Analysis of Spatial Justice in Access to Urban Services Case study: Yasouj city

Given that the urban spatial structure has a coherent system and is made up of a variety of components and elements, it appears necessary to emphasize its aspects in terms of different service indicators.The instability of any one of these components can have an impact on the entire complex and urban structure.Given the significance of the issue of spatial justice inthe distribution of urban services,the present study aims to investigate how urban services are distributed inYasoujcity and to pinpoint imbalances and inequalities at the of the city.This article used a descriptive-analytical research method.The mean nearest neighbor index was employed to identify the distribution pattern of urban services,and network analysis in Arc GIS software was used to evaluate the status of the city in terms of access to public services.The results of the study indicate the location of service clusters in Yasouj city.In this manner, the service distribution is beneficial in the areas of the city that are in District1 of Region1 and District1 of Region2, but it is unfavorable in the areas of the city that are in the east and northeast as well as the southern neighborhoods.The research's overall findings indicate that Yasouj city's service distribution is in poor shape and that the outskirt areas are less prosperous than the city center neighborhoods.Therefore, it is advised reviewing the urban development plans, paying attention to the present needs and necessities, avoiding the place, spatial, and economic requirements in the location of services, and redistributing services and giving the disadvantaged neighborhoods priorit

A national school-based screening program for mental health problems among children aged 6 to 12 years in Iran:scale development and psychometric evaluation

Schools are an ideal setting in which to measure and promote mental health difficulties. The aim of present study was to develop the Nemad Electronic Mental-Health Assessment Devices for Children (NEMAD-C) aged 6 to 12 years in Iran. A sample of parents and teachers (N = 10,163) were recruited to complete the parent and teacher reports. Totally, explorative and confirmatory factor analyses showed that the eight-factor model provides a better fit for both parental report and teacher report versions. Results revealed a screening tool consisting of eight dimensions: child abuse risk, self-harm, anxiety, depression, disruptive behavior disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders, academic achievement deficit, and self-regulation. Findings showed that the internal consistency coefficients of the subscales were high, and convergent validity was evidenced by significant correlations with theoretically related constructs. Therefore, the NEMAD-C has adequate reliability and validity and could be used for multi-dimensional assessment of mental health problems in Iran

Application of the Actant-Network Theory of Bruno Latour in Reading the Concept of Space

Abstract:Background: Space has always been a place of thinking and theorizing in various scientific fields, including geography. Each scholar looks at space from a different perspective. In the meantime, in the present research, an attempt has been made to study the reading of the concept of space from the perspective of the actant-network theory and to obtain a new reading of the concept of space.Objective: The aim of the current research is to identify the applications of the actant-network theory in reading the concept of space and also to expand new visions by using new intellectual-philosophical theories in looking at space.Research Methods: The current research is a part of basic research and it is done based on the analytical method. The source of this research to discover applications is Bruno Latour's (1996) actant-network theory. In this study, the data were collected by referring to main texts and secondary materials (articles, theses, and books written in recent years about the actor-network theory) by sampling the texts (in a targeted manner). The purpose of sampling here is to theorize applications, not statistical generalization.Research Findings: The actant-network theory defends the agency of non-human actors along with humans by rejecting essentialism as well as nature/society duality and believes that human actors are not superior to non-human actors and the whole is not in the hands of any of them. The application of the actant-network theory in the reading of the concept of space results in the acceptance of the principle of suspension in the knowledge of space, space as a syntagm, collective production of space, fuzzification of space, and multifaceted space. It considers space as a network and a black box.Keywords: Actant-Network, Bruno Latour, Space, Fundamental. IntroductionSpace has different definitions from the point of view of different sciences, including architecture, psychology, sociology, political science, urban planning, economics, philosophy, physics, and some other disciplines, and each discipline looks at the category of space from a specific perspective. All experts and thinkers are looking for an answer to the question of what space is. They have thought and presented different theories, but due to the complexity of the nature of space, there are still many disputes over the definition of space. In this research, an attempt is made to apply Bruno Latour's (1996) actant-network theory in reading the concept of space.What is Latour's answer to the question of space? And what are the ontological differences between Latour's actant-network theory in explaining the concept of space and other theories about space? The actant-network theory, which somehow has tried to separate its way from different schools and approaches (of course, this does not mean a complete break with other theories and schools) and has many ontological and epistemological differences with them, can provide us a new perspective on the concept of space. So far, according to the mentioned sources, the views that have been presented on the concept of space, such as the absolute space of Nionetti to Lefebvre's spatial trialectics, show the dispersion of approaches and viewpoints related to this concept. In this study, we aim to study Bruno Latour’s direction and whether his theory has similarities with the most important approaches and ideas about space. Materials and MethodsThe current research is a part of basic research and it is done based on the analytical method. The data were collected using first-hand sources (e.g. Latour, 1996) and second-hand texts (articles, theses, and books written in recent years about the actant-network theory). In order to achieve theoretical richness, the texts and sources are referred to several times to extract the key points that exist in the theory and from which the applications of the theory in reading the concept of space can be concluded. It was also tried to analyze and examine the differences and similarities between the concept of space from the perspective of the actant-network theory and other approaches and theories around the concept of space. Research FindingsThe results of the study show that the actant-network theory defends the agency of non-human actors along with humans by rejecting essentialism as well as nature/society duality and believes that human actors are not superior to non-human actors and the whole is not in the hands of any of them. The application of the actant-network theory in the reading of the concept of space results in the acceptance of the principle of suspension in the knowledge of space, space as a syntagm, collective production of space, fuzzification of space, and multifaceted space. The theory considers space as a network and a black box. Discussion of Results and ConclusionsWhat can be generally taken from Bruno Latour's actant-network theory in the reading of the concept of space is that Latour is against any presuppositions regarding space and in dealing with space (principle of suspension). Instead of facing the space with a fixed presupposition and looking for signs to prove our presupposition of the space (which is not accepted by the actor-network theory), Latour suggests that we should allow the actors to express themselves. How can we describe the space? Based on the teachings of actor-network theory, we should not look for a definite answer to this question. Due to the philosophical nature of this question, we should not turn it into an endless dispute. Rather, it is better to look for a way to face the description of the space in a way that we can. After identifying the actors, links, connections, and negotiations that take place in the concept, we should look for the lack of links and connections within the network that have caused problems so that we can help expand the network and make it stronger by connecting and re-linking the actors and resetting them. As Latour believes “everyday practice does not need any theorizing to reveal its underlying structure... Practice does not lack anything”. This means that there is no need to impose a model from space to space. The responsibility of the actant-network researcher is not how the space actors "should" reason or act, s/he should understand "how" they (the actors) reason or act

Spatial assessment of factors affecting the social vulnerability of coastal cities (Case Study: cities of Bushehr province)

Objective: Nowadays, coastal areas and the cities in it are considered as the most important components and elements of the urban system. Coastal cities are always vulnerable to damages from the environmental hazards and ignoring them will be problematic. Methods: This is a applied research and it is done by descriptive-analytical method that is based on library and statistics information. At first, factors affecting the social vulnerability of cities were identified and then all cities were classified in homogeneous groups and then were evaluated by GWR model. Results: The results showed that factors of lack of access to energy and fuel resources, social, physical, economic, dependent population, lack of access to healthy drinking water sources and population flotation had the most impact on social vulnerability of the studied cities. Also, the results of the cluster analysis model revealed that cities are classified in five clusters. Conclusion: It can be said that the resulting factorscovers almost all the underlying causes of social vulnerability. Also, according to the results, the most investment is needed to address the vulnerability of the lack of access to energy and fuel resources, as the vulnerability of households is more in this area. Also, due to the similar socioeconomic status of households in the cities of Bushehr province, the social vulnerability of most cities in this province is close to each other. Finally, it can be concluded that due to the inappropriate economic and social conditions of households who are living in coastal cities as well as the occurrence of natural hazards in the area, people living in these cities have a high social vulnerability

Mental Health Problems Scale for Adolescents- Parent Report: Development and Preliminary Technical Properties

This research aimed to develop a scale for adolescent psychological health problems (APHP). The population consisted of parents of high school pupils in six provinces in 2016: Alborz, Kermanshah, East Azarbaijan, Sistan and Baluchistan, Fars, and Razavi Khorasan. For each province, two cities (the provincial center and a low-income city) were selected on purpose. The selection of six institutions in each city was based on a random sampling method, and the selection of parents was based on available sampling. There were 308 parents in the sample, including 195 mothers and 111 fathers. After the data were collected, they were input into the 18th version of the statistical software for social sciences (SPSS). 133 items were examined for their adequacy using seven indicators (mean, standard deviation, standard skew, standard kurtosis, deletion alpha coefficient, multiple correlation, and correlation coefficient with total score) during item analysis. The item analysis revealed that the majority of objects possessed appropriate properties. Exploratory factor analysis of the coefficient revealed six factors that explain 42% of the variance. Internal homogeneity coefficients for the subscales ranged from 0.78 (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) to 0.95 (deficit in assignments and self-control) and 0.95 for the full scale. The results indicated that the preliminary version of the instrument has adequate psychometric properties

Hydrogel nanocomposite based on alginate/zeolite for burn wound healing: In vitro and in vivo study

Objective(s): The main objective of the current assay was to evaluate the antibacterial and regenerative effects of hydrogel nanocomposite containing pure natural zeolite (clinoptilolite) integrated with alginate (Alg) as wound healing/dressing biomaterials.Materials and Methods: The zeolites were size excluded, characterized by SEM, DLS, XRD, FTIR, and XRF, and then integrated into Alg hydrogel followed by calcium chloride crosslinking. The Alg and alginate zeolite (Alg/Zeo) hydrogel was characterized by swelling and weight loss tests, also the antibacterial, hemocompatibility, and cell viability tests were performed. In animal studies, the burn wound was induced on the back of rats and treated with the following groups: control, Alg hydrogel, and Alg/Zeo hydrogel.Results: The results showed that the hydrodynamic diameter of zeolites was 367 ± 0.2 nm. Zeolites did not show any significant antibacterial effect, however, the hydrogel nanocomposite containing zeolite had proper swelling as well as hemocompatibility and no cytotoxicity was observed. Following the creation of a third-degree burn wound on the back of rats, the results indicated that the Alg hydrogel and Alg/Zeo nanocomposite accelerated the wound healing process compared with the control group. Re-epithelialization, granulation tissue thickness, collagenization, inflammatory cell recruitment, and angiogenesis level were not significantly different between Alg and Alg/Zeo nanocomposite.Conclusion: These findings revealed that although the incorporation of zeolites did not induce a significant beneficial effect in comparison with Alg hydrogel, using zeolite capacity in hydrogel for loading the antibiotics or other effective compounds can be considered a promising wound dressing

Automatic brain tumor segmentation method using improved fuzzy C-means and fuzzy particle swarm optimization

The brain is the most important organ of the human body. It has a complicated structure, and a precise segmentation of brain cerebral tissues plays an important role for tumor detection. Since the manual segmentation is tedious and time-consuming, automatic segmentation becomes a more attractive subject to most researchers. Recently, many automatic segmentation methods have been proposed using clustering algorithms. Nonetheless, there are some remaining issues: noisy images and local optima. This study proposes a hybrid method by combining two clustering methods: FCM-FPSO and IFCM-PSO. In this research, a Gaussian filter is first applied as a pre-processing step to remove noises. Then, the enhanced image is segmented using a modified clustering method called Improved Fuzzy C-Means (IFCM). In IFCM, besides the target pixel intensity, the distance and intensity of the neighbours of the target pixel are used as the segmentation parameters. The presence of these parameters are helpful in case of the segmentation of noisy images. In order to prevent IFCM from falling into local optima, Fuzzy Particle Swarm Optimization (FPSO) is used to improve the parameter initialization step. FPSO is initialized by using a random membership function. The hybrid method is applied on thirty-one MRI brain tumor images collected from MICCAI 2012. The experimental results revealed that the F1-Measure of 79.98%, obtained by proposed hybrid method, is higher than that of the recent segmentation method

Automatic brain tumor segmentation method using improved fuzzy C-means and fuzzy particle swarm optimization

The brain is the most important organ of the human body. It has a complicated structure, and a precise segmentation of brain cerebral tissues plays an important role for tumor detection. Since the manual segmentation is tedious and time-consuming, automatic segmentation becomes a more attractive subject to most researchers. Recently, many automatic segmentation methods have been proposed using clustering algorithms. Nonetheless, there are some remaining issues: noisy images and local optima. This study proposes a hybrid method by combining two clustering methods: FCM-FPSO and IFCM-PSO. In this research, a Gaussian filter is first applied as a pre-processing step to remove noises. Then, the enhanced image is segmented using a modified clustering method called Improved Fuzzy C-Means (IFCM). In IFCM, besides the target pixel intensity, the distance and intensity of the neighbours of the target pixel are used as the segmentation parameters. The presence of these parameters are helpful in case of the segmentation of noisy images. In order to prevent IFCM from falling into local optima, Fuzzy Particle Swarm Optimization (FPSO) is used to improve the parameter initialization step. FPSO is initialized by using a random membership function. The hybrid method is applied on thirty-one MRI brain tumor images collected from MICCAI 2012. The experimental results revealed that the F1-Measure of 79.98%, obtained by proposed hybrid method, is higher than that of the recent segmentation methods

Fringe more than context : Perceived quality of life in informal settlements in a developing country: The case of Kabul, Afghanistan

Investigations of the quality and satisfaction of urban life in informal settlements remain largely overlooked in the existing literature especially in developing countries. About one-fifth of Afghanistan population is living in urban areas, however, the trend is changing very fast and the country observes now one of the highest urbanization rates in the world. Two principal reasons for rapid urbanization are the return of Afghan immigrants from other countries after a period of relative peace and domestic rural-urban migration. Kabul, the capital city, is the most attractive destination for all immigrants. Around 80 percent of the population of the city lives in informal and illegal settlements. To investigate the perceived quality of life (QoL) of citizens living in these settlements, a survey was administered to 400 households in informal areas of Kabul. Statistical treatment of the results, including regression and factor analysis, showed a general dissatisfaction with the quality of life components related to transportation, leisure, and governance. Material deprivation regarding basic services (water, energy, etc.) was also widespread. On the other hand, less tangible components such as sense of community and family scored higher. Still, informal settlements constitute a fundamental part of Kabul and authorities should seek to improve quality of life especially in what concerns the provision of urban public goods. The findings of this study attempt to provide basic results for managers, planners and urban policymakers to facilitate a reasonable evaluation of the current state of the city in order to take action in addressing planning problems and achieving urban sustainability