Ionic view title not updating on transition to 'nephew' state - angularjs

Question

Basically I am trying to transition from my root.home state to root.topic.section (a topic view with a nested section view). The view loads but my back button and view title do not appear. The view title stays the same as it was in root.home. I don't understand because when i use ui-sref to change to sibling state (with no child states) then it DOES change the title.
EDIT: When I navigate from root.home to a sibling page root.dbtest, dbtest created a new navbar element in the DOM with the correct title, and sets the home's navbar to 'cached'. But when I navigate from root.home to root.topic.section no new DOM element is created and home remains active.
EDIT 2 this is the 'ui-sref' i am using to link to the sub state from root.home.
<a ui-sref="root.topic.section({topicId: xxx, inStore: false, topicName: xxx, sectionType: SECTION_TYPE.Summary})">link</a>
.
$stateProvider
.state('root', {
url: '/root',
abstract: true,
templateUrl: 'templates/menu-static.html',
controller: 'MenuCtrl'
})
.state('root.home', {
url: '/home',
views: {
'menuContent': {
templateUrl: 'templates/home.html',
controller: 'HomeCtrl'
}
}
})
.state('root.topic', {
url: '/topic/:topicId/{inStore}',
abstract: true,
cache: false,
views: {
'menuContent': {
templateUrl: 'templates/topic-view.html',
controller: 'TopicCtrl'
}
},
params: {topicName: null}
})
.state('root.topic.section', {
url: '/section/:sectionType',
views: {
'sectionSpace': {
templateUrl: 'templates/topic-section-view.html',
controller: 'TopicSectionCtrl'
}
}
})
Here is a snippet from my menu-static.html
<ion-side-menu-content>
<ion-nav-bar class="bar-stable">
<ion-nav-back-button>
</ion-nav-back-button>
<ion-nav-buttons side="right">
<button class="button button-icon button-clear ion-navicon" menu-toggle="right">
</button>
</ion-nav-buttons>
</ion-nav-bar>
<ion-nav-view name="menuContent">
</ion-nav-view>
</ion-side-menu-content>
Here is a snippet from home.html
<ion-view view-title="All Topics">
<ion-nav-title>All Topics</ion-nav-title>
<ion-content>
</ion-content>
</ion-view>
Here is a snippet from topic-view.html
<ion-view view-title="NOT SHOWING">
<ion-nav-title>NOT SHOWING</ion-nav-title>
<ion-content>
<ion-nav-view name="sectionSpace">
</ion-nav-view>
</ion-content>
</ion-view>

Answer 1

Also: the Url will currently be /root/topic/... This seems undesirable=> you can have root have the url: '', and this will allow the url to be /topic/
The above did not work well for me so I tried this personally and it did work for the Parent:
Topic-view.html
<ion-view view-title="NOT SHOWING">
<div class="tabs-striped tabs-top tabs-background-balanced tabs-color-light">
<div class="tabs">
<a ng-repeat='section in ["Section1", "Section2", "Section3"]' class="tab-item" ng-click='goTo(section.toLowerCase())'>
{{section}}
</a>
</div>
</div>
<ion-nav-view name='sectionSpace'></ion-nav-view>
</ion-view>
And it did work.
I'm not sure what this {inStore} is about but maybe that's for earlier versions of Ionic/Angular I think I got this working in this codepen: http://codepen.io/zargold/pen/qZNJNJ?editors=1011