AN EXAMINATION OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNER TRANSLATORS' PROBLEMS IN TRANSLATION ACTIVITIES

The research reported here was an attempt to understand the nature of classroom translation problems of Iranian EFL learners. For this purpose, three cohorts of EFL learners taking introductory and advanced translation courses (from English to Persian and vice versa)participated in the study in order to identify the sources of their translation problems and offer solutions for the betterment of the situation. The content analysis of the samples of translationactivities of the participants revealed that translation is a more sophisticated skill than expected and that an inappropriate linguistic competence in English is responsible for the bulk of translation blunders faced by learner translators

A glimpse into the trophic ecology of deep‐water sharks in an important crustacean fishing ground

Deep-water sharks are among the most vulnerable deep-water taxa because of their extremely conservative life-history strategies (i.e., late maturation, slow growth, and reproductive rates), yet little is known about their biology and ecology. Thus, this study aimed at investigating the trophic ecology of five deep-water shark species, the birdbeak dogfish (Deania calcea), the arrowhead (D. profundorum), the smooth lanternshark (Etmopterus pusillus), the blackmouth catshark (Galeus melastomus) and the knifetooth dogfish (Scymnodon ringens) sampled onboard a crustacean bottom-trawler off the south-west coast of Portugal. We combined carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes with RNA and DNA (RD) ratios to investigate the main groups of prey assimilated by these species and their nutritional condition, respectively. Stable isotopes revealed overall small interspecific variability in the contribution of different taxonomic groups to sharks' tissues, as well as in the origin of their prey. S. ringens presented higher delta N-15 and delta C-13 values than the other species, suggesting reliance on bathyal cephalopods, crustaceans and teleosts; the remaining species likely assimilated bathy-mesopelagic prey. The RD ratios indicated that most of the individuals had an overall adequate nutritional condition and had recently eaten. This information, combined with the fact that stable isotopes indicate that sharks assimilated prey from the local or nearby food webs (including commercially important shrimps), suggests a potential overlap between this fishing area and their foraging grounds, which requires further attention.LA/P/0101/2020; SOSF 501info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards Trustworthy Healthcare AI: Attention-Based Feature Learning for COVID-19 Screening With Chest Radiography

Building AI models with trustworthiness is important especially in regulated areas such as healthcare. In tackling COVID-19, previous work uses convolutional neural networks as the backbone architecture, which has shown to be prone to over-caution and overconfidence in making decisions, rendering them less trustworthy -- a crucial flaw in the context of medical imaging. In this study, we propose a feature learning approach using Vision Transformers, which use an attention-based mechanism, and examine the representation learning capability of Transformers as a new backbone architecture for medical imaging. Through the task of classifying COVID-19 chest radiographs, we investigate into whether generalization capabilities benefit solely from Vision Transformers' architectural advances. Quantitative and qualitative evaluations are conducted on the trustworthiness of the models, through the use of "trust score" computation and a visual explainability technique. We conclude that the attention-based feature learning approach is promising in building trustworthy deep learning models for healthcare.Comment: Accepted to 39th International Conference on Machine Learning, Workshop on Healthcare AI and COVID-1

The magnitude of the non-adiabatic pressure in the cosmic fluid

Understanding the non-adiabatic pressure, or relative entropy, perturbation is crucial for studies of early-universe vorticity and Cosmic Microwave Background observations. We calculate the evolution of the linear non-adiabatic pressure perturbation from radiation domination to late times, numerically solving the linear governing equations for a wide range of wavenumbers. Using adiabatic initial conditions consistent with WMAP seven year data, we find nevertheless that the non-adiabatic pressure perturbation is non-zero and grows at early times, peaking around the epoch of matter/radiation equality and decaying in matter domination. At early times or large redshifts (z=10,000) its power spectrum peaks at a comoving wavenumber k~0.2h/Mpc, while at late times (z=500) it peaks at k~0.02 h/Mpc.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Replaced with version accepted by MNRAS. One figure removed, added some discussio

Design and modeling of dispersion-engineered all-chalcogenide triangular-core fiber for mid-infrared-region supercontinuum generation

An ultrabroadband mid-infrared supercontinuum (SC) source has been designed and modeled using a 10-mm-long all-chalcogenide triangular-core fiber (TCF). The TCF structure can be fabricated from Ge11.5As24Se64.5 chalcogenide glass as a core and Ge11.5As24S64.5 chalcogenide glass for its cladding running along the length of the fiber instead of air holes. Assuming the pump operates at 4 μm, the TCF is optimized by varying its side length using both anomalous-dispersion and all-normal-dispersion SC generation. Mid-infrared-region SC spectral broadening spanning beyond 15 μm could be generated with a low peak power of 3 kW by the proposed TCF structure optimized with varying its side length between 7 and 8 μm in anomalous-dispersion pumping. On the other hand, the TCF side length has to be decreased to 5.5 μm and below to optimize it for pumping in all-normal-dispersion-region SC generation. A coherent flat-top SC evolution in the mid-infrared region of up to 7 μm could be observed by this design with the same pump peak power and pulse duration applied before. The ultrawide optical bandwidth obtained by the proposed TCF design can be an effective tool for mid-infrared-region applications such as optical coherence tomography, molecular fingerprint spectroscopy, and biomedical imaging

Studies of the Effect of Schistosoma Mansoni Infection on Work Capacity

Estimates of labour productivity loss due to schistosomiasis have been put as high as 40% but there are no satisfactory objective measurements of deterioration in physical working capacity to support these claims. The effect of s. mansoni infection on work performance in the Sudan has been investigated in the present study using the criteria of maximal aerobic power measured in the laboratory and the habitual activity pattern verified by energy expenditure measurements in the field. The study relates to economically active males aged between 18 and 45 years: infected and non-infected villagers, heavily infected canal-cleaners, hospital patients, physically trained soldiers and non-infected townspeople. All had received anti-malarial prophylaxis. Laboratory measurements included anthropometric, sociological, haematologic and biochemlcul investigations together with pulmonary function tests and bicycle ergometer measurements of aerobic work output using a semi-automated system. In 37 non-infected and 147 schistosomiasis-infected villagers no differences were found in pulmonary function, submaximal exercise performance and predicted maximum aerobic power. Statistically significant reductions in all these parameters were, however, found in a group of heavily infected canal cleaners. A changing pattern of quantitative egg excretion from moderate (2000 eggs/g) egg loads was shown to bo associated with decrements of up to 20% in maximum aerobic power. The results wore not attributable to anthropometric (particularly leg muscle volume which affects performance on the bicycle ergometer) or to nutritional differences between the groups, but predicted maximum aerobic power, egg load and haemoglobin concentrations were significantly correlated. In a further study of anti-schistosomal (hycanthone) treatment on two groups of villagers, one of which served as a control, a significant improvement in physiological work capacity occurred after treatment. The empirical findings presented in this thesis provide abasis for a clearer understanding of the relationship between schistosomiasis infection, tropical productivity and health of an infected community

Effect of Permeation Enhancers on the Release Behavior and Permeation Kinetics of Novel Tramadol Lotions

Purpose: The aim of this research work was to formulate, characterize and evaluate the in vitro permeation behavior of tramadol lotion containing propylene glycol (PG) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) as permeation enhancers.Methods: The permeation experiments were conducted in vitro using full thickness rabbit skin in Franz diffusion cells. The donor compartment was filled with PBS (phosphate buffered saline) at pH 7.4 ± 0.1. The receptor phase was continuously stirred PBS (pH 7.4) at 37 °C ± 0.5. The amount of tramadol permeated into the receptor phase was determined spectrophotometrically at 271 nm. Various permeation parameters such as permeation coefficient (Kp), diffusion coefficient (D), flux (J), input rate,and enhancement ratio were obtained using Fick’s diffusion laws.Results: Permeation increased with increase in the concentrations of both enhancers tested. Maximum cumulative amount permeated for control lotion (Lc) was 357 ìg/cm2/min with input rate 0.574 ìg/min and lag time (tlag) of 34.93 min, while for the optimum test lotion (L4, containing 8 % PG/PEG in ratio of 1:1 v/v), it was 926 ìg/cm2/min, 1.482 ìg/min and 58.36 min, respectively. The significantly (p < 0.05) higher permeability shown by the test lotion L4 can be attributed, in part, to the interaction of PG withintercellular lipids leading to the disruption of their organization and increasing their fluidity, and also partly as a result of solubilization of lipid bilayers by PEG.Conclusion: A binary system of PG and PEG in lotion can be successfully utilized for the permeation enhancement of tramadol.Keyword: Tramadol, Transdermal delivery, Permeation, Propylene glycol, Polyethylene glycol, Rabbit skin