Recent developments in the field of education have led to a renewed interest in the mediating role of critical thinking abilities in the relationship between language learning strategies and the intermediate English as a Foreign Language learners’ writing performance. Oxford Placement Test was run to homogenize the participants, and 100 intermediate learners out of 235 were selected. Then, two valid questionnaires of Ricketts’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning were administered. Having administered the questionnaires, the researchers (...) asked the participants to sit for a writing test. The data collected from the questionnaires and as well as the scores of their writing performances were analyzed through SPSS. The results showed a significant relationship between learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, the sub-sets of learning strategies and learners’ writing performances, and CTA and learners’ learning strategies. However, CTA did not play a mediating role in the relationship between intermediate EFL learners’ learning strategies and writing performance. Based on the results of the study, one might also conclude that strategies seemed to play a more important role in the performance of learners especially their writing performances. Therefore, this study had useful contributions for students, teachers, and curriculum designers. Findings of this research could assist teachers to be aware of learners’ strategies in learning writing and help their students to be responsive to using learning strategies in their learning process and create a satisfactory learning context for using learning strategies. Therefore, learners were able to become independent and feel responsibility for their own learning. Secondly, curriculum developers could take advantage of the findings to include learning strategies training into the curriculum. As a result, students were able to use strategies in their learning process more easily and finally, the results might pave the way for improving the research findings. (shrink)

Background: Recently, a singular survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals,” which addresses shortcomings of previous instruments, has been validated. Aim: To determine how moral distress affects nurses and physicians differently across the various wards of a community hospital. Participant and research context: We distributed a self-administered, validated survey titled “Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals” to all nurses and physicians in the medical/surgical ward, telemetry ward, intensive care units, and emergency rooms of a community hospital. Findings: A total of 101 (...) surveys were included in the study. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for all respondents was 143.0. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score was 1.75 greater for nurses than for physicians, and nurses were 2.52 times more likely to consider leaving their position due to moral distress. The mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score for moral distress was least prevalent in the medical/surgical ward and highest in the telemetry ward. The intensive care unit ward had a mean Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals score mildly greater than the emergency room. Ethical considerations: No participant identifying information or information connecting a survey response to an individual was collected. This study was approved by the Raritan Bay Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board. Discussion: This study provides insight into the level of moral distress in the community hospital setting. Telemetry nurses experience significantly more than nurses in other wards. Telemetry nurses typically manage patients sicker than medical/surgical wards, however do not have the resources of the critical care units. This scenario presents challenges for telemetry nurses and may explain their elevated moral distress. Conclusion: In community hospitals, telemetry nurses experience a considerably greater amount of moral distress compared to their colleagues in other wards. As measured by the Measure of Moral Distress—Healthcare Professionals questionnaire, moral distress continues to be higher among nurses compared to physicians. (shrink)

Niches and mechanisms are two important but contested elements in the study of organism-environment interactions. Although they are closely interrelated, with niches playing a crucial role in theorizing about ecological and evolutionary mechanisms such as niche construction, facilitation, and species invasion, philosophical discussions about each issue have been largely disconnected. This collection addresses this gap, bringing together contributions from philosophers and biologists about the niche concept, niche construction theory, and ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. In this introduction we provide some background (...) to the collection, which arose out of two workshops organized within an interdisciplinary research consortium. We also summarize each contribution, organized roughly into three groups with considerable overlap and interrelations: niche construction and evolutionary theory, niches, and ecological and evolutionary mechanisms. (shrink)

The extent to which individuals with a variety of cultural backgrounds differ in empathic responsiveness is unknown. This article describes the differences in trait empathy in one independent and one interdependent society (i.e., the US and Iran, respectively). The analysis of data collected from self-reported questionnaires answered by 326 adults indicated a significant difference in the cognitive component of empathy concerning participants’ affiliation to either egocentric or socio-centric society: Iranian participants with interdependent cultural norms, reported higher cognitive empathy compared to (...) American participants who share independent cultural norms. In line with previous studies, gender differences were observed in all subscales of questionnaires, except the Empathy Quotient (EQ). Female participants demonstrated more empathy than males in both samples. Implications for understanding the cross-cultural differences of various components of empathy are discussed. (shrink)

The main objective of the present paper is to introduce some features of fake/bogus conferences and some viable approaches to differentiate them from the real ones. These fake/bogus conferences introduce themselves as international conferences, which are multidisciplinary and indexed in major scientific digital libraries. Furthermore, most of the fake/bogus conference holders offer publishing the accepted papers in ISI journals and use other techniques in their advertisement e-mails.

The aim of the present paper was to introduce some online-based approaches to evaluate scientific journals and publishers and to differentiate them from the hijacked ones, regardless of their disciplines. With the advent of open-access journals, many hijacked journals and publishers have deceitfully assumed the mantle of authenticity in order to take advantage of researchers and students. Although these hijacked journals and publishers can be identified through checking their advertisement techniques and their websites, these ways do not always result in (...) their identification. There exist certain online-based approaches, such as using Master Journal List provided by Thomson Reuters, and Scopus database, and using the DOI of a paper, to certify the realness of a journal or publisher. It is indispensable that inexperienced students and researchers know these methods so as to identify hijacked journals and publishers with a higher level of probability. (shrink)

This study examined the interrelationships among selected cognitive characteristics of Iranian EFL learners including English self-efficacy, metacognitive awareness, and their test performance. For this purpose, a model was proposed based on empirical studies and was tested using structural equation modeling. Following this, two questionnaires were administrated to 200 Iranian EFL learners of two language institutes in Mashhad, Iran. Results of this study indicated that Iranian EFL learners perceived themselves self-efficacious. They were also metacognitively aware of their learning process. Correlation analysis (...) results showed that metacognitive awareness statistically correlated with English self-efficacy and foreign language test performance. It was found that English self-efficacy significantly correlated with foreign language test performance as well. The proposed SEM model adequately fitted the data. Results of the SEM indicated that self-efficacy was the strongest direct predictor of learners’ test performance. Metacognitive awareness directly affected learners’ English self-efficacy. It also indirectly affected test performance through affecting English self-efficacy. (shrink)

A comparative world map of scientific misconduct reveals that countries with the most rapid growth in scientific publications also have the highest retraction rate. To avoid polluting the scientific record further, these nations must urgently commit to enforcing research integrity among their academic communities.

The final outcome of promotion and recruitment processes in universities should be conventional and plausible by the members of the relevant scientific community, to affirm that the processes have been competitive and fair. The objective of this opinion letter is to make a plea for the importance of the post-auditing and quantitative assessment of the selection criteria. It is shown that for an example case the outcome of the post-audit does not look reasonable from an external point of view, at (...) least regarding the research competency. (shrink)

Unilateral coercive international political, diplomatic, and economic sanctions are regular events of international relations and international law within the landscape of foreign affairs. However, while they may be prescribed by international law, or national legal systems, for peace and security reasons they have also been imposed for political grounds by powerful States such as the United States. The US sanctions are now targeting science, academic and university domains. When applied in this way, these sanctions violate international law, principles of human (...) rights, ethics, the autonomy of scientific institutions, and the norm of universalism in science. All of which protect and promote scientific freedom of expression. It is vital that international and domestic law be correctly applied to uphold proper ethical standards and scientific independence in order to protect the work and the freedom of scholarship. In this way, law is the solution, rather than the problem. (shrink)

Hemagglutinin is a major virulence factor of influenza viruses and plays an important role in viral pathogenesis. Analysis of amino acid changes, epitopes’ regions, glycosylation and phosphorylation sites have greatly contributed to the development of new generations of vaccine. The hemagglutinins of 10 selected isolates, 8 of 2010 and 2 of 2013 samples were sequenced and analyzed by several bioinformatic softwares and the results were compared with those of 3 vaccine isolates. The study detected several amino acid changes related to (...) altered epitopes’ sites, modification sites and physico-chemical properties. The results showed some conserved modification sites in HA structure. This study is the first analytical research on isolates obtained from Shiraz, Iran, and our results can be used to better understand the genetic diversity and antigenic variations in Iranian and Asian H1N1 pathogenic strains. (shrink)

The current study explored the effects of using digital flashcards and mobile devices on learning academic vocabulary. The participants were 86 university students majoring in Psychology in two experimental conditions and one control group. A list of 361 core academic words frequently used in Psychology was taught to the participants using different materials, and the learning outcomes were compared across the three groups. Accordingly, the participants in the experimental group 1 used a DF application, participants in the experimental group 2 (...) used traditional materials, and those in the control group were given a list of target words with their definitions. Receptive knowledge of the target words was tested before and after the treatment, and the learning outcomes were compared across the groups using one-way between-groups ANOVA. The findings of the study indicated that using DFs enhanced students’ engagement with learning their discipline-specific academic vocabulary and that experimental group 1 outperformed those participants in other learning conditions. The findings add to the existing literature on mobile-assisted vocabulary learning and provide empirical support for the effectiveness of such platforms for learning academic vocabulary. The implications of the study were discussed in terms of the affordances provided by DFs on mobile devices and corpus-based word lists for informing vocabulary learning components in teaching English for Academic Purposes. (shrink)

El presente ensayo trata la doctrina teológico-jurídica de la wilāyat al-faqih, expresión que puede traducirse con ‘tutela del jurisperito islámico’ –y, en la rendición de la doctrina por parte del gran ayatola Jomeiní, hasta con ‘gobierno del jurisperito islámico’– y su desarrollo e institucionalización en la República islámica de Irán después de la Revolución de 1979. En este marco, el ensayo analiza la función del vali-ye faqih, el jurisperito islámico encargado del gobierno de la R.I. de Irán, en la Constitución (...) y el ordenamiento del país. El término vali-ye faiqh, por su reiterado uso y prestigio, tiende a alternarse con sinónimos como rahbar, rahbar-e enqelāb, maqām-e rahbari o maqām-e mo’azzam-e rahbari. (shrink)

Signs of mankind's solidarity, by J. R. Nelson.--Mankind, Israel and the nations in the Hebraic heritage, by M. Greenberg.--Christian insights from biblical sources, by C. Maurer.--Muhammad and all men, by D. Rahbar.--The impact of New World discovery upon European thought of man, by E. J. Burrus.--The effects of colonialism upon the Asian understanding of man, by J. G. Arapura.--Religious pluralism and the quest for human community, by S. J. Samartha.--From Confucian gentleman to the new Chinese 'political' man, by D. (...) A. Robinson.--The scientific revolution and the unity of man, by B. Towers.--Language and communication, by E. A. Nida.--Man and the son of man, by J. Moltmann.--The potentiality of conciliarity: communion, conscience, council, by W. B. Blakemore.--Oneness must mean wholeness, by J. R. Nelson. (shrink)

Abstract:In this article, by providing a reading of three songs related to Tehran, created by three Iranian rock musicians, Behzad Khaivchi, Behzad Omrani, and Raam, I investigate a particular form of music education in a city that generates a supplemental narrative to the normative discourse of music education. Through Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, these musicians emerged in an other temporal, spatial, and imaginary space within the pseudo-colonial understanding of the Middle East region. Given the multiple teleological narratives of (...) the region, I seek to investigate the musicianship of selected musicians in this region to understand how they negotiate the often-conflicting narratives of their Middle Eastern home locally and how their musicianship contributes to the greater understanding of music education. More specifically, I challenge the concept of resistance in Iranian music education to counteract the representational politics with which these musicians grapple in their day-to-day music education practices, influenced by the Western media and the normative discourse of music education. (shrink)