Palm oil is the most widely traded vegetable oil globally, with demand projected to increase substantially in the future. Almost all oil palm grows in areas that were once tropical moist forests, some of them quite recently. The conversion to date, and future expansion, threatens biodiversity and increases greenhouse gas emissions. Today, consumer pressure is pushing companies toward deforestation-free sources of palm oil. To guide interventions aimed at reducing tropical deforestation due to oil palm, we analysed recent expansions and modelled likely future ones. We assessed sample areas to find where oil palm plantations have recently replaced forests in 20 countries, using a combination of high-resolution imagery from Google Earth and Landsat. We then compared these trends to countrywide trends in FAO data for oil palm planted area. Finally, we assessed which forests have high agricultural suitability for future oil palm development, which we refer to as vulnerable forests, and identified critical areas for biodiversity that oil palm expansion threatens. Our analysis reveals regional trends in deforestation associated with oil palm agriculture. In Southeast Asia, 45% of sampled oil palm plantations came from areas that were forests in 1989. For South America, the percentage was 31%. By contrast, in Mesoamerica and Africa, we observed only 2% and 7% of oil palm plantations coming from areas that were forest in 1989. The largest areas of vulnerable forest are in Africa and South America. Vulnerable forests in all four regions of production contain globally high concentrations of mammal and bird species at risk of extinction. However, priority areas for biodiversity conservation differ based on taxa and criteria used. Government regulation and voluntary market interventions can help incentivize the expansion of oil palm plantations in ways that protect biodiversity-rich ecosystems.

Triple antibiotic breast irrigation is clinically associated with a low incidence of capsular contracture compared with other published reports, and its clinical efficacy supports previously published in vitro studies. Application of triple antibiotic irrigation is recommended for all aesthetic and reconstructive breast procedures and is cost effective.

The majority of existing human papillomavirus (HPV) genotyping assays are based on multiplex PCR using consensus or degenerate primers. We developed a Templex HPV assay that simultaneously detects and identifies 25 common HPV genotypes in a single-tube reaction using type-specific primers for the HPV-specific E6 and E7 genes. The analytical sensitivities of the Templex assay for HPV type 16 (HPV-16), -18, and -56 were 20, 100, and 20 copies per reaction mixture, respectively. The Templex assay provides semiquantitative information on each type when multiple HPV types coexist in one reaction. We tested 109 clinical cervical specimens previously evaluated with the Digene HC2 high-risk HPV DNA test and found 95.4% concordance between the assay results. The Templex assay provided type-specific results and found multiple types in 29.2% (14 of 48) of high-risk HPV-positive samples. The entire Templex procedure, including DNA extraction, can be completed within 5 hours, providing a rapid and reliable diagnostic tool for HPV detection and typing that is amenable to automation.Human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is linked with cervical cancer (1,12,24). HPV can be divided into "high-risk (HR)" and "low-risk" groups on the basis of their association with cervical lesions (7,11,17). The HR group includes HPV types 16,18, 31, 33, 35, 39, 45, 51, 52, 56, 58, 59, 67, 68, 69, 82, 26, 53, 66, 70, and 73, while the low-risk group includes types 6, 11, 40, 42, 43, 44, 54, 61, 72, 81, and 89 (11, 15, 19). Recently, quadrivalent and bivalent vaccines have been demonstrated to effectively prevent type-specific persistent infection and disease (6, 23). To monitor the impact of vaccine implementation strategies, determine type-specific persistence, and evaluate the clinical significance of coinfection with multiple HPV types, HPV testing will require type-specific results. A high-throughput, sensitive, specific, and reproducible HPV detection and typing assay is therefore highly desirable.Most established HPV typing assays used in epidemiologic studies are based on consensus PCR to amplify the relatively conserved L1 gene region with hybridization, restriction enzyme digestion, or sequencing of the amplicon to determine type(s) (2, 22). Widely used L1 consensus primer PCR systems include the GP5ϩ/6ϩ, PGMY09/11, and SPF systems (4, 5, 13, 21). However, in all of these methods, variations in the efficiency of type-specific priming, primer competition, and limitations on the reagent concentrations in the assay may affect the observed type distribution, particularly when large numbers of types at greatly different copy numbers are present. In addition, typing requires a variable number of additional post-PCR steps, such as amplicon purification, gel electrophoresis, hybridization, and washing. These additional steps increase the time and labor required.We report the development of a novel HPV genotyping assay that is based on proprietary Templex technology. Templex is a unique multiplex PCR platform that uses a targetenriched multiple...