BACKGROUND: Bovine leukemia virus (BLV) is an oncogenic deltaretrovirus causing a persistent lifelong infection of B lymphocytes. In addition to the domestic cattle, the virus can also infect water buffaloes. OBJECTIVES: Recent investigations have demonstrated the increasing prevalence of BLV infection among cattle population in Iran. Large popul...

Metris is a version of the Tetris game that uses a player’s musical response to control game performance. The game is driven by two factors: traditional game design and the player’s individual sense of music and sound. Metris uses tuning principles to determine relationships between pitch and the timbre of the sounds produced. These relationships are represented as bells synchronised with signi...

This paper considers the Greenspan/Summers/IMF (GSI) argument that the Asian way of doing business was the deep cause of the Asian crisis. The IMF reform programme for the crisis-affected Asian countries suggested they should abandon the Asian business model and adopt the US corporate model. The main findings are: a) contrary to GSI doctrine, poor corporate governance and lack of competition ar...

Color preference research has traditionally focused on summarising or explaining the color preferences of groups of people. Claims of universal patterns and trends in color preference have generally been based on group analyses, with little consideration of the individual. Initial investigation of this issue has revealed that, although patterns can be identified at the group level, individual d...

Efforts to achieve effective and meaningful patient and public involvement (PPI) in healthcare have existed for nearly a century, albeit with limited success. This brief commentary discusses a recent paper by Carter and Martin exploring the “Challenges Facing Healthwatch, a New Consumer Champion in England,” and places these challenges in the context of the broader struggle to give a voice to h...

One of the most crucial problems in geo-engineering is the instability of unsaturated slopes, causing severe loss of life and property worldwide. In this study, five novel meta-heuristic methods are employed to optimize locating the Critical Failure Surface (CFS) and corresponding Factor of Safety (FOS). A Finite Element Method (FEM) code is incorporated to convert the strong form of the Richar...