Living in the Shadow and Light: Iranian Youths’ Responses to Diabetes-Related Stigma

This study aimed to explore the responses of Iranian young people with type 1 diabetes to the diabetes-related stigma. Conventional qualitative content analysis approach guided this inquiry. Volunteered people with type 1 diabetes were recruited by purposeful sampling from one endocrine and metabolism center in Isfahan in 2012. Data gathering was done through 17 individual unstructured in-depth interviews and 3 focus groups. Data saturation was achieved through 33 participants. The data were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. All participants acknowledged stigma and responded it in different ways, which was categorized in two main categories including living in the shadow (hide and seek, missing diabetes, withdrawal) and moving toward light (diabetes disclosure, destruction of the false bubbles). The most response especially for girls was to live in the shadow of silence that can be associated with negative consequences affecting diabetes management. Moving towards the light, suggests that it is possible to help people with type-1-diabetes to achieve a normal life as much as possible. It is necessary to plan the anti-stigma programs and engage them actively to reduce stigma and mitigate or prevent its negative impacts

Thermal comfort differences between polycarbonate and opaque roofing material installed in bus stations of Malaysia

Bus shelter as a semi-outdoor space protectsindividuals from direct sun light, rain and wind. The roofing material of busstop has extreme influence on environmental and subjective conditions ofpersons within this space. In this study, the principal concentration isdistinguishing the differences between installation of Polycarbonate plasticroofing material and that of opaque protection cover as two widespread roofingmaterials in obtaining human thermal comfort in equatorial climate of Malaysia. Hence, two bus stops, one covered by Polycarbonate translucent plastic and onewith opaque concrete-based tile, were selected to evaluate their inner thermalcomfort condition by measurement of four main microclimatic parameters (i.e.air temperature, wind velocity, humidity and mean radiant temperature) as wellas subjective survey in a university campus using the Physiological EquivalentTemperature (PET) as thermal index. The study found that the Polycarbonateroofing material is not appropriate material for permanence in bus shelters ofMalaysia neither objectively nor subjectively comparing with opaque protectivecover. Additionally, it was revealed adoption greatly impacts individualthermal perception which should not be neglected in the examination of thermalcomfort in non-indoor spaces

The Determinants of Pakistan’s Bilateral Trade and Trade Potential with World: A Gravity Model Approach

Nonlinear measurement of gravity model with PPML regression technique has become admired for modeling international trade flows since it approves a better accounting for zero flows and excessive values in distribution tail. In the present study, we have endeavored to investigate the bilateral trade milieu of Pakistan with 198 trading cohorts over the time epoch (1992-2016) 25 years and to stumble on latent markets in case of Pakistan’s bilateral trade. The empirical results revealed that market size, bilateral exchange rates, income differential, common religion, border, and trade agreements positively influence bilateral trade volume while bilateral distance and landlocked countries showed a negative relationship towards bilateral trade of Pakistan with rest of the world. The outcome also illustrates that the trade pattern of Pakistan hinges on the Heckscher-Ohlin (H-O) theory, therefore, can be explained by the dissimilarity in factor endowments whereas the WTO membership does not have any influence on bilateral trade of Pakistan. Pakistan owns satisfactory potential to enhance its bilateral trade with nearly 102 countries. The highest potential lies with countries Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Somalia, Hong Kong, Iran and USA whereas actual trade has exceeded with countries like China, Oman, Spain, UAE, Germany, and the UK. Hence, there is need to address all measures to improve bilateral trade with potential countries moreover per se Pakistan can perhaps decrease or handle the trade discrepancy by targeting these economies, to bring about a reasonable quality in mutual trading relations

The Effect of Interaction through Social Networks Sites on Learning English in Iranian EFL Context

This study aims to investigate the effect of interaction in social network websites on enhancing acquisition of English language in students studying in language institutes. Since the emergence of Social Network Sites (SNS) in 2005, they have been potentially affective in area of education in general and foreign language learning in particular. Language learners may use social networks sites (SNS) as a mean to get engaged and motivated in meaningful communicative situations. This study was conducted among 40 active and regular EFL intermediate level EFL learners in Qalame Bartar Language institute joining a Facebook group who are familiar with using computer and internet as participants of the study. The data were collected from the learners’ interactional exchanges in the weekly posts, from social interaction and discussion in SNSs; research conducted in related subject and the tests given to these participants after using SNS for 60 days. Based on data analysis, the EFL learners’ language learning skills in the treatment group highly increased during this period in comparison to the control group. The findings indicate interaction through SNS putting learner in real communicative situations plays an important role in enhancing the development of foreign language learning

E-Tourism: The role of ICT In tourism industry

One of the major limitations of all of the information distribution channels in tourism industry is that they, for the most part, all ultimately flow through the GDSs. Of course, this has several implications in terms of cost, audience and information content. As a result, many tourism suppliers would like to bypass the GDS route and use electronic distribution to sell directly to the consumer. With the phenomenal growth in the use of the Internet and the World Wide Web both in the home and in the workplace, and the opportunities presented by falling hardware and communications costs, the potential now exists for tourism suppliers to both distribute information to and process reservations from customers directly. In his paper by considering some of the trends shaping modern business strategies such as the mass customization of services, the interactive design of products with customers, the service envelope around the most basic products and the increasing information intensity of products, we illustrated how such trends apply to the tourism industry and describes the way ICT can support or enable such strategies. Then, we analysed the role of ICT in tourism industry by introducing a framework to classify and analyze related organisations around three dimensions, distinguishing what happens (1) at the boundary of the firms, (2) in their relations with their customers and suppliers and (3) on the markets they reach. The actors that we primarily considered were the following: (1) the service providers (hotels, airlines, congress organizers, etc.), the travel agencies, and other intermediaries, (2) the final customers (both corporate and individual), and (3) the countries (often represented by their tourism offices). Finally, we described some innovative ways of using ICT, among others, to expand an actor's business

Neuroticism and Attentional Biases for Threatening Stimulus

The role of the different dimensions of the personality in the cognitive processing includes some important research areas in the field of cognitive psychology. The present study aimed to investigate differences of attentional bias in individual with up and down neuroticism. For this purpose, 130 subjects (67 people with high neuroticism and 63 people with low neuroticism) were completed word-picture task and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. The main and interactive effect and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to investigate the relationship between neuroticism and Attentional bias. The results showed that people with high neuroticism compared to people with low neuroticism perform slower in experimental trials. In addition, the resulting correlation coefficient indicated a positive and meaningful relationship between neuroticism and Attentional bias, it seems that along with increased scores of people in neuroticism, more Attentional bias was showing by them. These findings indicated that the necessity of using treatment strategies tailored to the characteristics of personality was multiplied

The study of the relationship between organizational structure and psychological empowerment among the staffs in Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance

The present paper has been conducted with the aim of studying the relationship between organizational structure and psychological empowerment of staff of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance. This research is applied and is survey study from conduct point of view. Research population includes all the staff, experts and managers of Financial Supervision Department and Treasury of the whole country of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Finance which is a total number of 537 persons. For this purpose we have used closed questionnaires in the form of five options (standard questionnaire of Robins’ organizational structure which has three dimensions of formality, complexity and focus and standard questionnaire of Whetten and Cameron’s psychological empowerment which has 5 dimensions of trust, meaningfulness, effectiveness, self-efficiency, and self-determination). The size of the sample is 224 individuals of staff, experts and managers which have been selected with the use of stratified sampling. For analyzing the obtained data descriptive statistics (frequency table) and inferential statistics (Pearson’s correlation coefficient test) have been used which the results indicate that there is significant and negative relationship between organizational structure and three dimensions of “formality”, “complexity”, “focus” with psychological empowerment variable. Dimension of focus has the highest significance (first rank) among other dimensions of organizational structure variable and also self-determination has the highest importance (first rank) among the dimensions of psychological empowerment