Engendering Democracy after the Arab Spring

A gender analysis is needed for a deeper understanding of democracy and democratic transitions. While many commentators of the Middle East have focused on the participation (and transformation) of Islamist parties as key to a democratic transition, they tend to overlook what are in fact key constituencies, natural allies, and social bases of democratic politics—women and their feminist organizations. Women may need democracy in order to flourish, but democracy needs women if it is to be inclusive, representative, and enduring. A comparative perspective as well as a focus on the Middle East/North Africa region illustrates the relationship between the advancement of democracy and the advancement of women

A novel diblock copolymer of (monomethoxy poly [ethylene glycol]-oleate) with a small hydrophobic fraction to make stable micelles/polymersomes for curcumin delivery to cancer cells

Curcumin is a potent natural anticancer agent, but its effectiveness is limited by properties such as very low solubility, high rate of degradation, and low rate of absorption of its hydrophobic molecules in vivo. To date, various nanocarriers have been used to improve the bioavailability of this hydrophobic biomaterial. This study investigates the encapsulation of curcumin in a novel nanostructure of monomethoxy poly(ethylene glycol)-oleate (mPEG-OA) and its anticancer effect. Tests were done to determine the critical micelle concentration (CMC), encapsulation efficiency, drug-loading efficiency, and cytotoxicity (against U87MG brain carcinoma cells and HFSF-PI3 cells as normal human fibroblasts) of some nanodevice preparations. The results of fluorescence microscopy and cell-cycle analyses indicated that the in vitro bioavailability of the encapsulated curcumin was significantly greater than that of free curcumin. Cytotoxicity evaluations showed that half maximal inhibitory concentrations of free curcumin and curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA for the U87MG cancer cell line were 48 μM and 24 μM, respectively. The Annexin-V-FLUOS assay was used to quantify the apoptotic effect of the prepared nanostructures. Apoptosis induction was observed in a dose-dependent manner after curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA treatments. Two common self-assembling structures, micelles and polymersomes, were observed by atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scat­tering, and the abundance of each structure was dependent on the concentration of the diblock copolymer. The mPEG-OA micelles had a very low CMC (13.24 μM or 0.03 g/L). Moreover, atomic force microscopy and dynamic light scattering showed that the curcumin-loaded mPEG-OA polymersomes had very stable structures, and at concentrations 1,000 times less than the CMC, at which the micelles disappear, polymersomes were the dominant structures in the dispersion with a reduced size distribution below 150 nm. Overall, the results from these tests revealed that this nanocarrier can be considered as an appropriate drug delivery system for delivering curcumin to cancer cells. © 2014 Erfani-Moghadam et al

Ultra-structure of Ionocyte cells in gills of Silurus glanis of Mahabad Dam, Kordestan Province

Gills of catfish Silurus glanis (300 g weight) of Mahabad Dam (Iran) were examined for structural attributes in 2004. Immediately after catch, gills were removed and placed in Bouin and Glutaraldehyde for structural and microscopic examinations. For classical histological assessment, samples were stained with Hematoxylin and Eosin and examined under light microscope. For electron microscopy, cuts 90 nanometers each were prepared and stained with Uranyl Acetate and Lead Citrate, covered with silver, examined and photographed. We found the gill cells being composed of ionocyte alpha, beta, accessory, mucous, pillar and mosaic cells. The ionocytes were located at the base of the gill rakers and intra raker spaces. These structural attributes of ionocyte cells demonstrate their active role in osmotic regulation of catfish

Use of single-chain antibody derivatives for targeted drug delivery

Single-chain antibodies (scFvs), which contain only the variable domains of full-length antibodies, are relatively small molecules that can be used for selective drug delivery. In this review, we discuss how scFvs help improve the specificity and efficiency of drugs. Small interfering RNA (siRNA) delivery using scFv-drug fusion peptides, siRNA delivery using scFv-conjugated nanoparticles, targeted delivery using scFv-viral peptide-fusion proteins, use of scFv in fusion with cell-penetrating peptides for effective targeted drug delivery, scFv-mediated targeted delivery of inorganic nanoparticles, scFv-mediated increase of tumor killing activity of granulocytes, use of scFv for tumor imaging, site-directed conjugation of scFv molecules to drug carrier systems, use of scFv to relieve pain and use of scFv for increasing drug loading efficiency are among the topics that are discussed here. © 2016, University of Michigan. All rights reserved

Towards Gender Equality in the Arab/Middle East Region: Islam, culture, and feminist activism

human development, culture

Economic design of X̅-control charts under generalized exponential shock models with uniform sampling intervals

Economic design of X̅-control chart was first presented by Duncan’s model (1956) model and then followed by Hu (1984) with fixed sampling intervals and failure mechanism of Poisson and Weibull distributions, respectively. For the sake of convenience, in many situations, it may be desirable to have frequency of sampling fixed with age of the system and to avoid certain drawbacks of the mentioned distributions. It appears that the Generalized Exponential model can be used as an alternative to the Poisson or Weibull models in many situations. We, here, proposed a cost model based upon Generalized Exponential with uniform sampling intervals