Exploring the Critical Thinking Development Process of Supply Chain (Critical Thinking Skill and Tendency toward Critical Thinking) in Students (Case Study: Tabriz University)

The present study was done for studying the critical development process (tendency toward critical thinking and critical thinking skill) in students of general groups of Tabriz University. The method of present research, from goal perspective, was practical, and from identity perspective, it was descriptive-survey. Cluster and random sampling method was used for selecting the researchs samples about 341 people. The research tool included questionnaire attended to the California Critical Thinking of supply chain. For analyzing the accessed data from questionnaire, descriptive statistical tests and one-way variance analysis and schematic follow up test and independent t-test were used. The findings showed that the critical thinking development of supply chain (the critical thinking skill and tendency toward critical thinking) of students of general groups of Tabriz University in first, second, third and fourth years were different and included development and increasing process, and also there was difference between girls and boys in the critical thinking skill, but there was not difference in the tendency toward critical thinking of supply chain

Assessment of Children’s Experiences of Playing Computer Games: A Phenomenological Approach

Introduction: Due to the Attraction and enormous diversity of computer games, children and adolescents allocate a notable part of their time and energy to play these games. This necessitates the study of their Advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, the aim of this study was to represent the outcomes of playing computer games in the fourth grade students. Method: This is a qualitative and phenomenological study. In this study, 10 students were selected from the forth grade elementary students using purposive sampling and interviewed in-depth until data saturation was achieved. Data were coded and analyzed manually using Smith and MAXQDA 10 software. Results: The findings were categorized into four main themes: "physical outcomes, psychological outcomes, social outcomes, and educational outcomes" and 17 sub-themes. Conclusion: Students' experiences showed that playing computer games for a long time and without parental supervision, has various adverse outcomes, therefore, schools and families can significantly prevent such outcomes by supervision and planning. Keywords: Childhood experiences, Computer games, Phenomenolog

Examining the Effective Factors of Digital Transformation in the Process of Teamwork Development

Purpose: this study has been conducted with the aim of understanding the phenomenon of evading teamwork with a phenomenological approach in the General Department of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare of Fars Province. Method: The research method of the present study was conducted with qualitative analysis of hermeneutic phenomenology. In order to collect the data, an interview protocol was prepared. The statistical population included 11 eligible experts who were selected using the purposeful and non-probability sampling method, and in-depth and semi-structured interviews were given to them. Qualitative analysis of phenomenology has been used to identify the main and sub-categories of the research. MAXQDA software was used for qualitative analysis. Findings: The findings showed that 39 sub-categories were identified by examining and categorizing the descriptive codes obtained from the interview texts, according to the seven-step process of Claysey and according to their semantic similarity and affinity, they have been categorized into 7 main concepts including: inadequacy of the educational system, negative personality traits, weak communication and interactions, inappropriate organizational structure, insufficient knowledge and awareness of employees, lack of budget and financial resources, and negative cultural beliefs. Holsti coefficient was used for the final validation, reliability, transferability and verifiability of the data. The value of PAO in the present study was 0.712, which is greater than 0.7, and the data was confirmed. The results show that the categories of inadequacy of the educational system, personality traits, poor communication and interactions, inappropriate organizational structure, insufficient knowledge and awareness of employees, lack of budget and financial resources, and negative cultural beliefs have a direct impact on teamwork. Conclusion: Finally, practical suggestions were presented to the managers of the General Department of Cooperation, Labor and Social Welfare of Fars province to overcome the challenges and problems of teamwork evasion

Explaining the Experience of Academic Burnout by Medical Students, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran

Introduction: Academic burnout is a phenomenon that has received great attention in recent decades, as it has a negative effect on the performance of education and mental health among the students. This study aimed to achieve a deep understanding of the original essence of academic burnout phenomenon. Method: Qualitative descriptive phenomenological research method, chain sampling method, and in-depth interviews were used in this study on the medical students in Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran, in the academic year of 2014-15. Interviews were recorded and then, written. This process was continued to reach saturation point of data and the sample number reached to 9 people. Obtained data were analyzed using Smith method. To verify the trustworthiness, implication, and authenticity of the data, summary of statements were presented to the participants, and they announced to coordinate their views with the findings of researchers; and if there was a contradiction, perceptions of researcher were amended. Results: Experiences of academic burnout were summarized in 3 main theme included "poor planning", "problems of motivation", and "problem of adaptation", and 8 subthemes included "flaws in targeting", "postponing", "repeating programming mistakes", "disinterest", "external motivation", "feeling fatigue and impatience", "external locus of control", and "efficiency expectations". Conclusion: These findings can provide useful information on the characteristics and the situation of medical students, and also preventive strategies and corrective interventions to improve academic performance. Keywords: Burnout, Experiences, Student

Interpretation of Problems of Male Adolescents with Mild Intellectual Disability in Special Schools: A Qualitative Study

Introduction: Awareness of the problems of students with special needs will help families and special education officials to treat and train these children correctly. The goal of this study was to identify and analyze the problems of male adolescents with mild intellectual disability (MID) in special schools. Method: This qualitative study was conducted through the phenomenological method. The subjects included 16 male students of 15 to 18 years of age with MID in special schools of Tabriz, Iran, during the educational year of 2012-2013. Data were collected through unstructured interviews within 20 to 70 minutes, and analyzed using the Smith et al. method. Results: The themes that emerged from the interviews consisted of family damages (broken family and illness in the Family), physical ailments (illness, dysmorphism, and organ failure), abuse of adolescents, psychological trauma (anxiety, feeling of guilt, and poor self-control), fear of the future (concerns about safety in the future and concerns about education and job in the future), studying in a special school, poor learning, and disability in others. Conclusion: The findings of this study showed that adolescents with MID enrolled in special schools cope with complex problems. Attention to these problems can help families and educational system officials to reduce the suffering of this group of learners. Keywords: Adolescents, Mild intellectual disability, Special education, Phenomenolog

Investigation of Teachers' Lived Experiences of Student's Bullying Behavior: A Phenomenological Approach

Introduction: Bullying is a complicated behavioral problem that is mostly occurs at schools. There are many quantitative studies on this issue but few qualitative studies have investigated this problem. Therefore, this study was performed to investigate teachers' lived experiences of student's bullying behavior. Method: This is a qualitative study with a phenomenological approach. In this study, 20 high school teachers were selected using Purposive sampling. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Smith method. Results: After data analysis, 5 main themes and 23 sub-themes were extracted. It was revealed that in the definition of bullying, examples, features, and causes, there is a consistency between the teachers' lived experiences and background, but in feedbacks, different results were obtained. Teachers, based on their personal preferences, use different methods such as punishment, individual negotiation, referral to the manager's office, ignoring the undesirable behaviors and strengthening their conflicting behaviors, finding the causes, showing affection and creating friendship, inviting parents, referral to psychologists to take advice, and taking the rules of the school, scoring, and discipline seriously

Perception of Religious “Other” and the Quality of Its Narration in the Cultural Context of Iran

Human cultural vision in religious rituals and ceremonies of different religions, denominations and sects is of such a difference that this difference sometimes puts them in complete contradiction with each other. Apparently, every religion speaks of the eternal principles that must be followed by that religion’s followers and seeks to raise reasons of the veracity of its own claims as well as the refutation of the claims of other religions in order to prove its own supremacy in the face of the inferiority of the other religions. Today, man needs to have an interpretation and perspective of these diversities and to offer a judgement of their veracity, rightness or deviance may it make the best choice in rational terms. Referring to the ideas of thinkers is one of the methods that can help the humans to identify or mitigate these challenges. Thus, this study aims at assaying the perception of religious other from the point of view of the human scientists. The approach of this research is based on the qualitative method focusing on thematic analysis, data collection through semi-structured interviews as well as the analysis of the findings based on the stages of the thematic analysis. The research field is constituted by the professors of the universities of Tehran city. Sampling process continued in a purposeful manner among the professors of philosophy and sociology up to 8 cases until the theoretical saturation. The results of the research show that religious other within Iranian cultural context includes eight sub themes: Sunni, Zoroastrians, Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, Yarsans, Derwishes and Baha’is

Victimized students' experiences of bullying: A phenomenological approach

Introduction: Today, bullying is one of the most common problems in schools. Many quantitative researches have been conducted to understand the different aspects of this phenomenon, but very few qualitative researches have been performed in this area. Therefore, this study was undertaken to examine bullied students' experiences of victimization in order to understand the nature of victimization more deeply. Method: This qualitative research has been based on the interpretative paradigm and conducted using the phenomenological approach. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with 11 bullied students who had the inclusion criteria. Data were analyzed using Colaizzi’s method. Results: The findings revealed three main themes of "reasons for victimization", "the consequences of victimization", and "ways to deal with bullying" and twelve subthemes. Conclusion: Investigation of experiences of bullied students revealed that victimization has various psychological, social, behavioral, and academic consequences for these students. Moreover, data analysis showed that schools and families are major factors in the incidence of bullying and can also have a major role in dealing with bullying. Keywords: bullying, phenomenology, Vivtim Students

Twisted Laguerre-Gaussian mode division multiplexing to support blockchain applications

The blockchain is a distributed ledger shared among computers around the world that allowing anyone to transact and do business with each other.Once a new block is created, ledger's transactions are updated and synchronized.Hence, the speed of information propagation in order to minimize the time taken by a node to verify a block before announcing it to the network is very significant that should be leveraged by the enabling technologies.However, due to the huge of data capacity needed, mode division multiplexing (MDM) is a promising approach to provide an additional level of freedom through propagating different channels in multimode fiber (MMF). Nevertheless, mode coupling is considered as the primary bandwidth impairment of MMF due to the mode's random perturbation. This paper investigates the potential of mode spacing in conjunction with a feed-forward equalizer on twisted Laguerre-Gaussian (LG) MDM.Free error transmission of 40Gbit/s over MMF is achieved. The bit-error-rate and eye diagram have been used as a measurement metrics

Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks for 195 countries and territories, 1990–2017 : a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017

Background: The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2017 comparative risk assessment (CRA) is a comprehensive approach to risk factor quantification that offers a useful tool for synthesising evidence on risks and risk outcome associations. With each annual GBD study, we update the GBD CRA to incorporate improved methods, new risks and risk outcome pairs, and new data on risk exposure levels and risk outcome associations. Methods: We used the CRA framework developed for previous iterations of GBD to estimate levels and trends in exposure, attributable deaths, and attributable disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), by age group, sex, year, and location for 84 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or groups of risks from 1990 to 2017. This study included 476 risk outcome pairs that met the GBD study criteria for convincing or probable evidence of causation. We extracted relative risk and exposure estimates from 46 749 randomised controlled trials, cohort studies, household surveys, census data, satellite data, and other sources. We used statistical models to pool data, adjust for bias, and incorporate covariates. Using the counterfactual scenario of theoretical minimum risk exposure level (TMREL), we estimated the portion of deaths and DALYs that could be attributed to a given risk. We explored the relationship between development and risk exposure by modelling the relationship between the Socio-demographic Index (SDI) and risk-weighted exposure prevalence and estimated expected levels of exposure and risk-attributable burden by SDI. Finally, we explored temporal changes in risk-attributable DALYs by decomposing those changes into six main component drivers of change as follows: (1) population growth; (2) changes in population age structures; (3) changes in exposure to environmental and occupational risks; (4) changes in exposure to behavioural risks; (5) changes in exposure to metabolic risks; and (6) changes due to all other factors, approximated as the risk-deleted death and DALY rates, where the risk-deleted rate is the rate that would be observed had we reduced the exposure levels to the TMREL for all risk factors included in GBD 2017. Findings: In 2017,34.1 million (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 33.3-35.0) deaths and 121 billion (144-1.28) DALYs were attributable to GBD risk factors. Globally, 61.0% (59.6-62.4) of deaths and 48.3% (46.3-50.2) of DALYs were attributed to the GBD 2017 risk factors. When ranked by risk-attributable DALYs, high systolic blood pressure (SBP) was the leading risk factor, accounting for 10.4 million (9.39-11.5) deaths and 218 million (198-237) DALYs, followed by smoking (7.10 million [6.83-7.37] deaths and 182 million [173-193] DALYs), high fasting plasma glucose (6.53 million [5.23-8.23] deaths and 171 million [144-201] DALYs), high body-mass index (BMI; 4.72 million [2.99-6.70] deaths and 148 million [98.6-202] DALYs), and short gestation for birthweight (1.43 million [1.36-1.51] deaths and 139 million [131-147] DALYs). In total, risk-attributable DALYs declined by 4.9% (3.3-6.5) between 2007 and 2017. In the absence of demographic changes (ie, population growth and ageing), changes in risk exposure and risk-deleted DALYs would have led to a 23.5% decline in DALYs during that period. Conversely, in the absence of changes in risk exposure and risk-deleted DALYs, demographic changes would have led to an 18.6% increase in DALYs during that period. The ratios of observed risk exposure levels to exposure levels expected based on SDI (O/E ratios) increased globally for unsafe drinking water and household air pollution between 1990 and 2017. This result suggests that development is occurring more rapidly than are changes in the underlying risk structure in a population. Conversely, nearly universal declines in O/E ratios for smoking and alcohol use indicate that, for a given SDI, exposure to these risks is declining. In 2017, the leading Level 4 risk factor for age-standardised DALY rates was high SBP in four super-regions: central Europe, eastern Europe, and central Asia; north Africa and Middle East; south Asia; and southeast Asia, east Asia, and Oceania. The leading risk factor in the high-income super-region was smoking, in Latin America and Caribbean was high BMI, and in sub-Saharan Africa was unsafe sex. O/E ratios for unsafe sex in sub-Saharan Africa were notably high, and those for alcohol use in north Africa and the Middle East were notably low. Interpretation: By quantifying levels and trends in exposures to risk factors and the resulting disease burden, this assessment offers insight into where past policy and programme efforts might have been successful and highlights current priorities for public health action. Decreases in behavioural, environmental, and occupational risks have largely offset the effects of population growth and ageing, in relation to trends in absolute burden. Conversely, the combination of increasing metabolic risks and population ageing will probably continue to drive the increasing trends in non-communicable diseases at the global level, which presents both a public health challenge and opportunity. We see considerable spatiotemporal heterogeneity in levels of risk exposure and risk-attributable burden. Although levels of development underlie some of this heterogeneity, O/E ratios show risks for which countries are overperforming or underperforming relative to their level of development. As such, these ratios provide a benchmarking tool to help to focus local decision making. Our findings reinforce the importance of both risk exposure monitoring and epidemiological research to assess causal connections between risks and health outcomes, and they highlight the usefulness of the GBD study in synthesising data to draw comprehensive and robust conclusions that help to inform good policy and strategic health planning