Umbilical cord blood transplants are now used to treat numerous types of immune- and blood-related disorders and genetic diseases. Cord blood (CB) banks play an important role in these transplants by processing and storing CB units. In addition to their therapeutic potential, these banks raise ethical and regulatory questions, especially in emerging markets in the Arab world. In this article, t...

Nearly four decades after Iranian-Egyptian diplomatic relations were severed, the two countries are yet to restore them. This is a result of the predominance of certain negative emotional attachments embedded in Iranian and Egyptian identities, which have clouded their respective attitudes toward one another. Mired in resentment against Arabism, the national component of the Iranian state ident...

This paper discusses the application of the resource mobilization theory (RMT) to clarify the activities of certain key socio-political groups and movements in Egypt up till 2011. It contends that the political movements in the country have utilized information and communication technologies (ICTs) and social networks sites (SNSs) as a tool for mobilizing people and coordinating anti-regime act...

BACKGROUND Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancers affecting women worldwide. The main objective of this study was to assess and compare research activity in breast cancer in Arab countries with non-Arab Middle Eastern countries. METHODS Publications about "breast cancer" as a research topic were retrieved using the ISI Web of Science database. Analysis was confined to origin...

The legendary wealth in gold of ancient Egypt seems to correspond with an unexpected high number of gold production sites in the Eastern Desert of Egypt and Nubia. This contribution introduces briefly the general geology of these vast regions and discusses the geology of the different varieties of the primary gold occurrences (always related to auriferous quartz mineralization in veins or shear...

Health research in the Syrian Arab Republic faces many difficulties, including limited funds, infrastructure and means of dissemination. In a search of Medline and Embase databases in March 2006 we extracted data on 386 biomedical papers originating from the Syrian Arab Republic. Embase had the superior coverage. A total of 64% were published in journals from Europe, 22% from North American jou...

Diet has not been investigated as a potential risk factor for head and neck squamous cell carcinomas in the Syrian Arab Republic. In a hospital-based, unmatched case-control study 108 people with cancer and 105 controls were interviewed about dietary intake using a validated food frequency questionnaire in Arabic. Sociodemographic and health risk behavioural information were collected by a self...