Empirically Based Research on English and Farsi Literacy

Reading literacy as the outstanding subfield in second language acquisition has influenced teaching and assessment; however, literacy program in the L1 along with second or foreign languages requires further research in an EFL situation. Thus, the current study aims to focus on learning Farsi as the first language, and English as the second language of 15 random sampled first grade elementary participants. In order to observe the rate of success in each language, three features which are number of pauses (Robinson, Ting & Unwin 1995), false starts and repetitions (Skehan & Foster 1999) were analyzed so as to have a thick description, and to reach saturation. The obtained results show that there is no relationship between these three features in pairs except false starts and repetitions in English pretest and posttest, which is to some extent strong. Among three stated features, in English pretest the number of pauses and in posttest the number of false starts received the highest mean scores which indicate participants’ problems in English Language learning. Therefore, it is worth noting the importance of developing first language reading literacy and then to promote the second language at first grade of elementary school. Keywords: False Start; Pause; Reading Literacy; Repetition; Sandwich Mode

Experimental Characterization of Vascular Tissue Viscoelasticity with Emphasis on Elastin's Role

Elucidating how cardiovascular biomechanics is regulated during health and disease is critical for developing diagnostic and therapeutic methods. The extracellular matrix of cardiovascular tissue is composed of multiple fibrillar networks embedded in an amorphous ground substance and has been found to reveal time-dependent mechanical behavior. Given the multiscale nature of tissue biomechanics, an accurate description of cardiovascular biomechanics can be obtained only when microstructural morphology is characterized and put together in correlation with tissue-scale mechanics. This study constitutes the initial steps toward a full description of cardiovascular tissue biomechanics by examining two fundamental questions: How does the elastin microstructure change with tissue-level deformations? And how does the extracellular matrix composition affect tissue biomechanics? The outcome of this dissertation is believed to contribute to the field of cardiovascular tissue biomechanics by addressing some of the fundamental existing questions therein. Assessing alterations in microstructural morphology requires quantified measures which can be challenging given the complex, local and interconnected conformations of tissue structural components embedded in the extracellular matrix. In this study, new image-based methods for quantification of tissue microstructure were developed and examined on aortic tissue under different deformation states. Although in their infancy stages of development, the methods yielded encouraging results consistent with existing perceptions of tissue deformation. Changes in microstructure were investigated by examining histological images of deformed and undeformed tissues. The observations shed light on roles of elastin network in regulating tissue deformation. The viscoelastic behavior of specimens was studied using native, collagen-denatured, and elastin-isolated aortic tissues. The stress-relaxation responses of specimens provide insight into the significance of extracellular matrix composition on tissue biomechanics and how the tissue hydration affects the relaxation behavior. The responses were approximated by traditional spring-dashpot models and the results were interpreted in regards to microstructural composition

Endodontic Treatment of a Maxillary First Premolar with Type IV Buccal Root Canal: A Case Report

The maxillary first premolar may present large number of anatomic variations. The clinician should be aware of the configuration of the pulp system. Maxillary first premolars usually have two canals. The incidence of three canals in these teeth is quite rare. This case report presents the diagnosis and clinical management of a maxillary first premolar with two distinct canals in the apical third of buccal root (type IV), drawing particular attention to tactile examination of all the canal walls

Applications of the Buccal Fat Pad in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery

The buccal fat pad (BFP) has become more and more popular in oral and maxillofacial surgery. Originally, it was described as an anatomic structure without any obvious function; it was even considered to be a surgical nuisance. Nowadays, the most reported application of the BFP is the closure of oroantral communications. In this chapter, different aspects of the BFP such as its applications, anatomy, physiology, and complications are explained

Computational modeling of the brain limbic system and its application in control engineering

This study mainly deals with the various aspects of modeling the learning processes within the brain limbic system and studying the various aspects of using it for different applications in control engineering. The current study is a multi-aspect research effort which not only requires a background of control engineering, but also a basic knowledge of some biomorphic systems. The main focus of this study is on biological systems which are involved in emotional processes. In mammalians, a part of the brain called the limbic system is mainly responsible for emotional processes. Therefore, general brain emotional processes and specific aspects of the limbic system are reviewed in the early parts of this study. Next, we describe developing a computational model of the limbic system based on these concepts. Since the focus of this study is on the application of the model in engineering systems and not on the biological concepts, the model established is not a very complicated model and does not include all the components of the limbic system. In fact, we are trying to develop a model which captures the minimal and basic properties of the limbic system which are mainly known as the Amygdala-Orbitofrontal Cortex system. The main chapter of this thesis, Chapter IV, shows the utilization of the Brain Emotional Learning (BEL) model in different applications of control and signal fusion systems. The main effort is focused on applying the model to control systems where the model acts as the controller block. Furthermore, the application of the model in signal fusion is also considered where simulation results support the applicability of the model. Finally, we studied different analytical aspects of the model including the behavior of the system during the adaptation phase and the stability of the system. For the first issue, we simplify the model, e.g. remove the nonlinearities, to develop mathematical formulations for behavior of the system. To study the stability of the system, we use the cell-to-cell mapping algorithm which reveals the stability conditions of the system in different representations. This thesis finishes with some concluding remarks and some topics for future research on this field

High-Performance Communication Primitives and Data Structures on Message-Passing Manycores:Broadcast and Map

The constant increase in single core frequency reached a plateau during recent years since the produced heat inside the chip cannot be cooled down by existing technologies anymore. An alternative to harvest more computational power per die is to fabricate more number of cores into a single chip. Therefore manycore chips with more than thousand cores are expected by the end of the decade. These environments provide a high level of parallel processing power while their energy consumption is considerably lower than their multi-chip counterparts. Although shared-memory programming is the classical paradigm to program these environments, there are numerous claims that taking into account the full life cycle of software, the message-passing programming model have numerous advantages. The direct architectural consequence of applying a message-passing programming model is to support message passing between the processing entities directly in the hardware. Therefore manycore architectures with hardware support for message passing are becoming more and more visible. These platforms can be seen in two ways: (i) as a High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster programmed by highly trained scientists using Message Passing Interface (MPI) libraries; or (ii) as a mainstream computing platform requiring a global operating system to abstract away the architectural complexities from the ordinary programmer. In the first view, performance of communication primitives is an important bottleneck for MPI applications. In the second view, kernel data structures have been shown to be a limiting factor. In this thesis (i) we overview existing state-of-the-art techniques to circumvent the mentioned bottlenecks; and (ii) we study high-performance broadcast communication primitive and map data structure on modern manycore architectures, with message-passing support in hardware, in two different chapters respectively. In one chapter, we study how to make use of the hardware features to implement an efficient broadcast primitive. We consider the Intel Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC) as our target platform which offers the ability to move data between on-chip Message Passing Buffers (MPB) using Remote Memory Access (RMA). We propose OC-Bcast (On-Chip Broadcast), a pipelined k-ary tree algorithm tailored to exploit the parallelism provided by on-chip RMA. Experimental results show that OC-Bcast attains considerably better performance in terms of latency and throughput compared to state-of-the-art solutions. This performance improvement highlights the benefits of exploiting hardware features of the target platform: Our broadcast algorithm takes direct advantage of RMA, unlike the other broadcast solutions which are based on a higher-level send/receive interface. In the other chapter, we study the implementation of high-throughput concurrent maps in message-passing manycores. Partitioning and replication are the two approaches to achieve high throughput in a message-passing system. This chapter presents and compares different strongly-consistent map algorithms based on partitioning and replication. To assess the performance of these algorithms independently of architecture-specific features, we propose a communication model of message-passing manycores to express the throughput of each algorithm. The model is validated through experiments on a 36-core TILE-Gx8036 processor. Evaluations show that replication outperforms partitioning only in a narrow domain

Selecting an Appropriate Strategy to Increase Petrochemical Product Sales (Case Study: Iranian Petrochemical Industry)

This article aims to find the best strategies which help increase petrochemical products sales in Iran using multivariate regression model, Grand Strategy Matrix (GSM), and SWOT matrix. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development by creating and developing chemical cities or parks, petro-chemical refineries, and Especial Economic Zones, Vertical Integration, and Concentric Diversification with Diverse Portfolio were considered independent variables, while Increasing Petrochemical Product Sales is dependent variable. Then, each of above mentioned factors affecting the sales were ranked in order to take advantage of the highest added-value. The statistical population consisted of 140 experts, managers, directors, and customers involved in National Iranian Gas Company and Iran Petrochemical Company. Random sampling method was employed. A total of 57experts, managers, directors, and customers were enrolled as sample size. Data were collected using a five-option Likert scale questionnaire. SPSS, Grand Strategy Matrix (GSM), and SWOT[1] matrix were employed to analyze the data. According to the Cronbach's alpha (0.86), the reliability was verified. Market Development, Market Penetration, Product Development, and Concentric Diversification with Diverse Portfolio were found to be suitable offensive strategies to increase the petrochemical product sales. Product Development and Market Penetration are the most effective factors in increasing the petrochemical product sales. Therefore, they need to be taken into account. [1]Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat

Effect of Sludge Age and Concentration on the Settling Velocity of Sludge

Bioenvironmental Engineerin