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An essay is presented on evolution of modern science. The author poses a question whether the scientific revolution is a product of the west. He concludes that the Arabic knowledge along with the Islamic and the Chinese civilization have also contributed in the growth of science.

Helicobacter pylori is known to be a major cause of gastric carcinoma and peptic ulceration. cagA positivity and vacA's signal regions and mid-regions are well-characterized markers of H. pylori's virulence. Recently, an intermediate region has been identified as another strong marker of H. pylori-associated disease, and its i1 allele has been linked with severe diseases in colonized hosts. The goal of this study was to determine the prevalence of the intermediate alleles in H. pylori isolates from China, Turkey, and Uruguay and from U.S. Africans and to compare their distribution with other well-characterized virulence factors. Originally, 123 H. pylori strains were studied, but 3 were excluded due to the failure to amplify the intermediate region in these samples. Therefore, a total of 120 strains were analyzed: 30 Chinese isolates, 35 Turkish isolates, 30 Uruguayan isolates, and 25 U.S. African isolates. The s type and the m type were determined by PCR amplification. The i type was identified by PCR amplification and DNA sequencing. CagA status was determined by PCR methodology. There was a strong correlation among CagA positivity, s1, and i1 in Chinese, U.S. African, and Uruguayan isolates, but less correlation among these markers in Turkish isolates. A new intermediate variant (i3) was identified in 25.7% of Turkish strains and 3.3% of the Chinese strains. In summary, the distribution of CagA positivity and s1 correlated with the i1 in the three populations, except in the Turkish population, which showed a disproportionate representation of the i3 allele. Phylogenetic mapping confirmed the i-typing method previously defined and adopted for this study. The phylogenetic tree showed country-specific correlation with the intermediate region. Our results showed that the i1 allele is strongly associated with CagA positivity and the vacA s1 allele, suggesting its role as a virulence marker and potential predictor for clinical outcome.

Dichotic speech (CV syllables) and non-verbal stimuli (melodies, tones and triple tones) were presented to 20 French Canadian (10 men, 10 women) and 19 Chinese (10 men, 9 women) right-handed university students to investigate cultural and sexual differences in auditory functional asymmetry. Analyses of variances on correct scores showed a REA in the perception of speech and a LEA in the perception of melodies and triple tones for both groups. Cross-cultural effects were observed for speech only, indicating a better overall performance on the part of French Canadian students. Moreover, women were better than men in the perception of tones and triple tones, suggesting that women may attend more to intonational information. Finally, the results for both ethnic groups showed the same pattern of interhemispheric functional asymmetry for speech and non-speech material.

We ascertained prior pulmonary tuberculosis infection in 211 non-Caucasian female lung cancer patients and 419 sex, race, ape, smoking history and birthplace-matched control subjects by searching the Hawaii State Tuberculosis Branch patient records. Among never-smokers we found a significant increase in risk associated with prior tuberculous infection (odds ratio, 8.2; 95% confidence limits = 1.3 to 54.4). No such association was found among smokers. Prior tuberculous infection was identified in only 5.5% of never-smoking lung cancer patients, however, suggesting that this factor is a relatively unimportant contributor to the etiologic aspects of lung cancer in persons who have never smoked.