Background: Urticaria is a skin disease characterized by pruritic edematous lesions also called wheals. Although these lesions are self-limited they may result in lowered quality of life index. By far, the most recognized mechanisms that trigger the progression of this condition are hypersensitivity reactions. As an herbal therapy, Plantago major has been named in several references of Persian traditional medicine with effective properties in ameliorating urticarial symptoms. In this study we aimed to investigate whether Plantago major has the potential to be used clinically in treatment of urticaria according to the current knowledge about the plant effects. Materials and Methods: A combination of "Plantago major" and other terms related to urticarial therapy such as "mast cell", "anti-inflammatory", "prostaglandin", "histamine" and "IgE" that may have possible role in progression or suppression of urticaria was searched in Google Scholar and PubMed as the reference databases. Results: Eleven articles discussing either the direct role of Plantago major or any of its constituents in urticarial related bimolecular pathways were selected. Conclusion: Review of the selected articles indicated that Plantago major can effectively suppress many of hypersensitivity reactions which are also contributors in the pathophysiology of urticaria development. Further clinical trials are needed to prove the efficacy of this herbal treatment.

Massive Modularity Hypothesis of Mind assumes that the mind is composed largely, or perhaps even entirely, of modules. Since the publication of Modularity of the Mind (Fodor, 1983) modularity has occupied a central role in the studies of mind and cognitive science. But in philosophy there is no agreement about this role. In this paper, first I propose that many of these problems are the effects of the Fodorian base of Massive Modularity Hypothesis, and then I suggest taking Simon’s works on complexity as a proper base for modularity. In the last section of this paper, I consider two common characteristics of mind, i.e. domain- specificity and encapsulation, and argue that in shadow of Massive Modularity Hypothesis these characteristics can be explained better.

There are many situations in which experiments are not available or data are recorded from the population proportion to a nonnegative function called weight function. In a such situations the classical methods for inferencing about unknown parameters are not useful. In this study the problem of statistical Hypothesis testing is considered for weighted distributions to obtain (uniformly) most powerful tests.