Student Perceptions Using Augmented Reality and 3D Visualization Technologies in Chemistry Education

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Visualizing molecular conformations and complex compound structures and chemical transformations in 3D is one of the most difficult tasks for...     

A study on tourist demand for Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals as ancient Iranian sport

ABSTRACT

Nowadays sports, especially ancient sports, play an important role in promoting tourism. In recent decades, ancient Iranian Sport, especially Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals as creative cultural products, attract many tourists to destinations and are well known as tourist attractions in Iran. Hence, the aims of this paper, which was conducted in the city of Isfahan, are: (1) to investigate the attitude of domestic tourists towards Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals in Isfahan city; (2) to measure tourists’ awareness of Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage (ICH); and (3) to determine the priority given to attractions and activities around Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals from the domestic tourists’ perspective. On the basis of the results of this study, it can be concluded that domestic tourists are interested in gaining experience and increasing their knowledge of Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals. However, the level of awareness of these ancient sports among domestic tourists in the city of Isfahan is low. The results also illustrated that among the activities, visiting Zoorkhānehes in Isfahan, participating in Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei events and observing the live play of Pahlevani and Zoorkhanei rituals have high priority from the tourists’ perspective.     

Multi-Aspect Review-Team Assignment using Latent Research Areas

Reviewer assignment is an important task in many research-related activities, such as conference organization and grant-proposal adjudication. The goal is to assign each submitted artifact to a set of reviewers who can thoroughly evaluate all aspects of the artifact’s content, while, at the same time, balancing the workload of the reviewers. In this paper, we focus on textual artifacts such as conference papers, where both (aspects of) the submitted papers and (expertise areas of) the reviewers can be described with terms and/or topics extracted from the text. We propose a method for automatically assigning a team of reviewers to each submitted paper, based on the clusters of the reviewers’ publications as latent research areas. Our method extends the definition of the relevance score between reviewers and papers using the latent research areas information to find a team of reviewers for each paper, such that each individual reviewer and the team as a whole cover as many paper aspects as possible. To solve the constrained problem where each reviewer has a limited reviewing capacity, we utilize a greedy algorithm that starts with a group of reviewers for each paper and iteratively evolves it to improve the coverage of the papers’ topics by the reviewers’ expertise. We experimentally demonstrate that our method outperforms state-of-the-art approaches w.r.t several standard quality measures.     

Assessment of Endothelial Dysfunction in Health and Disease; Using Various Parameters

Conditions like hypertension, atherosclerosis and diabetes are known to be the result of endothelial dysfunction which could begin early in the life of an individual. The markers of endothelial dysfunction studied in the present work are plasma hemoglobin, serum high sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP) and plasma nitrite and nitrate. We studied the onset of endothelial dysfunction with increase in age as well as in disease condition like newly detected hypertensives and of hypertensive diabetic patients. The mean plasma hemoglobin and hsCRP values were found to increase with age. hsCRP and plasma hemoglobin levels were significantly higher in patient groups as compared to aged-matched controls. On the other hand nitrate and nitrite was significantly higher in patients who suffered from both diabetes and hypertension together and nitrate values were significantly lower in patients who suffered from hypertensive alone. Plasma hemoglobin and hsCRP are associated with endothelial dysfunction and increases both with age as well as in disease condition.     

Cytotoxicity and Apoptosis Inducing Activities of 2-Amino-4H-chromene-3-carbonitrile Derivatives Loaded on Gold Nanoparticles Against Human Breast Cancer Cell Line T47D

Chemotherapy drugs, used for prevention of uncontrolled cell proliferation in certain tissues as well as inducing apoptosis in tumor cells, are important candidates for treatment of cancer. The synthesized 2-amino-4H-chromene-3-carbonitrile derivatives effective on cancerous cells resistant to other drugs such as Paclitaxel were used due to their ability in induction of apoptosis. The growth inhibitory and inducing apoptosis activities were determined. In order to make it target-oriented, the best compound was conjugated with gold nanoparticles (NPs) by aspartic acid with chemical reduction method. Cytotoxicity effect of 2-amino-4H-chromene-3-carbonitrile derivatives against the T47D breast cancer cell line was determined by MTT assay. The synthesis of gold NPs was confirmed by transmission electron microscopy, UV–Vis and dynamic light scattering. To assess the effects of compounds on the process of apoptosis, staining methods with acridine orange–ethidium bromide and Hoechst staining by fluorescence microscopy and DNA fragmentation by the diphenylamine method were used. The synthesized compounds containing two NH₂ groups on benzene rings, demonstrated more cytotoxicity effect. The effect of conjugation with gold NPs and the induction of apoptosis were studied with the best compound. The cytotoxicity effects of the synthesized 2-amino-4H-chromene-3-carbonitrile compounds were changed by replacement of NO₂ group on thiol ring with different chemical groups on the benzene ring. Analyses of treated cell lines by conjugated and non-conjugated forms of compounds verified their ability in inducing apoptosis while conjugated form demonstrated higher apoptosis.     

A learning approach to optimizing exploration–exploitation tradeoff in relevance feedback

Relevance feedback is an effective technique for improving search accuracy in interactive information retrieval. In this paper, we study an interesting optimization problem in interactive feedback that aims at optimizing the tradeoff between presenting search results with the highest immediate utility to a user (but not necessarily most useful for collecting feedback information) and presenting search results with the best potential for collecting useful feedback information (but not necessarily the most useful documents from a user’s perspective). Optimizing such an exploration–exploitation tradeoff is key to the optimization of the overall utility of relevance feedback to a user in the entire session of relevance feedback. We formally frame this tradeoff as a problem of optimizing the diversification of search results since relevance judgments on more diversified results have been shown to be more useful for relevance feedback. We propose a machine learning approach to adaptively optimizing the diversification of search results for each query so as to optimize the overall utility in an entire session. Experiment results on three representative retrieval test collections show that the proposed learning approach can effectively optimize the exploration–exploitation tradeoff and outperforms the traditional relevance feedback approach which only does exploitation without exploration.     

Entrepreneurial learning as experienced by agricultural graduate entrepreneurs

Developing entrepreneurial graduates is essential to the future of higher education and supply of quality human resources in developing countries. To address this issue in the agriculture sector, which is dominant in economic terms in most developing countries, an exploratory combined qualitative and quantitative research was conducted to understand entrepreneurial learning of agricultural graduate entrepreneurs. For the phenomenological study, 14 agricultural graduate entrepreneurs were purposely selected, and for the quantitative study, 92 entrepreneurs were selected through simple random sampling method. The phenomenological study revealed 12 themes on how graduates experienced entrepreneurial learning. Our study finds support for “experiential learning,” “learning by doing,” and “social learning” theories. Nine themes including previous business experience, risk-taking propensity, entrepreneurial persistence, use of various information sources, tendency to be self-employed, concerns about job or career, interest in practical courses and activities, passion for agriculture, and thinking outside the box are internal to the entrepreneur and could be seen as learner identity. The theme of “support from family and friends” could be seen as a significant external influence. The survey showed that entrepreneurial learning themes were generalizable to the studied population. Although different students can take different learning paths to become the best they can be, our findings suggest that the overall student learning experience can be designed to ensure that graduates are more likely to become entrepreneurs.     

Lead White or Lead Whites? Reconsideration of Methods of sefidāb-i-sorb Production in Iran

Lead white is widely used as a white pigment in the history of Persian painting. This paper focuses on three Persian treatises dated between the twelfth and the sixteenth century, which explained different manufacturing methods of lead white or sefidāb-i-sorb. Experimental reconstruction of each recipe to access the comprehensive meaning of the text and analytical studies with X-ray powder diffraction on products of recipes revealed white compounds other than the previously known products of hydrocerussite (Pb(OH)₂?·?PbCO₃) and cerussite (PbCO₃) in samples. Chlorine-containing raw materials mentioned in these recipes lead to the chemical products of laurionite (Pb(OH)Cl), blixite (Pb₈O₅(OH)₂Cl₄), and phosgenite (Pb₂Cl₂(CO)₃) in the final products. These data lead to the hypothesis of the discrepancy of the lead white pigment between Iran and Europe and a marked probability of other compounds in historic Persian lead white samples.     

What is the meaning of spiritual health among older adults? A concept analysis

ABSTRACT

The different dimensions of spiritual health among older adults remain unknown to date and no globally acceptable definitions have yet been provided for the concept. To conduct the current study, the databases including Proquest, Medline, CINAHL, Science Direct, Blackwell, Iranmedex, SID, Noor Magazine and Irandoc were searched for the articles published between 1980 and 2014 in both English and Persian using keywords including spirituality, spiritual well-being, spiritual health, geriatric, older adult and old people and their Persian equivalents. The search for articles yielded into 197 titles, 31 of which were repeated and were therefore excluded. The remaining 166 articles were screened based on the inclusion criteria. A total of 29 articles were ultimately selected as the study samples. Rodgers’ evolutionary approach to concept analysis is used to identify the attributes, antecedents, consequences and surrogate terms of “spiritual health” and to provide a more comprehensive definition of the concept. The results obtained showed that spiritual health from the perspective of older adults is a multi-dimensional concept with cognitive, functional, affective and consequential components. Each component was found to be composed of several indicators. The results may help in providing a more thorough definition of spiritual health which can be a solid base for future researchers to develop appropriate tools for the assessment of older adults’ spiritual health and encourage research into this partially neglected subject. Care providers may also benefit from the results through acquiring a better understanding of the concept which can be used in designing appropriate spiritual interventions.