"Much of the world's population in North America, Europe, most of China and large portions of Russia live near temperate forests, so what happens in these forests has global importance, " said Jerry Franklin, a professor of forest resources at the University of Washington whose work was instrumental in maintaining the research plots.

CNN: Global warming threatens forests, study says

Over the next hour or so, the National Institutes of Health and the Wake Forest University School of Medicine, where scientists were analyzing the data work, issued press releases saying they would not comment until the data was published in a medical journal.

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