informal payments to health care providers have been reported in many african, asian and european countries. this study aimed to investigate different aspects of these payments that are also known as under-the-table payments in iran.this is an in-depth interview-based qualitative study conducted on 12 purposively chosen clinical specialists. the interviewees answered 9 questions including the o...

Why do some places have much higher diversity than others? Explaining patterns of species diversity on the earth is a problem of long-standing for ecologists. Numerous diversity patterns have been documented [1], but the mechanisms behind these patterns remain poorly understood. If we knew the mechanisms, surer decisions in conservation and management would be possible. Understanding can be sou...

The variety of natural patterns makes it difficult to analyze and compare them in a systematic manner. We address this problem by focusing on the computational aspects of pattern formation processes. They are characterized in terms of the number of morphogenetic agents, the computing capability of each agent, and the forms of information transfer between the agents and their environment. This c...

There is a common intuition in biology that strict laws are very difficult to be found. Still, there are recurrent patterns in nature, suggesting broad generalizations and understanding of phenomena. The problem is that many generalizations in biology, especially in the form of correlations, might be decoupled from causality, weakening their power of explanation. Here, I bring an example on the...

From swarming bacteria to social interactions among humans, the emergence of patterns in nature is ubiquitous. Pattern formation is often governed by collective dynamics, wherein individual components of a system begin to move or organize in a coherent way. The generation of patterns in nonlinear dynamical systems is found in nearly all subfields of science and provides insight into some of the...

This paper addresses the significance of rare patterns in linguistic typology. In the Georgian nominal system, vowel deletion in the context of hiatus targets low vowels regardless of position. This pattern is extremely unusual (possibly unique) both in that it targets low vowels (Gouskova 2003) and in that the position of the vowel does not play a role in determining which vowel is deleted (Ca...

Fractals have experienced considerable success in quantifying the visual complexity exhibited by many natural patterns, and continue to capture the imagination of scientists and artists alike. Fractal patterns have also been noted for their aesthetic appeal, a suggestion further reinforced by the discovery that the poured patterns of the American abstract painter Jackson Pollock are also fracta...