Philosophical discussions of health and disease have traditionally been dominated by a debate between normativists, who hold that health is an inescapably value-laded concept and naturalists, such as Christopher Boorse, who believe that it is possible to derive a purely descriptive or theoretical definition of health based upon biological function. In this paper I defend a distinctive view whic...

This analysis extends theoretical models of ethnic boundary formation to account for the shifting and layered nature of ethnic boundaries. It focuses on the underlying structural conditions that facilitate the expansion of ethnic boundaries or the construction of a pan-national identity, and explores how organizing along an ethnic boundary affects collective efforts at the panethnic level. Two ...

Mohammad – Taqi Bahar had been living in a historical period of Iran in which religious, geographical boundaries, culture and Iran`s sovereignty were exposed to numerous threats. Indeed, he, as a pious patriot, had a complete knowledge about these issues and attentively took into consideration the national identity phenomenon in his books and poets. They mostly consists the historical and po...

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The special interest group model of government, employed throughout public choice theory, models the outcomes of government as a function of special interest group activity. Early work in this area by authors such as Stigler (1971) and Peltzman (1976) focused on the role of interest groups in securing regulation beneficial to the regulated industry. Subsequent formulations—includingMcCormick an...

Ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence (or AmI) models raise the need for secured systems, due to increased heterogeneity, intelligence and dynamism. Information in such environments is managed by systems formed mostly of devices with limited capabilities. Indeed, AmI characteristics, difficult to handle by traditional computing concepts, are making the agent paradigm to gain impetus and...

Financial support. This work was supported by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (grants 5T32AI007151 to J. B. P. and 5R01AI107949 to S. R. M.). Potential conflicts of interest. Both authors: No reported conflicts of interest. Both authors have submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Conflicts that the editors consider relevant to the c...

Maternal death surveillance and response (MDSR) constitutes a quality improvement approach to identify how many maternal deaths occur, what the underlying causes of death and associated factors are, and how to implement actions to reduce the number of preventable stillbirths and maternal and neonatal deaths. This requires a coordinated approach, ensuring both national- and district-level stakeh...

Securing personal information and combating impersonation are nowadays considered as national priorities. Biometrics, the physical traits and behavioral characteristics that make each of us unique, promises an effective solution to our security needs. It is the aim of this paper to explore the use of the K nearest neighbor as a cheap and an unobtrusive way of reinforcing the de facto security m...