1,493 research outputs found
Shariat courts and women's rights in India
No full text"In the light of the debates and discussions about giving rights to Muslim women and dispensing of quick justice according to Islamic provision, and the argument in favour or against the establishment and strengthening of Shariat Courts by AIMPLB, the main issue is how far the AIMPLB’s insistence on Shariat Courts is justified in a secular democratic state. Further, why do they want to deprive women of their citizenship rights? Why they are not taking initiative to make divorce laws in accordance with the Quran, despite women’s organization continuous demand for making personal law gender-just? This paper deals with the some of these issues.
The Pakistan Federal Shariat Court, Section 4 of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, and the Orphaned Grandchild
No full textAbstractSection 4 of the Pakistan Muslim Family Laws Ordinance, 1961, dramatically altered the law of succession applicable to Muslims by granting to the orphaned grandchild(ren) the share that their deceased parent would have taken had s/he survived the propositus. The principle of representation incorporated in the Pakistani solution contrasts with the compulsory bequest relied upon by several Middle Eastern countries to deal with the same problem, although arguably representation more closely reflects the experience and expectations of the people of Pakistan. Nearly two decades later, the Federal Shariat Court was established and endowed with jurisdiction to declare a law contrary to "the Injunctions of Islam" and thus void. Some laws, however, were specifically exempted from the Court's jurisdiction; falling within this category is "Muslim Personal Law." A 1981 decision of the appellate Court (the Shariat Bench of the Supreme Court) held that the provisions of the Muslim Family Laws Ordinance were included within the phrase "Muslim Personal Law," and were thus outside the jurisdiction of the Federal Shariat Court. This position was reversed by another decision of the appellate Court in 1993, and the provisions of the Ordinance were immediately challenged on the basis of their alleged divergence from the "Injunctions of Islam." This essay reviews the provisions of section 4 of the Ordinance and examines the decision of the Shariat Court as regards this particular provision.
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Impact of medical treatments for male lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia on ejaculatory function: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
No full textIntroduction: Several drugs, currently used to treat lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), can be associated with bothersome sexual side effects, including ejaculatory dysfunction (EjD). Aim: To provide a systematic review and meta-analysis of the available randomized clinical trials (RCTs) reporting the impact of medical treatments for LUTS due to BPH on ejaculatory function. Main Outcome Measure: EjD related to medical treatments for LUTS. Methods: A systematic literature search was performed using PubMed, Scopus and Cochrane databases. EjD was identified using both free text ("ejaculat*," "retrograde ejaculation," "anejaculation," "ejaculatory dysfunction") and Mesh ("Ejaculation") searches. Results: Of 101 retrieved articles, 23 were included in the present meta-analysis. EjD was significantly more common with alpha-blockers (ABs) than with placebo (OR:5.88; P<0.0001), in particular, considering Tamsulosin (OR:8.58; P=0.006) or Silodosin (OR:32.5; P<0.0001), with Tamsulosin associated with significantly lower risk of EjD than Silodosin (OR:0.09; P<0.00001). Conversely, Doxazosin and Terazosin were associated with a risk similar to placebo. Meta-regression showed that EjD was associated with IPSS and with Qmax both before and after treatment with ABs, while multivariate analysis demonstrated that EjD was independently associated with the improvement of IPSS (adj.r:0.2012; P<0.0001) and Qmax (adj.r:0.522; P<0.0001). EjD was significantly more common with 5ARIs as compared with placebo (OR:2.73; P<0.0001). Both Finasteride (OR 2.70; P<0.0001) and Dutasteride (OR 2.81; P=0.0002) were associated with significantly higher risk of EjD than placebo. EjD was significantly more common with combination therapy as compared with ABs alone (OR:3.75; P<0.0001),or with 5ARIs alone (OR:2.76; P=0.02). Conclusions: ABs and 5ARI were both associated with significantly higher risk of EjD than placebo. More the AB is effective over time, greater is the incidence of EjD. Finasteride has the same risk of Dutasteride to cause EjD. Combination therapy with ABs and 5ARIs resulted in a 3-fold increased risk of EjD as compared with ABs or 5ARIs alone. These data can be relevant both for drug selection and patients counseling. Gacci M, Ficarra V, Sebastianelli A, Corona G, Serni S, Shariat SF, Maggi M, Zattoni F, Carini M, and Novara G. Impact of medical treatments for male lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia on ejaculatory function: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Sex Med 2014;11:1554-1566. © 2014 International Society for Sexual Medicine
The impact of local treatment of the primary tumor site in node positive and metastatic prostate cancer patients
No full textBackground:Surgical treatment of the primary tumor in patients with metastatic prostate cancer (mPCA) is gaining traction. We discuss the biological rational and the existing literature on this approach.Methods:We reviewed the literature regarding surgical management of advanced and mPCA disease.Results:Surgical removal of the primary tumor despite metastases is becoming a standard in an increasing number of malignancies. Basic science data support the use of surgical removal of the prostate in metastatic PCA. In addition, durable long-Term survival has been reported in patients with node-positive PCA treated with radical prostatectomy (RP) as mono or multimodal approach. Based on these data, several groups have demonstrated the feasibility and safety of RP in the metastatic setting. Retrospective series have also reported an improvement in survival for metastatic patients treated with RP in addition to systemic treatment.Conclusions:Although no level I data exist at this time to support the use of RP in clinically node-positive or mPCA patients, retrospective data together with basic research data and experience from other malignancies suggest that treatment of the primary tumor, in form of a RP, is safe and could improve long-Term quality of life and survival. However, prospective evaluations are requested to validate these findings before including in the standard clinical practice
Family physicians could help in predicting life expectancy without prostate cancer - Reply
No full textTransmission Expansion Planning of Transnational Offshore Grids: A Techno-Economic and Legal Approach Case Study of the North Sea Offshore Grid
No full textThe new energy policy of the European Union (EU) with the core objectives of competitiveness, reliability and sustainability, has driven Europe into a transition towards a low carbon & sustainable electricity supply systems. Under the new policy, the European energy systems are pursing two major objectives. First is to shift the focus from national to regional or (perhaps) a European level with the ultimate goal of introducing regional markets that facilitates cross-border power trades. Second, is to incorporate large renewable energy sources into the power systems to best exploit the energy resources. In this regards, special attention is oriented towards the development of the offshore gird in the North Sea region where offshore wind is abundant and has potential to become major energy source in the area. This thesis looks into transmission expansion planing in the North Sea region. It presents a market based approach to solve a long-term transmission expansion planning for a meshed VSC-HVDC offshore grid that connect regional markets. The main goal here is to determine the grid design that enables harnessing the offshore wind energy most efficiently, at the same time, creating capacity for conducting cross-border power exchange. Development of an offshore grid in the North Sea can encounter various technical, legal and economic barriers. Consequently advanced planning frameworks are required that enables accounting for these issues. The methodology proposed here provides a framework to investigate the impact of each of these factors on the development of offshore infrastructures. More precisely, the contributions of this thesis can be summarized as follows: \u95 Static Transmission Expansion Planning framework (STEP) In Chapter 5, I have proposed a multiple time-period static transmission expansion planning framework that is applicable to VSC-HVDC meshed grids. I have shown that the analytical solution to the problem gives the pricing mechanism that expresses the relationship between the electricity price of different zones and the congestion charges associated with the interconnectors between them. It is an extension of the work of Schweppe et al. that has been proven for and applied to VSC-HVDC grids. The proposed formulation includes investment recovery through congestion revenues as an implicit strict equality constraint. It, therefore, computes the expansion plan, such that the investment capital will be fully paid off through congestion revenues by the end of the chosen lifetime of the infrastructure. The framework determines the topology, transmission capacities and the power flows through the offshore grid, and the resulting distribution of social welfare among the price zones. By combining both flow-constraints and investment recovery-constraints and working with historical market data, the framework can deliver useful results that demonstrate how onshore price zones could benefit from an optimal grid design. \u95 Iterative clustering methods for computation feasibility The optimization framework proposed in Chapter 5 was intended to be driven by historical market-data in the form of hourly regional cost curves. The dimensionality of the search space and the computational intensity of the proposed optimization algorithm make the problem intractable. It was desirable to identify and work with only a subset from the total set of operating states. I developed an iterative algorithm that combines an unsupervised clustering technique with the proposed optimization tool to cope with the computational burden of the large-scale optimization problem. Automatic space transformation and clustering were performed to select a subset of representative hourly operating states. The number of samples in the subset was adjusted in order to match the congestion-induced revenues to that of the full data set. This ensured that essential information was not lost. The framework, thus, balances the need for reasonable computation times against the benefits of a model that allows multiple time-periods (as defined by zonal prices and wind power production combinations) and obtains realistic results. Several clustering algorithms (including K-means) and feature reduction techniques (such as Principal Component Analysis (PCA)) have been used in investment planning analysis. Their combination has also been explored in literature. However, this is the first time that an unsupervised PCA/clustering technique has been combined with an optimization tool to refine the clustering results. \u95 StaticWind and Transmission Expansion Planning framework (SWTEP) Chapter 6 describes a novel co-optimization wind and transmission expansion framework applicable to VSC-HVDC meshed grids. This is an extension of the static framework presented in Chapter 5 that adds wind to the TEP formulation, while implementing support schemes, which inherently induce a deviation from perfect competition. This results in a fundamental contradiction between the structure of the competitive market and the nature of support policies. The novelty of the work presented in Chapter 6 is that it has limited the market distortion by excluding the support payments from the market clearing process. To do so, I have proposed a formulation that divides the initial investment of the offshore wind infrastructure into subsidized and unsubsidized parts. Thus, the objective of the optimization problem was to maximize sum of incremental social welfare of all regions at all times, minus the aggregated investment cost of offshore transmission infrastructure and the investment cost of building the offshore wind farms that has not been covered through the support payments. The proposed framework enables the impact of implementing two types of feed-in premium support schemes (i.e., generation-based and capacity-based) to be accounted for in the final development of the grid. The goal of this chapter was to investigate the performance of the two feed-in support policies to verify if investment recovery would be fulfilled under a certain support scheme design. In addition, an ‘optimal’ support level and offshore wind support tariff rate were determined. The analytical solution to the optimization problems confirms the complete recovery of the investment cost of transmission infrastructure. In addition, under the assumption that no offshore wind was curtailed, the revenues collected from market sales of offshore wind farms can pay off the unsubsidized part of the wind farm investment, regardless of the payment basis (generation-based or capacity-based). \u95 Dynamic Transmission Expansion Planning framework (DTEP) In Chapter 7, I have proposed a market-based, multiple stage, multi-time period dynamic transmission expansion planning framework for a meshed offshore grid to connect upcoming offshore wind farms to multiple onshore markets. The main contribution of this framework is that it enables accounting for delays in the construction and implementation of offshore infrastructures, including wind farms and transmission systems. Delays can occur mainly due to legal barriers associated with differing permitting criteria in an international context, but also due to market maturity and supply chain issues. The timing of delays in grid, market and wind farm developments are set exogenously in the model. This is an extension of the work presented in Chapter 5 in which the whole offshore grid was assumed to be built in one instant. The final results include the optimal grid topology, transmission capacities, construction timing and the resulting remuneration and distribution of the social welfare increase and financial benefit among the various onshore price zones. The analytical solution to the optimization problem gives the pricing mechanism that is consistent with the AC onshore counterpart. The proposed market mechanism facilitates the integration of a multi-terminal VSC-HVDC offshore grid into the existing AC grid. In addition, the analytical solution confirms the investment recovery through congestion revenues, regardless of the number of investors that are involved. In the case of multiple investors, an independent financial entity is required that collects the transmission revenues from the grid operators and distributes them appropriately amongst the investors. Under this regulatory assumption, the investment recovery of every cable of every interconnector will be completely fulfilled within the desired economic lifetime.Electrical Sustainable EnergyElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc
Influence of a novel inhibitor (UM8190) of prolylcarboxypeptidase (PRCP) on appetite and thrombosis
No full textPreclinical pharmacological characterization of a novel inhibitor (UM8190) of prolylcarboxypeptidase (PRCP) was investigated. We synthesized and evaluated a library of proline-based analogs as prospective recombinant PRCP (rPRCP) inhibitors and inhibitors of PRCP-dependent prekallikrein (PK) activation on human pulmonary artery endothelial cells (HPAEC). Among the newly synthesized compounds, UM8190 was further characterized in vivo using methods that encompassed a mouse carotid artery thrombosis model and animal model of food consumption. (S)-N-dodecyl-1-((S)-pyrrolidine-2-carbonyl) pyrrolidine-2-carboxamide [Compound 3 (UM8190)] was selected for further evaluation from the initial assessment of its PRCP inhibitory action (K(i)= 43 μM) coupled with its ability to block PRCP-dependent PK activation on HPAEC (K(i)= 34 μM). UM8190 demonstrated excellent selectivity against a panel of carboxypeptidases and serine proteases and blocked bradykinin (BK) generation and BK-induced permeability by 100%, suggesting that it may be useful in preventing the local production of large amounts of BK. Furthermore, UM8190 showed an anorexigenic effect when systemically administered to fasted mice, reducing food intake in a dose- and time-dependent manner. In a mouse carotid artery thrombosis model, it also demonstrated an antithrombotic effect. UM8190 is a selective PRCP inhibitor and it may represent a new anorexigenic, and antithrombotic drug, that works by inhibiting PRCP-mediated mechanisms
Ricostruzioni tridimensionali dei vasi arteriosi intra ed extracranici con tomografia computerizzata.
No full textValutazione ecografica e Doppler degli autoinnesti di tessuto splenico nei pazienti sottoposti ad autotrapianto eterotopico di milza
No full textRicostruzione tridimensionale dei vasi del collo. Valutazione comparativa di diverse tecniche TC
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