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To gain a full perspective about English in Syria, it is necessary to focus on English learning in the past and present. The focus of the learning and teaching of the English language in Syria prior to 2011 consisted of various factors such as length of exposure to language, teacher preparation, qualifications, cross-linguistic transfer, and textbooks. The interruptions in schooling, brain drain, and depletion of resources were additional factors that influenced the learning and teaching of English in Syria in the post-2011 era. The entry concludes with a proposal that conscientious efforts are needed to enhance the teaching of English in Syria.

Objectives This study has been designed to determine Pakistani editors’ perceptions regarding the Open Access (OA) publishing practices of the Higher Education Commission (HEC)-recognized journals in Pakistan, and to assess their best OA publishing models. Methodology A structured questionnaire-based survey method of quantitative research approach was adopted to achieve the study’s objectives by collecting data from the editors of all 329 HEC-recognized journals in Pakistan. Findings This study exposed that public and teaching institutes are leading in OA journal publishing in Pakistan as compared to private and research institutes. Diamond OA, and Gold OA publishing models are popular among the respondents; however, respondents are not convinced to follow any specific OA publishing model due to their different choices. A large majority (92%) of the journals belong to the Y category (the lowest) of journals. A large majority (72%) of the journals in Pakistan is adopting the Open Journal System (OJS), and parent institutions installed web browsers. CC-BY-NC and CC-BY licenses are their favorite licenses. Significance The present study is the first comprehensive study on editors’ perceptions for OA journal publishing and is an effort to fill this gap to invigorate the scholarly literature. This study may enable the journals, editors, and publishers to follow the best OA journal publishing practices of the Pakistani journals for global OA usage of scholarly journals. The results have practical and theoretical ramifications for academic and research institutions, federal and provincial higher education commissioners, policy organizations, and parent institutions of journals.

This introduction synthesizes the research presented by the contributors to this special issue to explore sustainable educational practices for refugees. A common thread across the articles is that they share components of Nel Noddings’ ethics of care framework, which emphasizes establishing welcoming, nurturing, and supportive environments that enable refugees to build meaningful relationships while honoring their cultural identities. We recommend action steps gleaned from the 11 papers in this issue that call for the concerted efforts of all those involved. Central to this vision are teachers, who serve as the backbone of the education system; however, to fulfill this role, they must be equipped with the necessary resources and skills to foster culturally responsive educational environments that emphasize students’ identities and provide equitable learning. This introduction underscores the importance of holistic and relational approaches as foundational to achieving sustainable educational equity for refugee learners.

We report that the neutral hydrogen (H i) mass density of the Universe (ρH i) increases with cosmic time since z ∼ 5, peaks at z ∼ 3, and then decreases toward z ∼ 0. This is the first result of Qz5, our spectroscopic survey of 63 quasars at z ≳ 5 with VLT/X-SHOOTER and Keck/ESI aimed at characterizing intervening H i gas absorbers at z ∼ 5. The main feature of Qz5 is the high resolution (R ∼ 7000–9000) of the spectra, which allows us to (1) accurately detect high column density H i gas absorbers in an increasingly neutral intergalactic medium at z ∼ 5 and (2) determine the reliability of previous ρH i measurements derived with lower resolution spectroscopy. We find five intervening damped Lyα absorbers (DLAs) at z > 4.5, which corresponds to the lowest DLA incidence rate () at z ≳ 2. We also measure the lowest ρH i at z ≳ 2 from our sample of DLAs and subDLAs, corresponding to ρH i Mpc−3 at z ∼ 5. Taking into account our measurements at z ∼ 5 and systematic biases in the DLA detection rate at lower spectral resolutions, we conclude that ρH i doubles from z ∼ 5 to z ∼ 3. From these results emerges a qualitative agreement between how the cosmic densities of H i gas mass, molecular gas mass, and star formation rate build up with cosmic time.

Academic success is now coupled with social media engagement. Social media has become so normalized in the academy that absent a carefully curated social media presence, scholars risk being seen as unscholarly, unproductive, and unpopular. This article lays bare the pressures, mechanisms, and monstrosities of using social media to promote scholarship. We argue that the widespread adoption of social media outpaces critical attention to its ethics and wonder about the future of public scholarship and the monstrous scholarly selves we are becoming. Thinking of monstrosity, with Krecˇicˇ and Žižek, as the preontological domain that rests beneath society and constitutes alterity and otherness, we ask what kinds of #scholarfamousmonsters we want to be, become, and promote in the digital era.

Photovoltaic systems have proven to be one of the most widely used renewable energies and the best replacement for conventional energy. Yet, their non-linear nature remains a challenge when it comes to extracting maximum power from photovoltaic modules. Therefore, in this work, a nonlinear PID controller has been used to meet the requirements of the photovoltaic system. In addition, to improve system performance and response, metaheuristic search algorithms were introduced into the tuning process of both the NPID controller and conventional PID controller parameters in order to compare them. The use of Artificial Intelligence to fine-tune the controller parameters will enable the optimum values of proportional, integral, derivative and nonlinear gains to be determined as system condition change. Finally, a comparison between the algorithms applied is conducted in terms of efficiency, rise time, settling time and overshoot as well as the overall system stability.

Abstract There is an “underrepresentation problem” in philosophy departments and journals. Empirical data suggest that while we have seen some improvements since the 1990s, the rate of change has slowed down. Some posit that philosophy has disciplinary norms making it uniquely resistant to change. We present results from an empirical case study of a philosophy department that achieved and maintained male-female gender parity among its faculty as early as 2014. Our analysis extends beyond matters of gender parity because that is only one, albeit important, dimension of inclusion. We build from the study to reflect on strategies that may catalyze change.

Using a dynamic panel dataset of 150 countries for the period of 2006-2018 and a two-step system GMM estimation model, this paper shows that natural resources have a positive effect on economic development while holding corruption constant. Our findings support the notion that natural resources have a positive effect on the economy of a nation. When a country has less corruption, it improves the appropriation of economic gains from natural resources which serves as natural capital that would drive further capital accumulation and further development. We also find that physical capital, human capital, and freedom from corruption show strong positive effects on economic development, controlling for other economic and institutional variables.

Purpose: In the United States, 15 states maintain policies and 25 states represent some level of edTPA affiliation. This study investigated how the edTPA was integrated and aligned into different physical education teacher education (PETE) programs in New Jersey. It also sought to understand teacher educators’ perceptions and experiences in preparing teacher candidates for the edTPA. Methods: This study utilized three data sources: semistructured interviews (n = 4), one focus group interview (n = 1), and documents (n = 17). Data analysis reflected a conventional approach toward qualitative content analysis. Results: In analyzing the data, four themes were established: (a) benefits and drawbacks of edTPA in PETE, (b) goals and success of edTPA in PETE, (c) integrating edTPA into PETE—macro- and microperspectives, and (d) analytic insights into edTPA and future recommendations. Discussion/Conclusion: In states requiring the edTPA, early exposure, scaffolding, curriculum mapping, and a shared mission and vision are critical. In states not requiring the edTPA, programs may want to consider indicators of performance, such as artifacts, reports, elements of the edTPA, university-based assessments, or a portfolio. Regardless of the type of assessment, “a” performance-based assessment may help to determine teacher candidates’ ability to plan, instruct, assess, and reflect.

Visualizing Violence in Francophone Cultures brings together two complex and powerful loci of meaning: violence and the visual. As such, it offers a comprehensive overview from which one can gain a better understanding of the complexity of the visual rhetoric of violence. The visual representations of violence explored in this volume include both fictional works, including, for example, narrative films, graphic novels, and theatre, and non-fictional genres, such as news media and cultural artifacts. This volume’s strength is also grounded in its interdisciplinary approach; by bringing together scholars from a variety of academic fields to examine a broad range of visual artifacts, such as photography, graphic novel, films, paintings, objects, the book offers a substantive corpus focusing on the rhetoric of violence. The essays collected in this volume explore the ways in which visual expressions of violence have infiltrated diverse narrative forms, and, as such, how they both construct and challenge general understandings of contemporary violence. They all chart, with cultural and historical specificity, the way in which images of violence shape the visual imaginary of ethical worlds.

The present study, a part of researcher's Ph.D. project, aimed at exploring the reading trends of young Pakistani students (i.e., Generation Y: born during the 1980s and early 1990s, also known as internet generation), and the impact of digital media on their reading behavior. It was conducted as a pilot study on final year's master level students of the University of the Punjab. Quantitative research design, based on a survey was used. Convenient sampling technique was used to collect data from 50 students through questionnaire survey. It revealed that the students' reading behavior has been significantly changed during the last five years. Their overall reading time and digital reading time has been increased due to the availability of digital devices and digital reading material. The findings of this study are helpful in identifying the trends of reading behavior as well as in planning and designing library services with regard to the considering of the behavior of the students.

This study aimed to find out the effects of demographic variable i.e. gender, age, group of studies, GPA etc. on level of academic integrity among Pakistani students. The design of the study is quantitative in nature, in which the survey research method was employed to gather data from the respondents. A self-reported questionnaire was adapted on the basis of previously developed and validated questionnaire, with the consent of the authors. The developed scale was validated with the help of experts and pilot tested. Multilevel stratified convenience sampling technique was used to collect data from 4 provinces and federal area of Pakistan. The collected data was analyzed by using SPSS 16.0 version

This research aims to assess tire service quality of public libraries of Lahore by evaluating the disparities between the users' expectation and currently received services. The survey method based on questionnaire was used. Four of the largest libraries in Lahore, in terms of services, collection and other facilities, were the population of the study. A sample of four hundred library users was selected with one hundred library users for each library based on convenience sampling. A modified LibQUAL+ tool was adopted to collect the data. The findings revealed that users have very high expectations regarding the accessibility of library's electronic resources from home or office, library website, printed material, availability of electronic information resource, modem equipment, tools that allow the users to find the material themselves, and provision of the information in an easy manner. The findings are helpful for public libraries' authorities to redcsign/upgradc the quality of library services, policies and procedures according to users' expectations and requirements.

The study examined granularity of lexical partitioning of the blue area in speakers of English, which encodes the term blue; Russian, which encodes two terms, sinij [dark/navy blue] and goluboj [light/sky blue]; and Ukrainian, which encodes the terms synij [dark/navy blue] and blakytnyj and golubyj [light/sky blue]. Five groups of participants took part in the study: (1) 30 L1 speakers of English, (2) 30 L1 speakers of Russian, (3) 30 Russian–English bilinguals, (4) 30 English–Russian bilinguals, and (5) 25 Ukrainian–Russian–English trilinguals. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that L1 Russian speakers referred to different types of blue significantly more frequently than all other groups, while bilinguals patterned with L1 English speakers. These findings suggest that classroom exposure to L2 Russian does not make the distinction between sinij and goluboj communicatively relevant for L1 English speakers and that everyday use of L2 English may trigger attrition of the contrast in L1 Russian.

Motivated by the ongoing debate on the costs and benefits of corporate social responsibility (CSR), we explore how talented managers view CSR investments. Based on nearly 20,000 observations across 17 years, our evidence reveals a nonmonotonic effect of managerial talent on CSR. Exploiting a novel measure of managerial ability, we find that talented managers view CSR investments favorably. However, only those with especially strong talent are in favor of CSR investments. For executives ranked above the 75th percentile in terms of managerial talent, an increase in managerial ability leads to more CSR investments, suggesting that these strongly talented managers perceive CSR as enhancing firm performance. In contrast, for those with weaker talent, CSR investments are negatively associated with managerial ability, implying that these weakly talented managers view CSR as a wasteful deployment of resources. Further evidence shows that our conclusion is unlikely confounded by endogeneity.

Motivated by recent productivity-based theories of diversification, we argue that only conglomerates with an optimal degree of diversification can utilize their comparative advantages across various industries and achieve economies of scope by eliminating redundancies. Evidence from both corporate bond and equity markets suggests that optimally diversified conglomerates consist of either (1) approximately five equally weighted divisions, or (2) one large core business segment that roughly accounts for 75 % sales. Moreover, the relative size of divisions has a critical impact on how diversification affects credit spreads and excess values. Nonparity among divisions correlates with greater costs that increase with the number of divisions.