BACKGROUND Use of psychoactive drugs such as khat leaves (Catha edulis) alter moods and emotional state and lead to adverse effects on the health and social life of users. Ethiopia is a major producer and exporter of khat in east Africa and the majority of the khat comes from the eastern part of the country, however, no studies have been conducted to investigate the habit in this area. This stu...

Using book translations as a measure of the flow of ideas across countries, we test the effect of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe on the international transmission of ideas. We find that translations of Western European titles into former Communist countries increased by a factor of five with the fall of Communism, while translations between Communist countries decreased by a factor...

A new species of cat snake, related to Boiga beddomei (Wall, 1909), is described from the dry forests of eastern Peninsular India. It occupies a large geographic range from Berhampore (type locality), near the River Mahanadi in the northeast to Kaigal near the southern Eastern Ghats in the southwest. The new species is diagnosed by having the following combination of characters: 19 dorsal scale...

The present study deals with the presence of Diopatramarocensis in the eastern Mediterranean. This species is small-sized and inhabited muddy bottom near the opening of rivers or lagoons [salinity range: 33-39‰] in the Aegean and Levantine Seas, and reached a maximum density of 90 ind.m(-2) in Mersin Bay. This species might be an alien species that was introduced from the East Atlantic (near Gi...

An exercise in hermeneutical suspicion, this article engages the extent to which the burgeoning appearance of ostensibly Eastern concepts and practices within everyday late-modern discourse and practice can actually be said to represent a thoroughgoing “Easternization” of Western culture. Using insights from Pierre Bourdieu, this article argues that Eastern themes have been appropriated by succ...

Michael A. Reynolds, an FPRI Senior Fellow, is an Associate Professor in Princeton‟s Department of Near Eastern Studies where he teaches courses on modern Middle Eastern and Eurasian history, comparative empire, military and ethnic conflict, and secularism. He is author of Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908-1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2011)...

The relationship between human rights and religion cannot be seen as a two entirely distinct sets of values Human are deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian religious tradition. However, throughout history institutions have interpreted differently supported or hindered their implementation. This paper discusses social cultural matrix post-communist Central Eastern Europe. Our statistical analysis...