imam ali’s newly established government faced anuproarcaused by a group named nakesin during its early ages when its foundations were still being strengthened. this group pledged allegiance to imam ali freely, but then they left medina with the excuse of going for omrehpilgrimage, yet indeed they had the intention to conspire against imam by forming a new front and challenging his government. i...

Genomics data, including full sequences of the golden orb-weaver (Nephila clavipes) and other species, are revolutionizing our understanding of spider evolution. These data are also revealing the molecular complexities of spider venom and their silk, which companies have long sought to commercialize—with little success so far. See pages 288 and 293. Photo: Westend61 GmbH/Alamy Stock Photo FEATURES

In the fall of 2005, problems discovered in two SonyBMG compact disc copy protection systems, XCP and MediaMax, triggered a public uproar that ultimately led to class-action litigation and the recall of millions of discs. We present an in-depth analysis of these technologies, including their design, implementation, and deployment. The systems are surprisingly complex and suffer from a diverse a...

Scientists increasingly find themselves at the center of contentious public policy debates over issues such as chemical regulation and climate change. The general public and politicians often expect scientific advisors to be purely objective. However, a new commentary in this issue of EHP asserts that scientific research is intrinsically inf luenced by value judgments and that researchers shoul...

The Bergen Belsen Nazi concentration camp has been widely described and studied, especially as the images taken by British troops at moment of camp's liberation shaped very representation crimes Holocaust. Much less-known are debates about exhumations more than 20 000 corpses inmates, ones who died in weeks before or after liberation. French mission search deportees, so-called 'Garban mission',...

The issue of privacy stirred a tumultuous uproar when the ABC County Health Department (ABCCHD) was planning for an e-Healthcare system that utilized information technology to streamline the administration process of patients. ABCCHD had hired a software vendor, Info-Health, a company that specialized in information system development for the healthcare industry to help in the project. The priv...