THE FACTORS CAUSING ENGLISH SPEAKING ANXIETY ON NON-ENGLISH MAJOR ACADEMICS WHILE USING ENGLISH AS A MEDIUM OF INSTRUCTION

This qualitative study aims to reveal the factors causing English speaking anxiety on non-English major academics while using English as a medium of instruction. Eight non-English major academics with the experience of teaching in English participated in the present research. Semi-structured one-on-one interviews and e-mail interviews, which are qualitative data collection techniques, were used as data collection tools. Manual coding of qualitative data that requires in-depth reading of the transcripts and assigning codes and themes was used to interpret the data. The results reveal the situations that provoke speaking anxiety among the non-English major academics. They can be grouped under five main themes: academics’ English proficiency, academics’ self-evaluation, learner behaviors, learner inadequacies, and cultural differences. These five main themes can also be confined to individual factors, learner factors, and cultural factors. It can therefore be assumed that the factors causing English speaking anxiety on non-English major academics have to be considered within multidimensional aspects rather than simply originating from academics themselve

Idiosyncratic Development of Receptive and Free Active Vocabulary: To what extent do essay types and receptive vocabulary contribute to the lexical richness?

The present study seeks to explain the role of different essay types and proficiency level based on receptive vocabulary knowledge on learners’ free active vocabulary. The study includes the works done in a 15-week academic term by 26 EFL students with C1 level English proficiency. At the beginning of the research, the participants are applied Vocabulary Size Test (Nation & Beglar, 2007) to determine their receptive vocabulary knowledge and divided into two groups according to their results from VST: the more proficient group who master 8000 or more word families and the less proficient group who master less than 8000 word families. Throughout the semester, they have written two essays on each of two different essay types: comparison-contrast essay and cause-effect essay. In order to determine the participants’ free active vocabulary, two different scores, i.e., detailed Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer and Nation, 1995) and condensed Lexical Frequency Profile (Laufer, 1995), are calculated in the writings of the participants. The results indicate that neither essay types nor proficiency based on receptive vocabulary knowledge has any significant effect on learners’ free active productive vocabulary

Arterial Distensibility in Chronic Inflammatory Rheumatic Disorders

The pulse wave velocity (PWV), as an indicator of arterial distensibility, may play an important role in the stratification of patients based on the cardiovascular risk. PWV inversely correlates with arterial distensibility and relative arterial compliance. Decreased arterial distensibility alters arterial blood pressure and flow dynamics, and disturbes coronary perfusion. Systemic immune and inflammatory diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) are associated with increased morbidity and mortality, predominantly due to adverse cardiovascular events. Systemic inflammation in these disorders may alter arterial compliance and arterial distensibility and, through this effect, lead to accelerated atherosclerosis. We have demonstrated an increase in the carotid-femoral (aortic) PWV that is a technique in which large artery elasticity is assessed from analysis of the peripheral arterial waveform, in patients with chronic inflammatory conditions such as RA, SLE, familial Mediterranean fever (FMF), Wegener’s granulomatosis (WG), sarcoidosis, psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis except Behçet’s disease (BD). In this review, the issue of arterial stiffness in RA, SLE, as well as WG, psoriasis, FMF, BD, sarcoidosis, systemic sclerosis (SS) and Takayasu's arteritis (TA) is overviewed

Numerical Analysis of 1/28 Scaled HTGR Reactor Building Test Facility Response to Depressurization Event

Depressurized Loss of Forced Cooling (DLOFC) accident is an important type of accident scenario in High Temperature Gas-Cooled Reactor (HTGR) design which is initiated by a break in Helium Pressure Boundary (HPB). This class of accident scenarios results in a depressurization of primary helium coolant system with subsequent release of helium into the Reactor Building (RB) and to the atmosphere through Vented Low Pressure Containment (VLPC). After the total depressurization of helium depending on the specific accident scenarios, it is also possible that air enters into the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) through the RB which can potentially react with fuel and the reactor internal components such as nuclear-grade graphite. In this study, GOTHIC model of a 1/28-scaled simplified test facility was developed to analyze the depressurization scenarios and validate them against the experimental data. Simulations were conducted in three phases by following the experiment sequence. In the first phase, natural leakage from the RB was modeled with two different methods to prepare the model for further analysis. In the second phase, post-depressurization refill of air into the RB compartments was analyzed and results were validated against experimental data. In third phase, two hypothetical depressurization scenarios were analyzed and results were compared with experimental data. Simulation results were found to be consistent with experimental data

Formation control of multiple robots using parametric and implicit representations

A novel method is presented for formation control of a group of autonomous mobile robots using parametric and implicit descriptions of the desired formation. Shape formation is controlled by using potential fields generated from Implicit Polynomial (IP) representations and the control for keeping the desired shape is designed using Elliptical Fourier Descriptors (EFD). Coordination of the robots is modeled by linear springs between each robot and its nearest two neighbors. This approach offers more flexibility in the formation shape and scales well to different swarm sizes and to heterogeneous systems. The method is simulated on robot groups with different sizes to form various formation shapes

The Use of Gamma Irradiation in Plant Mutation Breeding

In plant breeding programs, one of the oldest methods is mutation breeding. Currently, mutation breeding has became popular among the breeders and scientists again with its use in plant biotechnology and due to some restrictions on the other techniques such as hybridization, cross breeding, and transgenic plants. Physical mutagens (X-rays, UV light, neutrons-alpha-beta particles, fast and thermal neutrons, especially gamma rays) are used more widely than chemical (ethyl methanesulfonate [EMS]) ones to artificially induce mutations (mutagenesis). However, among the physical mutagens, gamma-rays are widely used. During the irradiation of the seeds with ionizing radiation to generate mutants with desirable traits, reactive oxygen species (ROS) or free radicals can generate in cells. Although, these radicals/species generally can be very dangerous for the cell compartments, they can take an important role as a signal molecule activation of genes of antioxidant enzymes and proline, which are defense systems against these radicals in plant cells. In this chapter, usability of gamma-irradiation to provide the permanent gene expression of antioxidant enzymes and proline through the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is discussed