Criminalizing Female Genital Mutilation in Some Islamic Countries Including Iran

Background and Aim: This article presents some perspective on Female Genital Mutilation by focuses on Islamic countries law. Materials and Methods: A handful of legal texts and documents and have been reviewed for preparing this study.Ethical Considerations:Honesty in the literature and citation analysis and reporting were considered.Findings: Female Genital Mutilation is usual in some countries especially in Islamic countries due to belief that the Sharia made it necessary or at least called it recommended. Although there is no precise virtual and holy verses or texts approve this view but Female Genital Mutilation became a part of some countries custom and tradition. It is obviously a violent act against girls and women and governments try to prohibit it by criminalizing and determining sentence for its performance. Many international and regional instruments and documents also recommended against it.Conclusion: in some Islamic countries including Iran there is not specific rule or provision criminalizes Female Genital Mutilation. Here the authorities can prosecute the offender under general criminal law. Because Female Genital Mutilation is a kind of inflicting bodily harm, the prosecutor may make a trial based on Assault. And if it results in victim death the judge may convict the performer to Homicide or man slaughter. On the other hand, in some countries like Kenya the legislator passed detailed and comprehensive provision on Female Genital Mutilation.

Study on the Possibility of Applying Moharaba to Widespread Transmission of AIDS Virus

AIDS is a prevalent disease of our century. Fortunately its limited ways of transmission has caused it to be able to be controlled by adopting preventive methods. Transmission of HIV is therefore considered as a crime. The point is here:  May the widespread transmission of AIDS be regarded as an instance of Moharaba (insurgency)? The appearance of evidences does not confirm this view, as most jurists deem necessary the condition of drawing out weapon for Moharaba.   However, the author believes that a new interpretation of the Quran verse about Moharaba besides logical and step-by-step examination of the jurists' opinion may lead us to the opinion opposing that of most jurists. Keywords AIDS, Transmission, Moharaba, Ifsad Fi al-Arz (Corruption on earth).

The effects of ascorbic acid on salt induced alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) in in vitro culture

Ascorbic acid as an antioxidant agent has already been used for increasing of stress tolerance. Callus was produced from stem segments of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) on MS medium supplemented with 2,4 dichlorophenoxy acetic acid, naphthalene acetic acid and kinetin (2 mg/leach).Calli were then transferred to the same medium containing 0, 30, 60, 90, 120 mM NaCl and 0, 0.5, 1.0, 2.0 mM ascorbic acid. Addition of ascorbic acid to the medium improved seed germination and also increased the activity of acid phosphates, chlorophyll content, and drymass. The Na+ and K+ content of stem-leaf and root was relatively increased with some variations. The fresh weight of calli was also increased by ascorbic acid under salt stress conditio

Agroterrorism; Iranian Criminal Policy

Background and Aim: This article presents some perspective on bioterrorism by focuses on Agroterrorism cases. This study focuses attention on the issue of Agroterrorismand discusses criminal response against it in Iranian Criminal law. Materials and Methods: A handful of studies and researches have been reviewed for preparing this study.Ethical Considerations:Honesty in the literature and citation analysis and reporting were considered.Findings: Agroterrorism attack may results in the agricultural and food industries, loss of confidence in government, and possibly human casualties. The fear of a bioterrorist attack in the world have changed public health in countries. Based on these facts, a sharp and quick response including criminal responses against this kind of terrorism to protect the safety of community as well as health policies is necessary.Conclusion: Agroterrorism is a new form of terrorism which falls in the realm of bioterrorism. This kind of offence against the community attracts policy makers’ high level of attentions. Iranian legislator amongst other policies prosecute offenders with article 286 of Penal Code: “Corruption on Earth”. This question that this title is appropriate to combat Agroterrorism depends on the extent of the behaviors results. This title belongs to situation that vast geographic area or huge number of populations was affected due to terroristic attacks. The punishment of offender(s) is capital punishment

Triadimefon ameliorates negative effects of in vitro salt stress on two cultivars of alfalfa(Medicago sativa L.)

Triadimefon (TRD) is a member of triazol plant growth regulator group which is responsible for increasing stress tolerance. Effects of TRD on two cultivars of Medicago sativa (Hamedani and Yazdi) were investigated. The in vitro grown plantlets in MS medium were cultured in TRD at concentration 1.0, 2.0 and 4.0 mg/l combined with 0, 100 and 140 mM NaCl respectively. The changes in growth parameters, photosynthetic pigment, carbohydrate, α-tochopherol, glycine betain, proline and proline dehydrogenase (PDH) activity as well as its expression were measured after four weeks post treatment. NaCl treatment decreased overall plant growth and reduced the total chlorophyll, carbohydrate content, PDH activity and increased α-tochopherol, glycine betain content and proline content. The level of PDH transcript was changed in different combinations of NaCl and TRD, however, at 140 mM NaCl and 2 mg/l TRD expression was decreased. When plants were subjected to salt stress, TRD minimized the inhibitory effects of NaCl on plant growth by increasing, total chlorophyll, carbohydrate, α-tochopherol, glycine betaine content

Effect of salt and drought stress on acid phosphatase activities in alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) explants under in vitro culture

Acid phosphatase is wildly found in plants. This enzyme has intra and extra cellular activity. For instance, it dephosphorylase organic phosphate and change it to inorganic phosphate. However, acid phosphatase activity is increased by salt and osmotic stress. In this experiments, calluses were produced from invitro grown explants of Medicago sativa cv. Yazdi and cv. Hamedani under aseptic condition on MS medium containing NAA, 2,4-D. Then calluses and seedling were transferred to the same medium containing 0,0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1% NaCl and 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10% Mannitol as osmotic stress. After 2 weeks acid phosphatse activities were measured and data statistically analyzed. Clearly acid phosphatase activities was increased by salt and drought stress in both cultivars, and the difference between two genotype indicating that the acid phosphatase activity is highly genotype dependent. (African Journal of Biotechnology: 2003 2(5): 133-135

TOWARD LOWER COMMUNICATION IN GARBLED CIRCUIT EVALUATION

Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC) is a classical problem in theoretical security. In a SMC problem, two or more parties must compute correctly a function f on their respective inputs x and y, while preserving the privacy of their inputs and additional security properties. One of the approaches proposed for addressing the SMC problem relies on the design of Garbled Circuit (GC). In Garbled Circuits (GCs), the function to be computed is represented as a Boolean circuit composed of binary gates. The input and output wire of each gate is masked such that the party evaluating the Garbled Boolean Circuits (GBC) cannot gain any information about the inputs or the intermediate results that appear during the function evaluation. The complexity of today's most efficient GC protocol depends linearly on the size of the Boolean circuit representation of the evaluated function. The total cost and run-time interaction between parties increase linearly with the number of gates and can be huge for complex GBCs. Actually, interest has grown in the efficiency of this technique and in its applications to computation outsourcing in untrusted environments. A recent work shows that XOR gates in a Boolean circuit have no cost for the secure computation protocol. Therefore, circuits with a reduced number of non-XOR gates are more convenient and one of the possible ways to reduce the complexity of the computation is to reduce the number of non-XOR gates in the Boolean circuit. Recalling that, the main aim of this work is to reduce the number of non-XOR gates, which directly results in a reduced number of interactions between the parties and transfer complexity at runtime, we present different approaches for reducing the communication cost of Secure Multi-party Computation (SMC) and improving the overall computation time and efficiency of the execution of SMC

Effect of hydro-alcoholic Portulaca-Oleracea extract on oxidative damage induced by bacterial Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in liver of rat

زمینه و هدف: استرس اکسیداتیو یک نقش کلیدی در بروز بسیاری از بیماریها دارد. خرفه حاوی انواع اسیدهای چرب غیر اشباع و ترکیباتی مانند : آلفا-توکوفرول، اسید‌آسکوربیک و گلوتاتیون می‌باشد. که اثرات آنتی اکسیدانی دارند، بنابراین شاید بتواند نقشی موثر جهت پیشگیری و درمان بیماری‌های مرتبط با استرس‌اکسیداتیو داشته باشد. جهت بررسی این امر، استرس اکسیداتیو در یک مدل حیوانی از طریق تزریق لیپو ساکارید باکتریایی (LPS) القا گردید. در مرحله بعدی اثر عصاره هیدروالکلی خرفه بر بهبود آسیب اکسیداتیو القا شده توسط LPS در کبد موشهای صحرایی مورد بررسی قرار گرفت. روش‌ بررسی: موشهای صحرایی نر نژاد ویستار در 4 گروه قرار گرفتند. عصاره خرفه (400 mg/kg) طی یک دوره 14 روزه از طریق تزریق دهانی (گاواژ) به حیوانات داده شد. LPS (1000 µg/kg) ، به صورت داخل صفاقی تزریق گردید. میزان فعالیت آنزیمهای آنتی اکسیدان از طریق اندازه گیری کاتالاز(CAT) ، سوپراکسیددسموتاز(SOD) و گلوتاتیون ردوکتاز (GR) در بافت کبد گروههای مختلف صورت گرفت. میزان پروکسیداسیون لیپیدی نیز به عنوان مارکری برای تعیین آسیب اکسیداتیو اندازه گیری شد. همچنین مطالعات بافت شناسی نیز صورت گرفت. یافته ‌ها: LPS موجب تحریک و افزایش فعالیت آنزیم SOD، CAT و کاهش فعالیت GR نسبت به گروه کنترل شد. همچنین LPS موجب افزایش مالون دی آلدئید(MDA) کبد شد. از طرفی در گروه پیشگیری عصاره خرفه به صورت معناداری فعالیت آنزیم های SOD، CAT و GRرا نسبت به گروه LPS افزایش داد و باعث کاهش معنادار MAD نسبت به گروه دریافت کننده LPS گردید. بحث و نتیجه گیری : به نظر می رسد خرفه به علت دارا بودن میزان بالایی از ترکیبات انتی اکسیدانی می‌تواند به عنوان یک محصول طبیعی، برای پیشگیری از آسیب و بیماری های ناشی از استرس اکسیداتیو استفاده شود

Legal Developments of the Responsibility of the Physician in Iranian Criminal Law

زمینه و هدف: حرفه پزشکی به دلیل اهمیت خاص خود توجه قانونگذار را به خود جلب کرده و از تصویب نخستین قانون مجازات تاکنون، مقررات کیفری مختلفی در خصوص مورد به تصویب رسیده است. هدف این پژوهش تحلیل تحولات قانونی مقررات مربوط به مسؤولیت پزشک می‌باشد. مواد و روش‌ها: در این مطالعه قوانین و شروح مربوطه به صورت هدفمند جستجو و بازیابی شده و مورد مقایسه قرار گرفته است. ملاحظات اخلاقی: صداقت و امانتداری در گزارش‌دهی، تحلیل و استناد به متون رعایت گردید. یافته‌ها: مقررات کیفری ایران از ابتدا مشتمل بر پنج موضوع مهم مربوط به پزشک و کادر پزشکی است: اعمال پزشکی به عنوان سبب اباحه مسؤولیت، ضمان طبیب، امتناع از کمک به مصدوم، مباشرت و یا معاونت در سقط جنین، صدور تصدیق‌نامه خلاف واقع و افشای اسرار پزشکی بیماران. نتیجه‌گیری: عمده مقررات مربوط به مسؤولیت کیفری پزشک در تحولات قوانین کیفری ایران تغییر چندانی نداشته و تقریباً همان احکام در قالب عبارات مشابه تکرار شده است. با این حال، اسلامی‌شدن قانون مجازات پس از پیروزی انقلاب موجب ورود مفاهیم جدیدی مانند ضمان و دیه به قانون و موضوع مسؤولیت پزشک شده است.Background and Aim: The medical profession has attracted the attention of the legislator because of its particular importance and enacted various criminal provisions since first penal code. The aim of this study is to analyze the legal changes of regulations about the responsibility of the physician. Materials and Methods: In this analytical study, relevant and published articles were purposely searched and retrieved. Ethical Consideration: Honesty was observed in the reporting, analysis, and references to the texts. Findings: The criminal provisions of Iranian Penal Code consist of five major issues related to the physician and medical staff: medical practice as a justification of responsibility, Responsibility of Physician, refuse to help victim and patients, to commit or accessory in abortion, issuance of false certificate, and disclosure of medical secrets of patients. Conclusion: the main provisions relating to the physician’s criminal liability have not changed much in Iran’s penal code and almost the same sentences are repeated in the form of similar statements. However, the islamization of the Penal Code after the revolution led to enter of new concepts such as Zaman and blood money (Dia) in the realm of physician responsibility.   Please cite this article as: Ehsanpour SR, Ahadi F. Legal Developments of the Responsibility of the Physician in Iranian Criminal Law. Med Hist J 2018; 10(36): 105-11