The role of the principle of tolerance in the harmonization of public relations in the Republic of Kazakhstan

The article solves the problem of building a tolerant environment and the formation of an ethic of tolerance in Kazakhstani society. The role of a tolerant environment is to understand a person's place in the world, to master ways of interacting with him, to perceive tolerance as a personally significant value, as interaction with other people, during which personal mutual enrichment and development takes place.It also presents a theoretical and methodological understanding of the meaning of tolerance as a national-cultural worldview, deep human ability to perceive a feature of another culture and beneficially influence its further development through integration with its own culture. Elements of the spiritual culture of tolerance should be understood at the level of everyday interaction between certain phenomena and processes of a complex social structure, which Kazakhstani society today represents.The relevance of the article is due both to the scientific and theoretical need to highlight the main approaches to this issue with the aim of its etymological concretization and, thereby, to remove the problem of abstract interpretation of the content of tolerance, and the practice of implementing the essence of tolerance as a social value.Key words: tolerance, society, mentality, globalization, social worlds

Towards real-time topical detection and characterization of FDG dose infiltration prior to PET imaging

To dynamically detect and characterize 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) dose infiltrations and evaluate their effects on positron emission tomography (PET) standardized uptake values (SUV) at the injection site and in control tissue

Adherence issues related to sublingual immunotherapy as perceived by allergists

Objectives: Sublingual immunotherapy (SLIT) is a viable alternative to subcutaneous immunotherapy to treat allergic rhinitis and asthma, and is widely used in clinical practice in many European countries. The clinical efficacy of SLIT has been established in a number of clinical trials and meta-analyses. However, because SLIT is self-administered by patients without medical supervision, the degree of patient adherence with treatment is still a concern. The objective of this study was to evaluate the perception by allergists of issues related to SLIT adherence. Methods: We performed a questionnaire-based survey of 296 Italian allergists, based on the adherence issues known from previous studies. The perception of importance of each item was assessed by a VAS scale ranging from 0 to 10. Results: Patient perception of clinical efficacy was considered the most important factor (ranked 1 by 54% of allergists), followed by the possibility of reimbursement (ranked 1 by 34%), and by the absence of side effects (ranked 1 by 21%). Patient education, regular follow-up, and ease of use of SLIT were ranked first by less than 20% of allergists. Conclusion: These findings indicate that clinical efficacy, cost, and side effects are perceived as the major issues influencing patient adherence to SLIT, and that further improvement of adherence is likely to be achieved by improving the patient information provided by prescribers. © 2010 Scurati et al, publisher and licensee Dove Medical Press Ltd

Intentional communication between wild bonnet macaques and humans

Comparative studies of nonhuman communication systems could provide insights into the origins and evolution of a distinct dimension of human language: intentionality. Recent studies have provided evidence for intentional communication in diferent species but generally in captive settings. We report here a novel behaviour of food requesting from humans displayed by wild bonnet macaques Macaca radiata, an Old World cercopithecine primate, in the Bandipur National Park of southern India. Using both natural observations and feld experiments, we examined four diferent behavioural components— coo-calls, hand-extension gesture, orientation, and monitoring behaviour—of food requesting for their conformity with the established criteria of intentional communication. Our results suggest that food requesting by bonnet macaques is potentially an intentionally produced behavioural strategy as all the food requesting behaviours except coo-calls qualify the criteria for intentionality. We comment on plausible hypotheses for the origin and spread of this novel behavioural strategy in the study macaque population and speculate that the cognitive precursors for language production may be manifest in the usage of combination of signals of diferent modalities in communication, which could have emerged in simians earlier than in the anthropoid ape