• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.10
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• pp.6049-6053
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• 2013

Background: Following research demonstrating an increased risk for meningiomas in the Jewish population of Shiraz (Iran) we conducted a cohort analysis of meningiomas among Jews originating in Iran and residing in Israel. Materials and Methods: We use the population-based registry data of the Israeli National Cancer Registry (INCR) for the main analysis. All benign meningioma cases diagnosed in Israel from January 2000 to the end of 2009 were included. Patients that were born in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria and Greece were used for the analysis, whereby we calculated adjusted incidence rates per 100,000 people and computed standardized incidence ratios (SIRs) comparing the Iranian-born to each of the three other groups. Results: Iranian-born Jews had statistically significant higher meningioma rates rates compared to other Jews originating in Balkan states: 1.46 fold compared to Turkish Jews and 1.86 fold compared to the Bulgaria-Greece group. There was a small increase in risk for the Iranian born group compared to those who were born in Iraq (1.06, not significant). Conclusions: Higher rates of meningiomas were seen in Jews originating in Iran that are living in Israel as compared to rates in neighboring countries of origin. These differences can be in part attributed to early life environmental exposures in Iran but probably in larger amount are due to genetic and hereditary factors in a closed community like the Iranian Jews. Some support for this conclusion was also found in other published research.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.165-183
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• 2010

For the study of the development of Asia map made by european map makers, one should consider Gog and Magog which existed in the maps for more than 700 years. Gog and Magog are described as an apocalyptic people in the Bible and medieval literature, and they are important elements in medieval mappaemundi and early modem world maps. This study classified representation types of Gog and Magog in old western maps. Maps were classed in to six categories according to the location and ethnic groups which they represent, and they were discussed in cartographic context. The maps until the fourteenth century place Gog and Magog, shut up by Alexander, near Caspian Sea. In the fifteenth century, Gog and Magog were described as Closed Jews in maps. From the sixteenth century they appear in the far northeastern part of Asia and they are named as Amagog or Ung and Mongul. In the mid-seventeenth century, they are located in Eastern Siberia by French cartographers. But with the expansion of geographic knowledge, Gog and Magog disappeared completely in the eighteenth century. In general, God and Magog were represented on the basis of traditional lore rather than on the Bible, and they became one means of mapping others of European community.