Text, writing and literacy: An interdisciplinary approach to text and writing in the academic culture

The current paper examines and conceptually analyzes the issue of academic text and writing through an interdisciplinary approach. It also takes into account various models and theories in conceptualizing text, writing and literacy in the academic writing domain, with an special emphasis on meaning-making and social approaches. The complexity and the extent of existing conceptualizations, in the first place, bring the studies of writing and literacy out of the scope of single-disciplinary studies and present it as interdisciplinary ones. As such, the nature and essence of writing, text, academic writing and literacy identities and models as well as multisensory and multimodal literacy models, which in this paper are contrasted with the stereotyped concept of "writing ability", reveal the fact that writing and literacy, whether in addressing the problem or providing answers to it, possess an interdisciplinary nature. Thus, to emphasize more on the nature of text and the process involved in creating academic writing from an interdisciplinary viewpoint, the paper tries to get the semantic aspect of writing in the light of linguistic and sociological perspectives of the text and knowledge production and consider this type of writing not as a single-discipline and skillful activity but a complex and multifaceted one. Understanding this approach will probably respond to inadequacies of the analysis of each of "writing" discourses with a broader insight, and at the same time, provide more possibilities in the production and exchange of knowledge

Audit of Intrapartum Care Based on the National Guideline for Midwifery and Birth Services

© The Author(s) 2018. Providing high-quality maternity care is a worldwide health concern that necessitates regular assessment of intrapartum practice. In an observational study, we aimed to audit intrapartum care based on the National Guideline for Midwifery and Birth Services. Using quota sampling, a total of 200 pregnant women, admitted for normal vaginal delivery, were recruited from four educational hospitals in Tehran, Iran. An observational checklist was developed based on the national guideline to assess the quality of provided care. Content and face validity of the tool were checked and confirmed. Reliability of the observational checklist and questionnaire was confirmed using concurrent observation (intrarater reliability; r =.93) and test–retest (r =.9) methods, respectively. We found that the compatibility of intrapartum care and the national guideline in different domains were as follows: history taking 88.3%, vital sign measurement 64.6%, performing Leopold’s maneuver 38.5%, initial assessment 83.4%, labor care 22.5%, using pain relief methods 63.5%, labor progress assessment 71.5%, process of delivery 89.5%, and postpartum management 89.5%. The findings indicate that additional attention and monitoring are required to align current intrapartum care practices with the national guidelines

GA-ANN Short-Term Electricity Load Forecasting

This paper presents a methodology for short-term load forecasting based on genetic algorithm feature selection and artificial neural network modeling. A feed forward artificial neural network is used to model the 24-h ahead load based on past consumption, weather and stock index data. A genetic algorithm is used in order to find the best subset of variables for modeling. Three data sets of different geographical locations, encompassing areas of different dimensions with distinct load profiles are used in order to evaluate the methodology. The developed approach was found to generate models achieving a minimum mean average percentage error under 2 %. The feature selection algorithm was able to significantly reduce the number of used features and increase the accuracy of the models

Estimation of the number of users and the market of network data equipment in the upcoming years

In this article, with the aim of estimating the number of personal and organizational users of the country's data network, followed by estimating the market for the required equipment for the next few years, first the statistics of different groups of these users according to the latest census information in The country has been surveyed and, taking into account the annual growth rate, their number is estimated to be until the end of 2008. Then, the required bandwidth is estimated in the cities and provinces of the country according to the determination of the target services for the mentioned users and the capacity of the output ports of each router is estimated. Then, the data network topology in the said development plan at the level of "core" and "distribution" layers of the proposal and the capacity of intercity links in the country, in the form of eleven different areas, has been met. Finally, we have estimated the volume and market of hardware equipment and software requirements of the data network in the mentioned development plan

Coherent backscattering of electromagnetic waves in random media

The single and multiple scattering regimes of electromagnetic waves in a disordered system with fluctuating permittivity are studied by numerical simulations of Maxwell's equations. For an array of emitters and receivers in front of a medium with randomly varying dielectric constant, we calculate the backscattering matrix from the signal responses at all receiver points j to electromagnetic pulses generated at each emitter point i. We show that the statistical properties of the backscattering matrix are in agreement with the recent experimental results for ultrasonic waves (Aubry A. and Derode A., Phys. Rev. Lett., 102 (2009) 084301) and light (Popoff S. M. et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 104 (2010) 100601). In the multiple scattering regime the singular value distribution of the backscattering matrix obeys the quarter-circle law

Metal-insulator transition in three-dimensional Anderson superlattice with rough interfaces

NatuurwetenskappeInstituut Vir Teoretiese FisikaPlease help us populate SUNScholar with the post print version of this article. It can be e-mailed to: [email protected]