The effectiveness of worry exposure in treating generalized anxiety disorder

Worry exposure (WE) is a core of cognitive-behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The present study was carried out to examine the efficacy of WE in treating patients with GAD. Three patients with GAD were selected using Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID) based on disorders axis I. Subjects were selected using purposeful sampling, and underwent the treatment after gaining treatment needs. Multiple baseline experimental single case study was used as the method of the present study. The treatment program was carried out for 8 weekly sessions, with a follow up period of 3 months later treatment ending. Subjects completed Pennsylvania State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) and Cognitive Avoidance Questionnaire (CAQ). Research findings represented that WE decreased the intensity of GAD symptoms: Pathologic worry and cognitive avoidance. WE has suitable efficacy in treating Generalized Anxiety Disorder and it maintains suitable efficacy in treating GAD

Hope and Despair in Amal Donqol and Siavash Kasraei’s Poems (A Semiotic Analysis of Time-Place and Myths Components)

IntroductionSemiotics has provided researchers in the immediate past years with a tool for analyzing, understanding, and criticism of literary texts and discovery of hidden meanings. Semiotics has tried to unveil, decipher, and discover the deep meanings behind the structure. Amal Donqol (a contemporary Egyptian poet) and Siavash Kasraei (an Iranian poet) lived in their turbulent times. Political and social disorders intensively influenced the content and structure of their poems. The comparative semiotic study investigates meticulously and in detail the works of the Egyptian and Iranian poets considering hope and despair. It hopes to have a better and deeper understanding of the poets’ thoughts and spirits and their influence on their poems. Moreover, the study makes the ground for better presenting of the similarities and differences of their attitudes, as they live in rather similar conditions.Using the semiotics of the application of time, place, and myths, the study investigated the duality of despair and hope  in some poems of the two poets regarding the structure and poetic language. It tried to answer the question that how despair and hope have been presented in the poems and in mentioned components and how their poetic and artistic manifestations are.  Method This descriptive-analytic study was done within the American framework of comparative literature.  DiscussionSemiology (or semiotics) is a new type of criticism that has had a great impact on literary studies and related research. This field of study interprets literary texts according to such criteria and layers as time, place, intertextuality, narration, character, etc. This study explored the place, time, and mythical characters to show the appearance of hope and despair in the selected poems. The components work as codes for the poet through which he shows his inner feelings and imposes positive or negative meaning upon them. The analysis of the signs unveils the hidden layers of meanings in a literary text and familiars readers with the world, thoughts, and feelings of its writer.Time and place as signs and their signified are various and wide in literary texts and important for reading texts. The poets have used many words showing place and time. In many cases, adverbs showing the place in Donqol and Kasraei's poems lose the characteristic of being adverb of place and become a signifier having specific signifiers. The time adverbs have also been used in this way as their poems shows the change many times. The words become positively or negatively marked as they convey the poets’ feelings.  These words convey meanings different from their place and time meanings, which engages the readership with one of the dualities of despair or hope. Myth is also an important component that imposes meaning on the meaning in works of both poets. Using and recreating the myths, the poets communicate their ideals and spirits to the audience.   Conclusion- The study investigated the duality of despair or hope in the poems of two poets based on the application of some components of the semiotics of time, place, and myths. The socio-political conditions that the two poets live in seem to be the same and their poems protest against their contemporary situation, but based on the mentioned examples one can say that when the poems have been composed, when death and despair were dominant in the mental space of poets, he optimistically expected a bright future, whereas death and despair are always dominant in Amal Danqol's poems.- As a result of the different views of the poets, time, place, and myth have a hopeful and liberating application in the poems. In Amal's poems, however, the place, time, and myth components become nightmares of fear and failure, as a result of his sad and desperate creations.- Finally, looking from semiotic analysis, it can be concluded that the fully optimistic and hopeful poems of Siavash Kasraei sometimes lack poetic fantasy and becomes similar to prose, making it a weakness of the poems. On the contrary, Amal Danqol's poems, though exaggerates in expressing darkness, they are totally strong and surprising sometimes regarding poetic beauties, creating new meanings, and linguistic deviations. 

The effect of melatonin on in vitro maturation fertilization and early embryo development of mouse oocytes and expression of HMGB1 gene in blastocysts

Antioxidants are commonly used for maturation, fertilization and early development of embryos. Melatonin as an antioxidant have been recently proven to be useful for the assisted reproductive technology. In the present study, we evaluated the roles of melatonin in the in vitro maturation, fertilization, development and also the gene expression of high mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) in the blastocysts. The immature oocytes of BDF1 mice were transferred to the media containing different doses of melatonin (10-6, 10-9, 10-12 M). The blastocysts that developed under in vitro fertilizationfrom each group were stained to determine the cell number of embryos and analyzed to determine the expression level of HMGB1 by real-time PCR. The most effective doses of melatonin for maturation of oocytes were 10-6 and 10-12M (P<0.05). Fertilization rate, early development and the cell number of blastocysts were significantly higher in the group that treated with 10-12 M of melatonin comparing to the other groups. The HMGB1 expression decreased in groups that treated with 10-6M and 10-9M of melatonin and increased in the group that treated with 10-12 M of melatonin, but did not show a significant difference (p˃0.05). From the results, it may be concluded that the melatonin could be effective when the embryos undergo maturation, fertilization and early developmental processes. The HMGB1 expression, as a marker of early development in mice embryos, increased in the groups that treated with low doses of melatonin

A social work study on detecting organizational and job related factors creating stress: A case study of hydro power employees

The study investigates different factors influencing people to have more stress in a hydropower unit located in city of Esfahan, Iran. Since there were only 81 people working for customer service section of this company and the proposed study tries to focus only on this part of the firm we have decided to distribute questionnaires among all of them. The questionnaire consists of two parts, in the first part, we gather all private information such as age, gender, education, job experience, etc. through seven important questions. In the second part of the survey, there are 66 questions, which include all the important factors influencing employees' stress. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.946, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. The results of our ANOVA tests shows that among different factors, difficulty of working condition as well as work pressure are two most important factors increasing stress among employees. The other findings indicate that there is not a significant difference on work stress among different groups of employees in terms of their job title, educational level, employment type and gender (P>0.05). The other finding indicates that there is a meaningful difference between different groups of people with various ages, marital status and job experience (P>0.05)

Mapping local patterns of childhood overweight and wasting in low- and middle-income countries between 2000 and 2017

A double burden of malnutrition occurs when individuals, household members or communities experience both undernutrition and overweight. Here, we show geospatial estimates of overweight and wasting prevalence among children under 5 years of age in 105 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) from 2000 to 2017 and aggregate these to policy-relevant administrative units. Wasting decreased overall across LMICs between 2000 and 2017, from 8.4% (62.3 (55.1–70.8) million) to 6.4% (58.3 (47.6–70.7) million), but is predicted to remain above the World Health Organization’s Global Nutrition Target of <5% in over half of LMICs by 2025. Prevalence of overweight increased from 5.2% (30 (22.8–38.5) million) in 2000 to 6.0% (55.5 (44.8–67.9) million) children aged under 5 years in 2017. Areas most affected by double burden of malnutrition were located in Indonesia, Thailand, southeastern China, Botswana, Cameroon and central Nigeria. Our estimates provide a new perspective to researchers, policy makers and public health agencies in their efforts to address this global childhood syndemic

Global burden of 369 diseases and injuries in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019

Background: In an era of shifting global agendas and expanded emphasis on non-communicable diseases and injuries along with communicable diseases, sound evidence on trends by cause at the national level is essential. The Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) provides a systematic scientific assessment of published, publicly available, and contributed data on incidence, prevalence, and mortality for a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive list of diseases and injuries. Methods: GBD estimates incidence, prevalence, mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) due to 369 diseases and injuries, for two sexes, and for 204 countries and territories. Input data were extracted from censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, disease registries, health service use, air pollution monitors, satellite imaging, disease notifications, and other sources. Cause-specific death rates and cause fractions were calculated using the Cause of Death Ensemble model and spatiotemporal Gaussian process regression. Cause-specific deaths were adjusted to match the total all-cause deaths calculated as part of the GBD population, fertility, and mortality estimates. Deaths were multiplied by standard life expectancy at each age to calculate YLLs. A Bayesian meta-regression modelling tool, DisMod-MR 2.1, was used to ensure consistency between incidence, prevalence, remission, excess mortality, and cause-specific mortality for most causes. Prevalence estimates were multiplied by disability weights for mutually exclusive sequelae of diseases and injuries to calculate YLDs. We considered results in the context of the Socio-demographic Index (SDI), a composite indicator of income per capita, years of schooling, and fertility rate in females younger than 25 years. Uncertainty intervals (UIs) were generated for every metric using the 25th and 975th ordered 1000 draw values of the posterior distribution. Findings: Global health has steadily improved over the past 30 years as measured by age-standardised DALY rates. After taking into account population growth and ageing, the absolute number of DALYs has remained stable. Since 2010, the pace of decline in global age-standardised DALY rates has accelerated in age groups younger than 50 years compared with the 1990–2010 time period, with the greatest annualised rate of decline occurring in the 0–9-year age group. Six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of DALYs in children younger than 10 years in 2019: lower respiratory infections (ranked second), diarrhoeal diseases (third), malaria (fifth), meningitis (sixth), whooping cough (ninth), and sexually transmitted infections (which, in this age group, is fully accounted for by congenital syphilis; ranked tenth). In adolescents aged 10–24 years, three injury causes were among the top causes of DALYs: road injuries (ranked first), self-harm (third), and interpersonal violence (fifth). Five of the causes that were in the top ten for ages 10–24 years were also in the top ten in the 25–49-year age group: road injuries (ranked first), HIV/AIDS (second), low back pain (fourth), headache disorders (fifth), and depressive disorders (sixth). In 2019, ischaemic heart disease and stroke were the top-ranked causes of DALYs in both the 50–74-year and 75-years-and-older age groups. Since 1990, there has been a marked shift towards a greater proportion of burden due to YLDs from non-communicable diseases and injuries. In 2019, there were 11 countries where non-communicable disease and injury YLDs constituted more than half of all disease burden. Decreases in age-standardised DALY rates have accelerated over the past decade in countries at the lower end of the SDI range, while improvements have started to stagnate or even reverse in countries with higher SDI. Interpretation: As disability becomes an increasingly large component of disease burden and a larger component of health expenditure, greater research and developm nt investment is needed to identify new, more effective intervention strategies. With a rapidly ageing global population, the demands on health services to deal with disabling outcomes, which increase with age, will require policy makers to anticipate these changes. The mix of universal and more geographically specific influences on health reinforces the need for regular reporting on population health in detail and by underlying cause to help decision makers to identify success stories of disease control to emulate, as well as opportunities to improve. Funding: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licens

Relationship between quality of work life and psychological empowerment by employees′ productivity (structural equations modeling)

Aim: The purpose of this study was determining causal relationships and modeling structural equations of relationships between quality of work life, psychological empowerment and employees′ productivity of Municipal Administration of Zahedan. Methods: The method of the study is descriptive-causal - correlative. Statistical population of the study included administrative employees in municipality of center, district 1, 2, 3 of Zahedan in number of 257 people. Result: Findings of the study showed that the relationship of each variable, quality of work life and psychological empowerment, and employees′ productivity and also relationship between quality of work life and psychological empowerment were significant (P ≥ 0.01). Discussion: Findings related to structural equations model showed that quality of work life had a direct effect on boosting employees′ productivity, but its indirect effect on employees′ productivity was more than its direct one which has played this role by boosting employees′ psychological empowerment as an intermediate variable. Psychological empowerment also influences on employees′ productivity

طراحی الگوی مدیریت کرامت انسانی بر اساس آموزه‌های اسلامی

خلفية البحث وأهدافه: تعتبر الكرامة الإنسانية من المقولات المهمة في الثقافة الإسلامية، والتي يمكن من خلالها المحافظة على الكثير من القيم الإلهية-الإنسانية، وهي مما يجب على المدراء والموظفين في المؤسسات الالتفات إليها. ورغم أن هناك العديد من الدراسات قد تم إنجازها في مجال الكرامة الإنسانية، ولكنه مازال إلى الآن هناك إحساس بوجود نقص في تقديم نموذج للإدارة القائمة على أساس الكرامة الإنسانية في النظام الإداري المؤسس على التعاليم الإسلامية. ومن هنا، فقد تمت هذه الدراسة بهدف تصميم نموذج للإدارة المؤسساتية المبنية على الكرامة الإنسانية طبقاً للتعاليم الإسلامية. منهجية البحث: تعتبر الدراسة الحاضرة من النوع الكيفي ذات استراتيجية علم الظواهر الوصفي. وتشمل أفراد مجموعة هذه الدراسة جميع أعضاء الهيئة العلمية لأقسام الإلهيات والمعارف الإسلامية لجامعات مدينة زاهدان الحائزين على الدرجة العلمية للأستاذ المساعد أو الأعلى، ولهم خلفية تعليمية وتحقيقية في مجال الكرامة الإنسانية خلال العام الدراسي 19-2018، وقد تم اختيار 13 شخصاً منهم بطريقة التحديد الهادف للعينات إلى حدود الإشباع النظري. وكانت وسيلة جمع المعلومات عبارة عن مقابلات شبه منظمة. كما تمت الاستفادة من تشفير (استراوس وكوربين) بغرض تفكيك وتحليل بيانات المقابلات خلال ثلاث مراحل: التشفير المفتوح، والمحوري، والانتخابي. وقد تمت مراعاة جميع الضوابط الأخلاقية في هذه الدراسة، ولم يلحظ مؤلفو المقالة أي تعارض للمنافع. الكشوفات: تشير نتائج الدراسة إلى أن نموذج الإدارة المؤسساتية القائمة على الكرامة الإنسانية ذات الاتجاه الإسلامي يتكون من 21 شيفرة محورية وقد تم تصنيف هذه الشيفرات ضمن سبعة شيفرات انتخابية: مراعاة القانون، وجبران الخدمات، وتطبيق العدالة، واعتماد الكفاءة، وتحمل المسؤولية الاجتماعية، وبناء الثقة، والمشاركة في اتخاذ القرار. الاستنتاج: إن مدراء المؤسسات يستطيعون من خلال معايير مراعاة القانون، وجبران الخدمات، وتطبيق العدالة، واعتماد الكفاءة، وتحمل المسؤولية الاجتماعية، وبناء الثقة، والمشاركة في اتخاذ القرار؛ المحافظة على الكرامة الإنسانية للمستخدمين والارتقاء بها. &nbsp; يتم استناد المقالة على الترتيب التالي: Nosratzehi A, Nastiezaie N, Salimi S. Designing a Human Dignity Management Model Based on Islamic Teachings. Journal of Pizhūhish dar dīn va salāmat. 2021;7(2):7-27. https://doi.org/10.22037/jrrh.v7i2.28237Background and Objective: Human dignity is an important issue in Islamic culture and preserves many divine-human values that may be of interest to managers and employees of organizations. Although studies on human dignity have been conducted, but a human dignity management model is still lacking in the administrative system based on Islamic teachings. Therefore, the present study aimed to design a human dignity model based on Islamic teachings. Methods: Descriptive phenomenology was applied as a qualitative research method. The statistical population of the study was all faculty members of theology and Islamic sciences departments of Zahedan universities with the academic rank of assistant professor and higher and with a teaching and research experience in the field of human dignity in the academic year 2018-19. 13&nbsp;faculty members were selected using purposive sampling method until theoretical saturation was achieved. The data collection instrument included semi-structured interview. Strauss and Corbin coding was used in three levels: open, axial and elected to analyze the interview data. In this study, all ethical considerations were observed and no conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Results: The results of interviews showed that the model of human dignity applying Islamic approach consisted of 21 axial codeis. The Identified axial codes were categorized into seven elected codes of being law-abiding, compensating for services, justice, meritocratic selection, social responsibility, building trust and participatory decision making. Conclusion: Organizational managers can maintain and enhance employee dignity by observing the indicators of being law-abiding, compensation for services, justice, meritocratic selection, social responsibility, building trust and participatory decision making. &nbsp; Please cite this article as: Nosratzehi A, Nastiezaie N, Salimi S. Designing a Human Dignity Management Model Based on Islamic Teachings. Journal of Pizhūhish dar dīn va salāmat. 2021;7(2):7-27. https://doi.org/10.22037/jrrh.v7i2.28237سابقه و هدف: کرامت انسانی از مقوله‌های مهم در فرهنگ اسلامی است که می‌تواند حافظ بسیاری از ارزش‌های الهی-انسانی باشد و مدیران و کارکنان سازمان‌ها باید به آن توجه کنند. هرچند مطالعاتی در زمینۀ کرامت انسانی انجام شده است اما هنوز خلأ الگوی مدیریت مبتنی بر کرامت انسانی در نظام اداری بر اساس آموزه‌های اسلامی احساس می‌شود. ازاین‌رو، مطالعۀ حاضر با هدف طراحی الگوی مدیریت سازمانی مبتنی بر کرامت انسانی بر اساس آموزه‌های اسلامی انجام گرفته است. روش کار: روش پژوهش حاضر از نوع کیفی با راهبرد پدیدارشناسی توصیفی است. جامعۀ آماری پژوهش تمامی اعضای هیئت علمی گروه‌های الهیات و معارف اسلامی دانشگاه‌های شهر زاهدان با مرتبۀ علمی استادیار و بالاتر و دارای سابقۀ آموزشی و پژوهشی در حیطۀ کرامت انسانی در سال تحصیلی 98-1397 بود که از میان آنان 13 نفر به شیوۀ نمونه‌گیری هدفمند تا مرز اشباع نظری انتخاب شدند. ابزار جمع‌آوری اطلاعات مصاحبۀ نیمه‌ساختاریافته بود. برای تجزیه و تحلیل اطلاعات مصاحبه نیز از کدگذاری استراوس و کوربین در سه مرحلۀ کدگذاری باز، محوری و گزینشی استفاده شد. در این پژوهش همۀ موارد اخلاقی رعایت شده است و مؤلفان مقاله تضاد منافعی گزارش نکرده‌اند. یافته‌ها: نتیجۀ بررسی مصاحبه‌ها نشان داده که الگوی مدیریت سازمانی مبتنی بر کرامت انسانی با رویکرد اسلامی، از 21 کد محوری تشکیل شده است. این کدها در هفت کد گزینشی قانون‌مداری، جبران خدمات، عدالت‌ورزی، شایسته‌گزینی، مسئولیت‌پذیری اجتماعی، اعتمادسازی و تصمیم‌گیری مشارکتی طبقه‌بندي شده است. نتیجه‌گیری: مدیران سازمان با رعایت شاخص‌های قانون‌مداری، جبران خدمات، عدالت‌ورزی، شایسته‌گزینی، مسئولیت‌پذیری اجتماعی، اعتمادسازی و تصمیم‌گیری مشارکتی می‌توانند کرامت انسانی کارکنان را حفظ کنند و آن را ارتقا ببخشند. &nbsp; استناد مقاله به این صورت است: Nosratzehi A, Nastiezaie N, Salimi S. Designing a Human Dignity Management Model Based on Islamic Teachings. Journal of Pizhūhish dar dīn va salāmat. 2021;7(2):7-27. https://doi.org/10.22037/jrrh.v7i2.2823

A Comparison of Emotion Regulation Strategies of Blind Students With Sighted Students

Objectives: The purpose of the study was to compare the emotion regulation strategies of blind and sighted students.&nbsp; Methods: The research method used was descriptive and causal-comparative, and the statistical population included all the sighted and blind students at the University of Isfahan and the Islamic Azad University of Khorasgan. The sample volume was 64 members (32 members in each group). Sampling was conducted using the availability sampling method for the first group and the simple random sampling method for the second group. Data was gathered and measured with the help of the Emotion Regulation Scale by O.P. John and J.J. Gross, and analyzed using SPSS 21 and the ANOVA test. Results: The results indicated a significant difference between two groups with regard to applied emotion regulation strategies (P0.05).&nbsp; Discussion: Emotion regulation is a possible influential factor in many problems that blind people suffer from, more than sighted ones, and using interventions that target emotion regulation strategies would be useful

Personality and Post‑Traumatic Growth: the Mediating Role of Career Adaptability Among Traumatized Adolescents

Trauma needs special attention during the sensitive period of adolescence, which already involves its own psychological challenges and vocational tasks. Coping with trauma requires adaptation. From the perspective of the career construction model of adaptation, career adaptability provides psycho-social resources that promote adaptation. Using this model, the aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between personality and post-traumatic growth via career adaptability. A total of 266 Iranian adolescents who had experienced the sudden death of a parent recruited. They then completed the Big Five Questionnaire, Post-traumatic Growth Inventory, and Career Adapt-abilities Scale. The results showed career adaptability partially mediated the relationship between neuroticism and openness and post-traumatic growth. In addition, the findings confirmed the full mediator role of career adaptability in the relationship between conscientiousness and post-traumatic growth. The results also indicated a direct relationship between extraversion and post-traumatic growth, but no relationship between agreeableness and post-traumatic growth. These results emphasized the essential role of career adaptability in empowering traumatized adolescents