background: oral contraceptive pills effectiveness is lower in actual use than in clinical trials. the views of a group of married iranian women were sought as a step toward improving the enhanced use of contraceptive pills. methods: two focus groups of current pill users (n=13) and two focus groups of women not currently taking the pills (n=14) were held. leaders trained facilitators; themes w...

this study examines the quality of services at iran’s central library of management and planning organization (mpo) from the viewpoint of its users. the research was conducted in two phases: first, the library and its services were compared to the standards for special libraries published by the national library of iran (nli). the library was found to meet most of the standards. second, the qua...

Background: Long-term treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) with prednisolone (PRED) is associated with bone mineral density (BMD) loss. This study aimed to determine the status of BMD in non-compliant women who used PRED alone for RA. Methods: Non-adherent RA taking < 7.5 mg daily PRED without DMARDs for > 6 months, and RA patients taking methotrexate +PRED (RA control) were compared with ag...

PURPOSE To determine whether users and non-users of alternative medicine in the province of Quebec differ in terms of demographic characteristics, health profile or utilization of medical services. METHODS The Quebec Health Insurance Board (QHIB) medical service records of the Quebec Health Survey (1987) respondents for the 12 months before the survey were linked with respondents' survey answ...

Ridership is a key goal in the transit industry. Conventional transit analysis focuses on two types of users—captive and choice riders—but rarely aims to understand the preferences of non-transit riders. This research aims to better understand habits and preferences—for both users and non-users of the transit system—as they relate to the transit market in the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Our ...

Article history: Received 11 September 2014 Received in revised form 17 April 2015 Accepted 25 April 2015 Available online 2 May 2015 Westudy the impact of sovereign risk on the credit risk of the non-financial corporate sector in the Eurozone using credit default swap data. We show that an increase in sovereign credit spreads is associated with a statistically and economically significant incr...

Financial liberalization policies have significantly altered the structure of rural credit markets and the terms of household access to them throughout Latin America. This paper has two main objectives. First, it uses household survey data from northern Peru to fill an empirical void by presenting a detailed description of the terms of formal and informal credit contracts and the frequency of n...

Online P2P lending marketplaces match individual lenders and borrowers for unsecured loans via real-time auction without financial institutions as an intermediary. This paper aims to build up a theoretical framework from the perspectives of informational social influence and herding behavior to explain how individual investors’ participation of online financial community influence their credit ...

there is a misconception among our people that opioids may prevent or have ameliorating effects in the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases. in this study we evaluated 556 consecutive male patients hospitalized due to acute myocardial infarction (mi) in city of yazd, from may 2000 to october 2001 and compared the characteristics of opium addicts to non opium users. prevalence of opium addictio...

For most Americans, access to credit is an essential requirement for upward mobility and financial success. A favorable credit rating is necessary to purchase a home or car, to start a new business, to seek higher education, or to pursue other important goals. For many consumers, strong credit is also necessary to gain access to employment, rental housing, and essential services such as insuran...