A Methodological Critique of “The Imagist Historian or Formalist Poet”

In any scientific research, the research method is the main factor in obtaining accurate and correct results. Therefore, researchers in various fields of science try to conduct their research within the framework of methods defined in their discipline. “The Imagist Historian or Formalist Poet” is a book in which the author intends to study the poems of MohammadReza Shafi'i Kadkani by using three methods of historical, sociological and formalist criticism. The present article, in order to measure the accuracy of the approaches in this book, first examines its name, which represents the author's view of the work under study and then he has examined the quality of the author's use of approaches. After reviewing, it is clear that the author has made a mistake in applying all three main approaches of the book. In the end, such a conclusion is reached that the author does not have comprehensive knowledge of the methods he has chosen as research approach, and the book is devoid of any method that leads to accurate and scientific results. Extended Abstract Introduction Every coherent and purposeful scientific research needs a method. Methodology in literary research leads to "increasing efficiency" and "measurability" which are two important indicators of science. But conducting methodical research first of all requires familiarity with the used method and approach and then its correct application. The “Tarikhnegāre Tasvirgārā yā Shāere formalist” [the Imagist historian or formalist poet] written by Yusuf Aali Abbas Abad is a book that tries to examine Mohammadreza Shafi'i Kadkani's poems with the approach of historical-sociological criticism and formalist criticism. Methodology The current research has investigated the quality of the book's used approaches, employing a descriptive-analytical approach and library method, using books on theory and research methods. Discussion Before dealing with the research approaches of this book, the name of the book, which in a way defines the content of the book, has been reviewed. Aali called Shafi'i Kadkani an Imagist historian, but the subject examined in this book is Shafi'i's poetry, and Shafi'i, like all poets, has an aesthetic encounter with historical phenomena in his poetry, which has a considerable distance from historiography. The author used the terms “imagery” and “historian”, yet did not elaborate on these two terms throughout the book. The author of this book considers Shafi'i Kadkani to be a follower of a school called formalism, which has principles. This is despite the fact that basically formalism is not a literary school like romanticism and surrealism. Formalism is a way of evaluating the text and we should put it under the science of literary criticism. Also, in our literary circles, the title of formalist is often attributed to the poets who belonged to the avant-garde group, but Shafi'i Kadkani's poetry does not belong to any of the avant-garde trends. The author considered the main goal of his research to be the historical and sociological criticism of Shafi'i Kadkani's poems. There is not much affinity between what the author of the book brings as internal and external criticism and what is discussed in the historical criticism. This issue is due to the fact that he called the description of historical events that Shafi'i mentioned in his poems "historical criticism", by mistake. Sociological criticism is another approach of this research. According to the definition of sociological criticism, it should be said that most of Aali's content in this book cannot be considered as sociology of Shafi'i's poetry; because the content of this book that somehow communicate with the society are of two categories: There are some materials that he wrote about the social situation in Iran, especially Khorasan after the Mongol attack, citing various sources. Talking about the state of the society of the distant ages, which is mentioned in the poet's poems, cannot be called a sociological study of a work. There are also references about the time and context of writing some of Shafi'i Kadkani's poems, which the author also deciphers from some of the symbols of his poetry. In these cases, the author did not talk about the influence of social conditions on the structure of the poems and only reflected the social and political concerns of Kadkani in his poems. Another approach used by the author to examine Shafi'i's poetry is formalist criticism. If we define the form as follows: coherence and harmony between the elements that make up the form, including language, image, music and the meaning of the work, then there is a great distance between what the author of this book presented under the title of formalist criticism and the principles of formalist criticism. What Aali has presented in different parts of this book under the title of formalist criticism, refers to the existence of "alliteration" or cutting the verses in pieces of Shafi'i Kadkani's poems. Regarding what is mentioned under the title of Namānevesht, in most cases, it is just a kind of cutting and lining up. Mixing two methods of historical-sociological criticism and formalist criticism is also one of the main flaws of this book. In mixing these two completely different methods, on the one hand, the research method will not be used correctly, and on the other hand, the goal and result of the research will not be accurate and reliable. Another drawback of the method of criticism in this book is the position of the author as a critic of Shafi'i poems. What can be seen throughout this book is the praise of Shafi'i Kadkani's poetry, not its criticism. Referencing style and used sources require attention as well. Many sources are used in this book. But these many sources are exact examples of providing decorative sources and unnecessary references. Some sources cited by the author are not academic texts. Results Although the author of the book defined approaches for his research, he has made mistakes in all three approaches due to lack of familiarity with the approaches. In general, this book cannot be considered a research book with accurate scientific findings and an acceptable poetry criticism. This book does not open any new windows and horizons on Shafi'i Kadkani's poems and if we consider the duty of such reviews to create pleasure in the reader as a result of getting to know the hidden angles and new discoveries in the work, then the respected author has not been very successful in this matter

The Temporal Confounding Effects of Extra-cerebral Contamination Factors on the Hemodynamic Signal Measured by Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

Introduction: Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has been broadly applied for optical brain imaging. This method is hemodynamic-based functional brain imaging relying on the measurement of the neurovascular coupling to detect changes in cerebral neuronal activities. The extra-cerebral hemodynamic changes are important contaminating factors in fNIRS measurements. This error signal can be misinterpreted as cerebral activities during fNIRS studies. Recently, it was assumed that temporal changes in deoxygenated hemoglobin concentration [HHb] was hardly affected by superficial blood flow, and it was proposed that the activation maps could be determined from [HHb] at large source-detector separation.Methods: In the current study, we measured the temporal changes in [HHb] using a continues-wave fNIRS device at large source-detector separation, while superficial blood flow was stimulated by infrared lasers. A mesh-based Monte Carlo code was applied to estimate fNIRS sensitivity to superficial hemodynamic changes in a realistic 3D MRI-based brain phantom.Results: First, we simulated photon migration in a four-layered human-head slab model to calculate PPLs and fNIRS sensitivity. Then, the localization of the infrared laser inside a realistic brain model was studied using the Monte Carlo method. Finally, the changes in [HHb] over the prefrontal cortex of six adult males were measured by fNIRS at a source-detector separation of 3 cm. The results demonstrated that the relation between fNIRS sensitivity and an increase in S-D separation was nonlinear and a correlation between shallow and deep signals was observed.Conclusion: The presented results demonstrated that the temporal changes in the superficial blood flow could strongly affect HHb measurement at large source-detector separation. Hence, the cerebral activity map extracted from the [HHb] signal was mainly contaminated by superficial blood flow

Reflection of Obaid Zakani's works in Parviz Shapour's Carikalamature

Carikalamature, is simple, short, and literary sentence which evoke a caricaturelike humorous image. Some researchers view this as a byproduct of getting in contact with western literature through translation Whereas this kind of short, thematic prose has a long history in classical Persian literature. Using the theory of intertextuality, this article will try to reveal the origins of this type of prose in classical Persian literature by examining Obeid Zakani's prose as the best known classical example of this apparently new found type. Obeid's short and humorous prose style contains some sentences that have a carikalamature structure of Parviz shapour's. who are Creator of carikalamature. Therefore in this article his prose examples have been examined for the characteristics of carikalamature like satire, simplicity of expression, pictorial representation of sentences, briefness, artistic arrangement of words. Also The differences between Obaid's semi-carikalamatures and. - - carikalamature s are pointed out. Finally, according to Shapour's acquaintance with the works of Obeid the assumption that the carikalamature is rooted in western literary tradition is incorrect and it is better to know this kind of reviving an old form in a new format

A dual approach for positive T–S fuzzy controller design and its application to cancer treatment under immunotherapy and chemotherapy

This study proposes an effective positive control design strategy for cancer treatment by resorting to the combination of immunotherapy and chemotherapy. The treatment objective is to transfer the initial number of tumor cells and immune–competent cells from the malignant region into the region of benign growth where the immune system can inhibit tumor growth. In order to achieve this goal, a new modeling strategy is used that is based on Takagi–Sugeno. A Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model is derived based on the Stepanova nonlinear model that enables a systematic design of the controller. Then, a positive Parallel Distributed Compensation controller is proposed based on a linear co-positive Lyapunov Function so that the tumor volume and administration of the chemotherapeutic and immunotherapeutic drugs is reduced, while the density of the immune-competent cells is reached to an acceptable level. Thanks to the proposed strategy, the entire control design is formulated as a Linear Programming problem. Finally, the simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control approach for the cancer treatment

Combination of zinc nanoparticles with chitosan scaffolds increased cytokine genes on wound healing of infected rats with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)

Background: The present study aims to determine the effect of zinc nanoparticles with chitosan in the expression of cytokine genes on wound healing of infected rats with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).Methods: In this study, all male Wistar rats were divided into five groups. Group M1: 0.1 mL sterile saline 0.9% solution was added to the wounds with no infection. Group M2: the wounds were infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and only treated with 0.1 mL the sterile saline 0.9% solution. Group M3: animals with infected wounds were treated with zinc nanoparticle. Group M4: animals with infected wounds were treated with chitosan. Group M5: animals with infected wounds were treated with 0.1 mL solution of zinc nanoparticles with chitosan. Skin biopsy samples were removed for the histological studies and quantitative assessment of IL-6, VEGF, TNF and TGF genes using real-time PCR in each groups.Results: Quantitative histological and neovascularization studies showed that there was significant difference between rats in groupM5 compared to other groups. The infected groupM5 exhibited a significant increase in the expression levels of VEGF: 8.02, TNF: 5.34, TGF: 7.98, and decrease of IL-6:-3.34 folds as compared to the other groups on the 21st day (P<0.05). Also, on the same day was seen the minimum surface area of wound in group 5. The surface area between each study group and other groups was statistically significant(P<0.05).Conclusion: Our studies also show that the type of zinc nanoparticles with chitosan scaffolds have more effects than other types of compounds in wound healing.Keywords: Nanozinc; chitosan; wound; meticillin-resistant infection; Inflammatory cytokine 

Resilient Consensus Control Design for DC Microgrids against False Data Injection Attacks Using a Distributed Bank of Sliding Mode Observers

This paper investigates the problem of false data injection attack (FDIA) detection in microgrids. The grid under study is a DC microgrid with distributed boost converters, where the false data are injected into the voltage data so as to investigate the effect of attacks. The proposed algorithm uses a bank of sliding mode observers that estimates the states of the neighbor agents. Each agent estimates the neighboring states and, according to the estimation and communication data, the detection mechanism reveals the presence of FDIA. The proposed control scheme provides resiliency to the system by replacing the conventional consensus rule with attack-resilient ones. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method, a real-time simulation with eight agents has been performed. Moreover, a verification experimental test with three boost converters has been utilized to confirm the simulation results. It is shown that the proposed algorithm is able to detect FDI attacks and it protects the consensus deviation against FDI attacks

Resilient Consensus Control Design for DC Microgrids against False Data Injection Attacks Using a Distributed Bank of Sliding Mode Observers

This paper investigates the problem of false data injection attack (FDIA) detection in microgrids. The grid under study is a DC microgrid with distributed boost converters, where the false data are injected into the voltage data so as to investigate the effect of attacks. The proposed algorithm uses a bank of sliding mode observers that estimates the states of the neighbor agents. Each agent estimates the neighboring states and, according to the estimation and communication data, the detection mechanism reveals the presence of FDIA. The proposed control scheme provides resiliency to the system by replacing the conventional consensus rule with attack-resilient ones. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method, a real-time simulation with eight agents has been performed. Moreover, a verification experimental test with three boost converters has been utilized to confirm the simulation results. It is shown that the proposed algorithm is able to detect FDI attacks and it protects the consensus deviation against FDI attacks

A Novel Stochastic Predictive Stabilizer for DC Microgrids Feeding CPLs

In this work, a novel nonlinear approach is proposed for the stabilization of microgrids (MGs) with constant power loads (CPLs). The proposed method is constructed based on the incorporation of a pseudo-extended Kalman filter (EKF) into stochastic nonlinear model predictive control (MPC). In order to achieve high-performance and optimal control in dc MGs, estimating the instantaneous power flow of the uncertain CPLs and the available power units is essential. Thus, by utilizing the advantages of the stochastic MPC and the pseudo-EKF, an effective control solution for the stabilization of dc islanded MGs with CPLs is established. This technique develops a constrained controller for practical application to handle the states and control input constraints explicitly; furthermore, as it estimates the current by using the pseudo-EKF, it is a current-senseless approach. As noisy measurements are taken into account for the state estimation, it leads to a less conservative control action rather than the classical robust MPC, whereas it guarantees the global asymptotic stability in the presence of noisy measurements and parameter uncertainty. To validate the performance of the proposed controller, the attained results are compared with state-of-the-art controllers. Furthermore, the implementability of the proposed method is validated using real-time simulations on dSPACE hardware

Effect of Various Planting Substrates on Morphological and Chlorophyll Traits of Narcissus Plant

The studied substrates included soil, soil + leaf mold, soil + cocopeat, soil + perlite, and soil + vermicompost arranged in a Randomized Complete Block Design with three replications. The results showed that the highest germination speed (18) was related to soil and that the highest flower fresh weight (9.25) and flower diameter (52.3) were related to soil + perlite. Substrates did not impact floret number, root length, and flowering time significantly. The highest flower longevity (7 days) was observed in soil + leaf mold.  Results of analysis of variance did not display the significant influence on stem length, root length, floret number, leaf number and chlorophyll and flowering time. The results showed that the addition of materials such as vermicompost to soil could improve the important traits of Narcissus flower, including flower life, germination rate and stem diameter, thus reducing the use of chemicals