have led to widespread human suffering and substantial population displacement in Afghanistan. The country's infrastructure has been destroyed or degraded and vital human resources have been depleted.'' The researchers note that mental health facilities in Afghanistan are non-existent or in poor condition.
A first-of-its-kind Army medical report that queried Afghanistan and Iraq combat veterans shows that front-line action has adversely affected the mental health of some service members. The report, titled, ''Combat Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health Problems and Barriers to Care'' appears in the July 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. About 6 percent of the soldiers and Marines who participated in the anonymous study say they've experienced mental health problems after combat tours in Afghanistan or Iraq.
When their tours of active duty in Iraq or Afghanistan are over, Marines who receive an honorable discharge may be welcomed back by some employers with a higher salary for their Marine Corps experience, Penn State researchers have found. Dr. Kevin Murphy, professor and head of the department of psychology and leader of the study, says, "About one-third of the employers included in the survey data we studied said they see a substantial economic benefit to hiring Marines and would be willing to pay between 10 percent and 50 percent more to get a person with Marine Corps experience."
As if Afghanistan didn't have enough woes, the country has just lost its main agricultural insurance policy: two stores of carefully selected and maintained seeds representing the biodiversity of the nation's native crops. The seeds were ruined when looters broke into a storage facility where they were kept and made off with the airtight jars that held them. The seeds themselves were tossed on the ground, and have now been so jumbled together that they are virtually worthless. "It's like having a library of books with no titles on them," says Geoffrey Hawtin, director general of the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Rome. "All of the [traits you prize] are there, but you no longer know where to look for them."
