Liver biopsy is recommended as the gold standard method to determine diagnosis, fibrosis staging, prognosis and therapeutic indications in patients with chronic liver disease. However, liver biopsy is an invasive procedure with a risk of complications which can be serious. This book provides the management of the complications in liver biopsy. Additionally, this book provides also the references for the new technology of liver biopsy including the non-invasive elastography, imaging methods and blood panels which could be the alternatives to liver biopsy. The non-invasive methods, especially the elastography, which is the new procedure in hot topics, which were frequently reported in these years. In this book, the professionals of elastography show the mechanism, availability and how to use this technology in a clinical field of elastography. The comprehension of elastography could be a great help for better dealing and for understanding of liver biopsy.
Iran is currently experiencing the most important change in its history since the revolution of 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic: The regime in Tehran, traditionally ruled by the Shia clergy, is transforming into a military dictatorship dominated by the officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC; Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enqelab-e Eslami). This transformation is changing not only the economy and society in Iran, but also the Islamic Republic’s relations with the United States and its allies.
In this book, Ali Gheissari and Vali Nasr look at the political history of Iran in the modern era, and offer an in-depth analysis of the prospects for democracy to flourish there. After having produced the only successful Islamist challenge to the state, a revolution, and an Islamic Republic, Iran is now poised to produce a genuine and indigenous democratic movement in the Muslim world. Democracy in Iran is neither a sudden development nor a western import, and Gheissari and Nasr seek to understand why democracy failed to grow roots and lost ground to an autocratic Iranian state.
Classical data envelopment analysis (DEA) models use crisp data to measure the inputs and outputs of a given system. In cases such as manufacturing systems, production processes, service systems, etc., the inputs and outputs may be complex and difficult to measure with classical DEA models. Crisp input and output data are fundamentally indispensable in the conventional DEA models. If these models contain complex uncertain data, then they will become more important and practical for decision makers.Uncertainty in Data Envelopment Analysis introduces methods to investigate uncertain data in DEA models, providing a deeper look into two types of uncertain DEA methods, fuzzy DEA and belief degree-based uncertainty DEA, which are based on uncertain measures. These models aim to solve problems encountered by classical data analysis in cases where the inputs and outputs of systems and processes are volatile and complex, making measurement difficult. Introduces methods to deal with uncertain data in DEA models, as a source of information and a reference book for researchers and engineers Presents DEA models that can be used for evaluating the outputs of many reallife systems in social and engineering subjects Provides fresh DEA models for efficiency evaluation from the perspective of imprecise data Applies the fuzzy set and uncertainty theories to DEA to produce a new method of dealing with the empirical data
Many Westerners have offered interpretations of Iraq’s nation-building progress in the wake of the 2003 war and the eventual withdrawal of American troops from the country, but little has been written by Iraqis themselves. This forthright book fills in the gap. Zaid al-Ali, an Iraqi lawyer with direct ties to the people of his homeland, to government circles, and to the international community, provides a uniquely insightful and up-to-date view of Iraq’s people, their government, and the extent of their nation’s worsening problems. The true picture is discouraging: murderous bombings, ever-increasing sectarianism, and pervasive government corruption have combined to prevent progress on such crucial issues as security, healthcare, and power availability. Al-Ali contends that the ill-planned U.S. intervention destroyed the Iraqi state, creating a black hole which corrupt and incompetent members of the elite have made their own. And yet, despite all efforts to divide them, Iraqis retain a strong sense of national identity, al-Ali maintains. He reevaluates Iraq’s relationship with itself, discusses the inspiration provided by the events of the Arab Spring, and redefines Iraq’s most important struggle to regain its viability as a nation.
Sustainable Urbanism in China explores the notion of "Sustainable Urbanism" by considering the role sustainable neighborhood planning plays in the larger picture of sustainable urbanism and suggests innovations and best practices that are either developed or adopted by China. These are narrated as lessons learnt for other countries where we see similar trends of development patterns or emerging practices. Through various explorations of challenges, paradigms, and innovations of urban sustainability, this book highlights how planning, policy, and design are forming and reforming in the context of China. These are offered through a set of guidelines and pathways for urban sustainability at the scale of neighborhoods/communities or districts in a wider context of urban environments, as well as strategies for planners, developers, policy makers, and educators in the field of the built environment. Through a comprehensive overview of urban sustainability practices in China, this book investigates 12 case study projects. These comprehensive explorations should in turn help construct the future directions of China’s sustainable urban development and provide innovative pathways of sustainable urbanism in China and around the globe.
Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Iranian intellectuals have been preoccupied by issues of political and social reform, Iran's relation with the modern West, and autocracy, or arbitrary rule. Drawing from a close reading of a broad array of primary sources, this book offers a thematic account of the Iranian intelligentsia from the Constitutional movement of 1905 to the post-1979 revolution. Ali Gheissari shows how in Iran, as in many other countries, intellectuals have been the prime mediators between the forces of tradition and modernity and have contributed significantly to the formation of the modern Iranian self image. His analysis of intellectuals' response to a number of fundamental questions, such as nationalism, identity, and the relation between Islam and modern politics, sheds new light on the factors that led to the Iranian Revolution—the twentieth century's first major departure from Western political ideals—and helps explain the complexities surrounding the reception of Western ideologies in the Middle East.
This book critically develops and discusses Iran’s geopolitical imaginations and explores its various foreign-policy schools of thought and their controversies. In doing so, the book covers Iran's foreign policy and international relations from "9/11" all the way to Rouhani’s rise (late 2014). Accounting for both domestic and the international balance of power, the book theorizes the post-unipolar world order of the 2000s, dubbed “imperial interpolarity”, examines Iran’s relations with non-Western great-powers in that era, and offers a critique of the “Rouhani doctrine” and its economic and foreign-policy visions. Forged in the fires and intense deliberations of a PhD, undertaken at a most unique institution of higher learning in the world, Ali Fathollah-Nejad has produced one of the most informative and evocative studies of Iran’s foreign policy and international relations to date. Framed in a highly original theoretical approach, Ali’s nuanced analysis, drawing on a lorry load of primary and secondary sources, details the process and context of policy in the Islamic Republic, thus producing an unrivalled and lasting account of modern Iran’s worldview and the behaviour of this revolutionary state in a fast-changing world. —Anoush Ehteshami, Professor of International Relations & Director of the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, School of Government and International Affairs, Durham University (UK) Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, Iran in an Emerging New World Order flashes out the key drivers behind Iran’s international relations since the mid-2000s. Providing evidence for the material and geopolitical significance of Iran’s identity constructions, the book enriches the debate on the Islamic Republic’s foreign policy and bridges the divide between the discipline of IR and area studies. —Fawaz A. Gerges, Professor of International Relations & inaugural Director, LSE Middle East Centre (2010–13), London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE); author of the forthcoming The 100 Years' War for Control of the Middle East (Princeton University Press, 2021). Ali Fathollah-Nejad has established himself as one of the most insightful observers of Iranian politics. Providing the analytical background to his assessments of Tehran’s foreign policy in the 21st century, this book comes out opportunely at a time when a new U.S. administration is about to re-engage with Iran. —Gilbert Achcar, Professor of Development Studies and International Relations, SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) University of London A decisive contribution to two avant-gardist fields of knowledge: Critical geopolitics and Iranian foreign relations. Anyone interested in cutting-edge research that brings together International Relations and Iranian Studies will revel in this important book. —Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, Professor in Global Thought and Comparative Philosophies, Department of Politics and International Studies & former Chair (2012–18), Centre for Iranian Studies, SOAS University of London One of the few to have a thorough, beyond-the-headlines and forward-looking grasp of Iran, Ali Fathollah-Nejad offers a brilliant analysis of what is in store for Iran. A must-read for anybody interested in geopolitics. —Florence Gaub, Deputy Director & Director of Research, European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS), Paris It is no longer possible to think of any nation-state without simultaneously seeing the reflection of an entire changing world in it. Ali Fathollah-Nejad’s prose and politics in Iran in an Emerging New World Order is the state-of-the-art mapping of the epistemic shift that seeks to understand the global in the local, and the domestic in the foreign. The result is a mode of supple and symbiotic thinking that reveals the way transnational politics dwells on the borderline where the fate of nations unravels into the fold of a dysfunctional disorder that has become the fact of our fragile world. —Hamid Dabashi, Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature, Columbia University Iranian politics, outside of a small group of specialists, remains poorly understood. Iran in an Emerging New World Order helps demystify this subject. Thoroughly researched, very accessible and packed with insights, this book, focusing on the Ahmadinejad period, is highly recommended. It makes an important contribution to the study of internal Iranian politics, Iran’s foreign policy orientation and the international relations of the Middle East. —Nader Hashemi, Director, Center for Middle East Studies & Associate Professor, Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver Ali Fathollah-Nejad has produced an academic work that is, from my viewpoint, so far the most comprehensive one concerning Iranian standing in regional and international politics, its new political élite and their attitude towards the West and the world order. —Farhad Khosrokhavar, Professor in the Sociology of Contemporary Iran & Director of Studies at EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales), the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, France Since its inception in 1979, the Islamic Republic’s initial foreign policy was based on the rejection of the bipolar international order under the banner of a “neither East nor West” policy. By the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a unipolar order, the Islamic Republic tried to adjust its approach to deal with the United States as a hegemonic power. Iran shifted its foreign policy toward the East as soon as the international order moved from unipolarity in the early 2000s. Why did Iran turn its foreign policy, and what were the consequences and ramifications of this shift? Iran in an Emerging New World Order dives deep to answer these questions. Iran in an Emerging New World Order is a comprehensive and critical review of Iran’s foreign policy in post-unipolar world. As a delightful read full of important information and analyses, the book explores the domestic, regional, and international dimensions and ideational and material factors that shape and impact the Islamic Republic’s geopolitical imaginations and foreign policy controversies. Fathollah-Nejad explores Iran’s foreign-policy transformation from a unipolar to a (what he cautions as an increasingly but not fully-fledged) multipolar order, and its relations with non-Western great-powers in the 21st century. Written with clarity, Iran in an Emerging New World Order is a must-read primer for anyone interested in Iranian politics in particular and Middle East politics in general. —Saeid Golkar, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga; Senior Fellow on Iran Policy, Chicago Council on Global Affairs & author, Captive Society: The Basij Militia and Social Control in Post-Revolutionary Iran (Columbia University Press, 2015) A competent, engaged and impressive study of Iran’s foreign policy and its place in the world. Ali Fathollah-Nejad’s most important quality is that he looks with a wide lens and sees not just Iranian politics and foreign policy (in which he is clearly an expert) but the dynamics of the broader world and changes in the international system. This book is thus a must-read for those interested in Iranian foreign policy but also in shifts and changes of the international system into the second decade of the 21st century. —Arash Azizi (New York University), author of The Shadow Commander: Soleimani, the US, and Iran’s Global Ambitions (Oneworld Publications, 2020) In presenting Iran as sets of complexities – within and how it acts externally; how it represents itself and is represented by others; its myriad political and religious cultures, and how these shape the state and its international relations – and locating those within a constantly-changing global environment, Fathollah-Nejad provides us with unique and alternative assessments of how Iran’s foreign policy is shaped within the context of what he calls “Imperial Interpolarity”. The creative interplay of these various factors makes this an indispensable text for anyone wishing to understand Iran and its international relations within the current global political environment. —Na’eem Jeenah, Executive Director, Afro–Middle East Centre (AMEC), Johannesburg & advisory board member, World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES) A magnificent and conceptually powerful book; an eye opener for those who essentialize the role of Iran in contemporary International Relations. This landmark study covers the complexity of Iran’s cultural geopolitics and the diversity of its interlocutors in 21st-century world politics. The book is useful for delving into the internal dynamics of Iranian politics and its connection with the spheres of power in international relations. It is a very methodical book. Theoretically flawless. A deep, brilliant and enlightening academic text. —Moisés Garduño Garcia, Professor in the Center for International Relations, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) In this book, Ali Fathollah-Nejad goes beyond the usual one-dimensional view that dominates the study of Iran’s foreign policy and presents a comprehensive framework explaining the interrelated role of socio-cultural, economic and geopolitical elements in shaping the Islamic Republic’s foreign-policy orientation. The book also focuses on a crucial period involving two critical transitions: a systemic transition from the unipolar to the post-unipolar world order and a domestic one from a hardline to a more moderate worldview. All this makes the book a valuable contribution to the field. —Hamidreza Azizi, Alexander von Humboldt Fellow, Middle East and Africa Research Division, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) & former Assistant Professor of Regional Studies, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran (2016-20) Iran in an Emerging New World Order provides a timely and original account of foreign-policy making in the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially the turbulent first decade of the new millennium. —Kamran Matin, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, Sussex University & Associate Research Fellow, Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) Ali Fathollah-Nejad’s Iran in an Emerging New World Order builds on a reliable scientific approach and an informed overview of Iranian foreign policy. It identifies and examines the different factors which orientate it, such as its various schools of thought and their debates, the élites’ role, the interplay between structure and culture, and the one between internal and external realms. Furthermore, it casts light on the evolution of Tehran’s choices, including its “look to the East”. In this new book, Fathollah-Nejad has provided a challenging study which demonstrates the need to go beyond conventional framings, to include political culture, and provides a new evaluation of Iran’s international relations. This is an original and significant contribution to the literature on international relations, the workings of the Islamic Republic, and the understanding of the latter’s regional and global actions. —Firouzeh Nahavandi, Professor of Sociology of Development and Political Science & Director, Institute of Sociology & Director, CECID (Center for International Cooperation and Development Studies), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), as well as President, Graduate School of Development Studies of French Community of Belgium Through its careful analysis of a modern political culture in Iran gestated in the context of an encounter with European colonial modernity and evolved in correspondence with a catalogue of internal and external others, Ali Fathollah-Nejad’s timely book places contemporary geopolitical concerns against a much-needed backdrop of colonial and anti-colonial histories. —Siavash Saffari, Associate Professor of West Asian Studies, Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations, Seoul National University If you really want to dive deep into Iran and understand the reasons why its leaders are operating in the current crisis, this is the book you should read. It teaches analysts and policy-makers to understand the past to act wisely in the future. —Susanne Koelbl, award-winning Foreign Correspondent, Der Spiegel
Focused on the 2010-2011 Arab Uprisings, this book examines the role of the military in Tunisia and Libya, arguing that both armies contributed decisively to the outcome and form of the respective uprisings. The book begins by contextualizing the uprisings, with both countries plagued by anti-democratic politics and unequal social and economic structures in the 2000s. Alongside this, the book explores the key actors and factors leading up to, during, and after the uprisings. Employing a comparative case study methodology and drawing from approaches in rational choice theory and institutionalism, the author argues that the tripartite configuration of energy capacity, military structure, and strength of protest led to dichotomous outcomes in the countries. Tunisia, where the military defected, was marked by a lack of energy wealth, apolitical military structure, and high level of protest, enabling a nonviolent transfer of power. In contrast, in Libya, where parts of the military remained loyal to Gaddafi’s regime, protests evolved into violent civil conflict. Making use of expert and elite interviews obtained from fieldwork in Tunisia, as well as data from the research field, the book will appeal to specialists and students interested in international politics, military and security studies, and the MENA region.
Ali Rahnema's work is a meticulous historical reconstruction of the Iranian coup d'état in 1953 that led to the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq and his government. Mosaddeq's removal from power has probably attracted more attention than any other event occurring during his tenure because of the role of foreign involvement, the political, economic and social impact on Iran, and the long-term impact the ousting had on Iran-US relations. Drawing on American, British and Iranian sources, Rahnema closely examines the four-day period between the first failed coup and the second successful attempt, investigating in fine detail how the two coups were conceptualised, rationalised and executed by players on both the Anglo-American and Iranian sides. Through painstaking research into little-studied sources, Rahnema casts new light on how a small group of highly influential pro-Britain politicians and power brokers revisited the realities on the ground with the CIA operatives dispatched to Iran and how they recalibrated a new, and ultimately successful, operational plan.
Aghdaci argues that Iran has not yet sustained political development due to negligence by its leaders, resulting in a decline of public trust in post-revolutionary governments. He takes a statistical look at the reduction of social capital in Iran and suggests ways this trend can be reversed and political development can The role of social capital in political development and their relevance to Hashemi, Khatami, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s presidencies has been relatively neglected in the scholarship. In Social Capital in Political Development in Iran, Ali Abolali Aghdaci fills that void by discussing how states can create social development platforms and proposing an integrated model of social capital and political development. Aghdaci argues that the path to peak political development has not yet been sustained by any government in Iran because in all post-revolutionary governments, the people's trust in the government has fallen sharply due to the negligence and practices of the leaders in the political system. This book takes a statistical look at the reduction of social capital in Iran and suggests ways this trend can be reversed and political development can be maximized.
In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.
After a failed study mission in France, Abd al-Rahman returns home to Iraq to launch an existentialist movement akin to that of his hero. Convinced that it falls upon him to introduce his country's intellectuals to Sartre's thought, he feels especially qualified by his physical resemblance to the philosopher (except for the crossed eyes) and by his marriage to Germaine, who he claims is the great man's cousin. Meanwhile, his wealth and family prestige guarantee him an idle life spent in drinking, debauchery, and frequenting a well-known nightclub. But is his suicide an act of philosophical despair, or a reaction to his friend's affair with Germaine? A biographer chosen by his presumed friends narrates the story of a somewhat bewildered young man who like other members of his generation was searching for a meaning to his life. This parody of the abuses and extravagances of pseudo-philosophers in the Baghdad of the sixties throws into relief the Iraqi intellectual and cultural life of the time and the reversal of fortune of some of Iraq's wealthy and powerful families.
Written early in 2010 and initially published in September 2010, The Obama Syndrome predicted the Obama administration’s historic midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the “reform” president’s lack of firm resolve, Ali’s critique located the problem in Obama’s notion of reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to escalate the war in Afghanistan, and his economic team brought the architects of the financial crisis into the White House. Small wonder then that the “War on Terror”—torture in Bagram, occupation in Iraq, appeasement in Israel, and escalation in Pakistan—continues. And that Wall Street and the country’s biggest corporations have all profited at the expense of America’s working class and poor. Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms, including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the absence of a progressive upheaval from below—US politics is permanently mired in moderate Republicanism. Already called “a comprehensive account” of the problems with Obama (The Huffington Post), this new edition is sure to provide a more “powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
Modern Iran is a country with two significant but competing discourses of national identity, one stemming from ancient pre-Islamic customs and mythology, the other from Islamic Shi'i practices and beliefs. At one time co-existing and often mutually reinforcing, in more modern times they have been appropriated by intellectuals and the state who have drawn upon their narratives and traditions to support and authenticate their ideologies. The result has been an often-confused notion of identity in Iran. In this essential work, Ali Mozaffari explores the complex processes involved in the formation of Iranian national identity. He lays particular stress upon the importance of place, for it is through the concept of place that collective national identity and ideas of homeland are expressed and disseminated. The author reveals the ways in which homeland is conceived both through designated permanent sites and ritual performance, illustrating his arguments through an analysis of the ancient Achaemenid capital of Persepolis and the Shi'i rituals of Moharram. In a final part of the book, he extends his analysis to the Ancient Iran Museum and the Islamic Period Museum, housed in the National Museum of Iran, showing how the major transformations of twentieth-century Iran, which have so far been perceived in terms of political discourses and historical events, are in fact concerned with conceiving place. Forming National Identity in Iran offers powerful insights into the forces shaping national identity in Iran, which makes it a valuable contribution to the cultural and political importance of place.
This study explores Iranian influence in Afghanistan and the implications for the United States after most U.S. forces depart Afghanistan in 2016. Iran has substantial economic, political, cultural, and religious leverage in Afghanistan. Although Iran will attempt to shape a post-2014 Afghanistan, Iran and the United States share core interests: to prevent the country from again becoming dominated by the Taliban and a safe haven for al Qaeda.
Papers in this issue by: James Dean BROWN (1-32); Peter MASTER (33-58); Glenn S. HADIKIN (59-78); Mohammad Ali SALMANI NODOUSHAN (79-102); Noparat TANANURAKSAKUL (103-116); Jonathan Rante CARREON & Richard WATSON TODD (117-138); Eliza C. ANDERSON, Aaron M. VANDERHOFF & Peter J. DONOVICK (139-150); Stephen Pax LEONARD (151-174); Azizeh CHALAK & Hossein HEIDARI TABRIZI (175-184)
Optimal analysis is defined as an analysis that creates and uses sparse, well-structured and well-conditioned matrices. The focus is on efficient methods for eigensolution of matrices involved in static, dynamic and stability analyses of symmetric and regular structures, or those general structures containing such components. Powerful tools are also developed for configuration processing, which is an important issue in the analysis and design of space structures and finite element models. Different mathematical concepts are combined to make the optimal analysis of structures feasible. Canonical forms from matrix algebra, product graphs from graph theory and symmetry groups from group theory are some of the concepts involved in the variety of efficient methods and algorithms presented. The algorithms elucidated in this book enable analysts to handle large-scale structural systems by lowering their computational cost, thus fulfilling the requirement for faster analysis and design of future complex systems. The value of the presented methods becomes all the more evident in cases where the analysis needs to be repeated hundreds or even thousands of times, as for the optimal design of structures by different metaheuristic algorithms. The book is of interest to anyone engaged in computer-aided analysis and design and software developers in this field. Though the methods are demonstrated mainly through skeletal structures, continuum models have also been added to show the generality of the methods. The concepts presented are not only applicable to different types of structures but can also be used for the analysis of other systems such as hydraulic and electrical networks.
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