Enhancing International Students’ English Proficiency and Cultural Competence in Academic Settings: A Handbook for Teachers

More than one million international students have enrolled in U.S. undergraduate and graduate programs in 2015/16. The majority of these students come from non-English speaking countries with totally different language and cultural backgrounds. Although most of these international students have experienced studying English in their own countries, they may encounter the lack of communicative competence in the US. This lack of communicative competence will affect their social and academic life. The purpose of this field project is to increase international students’ communicative competence through boosting their cultural competence which is one of the main categories of communicative competence. This field project explores research in the theory multiple intelligences, the theory of communicative competence, the use of internet and technology, the acculturation and adaptation process, and the use of authentic material. This project tries to incorporate multiple intelligence and technology in other to teach English in a way that international students can increase their cultural competence

Automatic generation of high-throughput systolic tree-based solvers for modern FPGAs

Tree-based models are a class of numerical methods widely used in financial option pricing, which have a computational complexity that is quadratic with respect to the solution accuracy. Previous research has employed reconfigurable computing with small degrees of parallelism to provide faster hardware solutions compared with general-purpose processing software designs. However, due to the nature of their vector hardware architectures, they cannot scale their compute resources efficiently, leaving them with pricing latency figures which are quadratic with respect to the problem size, and hence to the solution accuracy. Also, their solutions are not productive as they require hardware engineering effort, and can only solve one type of tree problems, known as the standard American option. This thesis presents a novel methodology in the form of a high-level design framework which can capture any common tree-based problem, and automatically generates high-throughput field-programmable gate array (FPGA) solvers based on proposed scalable hardware architectures. The thesis has made three main contributions. First, systolic architectures were proposed for solving binomial and trinomial trees, which due to their custom systolic data-movement mechanisms, can scale their compute resources efficiently to provide linear latency scaling for medium-size trees and improved quadratic latency scaling for large trees. Using the proposed systolic architectures, throughput speed-ups of up to 5.6X and 12X were achieved for modern FPGAs, compared to previous vector designs, for medium and large trees, respectively. Second, a productive high-level design framework was proposed, that can capture any common binomial and trinomial tree problem, and a methodology was suggested to generate high-throughput systolic solvers with custom data precision, where the methodology requires no hardware design effort from the end user. Third, a fully-automated tool-chain methodology was proposed that, compared to previous tree-based solvers, improves user productivity by removing the manual engineering effort of applying the design framework to option pricing problems. Using the productive design framework, high-throughput systolic FPGA solvers have been automatically generated from simple end-user C descriptions for several tree problems, such as American, Bermudan, and barrier options.Open Acces

A taxonomic revision of the genus Glaucium (Papaveraceae) in Iran

A taxonomic revision of the genus Glaucium (Papaveraceae) in Iran is presented. It reveals the presence of 10 species including 4 subspecies and 14 varieties. Two new taxa are described: G. yazdianum and G. vitellinum var. pilosum. G. yazdianum is related to G. calycinum in general, but is differentiated by shape and cellular structure of trichomes on young fruits and sepals, the shape of filaments and stem leaves and finally the length of siliquae and buds. Pollen and leaf epidermis morphology of these two species are compared, keeping this criterion in mind. G. pulchrum, G. elegantissimum and G. golestanicum are treated here as synonyms of G. oxylobum. An identification key to the genus Glaucium in Iran and for each taxon a morphological description and notes on their distribution and habitats are presented

An economic lot and delivery scheduling problem with the fuzzy shelf life in a flexible job shop with unrelated parallel machines

This paper considers an economic lot and delivery scheduling problem (ELDSP) in a fuzzy environment with the fuzzy shelf life for each product. This problem is formulated in a flexible job shop with unrelated parallel machines, when the planning horizon is finite and it determines lot sizing, scheduling and sequencing, simultaneously. The proposed model of this paper is based on the basic period (BP) approach. In this paper, a mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model is presented and then it is changed into two models in the fuzzy shelf life. The main model is dependent to the multiple basic periods and it is difficult to solve the resulted proposed model for large-scale problems in reasonable amount of time; thus, an efficient heuristic method is proposed to solve the problem. The performance of the proposed model is demonstrated using some numerical examples

Analysis of Opportunities and Challenges for R&D Management and the Role of the R&D Society for its Improvement – A Case Study in Iran

Research and Development (R&D) management in Iran is faced to many barriers and obstacles, in which R&D units are considered as the basic core of the product development and innovation. Due to structural shortcomings, a great number of organizations and industries have not been able to find their actual status. There are about different 1141 R&D units with a dispersion pattern in Iran. This paper considers and analyzes the R&D case study in one of the provinces located in the north part of Iran in order to enhance the potential R&D activities in respect with the industrialized areas and zones. In this province, there are about 2504 industrial units of which there are only 44 R&D units certified by the state government. However, there are limit numbers of these R&D units that are extensively active. This paper also addresses the current status in respect with the R&D activities to find out why there is a lack and depression of these activities in the industrial units. By considering the opportunity and challenges of these R&D units, there is a need to change these units to be active in order to quickly respond the market and demand requirements. Finally, a few alternative solutions and improvement plans are proposed, in which the Iranian R&D Society is responsible for supporting and succeeding these action plans towards the organization goals.R&D Management

The effect of Salvia officinalis hydroalcoholic extract on PTZ-induced seizure threshold in Vincristine injected mice

and aims: Studies show that Vincristine is an anti-cancer drug which has neuropathic effects. Some studies have shown that Salvia officinalis has therapeutic effects on nervous system. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Salvia officinalis hydroalcoholic extract and Vincristine on pentylenetetrazole (PTZ)-induced seizure threshould in mice. Methods: In this experimental study, 32 mice were randomly divided into 4 groups. The first group received normal saline, second group received Salvia officinalis hydroalcoholic extract (1 g/kg, i.p.), third group received Vincristine (10 µg/kg/day, i.v.) and finally the fourth group received hydroalcoholic extract of Salvia officinalis plus Vincristine. Then the seizure threshold was determined for each group after the injections. The data were analyzed using one way ANOVA followed by Tukey test. Results: The results of this study showed that hydroalcoholic extract of Salvia officinalis significantly increased the PTZ Induced seizure threshold (P<0.05). Simultaneous uses of Vincristine and Salvia officinalis extract caused a significant increase in seizure threshold in Vincristine group (P<0.05). Conclusion: Considering the existence of different types of ingredients in Salvia officinalis extract such as antioxidants, b-pinene and spathulenol, which have beneficial affects on the nervous system as well as their antioxidant effects, we can use this plant to reduce Vincristine induced neuropathic effects

Synthesis and characterization of nanocomposite NiFe2O4@SalenSi and its application in efficient removal of Ni(II) from aqueous solution

In this work, nano ferrite spinel NiFe2O4 was synthesized by sol-gel method and characterized by SEM, XRD, FT-IR, and VSM. In second step Schiff base made from salicylaldehyde and amino propyl triethoxy silane was used for modification of the synthesized nano ferrit. In the third step removal of Ni(II) was done using modified adsorbent and 95% efficiency was achieved. The removal rate was determined by atomic absorption spectroscopy. These studies showed that the Freundlich isotherm model was fitted well with adsorption data. Moreover, the pseudo-second order kinetic model was fitted very well with experimental data. The results demonstrated that NiFe2O4@SalenSi nanoadsorbent can be used for the removal and recovery of metal ions from wastewater over a number of cycles, indicating its suitability for the design of a continuous process.               KEY WORDS: Nano ferrite, Sol-gel method, Schiff base, Removal of Ni(II), Magnetic nanocomposite Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. 2018, 32(1), 77-88DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/bcse.v32i1.

Intravenous valproate versus subcutaneous sumatriptan in acute migraine attack

Migraine is a common and incapacitating neurologic disorder manifesting with episodic moderate to a severe headache and other symptoms such as photophobia, phonophobia, nausea, and vomiting. Triptans and ergot compounds have been used as treatment options for an acute migraine headache for many years. Triptans are considered the first line of treatment in patients with moderate to a severe migraine. Although the triptans are commonly used at any time during a migraine attack; they are more efficacious when used in the early stages of a migraine. Intravenous valproic acid has been shown to be well tolerated, safe, and with rapid onset of action in patients with acute moderate to severe and even refractory migraine. Sodium valproate is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)�approved drug for prophylaxis of a migraine with and without aura. In this study, the main goal was to compare the effectiveness of sumatriptan versus valproate in an acute migraine. A randomized clinical trial including 37 patients with an acute migraine was considered to compare the effectiveness of sumatriptan versus valproate. The patients were divided into two groups. In first group, 6 mg subcutaneous of sumatriptan and in the second group 15 mg/Kg of valproate was administered. The outcomes including pain and drug adverse effects were compared across the groups. A total of 37 patients (7 male and 30 female) were evaluated in two groups. The difference between two groups regarding sex and age was not significant (P>0.05). The mean pain scores reduced from 8.3 to 4.7 and from 8.3 to 2.2 after one hour of treatment in sumatriptan and valproate groups, respectively. Response to treatment in valproate group was faster and more effective than sumatriptan group (P<0.05).The results indicated that valproate was more effective and with the faster response in patients with an acute migraine in comparison with sumatriptan without any recurrence and remarkable side effects. � 2015 Tehran University of Medical Sciences. All rights reserved