Critical Discourse Analysis and Its Implication in English Language Teaching: A Case Study of Political Text

This study was planned prudently to probe the impact of critical discourse analysis on male and female students. In so doing, the study utilized an experimental design with 62 participants including 32 males & 32 females majoring in English language. To this end, Obama's political speech as a text was delivered to students to analyze it. Before teaching CDA techniques, students were asked to analyze this political text in accord with their interests. After teaching these principles, they analyzed the same text for the second time critically. Then they responded to a questionnaire that divulged the consequences of CDA on males and females. The findings suggest that females were more influenced than males, but in every way the difference was not to a great degree impressive. Another purpose of this article pays heed to students' critical thinking. After inspection of students' analyses and evaluation of their answers given to the questionnaire, it was specified that critical discourse analysis facilitate nurturing critical thinking ability in students. Furthermore, students' motivation enhanced after learning these principles as well as their ability to decode the textual meaning of the text increased

Estudar o efeito mental da cor na arquitetura interior dos espaços hospitalares e afetar a tranquilidade do paciente

Interior architecture plays a major role in the building environment quality. Setting quality and space partitioning, color and material of the surface coverage, lighting, furniture, and etc. are the factors affecting the beauty of the interior spaces. Effect of environment psychology such as color and light on the human senses and its feedback in the environment influences the environment quality. Colors around us, not only possess the ability to transfer the message and emotion, but also possess the energy therapy property. Color psychology means the effect of environment on the mind and mental states of people through the stunning available in the environment. This fact is of great importance in the therapeutic Spaces because a patient that goes to the hospital , is in the unfavorable conditions and therefore it should be tried to reduce the patient anxiety and increase the hope of life and restore the patient’s tranquility. Thus, people strictly need the variety of color and form and combined artworks in the around environment. Generally, using the diverse colors and suitable lighting eliminates the uniformity in the environment and impatience in the patients and avoids weakening of the senses and the nervous system. Therefore , by knowing the topic of environment psychology and use the color and light in the therapeutic space and by the descriptive method, in this study we try to investigate the effect of colors on the different diseases and classify them quantitatively in order to create a sense of relaxation and more satisfaction in patients. Recent studies have reported that accurate use of the special colors can create useful effect in the mind balance and health, physical and mental relaxation, and in result rapid restore of health in the recovery time.La arquitectura interior juega un papel importante en la calidad del entorno de la construcción. Establecer la calidad y el espacio de particionamiento, el color y el material de la cobertura de la superficie, la iluminación, los muebles, etc. son los factores que afectan la belleza de los espacios interiores. El efecto de la psicología ambiental, como el color y la luz en los sentidos humanos y su retroalimentación en el ambiente, influye en la calidad del ambiente. Los colores que nos rodean no solo poseen la capacidad de transferir el mensaje y la emoción, sino que también poseen la propiedad de terapia energética. La psicología del color significa el efecto del medio ambiente en la mente y los estados mentales de las personas a través del aturdimiento disponible en el entorno. Este hecho es de gran importancia en los Espacios terapéuticos porque un paciente que acude al hospital, se encuentra en las condiciones desfavorables y por lo tanto se debe tratar de reducir la ansiedad del paciente e incrementar la esperanza de vida y restablecer la tranquilidad del paciente. Por lo tanto, las personas necesitan estrictamente la variedad de colores y formas y obras de arte combinadas en el entorno circundante. En general, el uso de colores diversos y una iluminación adecuada elimina la uniformidad en el entorno y la impaciencia en los pacientes y evita el debilitamiento de los sentidos y el sistema nervioso. Por lo tanto, al conocer el tema de la psicología ambiental y utilizar el color y la luz en el espacio terapéutico y el método descriptivo, en este estudio tratamos de investigar el efecto de los colores sobre las diferentes enfermedades y clasificarlos cuantitativamente para crear un sentido de relajación y más satisfacción en los pacientes. Estudios recientes han informado que el uso preciso de los colores especiales puede crear un efecto útil en el equilibrio mental y la salud, la relajación física y mental y, en consecuencia, la restauración rápida de la salud en el tiempo de recuperación.A arquitetura de interiores desempenha um papel importante na qualidade do ambiente de construção. Estabeleça a qualidade e o espaço de partição, a cor e o material da cobertura da superfície, a iluminação, o mobiliário, etc. são os fatores que afetam a beleza dos espaços interiores. O efeito da psicologia ambiental, como cor e luz nos sentidos humanos e seu feedback no ambiente, influencia a qualidade do ambiente. As cores que nos cercam não só têm a capacidade de transferir a mensagem e a emoção, mas também possuem a propriedade da terapia energética. A psicologia da cor significa o efeito do ambiente na mente e nos estados mentais das pessoas através do deslumbramento disponível no ambiente. Esse fato é de grande importância nos Espaços Terapêuticos, pois um paciente que chega ao hospital, está em condições desfavoráveis e, portanto, deve tentar diminuir a ansiedade do paciente e aumentar a expectativa de vida e restaurar a tranquilidade do paciente. Portanto, as pessoas precisam estritamente da variedade de cores e formas e obras de arte combinadas no ambiente circundante. Em geral, o uso de diversas cores e iluminação adequada elimina a uniformidade do ambiente e a impaciência nos pacientes e previne o enfraquecimento dos sentidos e do sistema nervoso. Portanto, conhecer o tema da psicologia ambiental e cor uso e luz no espaço terapêutico e o método descritivo, neste estudo nós investigamos o efeito de cores em diferentes doenças e classificar quantitativamente para criar uma sensação de relaxamento e mais satisfação nos pacientes. Estudos recentes relatam que o uso preciso de cores especiais pode criar um efeito útil no equilíbrio mental e na saúde, relaxamento físico e mental e, conseqüentemente, a rápida restauração da saúde no tempo de recuperação

Does Reading Literary Texts Have Any Impact on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Retention?

Abstract: This study seeks to find out whether EFL learners’ exposure to literary texts is in any way different from their exposure to nonliterary texts with respect to their ability to deal with related vocabulary items. Furthermore, the present study also sets out to examine whether EFL learners perform differently on reading comprehension tests derived from literary texts compared with those derived from nonliterary ones. The analysis of the data brought to light the fact that exposure to a plethora of literary texts does not imperatively bring any significant gain in the comprehension of literary or nonliterary texts. Even so, it is concluded that exposure to vocabulary items in literary texts may, in point of fact, help EFL learners to build up solid vocabulary knowledge. Key words: Extensive Reading; Literature; Reading Comprehension; Vocabulary Acquisition Résumé: Cette étude cherche à découvrir s’il y aurait des différences aux niveaux des résultats en comparant avec l’exposition des étudiants d'EFL aux textes littéraires et des étudiants d’EFL qui sont exposes aux textes non littéraires en ce qui concerne de leur capacité de traiter les articles relatifs de vocabulaire. En outre, la présente étude également mise à examiner si les étudiants d'EFL exécutent différemment sur des essais de compréhension de lecture dérivés des textes littéraires comparés à ceux dérivés de les non littéraire. L'analyse des données a mis en évidence le fait que l'exposition à une pléthore de textes littéraires n'apporte impérativement aucun gain significatif dans la compréhension des textes littéraires ou non littéraire. Néanmoins, on le conclut que l'exposition aux articles de vocabulaire en textes littéraires peut, en effet, aider des étudiants d'EFL à accumuler la connaissance solide de vocabulaire. Mots clés: Lecture étendue; Littérature; Compréhension de lecture; Acquisition de vocabulair

Intravenous Immunoglobulin for Management of Non-paraneoplastic Autoimmune Retinopathy

Purpose: To report a case of non-paraneoplastic autoimmune retinopathy (npAIR) treated with intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). Case report: A 12-year-old boy presented with progressive visual field loss, nyctalopia, and flashing for three months. He had suffered from common cold two weeks before the onset of these symptoms. On the basis of clinical history and paraclinical findings, he was diagnosed with npAIR, and IVIG without immunosuppressive therapy was started. During the one-year follow-up period after the first course of IVIG, flashing disappeared completely. Visual acuity remained 10/10, but nyctalopia did not improve. Multimodal imaging showed no disease progression. Conclusion: Although established retinal degenerative changes seem irreversible in npAIR, IVIG may be a suitable choice to control the disease progression

Neuro-fuzzy system modelling for the effects of intelligent transportation on road accident fatalities

U radu se predlaže neuro-fuzzy sustav za kvantitativnu procjenu učinaka inteligentnog prijevoznog sustava i tehnologija na broj žrtava. Osnovna ideja razvoja neuro-fuzzy sustava zasniva se na činjenici da inteligentni prijevozni sustavi i tehnologije aktiviraju neke sigurnosne mehanizme, a aktiviranje sigurnosnih mehanizama djelovat će pozitivno na sigurnost na cesti. Odabrano je devet inteligentnih prijevoznih sustava u svrhu proučavanja njihovih učinaka na sigurnost na cesti. Provedena je stručna anketa i na osnovu rezultata razvijen je sustav neizrazitog zaključivanja kako bi se procijenila stopa smrtnosti postojećeg prijevoznog sustava. Metoda prilagodljivog sustava neuro-neizrazitog zaključivanja (ANFIS) primijenjena je za identifikaciju svojstava sustava neizrazitog zaključivanja - FIS-a uključujući bazu fuzzy pravila i izlazne funkcije FIS-a. Rezultat neuro-fuzzy modeliranja pokazuje da su nadzor kamerom i nadzor/upozorenje pospanosti najučinkovitije tehnologije za sprečavanje prometnih nezgoda.This paper proposes a Neuro-fuzzy system for quantitative assessment of the effects of intelligent transportation systems and technologies on road fatalities. The basic idea in developing Neuro-fuzzy system is the fact that intelligent transportation systems and technologies activate some safety mechanisms and in turn the activation of safety mechanisms will have a positive impact on road safety. Nine intelligent transportation systems are selected to study their effects on road safety. Expert questionnaire survey is performed and based on its results, a fuzzy inference system is developed to estimate the fatality rate in a given transportation system. Adaptive network based fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) method is used to identify the FIS properties including fuzzy rule base and FIS output functions. The result of neuro-fuzzy modelling shows that camera monitoring and drowsiness monitoring/warning are the most influencing technologies in avoiding road accidents and fatalities

eHealth Equity: Current Perspectives

Health justice is something that every country in the world needs. However, the existence of health disparities among different social groups and geographical regions in various countries of the world is inevitable. These health inequalities are a major obstacle in achieving health justice. There are a number of factors affecting health equity such as socio-economic status, education level, age, religion, geographical position, racial and ethnical differences, gender minorities, environmental factors, accessibility level to healthcare services and resources, and also the quality of healthcare. Although eHealth has the potential of eliminating health inequalities leading to the establishment of health justice, it is essential that governments and health policy makers provide some measures to diminish major barriers facing the society members especially the elderly, poor, uneducated, and disabled people when implementing it. This can result in attaining the advantages of eHealth for establishing health equity

Continuous Reinforcement Learning-based Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment in a Visual Working Memory Game

Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment (DDA) is a viable approach to enhance a player's experience in video games. Recently, Reinforcement Learning (RL) methods have been employed for DDA in non-competitive games; nevertheless, they rely solely on discrete state-action space with a small search space. In this paper, we propose a continuous RL-based DDA methodology for a visual working memory (VWM) game to handle the complex search space for the difficulty of memorization. The proposed RL-based DDA tailors game difficulty based on the player's score and game difficulty in the last trial. We defined a continuous metric for the difficulty of memorization. Then, we consider the task difficulty and the vector of difficulty-score as the RL's action and state, respectively. We evaluated the proposed method through a within-subject experiment involving 52 subjects. The proposed approach was compared with two rule-based difficulty adjustment methods in terms of player's score and game experience measured by a questionnaire. The proposed RL-based approach resulted in a significantly better game experience in terms of competence, tension, and negative and positive affect. Players also achieved higher scores and win rates. Furthermore, the proposed RL-based DDA led to a significantly less decline in the score in a 20-trial session

Service quality monitoring in confined spaces through mining Twitter data

Promoting public transport depends on adapting effective tools for concurrent monitoring of perceived service quality. Social media feeds, in general, provide an opportunity to ubiquitously look for service quality events, but when applied to confined geographic area such as a transport node, the sparsity of concurrent social media data leads to two major challenges. Both the limited number of social media messages--leading to biased machine-learning--and the capturing of bursty events in the study period considerably reduce the effectiveness of general event detection methods. In contrast to previous work and to face these challenges, this paper presents a hybrid solution based on a novel fine-tuned BERT language model and aspect-based sentiment analysis. BERT enables extracting aspects from a limited context, where traditional methods such as topic modeling and word embedding fail. Moreover, leveraging aspect-based sentiment analysis improves the sensitivity of event detection. Finally, the efficacy of event detection is further improved by proposing a statistical approach to combine frequency-based and sentiment-based solutions. Experiments on a real-world case study demonstrate that the proposed solution improves the effectiveness of event detection compared to state-of-the-art approaches

The effect study of Acetic acid on the scoria performance in removing of Malachite from aquatic environments: Determination of model, isotherms and reaction kinetics

زمینه و هدف: رنگ مالاشیت به دلیل ویژگی های ساختاری قابلیت تجزیه بسیار کمی داشته و موجب ایجاد مشکل در محیط های آبی می شود. با توجه به تأثیر اسید استیک بر ویژگی های فیزیکی و شیمیایی اسکوریا، هدف از این مطالعه بررسی کارایی فرم های مختلف اصلاح شده اسکوریا با اسید استیک در حذف رنگ مالاشیت از محیط های آبی می باشد. روش بررسی: این مطالعه آزمایشگاهی بوده که در pH، دوز جاذب، زمان های تماس مختلف و غلظت ثابت رنگ انجام شد. سپس غلظت باقیمانده در محلول رنگ از طریق جذب به وسیله اسپکتروفتومتر در طول موج 665 نانومتر اندازه گیری شد. به منظور درک چگونگی جذب، داده های به دست آمده با ایزوترم های جذب لانگمیر، فروندلیچ و سینتیک های واکنش شبه درجه اول و دوم برازش داده شدند. برای تحلیل داده ها از نرم افزار DOE= Design of Experiments)) استفاده شد. یافته ها: نتایج نشان داد که با افزایش نرمالیته اسید، pH، دوز جاذب و زمان تماس، کارایی جاذب در حذف رنگ افزایش می یابد، به طوری که بیشترین راندمان حذف (100) برای جاذب اصلاح شده با اسید استیک 12 نرمال در 11 =pH، دوز جاذب 4/1 گرم در لیتر و زمان 75 دقیقه به دست آمد. همچنین جذب رنگ از هر دو ایزوترم لانگمیر و فروندلیچ و سینیتک شبه درجه دوم تبعیت مناسبی داشت. نتیجه گیری: با توجه به نتایج می توان گفت که جذب رنگ هم به صورت چند لایه ای و تک لایه ای صورت می گیرد و اصلاح اسکوریا با اسید استیک موجب افزایش کارایی آن نسبت به اسکوریا طبیعی می شود