Social Studies

This article tried to identify the role of internet in shaping the youth’s national identity and determine factors affecting the identity of the youth who use the Internet. The population included all the youth users of Internet. In this research, quantitative survey method was applied and the research tool is questionnaire which is prepared by the researcher. It can be concluded that using Internet affects the youth’s identity in terms of their cognitive, feeling and value identity, and in general, the research showed that using internet has a great and undeniable role on shaping or even changing the youth’s national identity.

Reading strategies are of interest for what they reveal about the way readers manage their interaction with written text and how these strategies are related to text comprehension. The aims of this study is to compare using of metacognitive strategies in reading skill by advanced, intermediate and elementary levels learners of English language. 200 Iranian EFL students both male and female were participated in this study. Their language proficiency level was classified to elementary, intermediate and advanced learners. It is convincing to mention that the participants were English major in teaching, translation and literature. The researcher utilized a questionnaire which was 22 items based on Likert Scale. The metacognitive reading strategies questionaire (MRSQ)is administered to investigate the frequency of participants'useof metacognitive reading strategies developed by Taraban,Kerr and Rynerson (2004). The results of the chi-square indicate that there is a significant relationship between the proficiency level of the students and their use of meta-cognitive strategies (x2 (8) = 74.67, P = .000 < .05). That is, as proficiency level increases the students make more use of meat-cognitive strategies. It should be also noted that gender as an independent variable in this study didn't cause any significant difference in the performance, i.e., we can claim that no significant differences between male and female students exist regarding the use of metacognitive strategies.

Although quantum mechanics, as one of the most advanced physical theory was successful in explaining many of the physical and natural phenomena and this theory has numerous achievements in diverse areas of human gifted, but parallel to this subject, much confusion has been made in understanding the philosophical principles. The most obvious approach to the challenges of understanding the nature and will cause disagreement and confusion in describing the physical world and reality. The question "how quantum mechanics describes physical reality and describe what results there?" Many researchers have attempted to address the meeting. Among the researchers, David Bohm has a special place. By providing an alternative to quantum mechanics, "Bohemian Mechanics" offers.In this brief article will attempt to introduce "quantum mechanics" and its description of physical reality, the "Bohemian Mechanics" and its own definition of physical reality too.

The tourism as a Scanner industry and incomet generation has an important role in many economic, social and cultural aspects. Today, many counties are based in economic structures from tourism development supporting, and develop their economies by reliance to it. The aim of this study is to assess tourism Socio-cultural and environmental effects of Tang Ganje recreational camps. Data were collected by interview and questions of the people then were analyzed using SWOT model. So development of tourism can have widespread effects on the indigenous people lives, and through the influence on all aspects of indigenous life, and develop their economic and socio-cultural condition. According to the findings of sample groups showed that tourism in all its dimensions has more positive effects and creating appropriate infrastructure for the organizations can help attract more tourists to the area. It also became clear that the development of this industry in the region could cause economic growth; reduce migration to urban areas and increasing the welfare of the indigenous people. Key words: Tourism, sustainable development, evaluation, village, Tang Ganjei, SWOT

The globalisation of entities has meant that innovative ideas need to be implemented in order for businesses to grow but also to reduce costs thereby affecting the profit margins positively.Technology has advanced to such a degree that it has increased the capability to process more demanding algorithms for both video and audio technologies. This study is intended to enable a deeper insight into the adoption and diffusion patterns of Video Conferencing (VC) technologies within a public sector company, Company X, with a focus on the factors that impact users perceived quality and trust as well as the intended use of this technology. It is for this reason that the focus of the study is to analyse the adoption and diffusion patterns of the new technology of VC in Company X.Data was gathered with the use of both quantitative (questionnaire) and qualitative (interview) with a sample of 180 employees and three middle managers respectively. In addition, observations were conducted over a period of three weeks to triangulate data that was collected. The study established that users adopted and diffused technology to a limited degree.Use of the technology was between 1 to 5 hours each week predominantly for meetings. The participants also mentioned that travel time is saved, hence there was more personal time and also more time gained for the completion of collaboration tasks more quickly. However, some staff preferred the face to face approach during meetings. The majority indicated that using the facility during VC was complicated and at time disruptive due to insufficient training. Based on the results of the primary study and literature, recommendations were formulated for management.

This study tries to investigate why some Persian learners have difficulty in learning certain structures of English language. To answer this question, a general proficiency test was administered to a total of 98 female high school students who were at intermediate level at English language institutes, with the same level and age, out of which 46 participants whose scores ranged from 65-85 out of 100 were chosen as the Intermediate Level. The instruments used in the study consist of a Translation test and participants' PET scores. In order to do this, the translation test administered to the participants included one aspect of grammatical errors which were predicted to be problematic parts of learning. That is, the participants were required to translate 50 Persian sentences into English and then the erroneous parts were determined. A hierarchy of difficulty was developed, to determine the level of difficulty of using English 11 grammatical items namely, using the wrong preposition, infinitive, tense, un-English expressions, incorrect omissions and etc, for Iranian Intermediate participants. After that, the number of errors on each grammatical item in the test was counted. Then by use of descriptive and inferential statistics (Independent Samples T-test, Pearson correlation and Friedmantest) were applied to analyze. The results indicated that L1 grammar negative transfer does affect L2 writing skill (translation in English) among Iranian EFL learners. In conclusion, the study demonstrates that we would probably be able to enhance the L2 writing skill of Iranian EFL learners by drawing the EFL learner's attention to those problematic areas of L2 and so L1 negative transfer would be, to some extent, reduced. In addition, the findings show that L2 teachers, can probably be successful in their teaching and can have successful learners as well.

Slums are the expression of poverty, group inequality and social exclusion (Slums of the World-2003). Slums are distributed throughout the Srinagar city. Clustering was done to study the socio-economic attributes of slums in Srinagar city. These clusters show inequality in social and economic conditions due to marginalized location. The present paper attempts to examine the socio-economic setting of slums in Srinagar city.

This paper examines the causal relationship between energy consumption, economic growth and prices evidence from Pakistan by using the annual time series data from 1980 to 2011. Co-integration, Engle Granger test and Error correction techniques are used to achieve the objective. The empirical results of co-integration test shows that energy consumption and economic growth are cointegrated. In addition, causality test results reveal that there is a short-run and long-run Granger causality running from economic growth to energy consumption for Pakistan. The empirical results of this study provide policy makers a better understanding of energy consumption-economic growth relationship to formulate energy policies in Pakistan. In this study, economic growth cause energy consumption, it suggests that the implementation of energy conservation policies may be implemented with little or no adverse effect on economic growth. Therefore, there is relatively more scope for energy conservation measures as a feasible policy in Pakistan.

The study of test fairness is of crucial importance in the context of standardized high-stakes tests used to make selection decisions at different levels, for different purposes and across different groups of test takers. Fairness must be ensured in every stage of test development: from test design stage through the research stage (Kunnan, 2008). Researchers are particularly concerned about the possibility that standardized high-stakes tests may be used inappropriately to make score-based interpretations and decisions, which may introduce unfair consequences to different groups of test takers. These concerns have increased social and educational demands, subjecting these tests to rigorous validation research. This paper seeks to expand research in the area of test fairness. To this end, an argument-based approach to test fairness, developed by Xi (2010), is adopted to investigate the degree of fairness of standardized high-stakes tests of IELTS based on the inference of Domain definition. This article is derived from a larger study and reports the second phase of that investigation.

This paper has investigated the relationship between the oil prices and the real exchange rate in Iran from 1980-2013. The result of the Johansen cointegration test illustrates a long run equilibrium relationship between the real oil prices and the real exchange rate. This relationship is supported by the Granger Causality test which determines the causal relationship from the oil prices to the Real Exchange Rate. The result of the Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity test (GARCH) suggests persistency of the volatility between the oil prices and the real exchange rate. These findings consider the implications for policy maker to stabilize the fluctuations of the real exchange rate. Therefore, these findings can be beneficial for formulating and implementing economic policies.