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Exoskeletons are mechanical structures that humans can wear to increase their strength and endurance. The purpose of this paper is to explain how exoskeletons can be used to improve performance across five phases of manufacturing.

Multivocal literature review, encompassing scientific literature and the grey literature of online reports, etc., to inform comprehensive, comparative and critical analyses of the potential of exoskeletons to improve manufacturing performance.

There are at least eight different types of exoskeletons that can be used to improve human strength and endurance in manual work during different phases of production. However, exoskeletons can have the unintended negative consequence of reducing human flexibility leading to new sources of musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and accidents.

Findings are relevant to function allocation research concerned with manual production work. In particular, exoskeletons could exacerbate the traditional trade-off between human flexibility and robot consistency by making human workers less flexible.

The introduction of exoskeletons requires careful health and safety planning if exoskeletons are to improve human strength and endurance without introducing new sources of MSD and accidents.

The originality of this paper is that it provides detailed information about a new manufacturing technology: exoskeletons. The value of this paper is that it provides information that is comprehensive, comparative and critical about exoskeletons as a potential alternative to robotics across five phases of manufacturing.

Policy makers, professional associations and scholars continue to advocate for the integration of enhanced clinical experiences for future teachers’ preparation. These recommendations reflect the growing recognition that few events in preservice teachers’ education are more significant than their experiences in the classrooms of veteran peers. Aware of the fact that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the “critical, project-based” (CPB) model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned objective.

Aware that the field of teacher education needs examples of effective clinical experiences, the authors examined the CPB model, employing Photovoice activities in a dropout prevention course in a secondary education partner school at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article they detail a practitioner research examination that explores the experiences of 12 preservice middle/high school teachers, reporting on these individuals’ considerations of general pedagogies, writing instruction strategies and teaching personas.

Results suggest that preservice teachers might best identify pedagogical practices that are consistent with their nascent teaching identities via experiences that occur in school-university partnerships in which future teachers are positioned as pedagogues.

This manuscript explores the use of the “CPB” clinical experience model, identifying the impacts of this approach for preparing future teachers.

This study aims to highlight the dimensions of the rivalry over the regional role between two regional powers in the Middle East, and the impact of local, regional and international pressures of the Syrian crisis on the role performance of the competing forces.

The study is based on using “the role approach” as an analytical frame to benefit by the application of the theory of role. This approach allows the possibility of linking various analytical levels, both in clarifying the relationship between internal and external factors and showing the interaction between elements of perception, abilities and behavior.

The international pressures shall remain governing the frame of competition among the roles of the regional powers, through determining the course of competition and its direct impact on its results.

This study examines the phenomenon of regional rivalry between two distinct and competing regional powers, in a turbulent environment in the wake of the Arab Spring crises, which created opportunities and challenges for regional powers, especially in Syria, where it intersected with the interests and policies of major and regional powers.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the first major federal education policy, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965, and the most recent federal policy, the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, through a Black critical theory (BlackCrit) lens to understand better how these educational policies have served as antiblack projects. Furthermore, this study locates examples of educational Freedom Dreams in the past and present to imagine new possibilities in Black education.

By analyzing education policy documents and history through BlackCrit methods, the authors expose how education policy is inherently an antiblack project. Freedom Dreams catalyze possibilities for future education.

The data confirms that while these policies purport equity and accountability in education, they, in practice, exacerbate antiblackness through inequitably mandated standardized testing, distributed funding and policed schooling.

This paper applies BlackCrit analysis of education policy to reimagine Black educational possibilities.

Sports leagues have stood out in the entertainment industry due to their great economic value and cultural impact. This is the case of the American sports leagues, with emphasis on the National Basketball Association (NBA), whose largest Latin American market lies on Brazil. The aforementioned league’s audience is constantly growing, a fact that can be partially explained by the encouragement provided for its viewers to interact through social media, in a phenomenon called social TV. Accordingly, the aim of the present study is to investigate how social TV works as a means for Brazilian fans to coproduce their NBA broadcasting enjoyment through social media interactions.

The authors conducted a netnography on the community of fans engaged in Twitter hashtag #NBAnaESPN, which was released by ESPN to promote audience integration during NBA games' broadcasting.

A theorization about the role played by social TV in the way fan culture articulates through social media to enjoy broadcasting media products was herein presented. The findings of this study have evidenced three categories concerning the role played by television broadcasting, social media and the fandom in NBA consumption by Brazilian fans. Based on these findings, the authors got to the conclusion that social TV establishes a mediatized environment where fan culture can be articulated through social media to enable interactions about television broadcasting.

The study was limited to members of the Brazilian NBA audience who engage in the official social media of the league’s broadcasting.

The study heads toward a theoretical generalization based on the research results.

The escalation of Turkish intervention in Arab internal affairs before and after the revolutions of the Arab Spring, particularly the military intervention. Sometimes Ankara threatens with military intervention and sometimes establishes large military bases in Arab countries: Qatar, Somalia and Iraq. Moreover, it carries out extensive military operations within the borders of some Arab countries such as Iraq and Syria. This type of behavior requires a study that takes into consideration the reasons of such behavior and future implications on the relations between the Arab and Turkish parties.

The theoretical framework of the study will follow neorealism, as the basis for understanding Turkish pragmatic foreign policy adopted in managing its international relations and interests with various countries.

The situation in Afrin after a year of Turkish occupation confirms this. Erdogan may not go ahead with a new military operation in east Euphrates and northern Syria. He may prefer instead he may deem it better to control the safe area in the north through the revival of the agreement of Adana of 1998. However, Turkey's desire to control northern Syria, which represents a quarter of the country, faces tough resistance of Turkish groups, Russian-Syrian rejection and European-American resentment. Control of the Syrian north may be subject to concessions and consensus among these powers without excluding any of them.

States in the international system, such as companies in the local economy, have the same main interest: that’s survival. It is worth noting that Waltz’s neorealistic theory cannot be applied to domestic national politics. It cannot contribute to the development of state policies relating to its international and internal affairs. His theory only helps to explain the reason behind the similar behavior of countries despite having different forms of governments and diversity of political ideologies. It also explains why the comprehensive international relations have not changed despite the growing decentralization of these countries.

How does neorealism explain Turkish military intervention in Syria since 2016?

This research aims to fill the research gaps regarding customer preferences for digitalisation to create value for retailers and customers, as well as focus on retail change and shopping behaviour in grocery retail stores in the emerging market.

This paper contributes to the research in this area by evaluating customers' and retailers' attitudes towards digital transformation in retailing through interviews. Methodologically, 200 questionnaires were gathered, and data were analysed with the partial least squared structural equation modelling method.

The findings of this study reveal that the effect of digital transformation in the retail industry will be more apparent in an emerging market.

The paper's originality consists in understanding the future retail structure in an emerging market. Notably, focussing on business-to-consumer businesses appears helpful in distinguishing between behavioural (buying) intention and online buying behaviour (actual usage) in an emerging market.

The motivation for the current exploration follows from the fact that one-third of the population in Saudi Arabia (SA) is expatriates. According to the Saudi General Authority for Statistic (https://www.stats.gov.sa/en), the total population in SA in 2021 is estimated at 33,413,660 people, 20,768,627 of whom are Saudi citizens whereas 12,645,033 are expatriates coming from different countries across the world, such as Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Pakistan, Philippines, Sudan, Sri Lanka, among many others. In this study, the author targeted limited English and Arabic proficiency patients (LEAPPs) from only three countries in the Near East: (1) Bangladesh, (2) India and (3) Pakistan. The author selected these three countries because they represent the high number of expatriates in SA. According to www.globalmediainsight.com, the population of the abovementioned nationalities in SA in 2021 is as follows: India (2,550,000 million), Pakistan (2,450,000 million) and Bangladesh (1,300,000 million) (see https://bit.ly/3NR6SfT). The main official languages for Pakistan, India and Bangladesh are Urdu, Hindu and Bengali respectively. Although the English language is the second official language in both Pakistan and India, it comes as a second language, not as a mother tongue. In other words, these LEAPPs are unlikely to have a full command of the English language.

The current study makes use of both quantitative and qualitative approaches. The quantitative component follows from the use of questionnaires whereas the qualitative part comes from the execution of face-to-face interviews. This mixed approach has been influential in earlier explorations (see, e.g. Terrel, 2012; Dawadi et al., 2021) and was used in this study to achieve two objectives: (1) to explore whether LEAPPs suffer linguistically when they visit a Saudi hospital, and this data can be elicited via questionnaires, and (2) to gain insights from LEAPPs' experience and attend to their suggestions towards the improvement of the linguistic landscape of the Saudi health system, and this can be gleaned from the interviews.

Based on questionnaires and interviews, the study shows that 64.5% of LEAPPs cannot express their health issues to Arabic-speaking physicians, while 54.8% cannot understand the details of their diagnoses and the guidelines of the prescriptions. Although there is a strong consensus among LEAPPs that interpretation services should be introduced to the Saudi health sector to achieve a better experience, 67.7% are generally satisfied with the current healthcare. Contra previous claims that patients are concerned about their privacy with the introduction of interpreters (see, e.g. Hadziabdic, 2011; Floyd and Sakellariou, 2017; MacFarlane et al. 2020), the present study shows that 70.9% of LEAPPs express no concerns regarding their privacy, whereas 19.3% adopt a neutral position.

Unlike Al-Khathami et al. (2010) who explored the perspective of Saudi patients towards nonArabic speaking nurses and contra Alhammami (2020) who examined the attitudes of the nonArabic speaking doctors towards Saudi patients, the current study shed more light on a neglected sample, namely the laborers, janitors and other craftsmen who have limited knowledge of both Arabic and English and who visited a Saudi clinic/hospital and were met by Arabic-speaking physicians.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the vulnerability of the important rangeland shrub, Atriplex leucoclada (Boiss) to both climate change and livestock grazing, within the Syrian rangelands as a representative landscape type of West Asia.

Ecologically based quantitative niche models were developed for both shrub species using maximum entropy and 13 spatially explicit GIS-based layers to predict current and future species distribution scenarios. Climatic variables varied over time in line with the predictions created from the HADCM3 global circulation model.

Results indicate that with grazing and climate change, the distribution of A. leucoclada will be reduced by 54 per cent in 2050, with the mean annual and minimum temperatures of the coldest month having the highest contribution in the model (28.7 and 21.2 per cent, respectively). The contribution of the grazing pressure, expressed by the overgrazing index, was estimated at 8.2 per cent.

These results suggest that the interaction of climate and increased grazing has the potential to favor the establishment of unpalatable species, while reducing the distribution of preferred plant species on western Asia rangelands.