Generic Structure of the blurbs in Pakistani E-Socio-Romantic Novels

This paper studies the generic move structure of the blurbs of Electronic Socio-romantic novels published in Pakistan. It explores the move schema, the number of moves and their order in different blurbs. It also observes the most focused and the most neglected move in these blurbs. 20 book blurbs have been collected from online source and the model presented by Valor (2005) has been adapted for their analysis. The results reveal that there have been total 6 moves and 12 steps in the blurbs of Pakistani socio-romantic novels. Most of the moves have no fix order. The “Description” move has been followed by all the blurbs where as “publisher’s info” has been least attended by them. This suggests that this genre does not rely much on Publisher’s name for their promotion; rather the description of the story has been used as a tool to attract the potential readers. Key words: book blurbs, socio-romantic novels, genre analysi

Cultural Representation in ESL Textbooks in Pakistan?A Case Study of “Step Ahead 1”

The issue of culture inculcation in EFL/ESL learning and teaching has gained attention in ‘World Englishes’ scenario along with the voices of ‘Glocalization’ (Tiplady, 2003), acculturation and international culture, advocating the concepts of the amalgamation of global and local aspects of a phenomena, the mixing up of learner’s native and target culture and overall world culture as a whole respectively. There are two views regarding the cultural representation in ESL/EFL learning and teaching; the source culture i.e. learners’ native culture should be presented or only the exposure to target culture i.e. the culture of the countries where English is spoken as first language should be given. The present study is an attempt to highlight the cultural representation in ESL textbook using the model presented by Byram et al. (1994). The results reveal that the major focus of the textbook Step Ahead 1 is non-native culture, inadequate insufficient inter-cultural harmony is found in it and the least consideration has been given to the source culture, which is likely to alienate the learners from their own culture. The researchers argue that there should be ‘glocalized’ approach in such a sensitive issue and conclude with some suggestions that the books used as ESL textbooks should contain some aspects of both the target and source culture and there should be the intercultural harmony as well. Keywords: culture, source culture, target culture, ESL textbook

A Corpus Based Study of Distribution of Preposition in Pakistani and British Englishes

The present study, in the context of World Englishes, explores the distribution of preposition across two varieties of English i.e. Pakistani and British Englishes. It is a corpus based research and studies the frequency of preposition along with its types and (un)shared prepositions in the said varieties. These varieties of English have been studied using Lancaster- Oslo-Bergen (LOB), Freiburg LOB (FLOB) and Pakistani Written English corpus (PWE) respectively. CLAWS Tagger 7 and Antconc.3.3.5 have been used as research tools. The corpus methodology has contributed significantly to gain objective and quantitative findings. In Pakistani English the preposition has been found to be used more frequently than in the British variety. There have been found no significant differences between the numbers of the types of preposition. The findings of the study correspond closely to that of Mindt and Weber’s study (1989) conducted on the prepositional distribution in American and British Englishes. Keywords: Pakistani English; World Englishes; Preposition; Corpus based study

Use of antibiotics and the prevalence of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea in patients with spinal cord injuries: an international, multi-centre study

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the use of antibiotics and the extent of antibiotic-associated diarrhoea (AAD) in patients with spinal cord injuries (SCIs). AIMS: To record the use of antibiotics, establish the prevalence of AAD and Clostridium difficile infection (CDI), and assess if there was any seasonal variation in antibiotic use and incidence of AAD in patients with SCIs. METHODS: A retrospective study was conducted in six European SCI centres between October 2014 and June 2015. AAD was defined as two or more watery stools (Bristol Stool Scale type 5, 6 or 7) over 24 h. FINDINGS: In total, 1267 adults (median age 54 years, 30.7% female) with SCIs (52.7% tetraplegia, 59% complete SCI) were included in this study. Among the 215 (17%) patients on antibiotics, the top three indications for antibiotics were urinary tract infections (UTIs), infected pressure ulcers and other skin infections. Thirty-two of these 215 (14.9%) patients developed AAD and two patients out of the total study population (2/1267; 0.16%) developed CDI. AAD was more common in summer than in spring, autumn or winter (30.3% vs 3.8%, 7.4% and 16.9%, respectively; P<0.01). AAD was associated with age ≥65 years, tetraplegia, higher body mass index, hypoalbuminaemia, polypharmacy, multiple antibiotic use and high-risk antibiotic use. Summer and winter seasons and male sex were identified as independent predictors for the development of AAD. CONCLUSION: This survey found that AAD is common in patients with SCIs, and UTI is the most common cause of infection. Summer and winter seasons and male sex are unique predictors for AAD. Both AAD and UTIs are potentially preventable; therefore, further work should focus on preventing the over-use of antibiotics, and developing strategies to improve hospital infection control measures

Characters of finite groups, part 1

This book discusses character theory and its applications to finite groups. The work places the subject within the reach of people with a relatively modest mathematical background. The necessary background exceeds the standard algebra course with respect only to finite groups. Starting with basic notions and theorems in character theory, the authors present a variety of results on the properties of complex-valued characters and applications to finite groups. The main themes are degrees and kernels of irreducible characters, the class number and the number of nonlinear irreducible characters, values of irreducible characters, characterizations and generalizations of Frobenius groups, and generalizations and applications of monomial groups. The presentation is detailed, and many proofs of known results are new. Most of the results in the book are presented in monograph form for the first time. Numerous exercises offer additional information on the topics and help readers to understand the main concepts and results