The Rise of Cohabitation in the Southern Cone

This chapter analyses the increase in cohabitation in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) and attempts to determine the extent to which consensual unions and marriages have similar traits or differ in the context of the cohabitation boom (Esteve et al. 2012). The first section of the chapter reviews the historical context of cohabitation in the Southern Cone. The second section uses census and survey data to analyse the trends in conjugal union formation in the three countries during the last 40 years. We analyse the patterns of both childbearing and union formation, as well as the differences between marriage and cohabitation based on educational attainment, labour market participation and household structure. The purpose of this analysis is to better understand whether the behaviour of married and cohabiting women with different characteristics are converging or diverging over time and tentatively, whether more egalitarian gender relationships are emerging in both types of conjugal unions

Ocular Drug Delivery

Ocular drug delivery has been a major challenge to pharmacologists and drug delivery scientists due to its unique anatomy and physiology. Static barriers (different layers of cornea, sclera, and retina including blood aqueous and blood–retinal barriers), dynamic barriers (choroidal and conjunctival blood flow, lymphatic clearance, and tear dilution), and efflux pumps in conjunction pose a significant challenge for delivery of a drug alone or in a dosage form, especially to the posterior segment. Identification of influx transporters on various ocular tissues and designing a transporter-targeted delivery of a parent drug has gathered momentum in recent years. Parallelly, colloidal dosage forms such as nanoparticles, nanomicelles, liposomes, and microemulsions have been widely explored to overcome various static and dynamic barriers. Novel drug delivery strategies such as bioadhesive gels and fibrin sealant-based approaches were developed to sustain drug levels at the target site. Designing noninvasive sustained drug delivery systems and exploring the feasibility of topical application to deliver drugs to the posterior segment may drastically improve drug delivery in the years to come. Current developments in the field of ophthalmic drug delivery promise a significant improvement in overcoming the challenges posed by various anterior and posterior segment diseases