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Rashīd ad-Dīn gives a summary of what he found in Arabic and Chinese medical literature concerning the topic Heat.

The last few years have seen an explosion of economic research on the consequences of natural disasters. This new interest is attributable first and foremost to a growing awareness of the potentially catastrophic nature of these events, but also a result of the increasing awareness that natural disasters are social and economic events: their impact is shaped as much by the structure and characteristics of the countries they hit as by their physical characteristics. Here, we survey the literature that examines the direct and indirect impact of natural disaster events specifically on the poor and their impact on the distribution of income within affected communities and societies. We also discuss some of the lacunae in this literature and outline a future agenda of investigation.

Can Chinese Medicine and Biomedicine Converge?

Integrative Medicine: East Meets West.

Ginseng: Nature’s “Cure-All”.

In this paper, we set up an abstract theory of Murata densities, well tailored to general arithmetical semigroups. In [On certain densities of sets of primes, Proc. Japan Acad. Ser. A Math. Sci.56(7) (1980) 351–353; On some fundamental relations among certain asymptotic densities, Math. Rep. Toyama Univ.4(2) (1981) 47–61], Murata classified certain prime density functions in the case of the arithmetical semigroup of natural numbers. Here, it is shown that the same density functions will obey a very similar classification in any arithmetical semigroup whose sequence of norms satisfies certain general growth conditions. In particular, this classification holds for the set of monic polynomials in one indeterminate over a finite field, or for the set of ideals of the ring of S-integers of a global function field (S finite).

Mineral wealth tends to make countries less democratic and more likely to experience a civil war. Many countries also find it hard to use their natural resource revenues to make high-quality, growth-enhancing investments. I argue that these problems are caused, in part, by the unusual qualities of resource revenues — their great size, their non-tax source, their lack of stability, and their secrecy. While there is no universal formula for changing these four qualities, I present a menu of policies that could make natural resource revenues smaller, smoother and more transparent, and hence easier for governments to invest productively.

The efficiency of complex industrialized farming systems are compared to that of natural environmental systems while taking into account economic and environmental benefit as well as the needs of farmers and cattle.

Now growing at a rate of over 5% per annum, the $3 billion ‘alternative health therapies’ business is now positioned in the top ten growth industries in Australia. With poor regulation of both therapeutic goods and the unregistered therapists who promote them, cancer patients may well be putting their health at risk when they place their faith in many so-called ‘natural’ or ‘traditional’ treatments. With a focus on what complementary therapists refer to as ‘energy medicine’ and ‘nutritional medicine’, this chapter explores the risks and benefits of some of the more popular alternative health-care choices. While investigating their histories, it outlines what influences cancer patients to try these unproven therapies, and the conflict and contrast in information relating to the claims made for them and the conclusions of evidence-based research. Although there are a number of complementary therapies that are of benefit to some patients, both during and after their cancer treatments, ‘natural’ does not always equal ‘safe’, may be expensive and may even compromise their health. More patients now want a greater say in their choices of treatment, and selecting complementary therapies that may help is another of the many challenges faced in trying to make informed choices, as we navigate along our individual roads on our journeys to recovery.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) continues to evoke fierce debate and divergent views within the medical community, yet complementary medicine is used by 14–65% of Australian adults diagnosed with cancer (with estimates as high as 80–91% in the US and Europe), and alternative medicine by 8–14%. Cancer patients who use CAM are typically female, younger, better educated and of higher socio-economic status. Whereas surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy have proven increasingly successful but still have limited curative potential, these conventional approaches are generally more invasive, aggressive and associated with greater toxicity than CAMs, which tend to take a slower, gentler approach by attempting to bolster constructive forces (e.g. the immune system) rather than battling the destructive forces of growing cancer cells. They focus on symptom control and patients are generally encouraged to be active participants in the management of their illness. This patient-centred approach, which is more easily accessible, contributes to the appeal of CAM. Many CAMs, however, have drawn steadfast opposition from cancer physicians, primarily because they remain unproven in clinical trials and pose potential safety risks and financial or psychological harm to their patients. Research indicates that 33–77% of patients do not disclose CAM use to their physicians, often because of a perceived negative response. The perception that CAMs are more “natural” and, by association, safer than conventional treatments is problematic. Indeed, they may pose direct safety risks because of their potential adverse effects or interactions with conventional oncology treatments. Alternative therapies promoted as “cures” in place of conventional treatments have the potential to cause patients harm. It is therefore imperative that those involved in the medical care of cancer patients are equipped with the skills and knowledge to help patients appropriately evaluate complementary and alternative therapies, and be aware of interactions with conventional anticancer therapies, in order to increase the likelihood that patients avoid harm and, where possible, receive benefit should they choose to use CAM.

Radiocesium (Cs-137, t_1/2 = 30.2 years), a long-lived anthropogenic radionuclide, has been the subject of extensive research on soil-to-plant uptake factors due to the fact that it is widely released from global fallout and other nuclear catastrophes. However, other radionuclides in the environment are either anthropogenic (such as Sr-90 and Pu-239) or naturally occurring (such as ²³⁸U and ²³²Th), and their daughter nuclei in the natural radioactive decay sequence, as well as ⁴⁰K, can be absorbed by plants. Due to their presence in the soil, they have a chance of spreading to plants and contaminating the food supply. The primary method by which plants absorb radionuclides is through root absorption, and the soil-to-plant transfer factor (TF) is typically used to simulate radionuclide transfer from soil to plants. The primary objective of the research is to calculate the activity concentrations due to natural and man-made radionuclides in some soil and rice crops, including their soil-to-plant TFs. A total of 15 soil and 5 rice plant/grain samples were collected for the measurements of ¹³⁷Cs, ⁴⁰K ²²⁶Ra (²³⁸U), and ²³²Th. A high-purity germanium (HPGe) detector was used to measure the activity of these radionuclides. The average radioactivity for ²²⁶Ra (range: 21.13–23.52 Bq kg⁻¹), ²³²Th (range: 28.72–48.53 Bq kg⁻¹), ⁴⁰K (range: 274.78–374.52 Bq kg⁻¹), and ¹³⁷Cs (range: 0.19–1.23 Bq kg⁻¹) were found to be 31.69, 38.79, 319.07, and 0.88 Bq kg⁻¹, respectively. The total combined uncertainty (%) was found to be 15, 7, 8, and 10 for ¹³⁷Cs, ⁴⁰K, ²³²Th, and ²²⁶Ra, respectively. In general, these values are in good agreement with other literature or world average values. Multivariate statistical techniques, such as correlation matrices and cluster analysis, were applied to the radioactive datasets in order to comprehend the intricate correlations between the radioactive variables and their environmental categories. The following radiological indices were calculated: radium equivalent activity (Ra_eqv), absorbed gamma dose rate (D_g), yearly effective equivalent dose (Y_d), yearly gonadal equivalent dose (Y_gd), average yearly committed effective dose (A_cd), external hazard index (H_ext), internal hazard index (H_int), internal alpha radiation hazard indices (I_a), gamma radiation representative level index (I_ri), and lifetime cancer risk (L_rc). The collected data are crucial for mapping naturally occurring radioactivity and serve as a baseline for assessing radiation risk in the future caused by changes in radio-activity levels brought on by nuclear, industrial, or human activity. In continuation of earlier research, the TFs in some rice plants/grains from soil radioactivity for anthropogenic and naturally occurring radionuclides are also assessed. The background, methods, ideas, radioactivity measurement, dose calculation, and future direction on the soil–plants– food cycle are all thoroughly discussed in this book chapter.

We compare different actual forms of democracy and analyse in which way they are variations of a “natural consensus decision process”. We analyse how a “pure consensus procedure” is open to boycott of a minority, and how a “consensus decision followed by majority voting” is open to “false play” by a majority. We introduce a “random consensus procedure” in order to come closer to a natural decision process, and investigate how for such decision procedure false play of a minority is plausible to happen. We introduce the combined notion of “quantum parliament” and “quantum decision procedure”, and prove it to be the only one, when applied after consensus decision, that is immune to false play. We define a new form of democracy applying a quantum consensus system for its decision procedures.