On comparative concepts and descriptive categories,suchas they are

Formal Description Techniques - How Formal and Descriptive are they?

I discuss formal description techniques (FDTs) as they are applied in practice in software and system engineering. Their quality can be measured by their formality, descriptiveness and technical usefulness. I discuss shortcomings in the scientific and semantic foundations of FDTs. I formulate requirements for FDTs. I demonstrate how a family of complementary description techniques can be develo...

Comparative concepts and descriptive categories in cross-linguistic studies

In this paper I argue that cross-linguistic grammatical comparison cannot be based on grammatical categories, because these are language-specific. Instead, typology must be (and usually is) based on a special set of comparative concepts that are specifically created by typologists for the purposes of comparison. Descriptive formal categories cannot be equated across languages because the criter...

Toxic Christmas and New Year Holiday Plants...or Are They?

Background: Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima), holly (Ilex opaca) and mistletoe (Phoradendron flavescens) adorn homes during the Christmas and New Year holiday season and create the potential for curious children to sample their colorful leaves and enticing berries. This study was aimed to review the American Association of Poison Control Centers National Poison Data System (AAPCC NPDS) to des...

Are Concepts About Constipation and Dietary Fiber Changing?

Herbal drug leaflets: are they in compliance with standards?

Leaflets inside pharmaceutical packages should include focal points about medicines being used by patients. The current study was designed to assess the compliance of information cited in herbal medicine leaflets with the standards released by the Ministry of Health and Medical Education of Iran (MHMEI). Leaflets of commonly used herbal pharmaceutical products sold in pharmacies of Iran were co...