Gender differences in task-based performance of EFL students

Although various studies have been conducted to examine gender difference regarding different aspects of language learning, the results reveal inconsistencies. This study examined the difference between the performances of male and female EFL learners on three task-based activities. A random sample of 120 participants in an Iranian English school (in Mashhad) was drawn from the pre-intermediate level (60 male and 60 female). Students' performances of three task types were evaluated using a validated rating checklist with a reliability of 0.87. The results proved that there was no significant difference between the task-based performances of male and female students suggesting that the gender imposes no difference on EFL learners' performances of task-based activities

Recognition of the Role of Bricks and Brick Structures in the Human: A Case Study in Kermanshah, Iran

Body of brick architecture like the human body aroused from the soil as the body and returns back into the soil again. This heterogeneity makes the soil architecture compatible with the human nature. Various forms of the nature and soil architecture in the traditional buildings depend on Islamic architecture, and our nature is human spirit and intrinsic qualities of nature are introduced as the basis of life and spirit. The nature is the universe of objects and appearance. A lot of soil products are produced in this region. Favorable climatic conditions in the city of Kermanshah provided the ground for using soil products. Later, the bricks were known as the main materials of living.  The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of brick materials and make a sense of belonging within the context of the historical city of Kermanshah. In this study, we tried to evaluate psychological impact of bricks from different aspects by a cross - sectional approach. Finally, the results indicated that soil materials in the form and meaning are consistent with human nature. Soil reduces energy consumption in the buildings

Recognition of the Role of Bricks and Brick Structures in the Human: A Case Study in Kermanshah, Iran

Body of brick architecture like the human body aroused from the soil as the body and returns back into the soil again. This heterogeneity makes the soil architecture compatible with the human nature. Various forms of the nature and soil architecture in the traditional buildings depend on Islamic architecture, and our nature is human spirit and intrinsic qualities of nature are introduced as the basis of life and spirit. The nature is the universe of objects and appearance. A lot of soil products are produced in this region. Favorable climatic conditions in the city of Kermanshah provided the ground for using soil products. Later, the bricks were known as the main materials of living.  The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of brick materials and make a sense of belonging within the context of the historical city of Kermanshah. In this study, we tried to evaluate psychological impact of bricks from different aspects by a cross - sectional approach. Finally, the results indicated that soil materials in the form and meaning are consistent with human nature. Soil reduces energy consumption in the buildings

Investigating EFL students’ EAP needs on productive skills in Malaysian universities

Many international students are currently pursuing their post-secondary studies in Malaysia. At the beginning of each study programme in Malaysian universities, international students typically attend EAP courses for a better performance on campus. However, it is believed that these courses do not satisfactorily meet the EFL international students’ needs, and this is probably because such courses do not take into consideration a comprehensive need analysis. This survey is one of the forerunning efforts to find out what tasks of English writing and speaking skills are actually needed by EFL international students in order to improve their ability of English as these two skills have been reported to be the most essential ones in academic settings. To this end, a Need Analysis questionnaire was employed to examine EFL international students’ needs over productive skills. The questionnaire was sent to respondents via email and 60 post-secondary students responded and returned the questionnaire. The data analysis revealed that the majority of the participants considered speaking as the most important language skill that they needed to improve. Also, they reported that Explaining Ideas, Giving a Presentation, Giving Reasons, and Discussing in Meetings ranked on top of their speaking needs. In addition, the most needed writing tasks in EAP classes included Taking Lecture Notes and Writing Journal Papers/Articles. Moreover, gender was found to be significant in determining speaking tasks needed by EFL international students. Finally, PhD students reported to have different speaking needs compared to students studying Master and Bachelor programmes. Findings of this study are majorly congruent with other studies on international students’ needs in academic settings, which can be of worth for the current EAP/ESP courses offered in Malaysia for EFL international students

RSS-based sensor localization with unknown transmit power

Received signal strength (RSS)-based single source localization when there is not a prior knowledge about the transmit power of the source is investigated. Because of nonconvex behavior of maximum likelihood (ML) estimator, convoluted computations are required to achieve its global minimum. Therefore, we propose a novel semidefinite programming (SDP) approach by approximating ML problem to a convex optimization problem which can be solved very efficiently. Computer simulations show that our proposed SDP has a remarkable performance very close to ML estimator. Linearizing RSS model, we also derive the partly novel least squares (LS) and weighted total least squares (WTLS) algorithms for this problem. Simulations illustrate that WTLS improves the performance of LS considerably

RSS-Based Sensor Localization in the Presence of Unknown Channel Parameters

This correspondence studies the received signal strength-based localization problem when the transmit power or path-loss exponent is unknown. The corresponding maximum-likelihood estimator (MLE) poses a difficult nonconvex optimization problem. To avoid the difficulty in solving the MLE, we use suitable approximations and formulate the localization problem as a general trust region subproblem, which can be solved exactly under mild conditions. Simulation results show a promising performance for the proposed methods, which also have reasonable complexities compared to existing approaches