Investigating the skills of integrating Internet tools in teaching by math teachers of secondary schools in Ahvaz first educational district

Background and Objectives: Today Internet has a substantial effect on all aspects of human life and has influenced every individual and social aspects. According to studies, more than 82 percent of Iran's population use Internet by the year 2019. Internet as an attractive and pervasive medium has a deep effect on economic, financial, administrative sectors as well as social, cultural, and scientific communications; and somehow has changed people’s lifestyle. This effect has been such that today a concept called digital citizenship is mentioned instead of the traditional concept of citizenship. Since instruction and learning are an important area of human life, reducing the increasing costs of instruction and improving students’ learning and teachers’ teaching have become a main challenge of educational systems, and officials and mangers therefore seek to solve such a problem. Generally, technologies as a new solution open promising windows for educational system administrators. From the advent and development of the Internet as a powerful and interactive tool, it has been at the center of attention of the administrators. The unique nature of the Internet and the fundamental differences with previous media have also attracted the attention of many teachers and professors. Internet provides numerous tools and facilities and could be a desired environment for overcoming challenges. These tools and facilities could be applied in different phases and parts of teaching. Some are appropriate for presenting materials, some for gaining and directing students’ attention, some for doing various practices, and some for doing cooperative and group projects. Therefore, researchers recently have studied how to use Internet tools for various purposes of teaching and learning. Investigating teachers' abilities and capabilities for using Internet tools in teaching and learning has become a main question for researchers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the skills of math teachers of secondary schools in Ahvaz to integrate Internet tools in their teaching. Methods: The research method was descriptive survey in which a researcher-made questionnaire was designed. Developed questionnaire consisted of 41 Likert type questions which were divided into 5 categories. 10 questions were related to presenting the material, 9 questions to gaining attention and motivating learners, 13 questions related to designing and developing practices, 4 questions related to providing optimal feedback to learners and finally 5 questions related to facilitating cooperative learning. Reliability of the questionnaire was assessed by alpha coefficient and found to be 0.872. Then expert views were used for assessing the validity of the questionnaire. Statistical population was Ahvaz math teachers and based on the size of the population, all 67 teachers (37 males and 30 females) were selected from high-school teachers. Then the required data was gathered by the questionnaire.  Findings: The results this study indicate that the teachers' skills in using the Internet tools are almost poor. In other words, teachers' skills for presenting the materials (1.62), for gaining attention and motivating learners (1.55), developing practices (1.79), providing optimal feedback to learners (1.72), and for facilitating cooperative learning environment (1.23) were all lower than the assumed mean of the study. Conclusion: Theskills of teachers in integrating Internet tools into teaching including presenting the materials, gaining attention and motivating, developing practices, providing optimal feedback to learners, and for facilitating cooperative learning environment are all poor and need to be improved.   ===================================================================================== COPYRIGHTS  ©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.  ====================================================================================

Measuring urban social sustainability:Scale development and validation

Despite the significant role of social sustainability in the sustainable development agenda, there is a lack of research to clearly define and fully operationalise the concept of urban social sustainability. The aim of this study is to contribute to the existing literature by developing a comprehensive measurement scale to assess urban social sustainability at the neighbourhood level. We argue that urban social sustainability is a multidimensional concept that incorporates six main dimensions of social interaction, sense of place, social participation, safety, social equity and neighbourhood satisfaction. Failure to consider each of these dimensions may lead to an incomplete picture of social sustainability. Validity, reliability and dimensionality of the urban social sustainability scale are examined using factor analysis. We also illustrate the application of the urban social sustainability scale by investigating the influence of quality of design, as one of the least studied factors of urban form, on different dimensions of social sustainability. The paper uses data collected from the household questionnaire survey in a sample of 251 respondents from five case study neighbourhoods of Dunedin city, New Zealand. This study provides new evidence on the significance of improving neighbourhood quality of design and its positive and significant relationship with different dimensions of social sustainability and the overall social sustainability

Measuring Urban Sustainability: Developing a Conceptual Framework for Bridging the Gap Between theoretical Levels and the Operational Levels

The issue of sustainable development has been widely acknowledged and spread rapidly after United Nations conference on environment and development in Rio in 1992. Considerable attention is given to urban settlement areas. Thus, role of urban development is seen as a challenging issue under circumstances. Outcomes of the current patterns of world population growth and industrial development are agreed and reported as major causes of un-sustainability in long term. Whereas by turn of century almost half of the world's population is lived in urban areas; it is expected that this figure will reach to 8.1 billion -60.5% of world population- by year 2030. This is twofold; on the one hand cities are the places of the excessive use of energy and resources, of production of waste and pollution, of crimes and deprivations and socio-cultural un-stability, and so forth. However, some question will arise: is there a simple and universal model of sustainable urban form? How would decision makers be able to assess the rightness of their programs and actions in terms of sustainability of urban forms? And to what extent the concept of urban sustainability can be translated to some measurable elements? This paper therefore, aims to develop a conceptual framework within which the notion of urban sustainability-as a broad conceptual term - can be translated into some quantities which can be measured and evaluated with more assertion. Through this model, characteristics of sustainable urban form, systematically are defined and translated into some indicators. It is hoped that this model can provide easement and clarification for researchers and decision-makers in their assessment of cities’ form and function towards achieving sustainability

Experimental And Numerical Investigation Of Laser-Based Short Wavelength Plasma Sources

Laser-based plasma lamps are of particular interest in the semiconductor industry. This study examines the optimum regions of laser-plasma operational space for a number of intense laser-irradiated mass-limited droplet source scenarios

A Case Report: Acute Kidney Injury and Cardiac Arrest After Poisoning with the Uncommon Type of Rodenticide (zinc Phosphide) in Yasouj

Abstract:   Background and Aim:  Zinc phosphate is a solid gray chemical compound whose commercial sample is dark or even black and white. Severe hypertension and cardiac poisoning are the most serious complications of zinc phosphate poisoning and are associated with a high mortality rate. Poisoning with zinc phosphide as a rat poison, which has similar effects to aluminum phosphide tabletsis is uncommon. The report relates to a death case following poisoning with zinc phosphide mice.   Case Report: The patient was a young 18-year-old man who was admitted to suicide attempted at hospital. Due to the lack of toxic poison, the patient was treated with supravavalin as probable toxicity. After several hours of admission, his level of consciousness was reduced with deep breathing. In the tests after the onset of shortness of breath, pH was 6.94, HCO3: 4.9, blood sugar 21, creatinine 6.1 and BUN: 24. Then, the zinc phosphate was detected. Despite the onset of treatment, after 1 hour, the patient suffered from cardiopulmonary arrest and eventually died.   Conclusion: Poisoning with zinc phosphide can cause acute renal failure. Considering that phosphide is one of the poisonous toxins of rodents, especially in rat poison, toxic poisoning with phosphodies is also recommended in poisonous toxin poisoning cases.   &nbsp

Investigation of the Frequency of Plasmid-Dependent Quinolone Resistance Genes in Klebsiella Pneumoniae, Pseudomonas Aeruginosa and Escherichia Coli Isolated from Surgical Site Infections

Background & aim: In recent years, the rate of antibiotic resistance has been increasing which has led to the limitation of ways to control hospital infections (especially surgical site infections) and accurate treatment options. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to determine and investigate the frequency of plasmid-dependent quinolone resistance genes in Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli isolated from surgical site infections. Methods: The present cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 45 isolates of Klebsiella pneumoniae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Escherichia coli isolated from surgical site infections of patients hospitalized at Yasuj hospitals in 2018. After identifying the isolates, they were checked for resistance to quinolone drugs by diffusion method from agar disk. Then, quinolone resistant isolates were examined for the presence of qnrB, qnrA and qnrS genes using PCR method. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistical tests and SPSS version 25 software. Results: The highest rate of antibiotic resistance to Ciprofloxacin was 75.7%, and the rate of resistance to Levofloxacin and Ofloxacin were 73.3 and 62.2 percent, respectively; 24 (70.6%) isolates had at least one qnr gene, among these 24 isolates, 7 (20.6%) isolates contained qnrB gene, 4 (11.8%) isolates contained qnrA gene and 13 (2. 38 percent) isolates carried the qnrS gene. The results of the present study indicated the high prevalence of quinolone resistance due to plasmid (70.7%) among all isolates resistant to quinolones. Conclusion: The final results of the present study indicated that the level of resistance to quinolone antibiotics in gram-negative bacteria isolated from surgical site infections had a high and significant prevalence, hence the use of appropriate treatment methods and correct and rational prescription antibiotics by physicians are correspondingly significant in their control

Exploring the Redundancy Capacity Through a System Dynamics Approach

Current urban agenda is interested in developing urban strategies to enhance urban resilience for cities. This paper examines the concept of urban resilience applied in the context of urban planning with specific attention to which are the capacities that make urban systems resilient. The knowledge and the understanding of these capacities are fundamental to set up suitable strategies. However, only few frameworks consider urban resilience and its capacity within the complexity of urban system. Through an in-depth literature review, this paper aims at providing a methodological framework both to recognize these capacities and analyze which are the main factors that mainly contribute to the achievement of these ability. The paper illustrates the first step of the application of a System Dynamics approach to analyze the redundancy capacity in order to define which are the key variables to enhance this capacity and also to determine which can be the impacts on the urban systems as a whole of the redundancy