Intrusions of textism into students' formal writing: reality or myth?

It is claimed by the media that the expansion of Instant Messaging (IM) in recent years affected the quality of formal writing and there are intrusions into such writings (Grace, Kemp, Martin, & Parrila, 2015). The current study examined six articles published in scientific journals in 2009, 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2015 on textism (e.g. gr8 for “great”) to see if there have been any changes in the results of the studies on the quality of writing under the influence of textism in native and non-native groups during the last 6 years. The population in all three studies has been young adults between 18 to 29 years old, male and female. The studies are done through writing tests in academic institutions and schools. Synchronization of the findings over time is important as it can show that if, with the expansion of social media and increasing number of messaging applications, there has been any significant increase in the textism intrusion or not. The content analysis and statistical comparison are used as the methods to compare the studies’ results and to form an armchair study to validate the effects of the textism on formal writing. Based on the chronological and synthesized results, it was found ultimately that in the native group there is not any significant difference between the results over the synchronized time and the media claims are not true, while the non-native learners of English have shown negative intrusions

The effectiveness of an online abstract checker application

Writing an abstract is difficult for students and they need a tool to check their abstracts against a confirmed framework. The current paper is a report on the usefulness of the online abstract checker application to the users. The application ‘abstract checker 1.0’ was developed based on Santos’ (1996) Framework for writing a successful scientific abstract. The efficacy of the application was verified in a trial session which saw the participation of 32 postgraduate students from different faculties in Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM). During the session, participants were given instructions on how to use the tool and their feedback on the performance of the application was collected through a questionnaire and notes from mutual talks with the researchers. The special features of the application are the highlighting of the sentences according to the moves and the Abstract Quality Index (AQI) as an indicator of the level of quality of the submitted abstract. The usefulness of the software was analyzed based on a five point Likert scale and the obtained score showed that generally students found the application very useful. However, more importantly, the feedback received from the participants were invaluable information for the researchers to further fine tune the software for a more efficient and trustworthy application

Translators' strategies for the translation of cultural markers from English into Persian in a literary text

This study examined the strategies adopted by six translators in the translation of the cultural markers from English to Persian in The Alchemist, a novel by Paulo Coelho (1992). The study aimed to identify the strategies that the translators have adopted in rendering the cultural markers in the Persian translation of the novel, as well as to analyze to what extent the translators have been observant of the receiving culture. The Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS) theories underlie the study. Data of the study comprise words and compounds extracted from a corpus of six different Persian translations of the English novel based on a database and search tool designed for this purpose. The classification of cultural markers proposed by Newmark (1988) was used as a basis for searching and extracting the cultural markers from the source text. A total number of256,342 words constitute the corpus, from which 39,483 words are in English and 216,845 words are in Persian. The identified translated words and compounds were then analyzed to fmd out how the translators dealt with cultural markers and to determine the strategies adopted by them in translating the sensitive cultural concepts and phenomena. The analysis of the data revealed that certain concepts such as religious names, traditions and rituals are lost in the translated texts, which is attributed to the cultural differences and religious beliefs of the translators and their preferences for the receiving culture. The comparison of the translated data also revealed that Persian translators could have intentionally or unintentionally omitted or changed certain concepts and meanings due to cultural, religious and translatability issues. These changes considered both as translation mistakes and/or translators' intentions to avoid the religious and morality issues in the receiving culture

Snapshots of the relationship between photo, caption and headline in news articles on food

The paper is motivated by investigations on how visuals interplay with text to create meaning. Today in news reporting, written text alone would not suffice to attract the attention of readers. Photos play a major role in depicting a theme and also to create mental representations that would help to bring out the message in the text. The current study focuses on examination of the relationship between photo, caption and headlines as the initial elements of a news article that set the scene for further reading. A qualitative approach is used to analyse the content of the photos as well as the captions and the headlines. Each of the elements is discussed and the elements are then linked together to provide coherence of response to the effects that are created. The analysis also points to the techniques used by news writers in the evocation of emotions and attitude towards a universal concern of food and its critical shortages through the manipulation of the interrelationship between photo, caption and headline

Superparamagnetic Fe(OH)₃@Fe₃O₄ Nanoparticles: An Efficient and Recoverable Catalyst for Tandem Oxidative Amidation of Alcohols with Amine Hydrochloride Salts

Magnetic Fe­(OH)₃@Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles were successfully prepared and characterized. This magnetic nanocomposite was employed as an efficient, reusable, and environmentally benign heterogeneous catalyst for the direct amidation of alcohols with amine hydrochloride salts. Several derivatives of primary, secondary and tertiary amides were synthesized in moderate to good yields in the presence of this catalytic system. The catalyst was successfully recycled and reused up to six times without significant loss of its catalytic activity

Fluorescence Chemosensory Determination of Cu2+ Using a New Rhodamine–Morpholine Conjugate

A new rhodamine-B carbonyl-morpholine derivative (denoted as RECM) was prepared by a two-step synthesis procedure. The employed method allowed a lactam ring development of rhodamine-B and ethylenediamine to demonstrate a facile amide bond formation. The obtained RECM was confirmed by 1H NMR, 13C NMR, and mass spectrometry analysis. RECM was formed to detect copper ion (Cu2+) due to its problematic toxicity features in aquatic ecosystems. It showed a high selectivity toward Cu2+ in comparison with some environmentally relevant alkali, alkaline earth, and transition metal cations at 50 µM in acetonitrile. Moreover, non-fluorescent RECM showed fluorescence intensity and UV-Vis absorbance increases in the presence of Cu2+ with high linear dependent coefficients (R2 = 0.964 and R2 = 0.982 respectively) as well as a color change from colorless to pink owing to the ring opening of the rhodamine spirolactam form. Binding capability experiments presented a clear 1:1 stoichiometry of RECM–Cu2+ complex with the binding constant (Ka) as 2.25 × 104 M−1. The calculation of limits of detection (LOD) was 0.21 µM based on the linear regression method, which is below the maximum contaminant level goal (MCLG) value of Cu2+ (1.3 ppm equals to 20.46 µM) in drinking water. These characteristics make the RECM a promising candidate for the real-time detection of toxic Cu2+ in environmental monitoring applications