The Socio-political Situation of Avicenna’s Time and His Spiritual Messages: On the Occasion of 1031st Birth Anniversary of Avicenna (23 August 980)

In the fourth century A.H. (tenth century AD) many thinkers, philosophers, jurisprudents, poets, and authors were present in different scientific, literary and health fields in ancient Iran and Islamic world that by their hard attempts the sciences and literature were safe from incidents and resulted in growth, development and innovation of Islamic sciences. Meanwhile, Avicenna was superior to all others and the most famous scientist. He was a great human that by attempting hard, perseverance, stability, patience, and believing in God could complete supreme scientific ranks and compiled encyclopedia of Canon of Medicine and besides gathering many written important issues that most of them were confiscated at libraries of kings. He added medical experiences of ancient Iran and especially Jondishapour University and also his personal experiences and finally Canon of Medicine by benefiting from monotheistic style and science based on faith was written. He has written a book that is regarded as root and basics of modern medicine and by completing it some infrastructure health viewpoints and common medicine were created. It is a kind of book that in spite of scientific advances and production of modern research tools many of its contents are replaced with modern methods of medicine and health, but still many of its health basic messages, research orientation and monotheism with great dynamic mode is considerable at world’s medical references. The aim of this study is evaluate the political situation of Avicenna’s time and a review of his Godly writings. This is a library study by using electronic version of Canon of Medicine and other related resources. Findings, include writing style of monotheistic literature, and freeing from nihilism and affiliating diseases to Satan, jinn and such issues. It is necessary that our students within course of Iranian and Islamic culture and civilization to be more familiar with monotheistic thoughts and activities of scientists like Avicenna.     

ISLAM AND SCIENCE: THE PHILOSOPHICAL GROUNDS FOR A GENUINE DEBATE

What does it take for Islam and science to engage in a genuine conversation with each other? This essay is an attempt to answer this question by clarifying the conditions which make having such a conversation possible and plausible. I will first distinguish between three notions of conversation: the trivial conversation (which requires sharing a common language and the meaning of its ordinary expressions), superficial conversation (in which although the language is shared, the communicators fail to share the meaning of their theoretical terms), and genuine conversation (which implies sharing the language and the meaning of ordinary as well as theoretical terms). I will then argue that our real concern with regard to the exchange between Islam and science is to be to specify the conditions under which their proponents can engage in a genuine conversation with each other and that such a conversation to take place essentially requires sharing a common ontology. Following Quine, I will argue that Muslims, like the followers of any religion, would have no other choice but to work from within science. Doing so, however, would not prevent Muslims from having a genuine conversation with the proponents of other worldviews because when the shared ontology fails to offer any potentially testable answer to our remaining questions about the world, the Islamic viewpoint can appear as a genuine alternative among other underdetermined ones, deciding between which would be a matter of pragmatic criteria.     

The Relationship between Religious Coping and Self-Care Behaviors in Iranian Medical Students

In recent years, researchers have identified that coping strategies are an important contributor to an individual’s life satisfaction and ability to manage stress. The positive relationship between religious copings, specifically, with physical and mental health has also been identified in some studies. Spirituality and religion have been discussed rigorously in research, but very few studies exist on religious coping. The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between religious coping methods (i.e., positive and negative religious coping) and self-care behaviors in Iranian medical students. This study used a cross-sectional design of 335 randomly selected students from Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran. A data collection tool comprised of the standard questionnaire of religious coping methods and questionnaire of self-care behaviors assessment was utilized. Data were analyzed using a two-sample t test assuming equal variances. Adjusted linear regression was used to evaluate the independent association of religious copings with self-care. Adjusted linear regression model indicated an independent significant association between positive (b = 4.616, 95% CI 4.234–4.999) and negative (b = ?3.726, 95% CI ?4.311 to ?3.141) religious coping with self-care behaviors. Findings showed a linear relationship between religious coping and self-care behaviors. Further research with larger sample sizes in diverse populations is recommended.     

The impact of religious cognitive behavioural therapy (RCBT) on general health among Iranians

The aim of this study was to determine the efficacy of religious cognitive behavioural therapy (RCBT) on general health among Iranians. This study was a randomised, single-blinded clinical trial from April 2017 to October 2017. One hundred forty-four Yazd citizens were selected using a cluster sampling method and randomly assigned to experimental or control groups. The experimental groups received 10 sessions of RCBT, lasting 45 minutes once a week and the control group remained on the waiting list. The results showed that mean general health scores in the experimental groups were significantly lower than those in the control group on the post-test. RCBT had the most positive impact on somatic symptoms, anxiety/insomnia, social dysfunction, depression, and mental health. Based on these findings RCBT can be considered a significant and effective practical therapy for improving both general and psychological health.     

Orientation-selective adaptation during motion-induced blindness

When a global moving pattern is superimposed on high-contrast stationary or slowly moving stimuli, the latter occasionally disappear for periods of several seconds (motion-induced blindness, MIB). Here, an adaptation paradigm was used to determine if orientation-selective adaptation still occurs for the stimulus that is no longer visible. Two slowly drifting high-contrast Gabor patches were presented to observers. As soon as both patches disappeared, one was eliminated from the screen. After 2 s, two low-contrast Gabor patches were presented as tests at the same locations and observers were asked to report their orientations. The observers' performance was significantly higher when the orientation of the low-contrast test patch was orthogonal to the orientation of the high-contrast adapting patch (p < 0.0001) for the location where the patch was present during MIB, even though it was perceptually invisible. The observers' performance was not significantly different at the adjacent control location where the stimulus was absent during the MIB. Although no stimulus was visible at either location, orientation-selective adaptation was preserved only for the location at which the patch remained present. Since orientation information is processed in low-level visual areas such as the primary visual cortex (V1), we conclude that MIB originates in an area higher than V1.     

Motion-induced overestimation of the number of items in a display

Subjects were asked to report the number of items in a display as the items moved along a circular path around the fixation point. As the rotation speed increased, the apparent number of items also increased. This motion-induced overestimation (MIO) effect was investigated in three experiments. In the first experiment, the effect of rotation speed and set size was explored with an enumeration task. The overestimation error increased with an increase in speed or number of items in the display. In the second experiment, we used an adjustment paradigm to measure the speed threshold of MIO effect onset. Temporal rate of the display, which was defined as product of rotation speed and the number of rotating items, was the determining factor of MIO onset. In the third experiment, moving items were marked with different colours. Surprisingly, the number of perceived items was still overestimated even though the number of perceived colours was not.     

Are Religious Coping and Pain Perception Related Together? Assessment in Iranian Cancer Patients

Pain of cancer had various significant side effects that based on the literature it can reduced by religious coping methods. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between religious coping and pain perception in Iranian cancer patients. In this cross-sectional study (October–December, 2015), 380 hospitalized cancer patients were entered to the study using accessible sampling. Data were collected by socio-demographic, Religious Coping and McGill pain questionnaires. Males (48.39 ± 13 ± 39; CI95: 46.41–50.38) are older than females (45.33 ± 18.44; CI95: 42.79–47.87). According to results, there was a significant relationship between pain perception and positive religious coping in cancer patients. Also there was a significant relationship between pain perception and family history of cancer (P < 0.05). It seems that improving the level and quality of positive religious affiliation can be effective on the amount of stimulation and pain of cancer patients. Of course, more comprehensive studies are needed to be achieved more reliable results about the effects of religious coping on pain perception in these patients.     

Morphological Development in the Speech of a Persian–English Bilingual Child

The present study aims at testing the two dominant hypotheses regarding the development of inflections and other functional categories namely the Structure-Building Model and the Continuity Hypothesis within the generative theory. According to the first view, functional categories are entirely absent in children’s early grammars, which contain only projections of lexical categories, most importantly ‘nouns’ and ‘verbs.’ This hypothesis holds that utterances produced by children are actually small clauses or verb phrases, and functional categories such as copula, determiners, and genitive are not acquired during the single-word or early multiword stages, but are implemented in the course of further acquisition, at around age 2 or later. The proponents of the second, i.e., the ‘Continuity Hypothesis,’ on the other hand, argue that functional categories are in fact present in children’s early syntax. These two hypotheses will be tested here against empirical data in English and Persian. Thus, longitudinal data will be provided on the acquisition of a few morphemes in the two languages acquired by the subject of the present study (i.e., English and Persian) including determiners, plural marker, genitive, and copula. The significance of the present study lies in the fact that it provides data on two typologically different languages in bilingual first language acquisition and thereby making a contribution to the field.