The initiative of the Centre for Arab Genomic Studies to establish a database for genetic disorders in the Arab World started in 2004 with a pilot project to catalogue genetic disorders in the Arab population of the United Arab Emirates. The strategy applied for this purpose consisted of data collection from a variety of sources including international and national bibliographic indices, nation...

The cultural background of web users is argued to play a key role in the way they interact with and perceive the usability and usefulness of websites. The objective of this case study is to identify Arab users’ preferences and expectations of the design of Arabic websites in order to examine whether these preferences are consistent with their cultural-specific attributes as described and predic...

The League of Arab States (also known as the Arab League) is well past its sixth decade of establishment. However, it has a long way to go to achieve the objectives enumerated in its charter. In a sense, there is much stronger propensity towards disintegration than integration in the League. This article seeks to study the reasons that account for the failure of such integration in the Arab Lea...

Mindfulness is defined as nonjudgmental acceptance and paying attention in specific way to current thoughts and emotions. The concept of mindfulness is directly inspired by the Buddhist tradition, but it is not considered a religious practice. It is also not constrained to the Buddhist tradition. Mindfulness-based interventions were derived from the concept of mindfulness and were reported to b...

With many drugs coming to market and post-marketing surveillance limited to industry, there is a need for an integrated common approach to pharmacovigilance (PV) in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR)/Arab region. The first meeting of the EMR/Arab countries for PV involved ten of the 22 states and revealed how these countries are learning from and working with each other in order to achieve ...

The conclusion of the Trade Related Aspects Intellectual Property Agreement (TRIPS), in the context of the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (1994,) ushered in an unprecedented interest in the protection of intellectual property (IP) particularly concerning the impact of new global IP rules on developing countries. However, developments relating to protection of IP in Arab countries have, in ...

An article in this journal in 2016 demonstrated that smoking prevalence among Arab men in Israel is greater than among their Jewish counterparts born in Israel, while the reverse is true among Arab and Jewish Israeli women. This is reflected in lung cancer mortality rates. In the U.S., smoking prevalence in the mid-1960s was 20% higher in African American men than in white men, but has since de...

In March 1998, the political leadership of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel was looking for ways to commemorate al-Nakba (“The Disaster,” in Arabic), referring to the war of 1948, during which about 700,000 Palestinians were uprooted and hundreds of Palestinian villages were destroyed. This leadership, organized in the Follow-Up Committee (FUC), nominated a Nakba and Steadfastness Commit...

The concept of food-based dietary guidelines (FBDG) has been promoted by several international organizations. However, there are no FBDG for the countries in the Arab region. As the Arab Gulf countries share similar a socioeconomic and nutrition situation, an attempt was made to develop FBDG for these countries. This paper summarizes the steps taken to develope such guidelines by the Arab Cente...

Since the 1950s, Arab countries have made progress in some health related aspects such as: infant mortality, life expectancy, and access to health care. Infectious diseases and nutritional disorders have decreased in prevalence because of significant advances in immunization and the overall improvement in hygiene. Arab scholars working in the field of biomedical sciences are giving more attenti...