Sanctions and illicit trade: British American Tobacco’s activities in Iran (2000–2014)

Previous research has documented how British American Tobacco (BAT) and other transnational tobacco companies (TTCs) smuggled their own products into Iran in the 1990s in order to circumvent sanctions and other trade restrictions. In the early 2000s, BAT, along with other TTCs, signed legal agreements with Iranian authorities to sell its products legally and curb illicit tobacco trade (ITT). Our analysis of previously unreleased internal BAT documents (covering 2000–2014) suggests BAT remained potentially involved in ITT after those agreements were signed. Meanwhile, BAT engaged with government authorities to tackle ITT primarily for reputational and commercial purposes. With a business model based on a high number of contractors and distributors, extensive engagement with government authorities, and an anti-illicit trade strategy focusing more on reputation and growth than on effectively controlling its supply chain, further investigation into BAT’s activities in Iran – including potential sanctions breaching – may be warranted. This is especially relevant as, in April 2023, BAT agreed to pay penalties exceeding US$629 million to resolve charges of bank fraud and sanctions violations in North Korea, following a criminal investigation by the US Department of Justice and Office of Foreign Assets Control. Exploration of BAT’s activities in Iran would provide insight into the credibility of BAT’s response following these penalties, with the company having claimed that “Adhering to rigorous compliance and ethics standards has been, and remains, a top priority”

“Now as a teacher”: Novice Teachers Reflect on English Language Teacher Education in Iran

This study relied on the reflections of 12 novice English language teachers and 3 supervisors to explore the status quo of teacher training in 3 private language institutes with headquarters in Tehran and about 420 language schools throughout the country. Extensive data collection was done through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and teacher diaries as well as informal peer interviews and observation of occasional meetings of supervisors and teachers. To analyze data, an inductive analysis procedure was used. Findings revealed that current language teacher training courses in the context of concern may require different types of improvements with regard to theory-practice gap, supervised in-service workshops, reflective teaching skills, use of technology, and teachers\u27 experiential learning

Japan Tobacco International: : To ‘be the most successful and respected tobacco company in the world’

Japan Tobacco International (JTI) is the international division of Japan Tobacco Incorporated, and the world's third largest transnational tobacco company. Founded in 1999, JTI's rapid growth has been the result of a global business strategy that potentially serves as a model for other Asian tobacco companies. This paper analyses Japan Tobacco Incorporated's global expansion since the 1980s in response to market opening, foreign competition, and declining share of a contracting domestic market. Key features of its global strategy include the on-going central role and investment by the Japanese government, and an expansion agenda based on mergers and acquisitions. The paper also discusses the challenges this global business strategy poses for global tobacco control and public health. This paper is part of the special issue 'The Emergence of Asian Tobacco Companies: Implications for Global Health Governance'.19 page(s

Insights into TEFL: Moral Dilemma Patterns in Teaching Practice

Though moral aspects of English language teaching (ELT) have recently attracted much attention, moral dilemmas teachers encounter have not been given the sustained attention they deserve. The present study was conducted to document the types and frequencies of moral dilemmas ELT instructors face and the likely differences between the pattern of moral dilemmas experienced and less experienced, male and female ELT practitioners deal with. Forty teachers participated in stimulated recall and focus group interviews. Results showed that teachers are mainly concerned with dilemmas raised from Rules and Regulations. Experience was found to affect both the order and the frequency of the dilemmas teachers faced in different groups. Gender, however, did not result in significant changes in the pattern of moral dilemmas experienced by participants

Evaluating novice and experienced EFL teachers' perceived TPACK for their professional development

Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is a framework which provides a number of opportunities for conducting research in teacher edu- cation, teacher professional development, and teacher’s use of technology. By applying TPACK framework, this mixed methods study aimed to examine novice and experienced EFL teachers’ differences in their perceived TPACK and its influences on their professional development. To this end, for the quantitative phase, a sample of 427 EFL teachers, both male and female with different teaching experiences were selected from various English language institutes in Tehran. In the qualitative phase, 16 EFL teachers were selected for a structured interview. The quantitative results indicated that experienced teachers were of significantly higher scores in terms of pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge subscales. In contrast, novice teachers were of significantly higher scores considering their technological knowledge, technological content knowledge, technological pedago- gical knowledge, and TPACK. The qualitative results demonstrated that novice and experienced EFL teachers favored different professional development programs tailored to their needs. Likewise, they claimed that they could bridge the gap in their knowledge through collaboration in professional development courses

Two decades of condition monitoring methods for power devices

Condition monitoring (CM) of power semiconductor devices enhances converter reliability and customer service. Many studies have investigated the semiconductor devices failure modes, the sensor technologies, and the signal processing techniques to optimize the CM. Furthermore, the improvement of power devices’ CM thanks to the use of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence technologies is rising in smart grids, transportation electrification, and so on. These technologies will be widespread in the future, where more and more smart techniques and smart sensors will enable a better estimation of the state of the health (SOH) of the devices. Considering the increasing use of power converters, CM is essential as the analysis of the data obtained from multiple sensors enables the prediction of the SOH, which, in turn, enables to properly schedule the maintenance, i.e., accounting for the trade-off between the maintenance cost and the cost and issues due to the device failure. From this perspective, this review paper summarizes past developments and recent advances of the various methods with the aim of describing the current state-of-the-art in CM research

“I Suppose I Am Now a More Creative Teacher”: An EFL Teacher’s Journey into Creativity within Constraints

Considering the paucity of self-studies exploring English as Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' journeys into becoming a creative teacher, in this qualitative action research, a mainstream Iranian teacher-researcher narrates the changes and challenges she observed while planning her creative classroom practices, implementing, and reflecting on them. While she experienced changes like going beyond the textbook, becoming a caring observer, and becoming a moment catcher, she faced constraining challenges like overcoming inner fears, showing (non)-compliance with institutional rules, and coping with situations when things did not turn out as expected. Such an insider view of teacher creativity reiterates that creativity needs to be considered not just as a set of techniques and procedures to be mastered but as an ongoing passion for renovation which should be cultivated over time despite existing constraints

Towards Functorial Language-Games

In categorical compositional semantics of natural language one studies functors from a category of grammatical derivations (such as a Lambek pregroup) to a semantic category (such as real vector spaces). We compositionally build game-theoretic semantics of sentences by taking the semantic category to be the category whose morphisms are open games. This requires some modifications to the grammar category to compensate for the failure of open games to form a compact closed category. We illustrate the theory using simple examples of Wittgenstein's language-games.Comment: In Proceedings CAPNS 2018, arXiv:1811.0270