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The global outbreak of COVID-19 necessitated a swift transition from conventional face-to-face (F2F) teaching to Emergency Remote Teaching (ERT) in educational institutions worldwide. This sudden shift posed significant challenges for both teachers and students, particularly those in low-resource rural schools. This study sought to probe into this experience in the context of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instruction, focusing on the perspectives of teachers and students in rural high schools within Iran. The study participants were 13 female EFL teachers and 15 female EFL students teaching and studying in rural high schools in different cities in Iran. Employing a qualitative approach, data were gathered through semi-structured interviews, online observation, and one of the researcher’s reflective journals. Thematic analysis was utilized to analyze the data, identifying several categories encompassing the hurdles encountered by the participants and the achievements they attained. The identified categories pertaining to hurdles encompassed technological, financial, educational, personal, professional, and well-being problems. Similarly, the categories pertaining to achievements comprised technological, educational, and professional progress, as well as enhanced convenience. Exploring the dilemmas and aspirations expressed by these participants can inform and better equip the educational system of Iran to effectively respond to similar crises in the future. Furthermore, this study offers insights to education authorities, aiding in the resolution of barriers to distance online education and facilitating enhanced preparedness for potential future emergencies.

Substitution-boxes (S-boxes) are very important nonlinear components used for achieving strong confusion for enhancing cryptographic security in most of the block ciphers. Designing cryptographically strong S-boxes has been a major research domain for the designers of symmetric crypto systems. In the proposed research work, Bat Algorithm based swarm technique is proposed to design strong S-boxes.  Cryptographic strong S-boxes are obtained by the developed swarm technique. Authors analyze cryptographic strength of the obtained S-box by evaluating properties like Bijectivity, Nonlinearity, Bit-Independence Criterion, Linear Probability and Differential Uniformity. The obtained performance parameters for the designed new S-box by the swarm technique are compared with some recently reported S-boxes in the literature. The designed S-box has good cryptographic strength. The designed S-box has good cryptographic strength like nonlinearity = 110.75 and average Strict Avalanche Criterion (SAC) value = 0.506. For the constructed S-box, most of the Differential uniformity components are 4 and shows uniform distribution approximately. The proposed new S-box is also free from the fixed points.

Purpose- Scientific papers are presented for benefit in journals. The studies are carried out academically and in accordance with the needs of society. Therefore, examining them is essential to journals and academics. This paper aims to analyze the articles of the Journal of Rural Planning and Research and the connection of these articles with the challenges and obstacles of rural development.Design/methodology/approach- Scientometrics research was the basis of the current research. Scientometrics is defined as quantitatively studying science or measuring the quality and impact of research. As a field, Scientometrics uses statistical methods and techniques to quantify research and achievements to reveal the research development process and can be a tool for decision-making. The main themes include measuring research quality and impact, citation processes, mapping scientific fields, and using indicators in research policy and management. The method of collecting information was from libraries and the citation database in the "Publish or Perish" software program. The indexes of "Network Density", "Centrality Degree", "Betweenness Centrality", "Eigenvector" and "Clustering Coefficient", as well as "H-Index", were used in this study. Ravar Matrix was used to prepare the self-interaction matrix, and Ucinet and Gephi were used to analyze the indicators and make graphs. Also, the co-occurrence of the keywords of the articles was the basis for identifying the topics of the articles.Findings- Journal of Rural Research and Planning (JRRP), has published 348 articles in 10 volumes and 35 issues. Authors such as Anabestani, Barghi and Rezvani had the highest number of connections in the collaboration network. On the other hand, researchers like Taghdisi, Anabestani, Afrakhteh and Bouzarjomehri are the most influential authors of the Journal. Moreover, the main topic of the papers is Economic Development in rural areas. According to the changes and evolution of the leading research topics, the issue of sustainable development has been one of the main research approaches in the last few years. After that, studies have been conducted more on sustainable livelihood development, connected with other topics.Originality / value- Neglecting social and cultural challenges seems to be the common shortcomings of rural research besides rural development programs in Iran. This issue indicates the need for more integration in research and calls for attention in development programs.

Purpose- Village as a residential system has always suffered a lot of damage due to natural hazards such as drought throughout history, and due to the dependence of the rural economy on the agricultural sector, any threat against this sector leads to the weakening of the economic foundations, the village and eventually the economic stagnation of the country. Therefore, the aim of the current research is to evaluate the drought-resilient measures to reduce the vulnerability of rural households located in Rastaq district in Khalil-Abad City, Khorasan-Razavi Province.Design/methodology/approach- The type of research is applied research, and the data was collected by applying a descriptive-analytical method by using documentary sources and field studies (questionnaire). The statistical population of the research is comprised of the heads of rural households living in the study area. As a result, 337 people were selected using Cochran's method. For ranking and spatial analysis of the village, Copras and Vicor techniques were used, and Shannon technique and SPSS software were used for statistical data analysis.Findings- The results showed that among the weights obtained from the paired comparison of the dimensions raised in resilience measures with drought in reducing the vulnerability of rural households, modern irrigation measures with a score of (0.290) have the highest score in resilience measures. Avarane took over with the drought. Finally, in the study area, Niqab village performed better than other villages in terms of resilience measures in dealing with drought.Research limitations/implications- Not having access to statistical information when referring to Jihad Agriculture and Governorship, as well as filling out the questionnaire depending on the topic at the village level and the costs of conducting this research are among the challenges of the present research.Practical implications- In the end, according to the obtained results, it is considered necessary to provide solutions for the resilience of rural households at the level of the villages of this district and to implement the solutions.Originality / value- The present research is significant due to its expression and recognition of different issues surrounding the resilience of households in the face of drought. An important step can be taken in the direction of reducing the vulnerability of rural households to deal with drought in the coming years.

Despite widespread studies on language assessment literacy (LAL), there are still many unexplored areas about LAL (Gan & Lam, 2022). One of these areas is identifying various aspects of LAL regarding different language skills and scrutinizing the English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ involvement with these aspects. Accordingly, this study attempted to (a) explore Iranian EFL teachers’ perceptions, preferences, and difficulties of oral/aural skills LAL and (b) develop a scale to measure these teachers’ oral/aural skills LAL. The study was carried out in two phases. First, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 Iranian EFL teachers to identify their perceptions, preferences, and difficulties of oral/aural skills LAL. Second, the researchers developed a questionnaire based on a review of the literature on assessing oral/aural skills and the results of interviews. The questionnaire was reviewed by experts, revised accordingly, and administered to 150 Iranian EFL teachers who were selected through convenience sampling. The reliability of the questionnaire and its construct validity were then checked. The results of both phases of the study were compatible. The outcomes showed that almost all teachers represented dissatisfaction about their oral/aural skills LAL and they were enthusiastic to participate in assessment training courses. Furthermore, it was found that due to their lack of knowledge about oral/aural skills assessment, traditional techniques of assessment were widely used by Iranian EFL teachers.