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The purpose of this paper is to provide an evidence‐base for home modification guidelines for people with visual impairment due to age‐related macular degeneration (AMD), from the perspective of people with AMD, by exploring the home modifications they find useful and would recommend to other people with visual impairment due to AMD as being effective.

People with impairments may not be aware of their own coping with inability strategies until they are asked to express their strategies. A qualitative approach using semi‐structured individual interviews was used to elicit the perspectives of people with AMD with regards to their preferred home modification interventions. Interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim into text for thematical analysis using Nvivo 8.

In total, 31 individuals (aged 79.1±5.6 years) with AMD and no other ocular diseases were recruited from a low vision clinic or the Macular Degeneration Foundation database in a metropolitan city. Interviewees had not received any formal home modification assessment from a government provider. Nevertheless, 70 per cent of participants stated that they undertook home modifications themselves or with the assistance of family and friends. The most important functional modifications as perceived by the participants concerned the installation of hand rails, non‐slip matting, colour contrasting safety stair nosing, single lever taps, slip resistant flooring, lift chairs and motion sensors that activated pathway lighting. Kitchens, steps and bathrooms were perceived as hazardous locations. Most participants had difficulties with reading fine‐print material on kitchen appliances, washing machines, microwave ovens and remote controls for electronic devices in the home.

An evidence‐base for useful home modifications as suggested by people with visual impairment was perceived to be a valuable resource for other people with visual impairment who may not yet have developed adaptive strategies. Industrial and interior designers and low vision rehabilitation services who aim to improve functionality of the home environment will also find these suggestions useful.

This paper aims to develop a multi-aspectual framework for evaluating locally prepared English language teaching (ELT) materials used for Iranian senior high school students. Many practitioners of the field assert that the inappropriate development of ELT materials would leave an adverse effect on the potential value of the realistic ways which translate the educational beliefs on language learning into operational goals defined by local educational systems.

Using a stratified sampling method, 120 high school students along with 60 ex-students attending Isfahan (Khorasgan) University as well as 30 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers teaching English courses at high schools were selected. To measure the participants’ attitudes toward the pedagogical effectiveness of English textbooks (i.e. Right Path to English series), a 30-item questionnaire developed based on the comprehensive guidelines suggested by Nation and Macalister (2010) about materials development was used. To improve the credibility and dependability of respondents’ perceptions, a focused-group interview was further utilized as a source of triangulation.

The findings revealed that the multi-aspectual framework is a comprehensive and valid model utilized for post-use materials evaluation. The results also depicted that the target textbooks published by the Iranian Ministry of Education did not satisfy the actual needs of students.

The findings may offer certain benefits to teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL) teachers, policy makers and materials developers engaged in locally ELT material design.

The present study used a comprehensive list of criteria dominating not only the curriculum development but also the principles governing the EFL classroom practices. Considering the principles as a litmus test for evaluation, the study used a principle-driven approach to evaluate the Iranian English textbooks used in senior high school level.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for the transformation from a second-generation university to an entrepreneurial university. The work is practical and innovative, which provides the foundation for further work in this field.

Based on a systematic review of relevant studies on entrepreneurial universities, this paper proposed an evaluation framework with clear logic and practicability. This paper also provided a basis for further research. The restrictions of each factor were defined by the readiness framework, and the consequences of entrepreneurial activities on local economic development were analyzed by using the proposed model. The proposed conceptual framework aided policymakers in completing a much-needed assessment of the impact of organizational policies, practices and structures on the entrepreneurial activities and transformation from second-generation universities to third-generation organizations.

The proposed readiness framework led to the development of organizational interventions that facilitated successful entrepreneurial activities. The quantitative indicators of different university types were demonstrated in this study. The quantitative validation of the integrated framework suggested that university heads and policymakers can encourage and develop academic entrepreneurship by using a comprehensive systems approach for the identification, protection and commercialization of university’s intellectual property.

This paper provides a framework for policymakers or decision makers to better understand whether a local university is ready for entrepreneurship. This framework also provides a direction for future quantitative research.

As transferring biological fluid through an artery is nowadays a pivotal subject, the purpose of this paper is to study the mathematical model of hybrid nanofluid flow comprising pure blood as base fluid and TiO₂ and Ag as nanoparticles through the porous channel, which can be an applicable model for drug delivery.

Both walls of the channel have different permeability, which enables the fluid to enter and exit, and variable height, which dilates and squeezes at the uniform rate. By taking advantage of the similarity transformation technique, governing equations have been converted into a system of the non-linear ordinary differential equation. This problem is solved numerically by utilizing BVP4C built-in function in MATLAB software to explore the impacts of pertinent parameters.

The plots of velocity and temperature profile, normal pressure distribution and wall shear stress, as well as Nusselt number for involved parameters, are presented and the logic and physical reasons beyond them are highlighted. It has been observed that the asymmetry of the channel, caused by different permeability at walls, affects the nature of flow significantly.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no one has ever attempted to study the flow through a deformable porous channel with blood as a base fluid and as hybrid nanoparticles to describe medical phenomena and treatment applications. Indeed, the achievements of this paper are purely original and the numerical results were never published by any researcher.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns were implemented to achieve two goals: (1) to reduce the number of COVID-19 cases and (2) to reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths. In this paper, the authors aim to look at empirical evidence on how effectively lockdowns achieved these goals among small island developing states (SIDS) and for one specific SIDS economy, Guam.

The authors reviewed existing studies to form two hypotheses: that lockdowns reduced cases, and that lockdowns reduced deaths. Defining a lockdown as a positive value for Oxford COVID-19 government response tracker, OxCGRT's stringency index, the authors tested the above hypotheses on 185 countries, 27 SIDS economies and Guam using correlation and regression analyses, and using different measures of the strictness, duration and timing of the lockdown.

The authors found no evidence to support the hypothesis that lockdowns reduced the number of cases based on data for all 185 countries and 27 SIDS economies. While the authors found evidence to support the hypothesis in the case of Guam, the result required an unrealistically and implausibly long time lag of 365 days. As to the second hypothesis that lockdowns reduced the number of deaths, the authors found no evidence to support it for 185 countries, 27 SIDS economies as well as Guam.

From the review of the existing literature, the authors are the first to conduct this type of study among SIDS economies as a group and on Guam.