The Investigation of Identity Construction: a Foucauldian Reading of Sam Shepard's Buried Child

Shepard is peculiarly powerful in his symbolic family problem plays: True West, Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class. He allegorizes the American experience and undermines the myth of America as the New Eden. The present study seeks to critically explore Sam Shepard's Buried Child in terms of Foucauldian conception of identity construction. Shepard is depicting a dystopian world with its bewildered characters; however he has still got a romantic view of individuals trying to grapple with the society in order to get unity and order. This Shephardian attitude towards human beings is seemingly a free agent that overlaps the Foucauldian view which establishes a philosophy focusing on the relationship between the self and the society. The present essay attempts to demonstrate the complicated relationship between the self and the opposing forces

Evaluation and comparison of bivariate and multivariate statistical methods for landslide susceptibility mapping (case study: Zab Basin)

Landslides are among the great destructive factors which cause lots of fatalities and financial losses all over the world every year. Studying of the factors affecting occurrence of landslides in a region and zoning the resulting damages will certainly play a crucial role in mitigating such phenomena. In this research, through geological maps and field studies, we primarily prepared a map for landslide distributions in Zab basin-an area of 520 km 2 in the southwest mountainsides of West Azerbaijan Province. By applying other source of information such as the existing thematic maps, we studied and defined the factors (slope, slope aspect, distance to road, distance to drainage network, distance to fault, land use and land cover, geological factors, horizontal gravity acceleration of earthquakes, and climatic condition of the studied area) that affect occurrence of the landslides. To get better precision and higher speed and facility in our analysis, all descriptive and spatial information were entered into geographic information system (GIS) system and Ilwis software. We also used Satellite images (Landsat ETM + and SPOT 5), producing land cover and landslide-inventory maps, respectively. After preparation of the influential parameters on landslides, we drew the zoning maps of slide hazard via four different statistical methods and then evaluated and compared them. By analyzing the obtained index and by comparing landslide distribution map and zoning map of landslide susceptibility prepared by each of the methods in GIS environment, we found that bivariate method of information value analysis, bivariate method of density-area, multivariate method with linear regression analysis, and multivariate method of discriminate analysis take priority, respectively. Finally, as this research shows, despite their simplicity, bivariate statistical methods have more acceptable precision than multivariate methods, and consequently, they are more compatible with landslide susceptibility of the region. From the results, lithology, slope, annual rainfall, land cover, slope aspect, distance to waterway, distance to road, horizontal gravity acceleration, and distance to fault are very influential to landslides in the region

A Creative Playground Design based on Universal Design: An Interaction Approach

Problem solving algorithm of TRIZ using a creative method can provide appropriate solutions due to its abilities in problem analysis. This method is a combination of knowledge and experience. Therefore it has called engineering of creativity. Organizing the required methods for providing the proper solutions in a way that the number of trial and errors limited to 10% is one of the main advantages of TRIZ for problem solving. This research aims to design a playground equipment based on universal design method. Lack of suitable play equipment for interaction between disabled and healthy children make an interruption to communicate each other effectively. Therefore, disabled would be isolated in the society. The overall goal of this research is to provide a base for a proper interaction between ordinary and disabled children designing a playing tool for ordinary parks (not those specially designed for disabled children). In this research, a creative method based on TRIZ was introduced to design the playground equipment for children (healthy and disabled). A questionnaire was used to ensure its consistency. Cronbach’s alpha of questionnaire determined is 0.955 which shows the validity of this research.

A Creative Playground Design based on Universal Design: An Interaction Approach

Problem solving algorithm of TRIZ using a creative method can provide appropriate solutions due to its abilities in problem analysis. This method is a combination of knowledge and experience. Therefore it has called engineering of creativity. Organizing the required methods for providing the proper solutions in a way that the number of trial and errors limited to 10% is one of the main advantages of TRIZ for problem solving. This research aims to design a playground equipment based on universal design method. Lack of suitable play equipment for interaction between disabled and healthy children make an interruption to communicate each other effectively. Therefore, disabled would be isolated in the society. The overall goal of this research is to provide a base for a proper interaction between ordinary and disabled children designing a playing tool for ordinary parks (not those specially designed for disabled children). In this research, a creative method based on TRIZ was introduced to design the playground equipment for children (healthy and disabled). A questionnaire was used to ensure its consistency. Cronbach’s alpha of questionnaire determined is 0.955 which shows the validity of this research.

Utility of commonly used commercial human chorionic gonadotropin immunoassays in the diagnosis and management of trophoblastic diseases.

A multi-centre study involving worldwide collaboration highlighted the between-method variation in hCG quantification and estimation and the resultant potential misdiagnosis of GTD

Using a developed PM in order to optimize the production productivity in a cement industry

Cement factories are highly energy and cost intensive industries. Producing the cement requires a lot of energy to transform the raw material into final product. One major area to improve the production productivity is preventive maintenance (PM). It helps to protect assets, increase the useful life ofequipment, improve system reliability, decrease cost of replacement and finally improve system energy consumption. In this paper, the theory of microeconomics firm was used to find a model of optimal production productivity in cement industry. To show the effect of preventive maintenance system in the model, energy consumption of equipment is considered as a function of failure rate of equipment and then added to the set of constraints.Using this model energy consumption is reduced up to 15% and total annual cost is reduced up to 12.7%

Do Patients with Penetrating Abdominal Stab Wounds Require Laparotomy?

Background: The optimal management of hemodynamically stable asymptomatic patients with anterior abdominal stab wounds (AASWs) remains controversial. The goal is to identify and treat injuries in a safe cost-effective manner. Common evaluation strategies are local wound exploration (LWE), diagnostic peritoneal lavage (DPL), serial clinical assessment (SCAs) and computed tomography (CT) imaging. Making a decision about the right time to operate on a patient with a penetrating abdominal stab wound, especially those who have visceral evisceration, is a continuing challenge. Objectives: Until the year 2010, our strategy was emergency laparotomy in patients with penetrating anterior fascia and those with visceral evisceration. This survey was conducted towards evaluating the results of emergency laparotomy. So, better management can be done in patients with penetrating abdominal stab wounds. Patients and Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was performed on patients with abdominal penetrating trauma who referred to Al- Zahra hospital in Isfahan, Iran from October 2000 to October 2010. It should be noted that patients with abdominal blunt trauma, patients under 14 years old, those with lateral abdomen penetrating trauma and patients who had unstable hemodynamic status were excluded from the study. Medical records of patients were reviewed and demographic and clinical data were collected for all patients including: age, sex, mechanism of trauma and the results of LWE and laparotomy. Data were analyzed with PASW v.20 software. All data were expressed as mean ± SD. The distribution of nominal variables was compared using the Chi-squared test. Also diagnostic index for LWE were calculated. A two-sided P value less than 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: During the 10 year period of the study, 1100 consecutive patients with stab wounds were admitted to Al-Zahra hospital Isfahan, Iran. In total, about 150 cases had penetrating traumas in the anterior abdomen area. Sixty-three (42%) patients were operated immediately due to shock, visceral evisceration or aspiration of blood via a nasogastric tube on admission. Organ injury was seen in 78% of patients with visceral evisceration. Among these 87 cases, 29 patients’ (33.3%) anterior fascia was not penetrated in LWE. So, they were observed for several hours and discharged from the hospital without surgery. While for the remaining 58 patients (66.6%), whose LWE detected penetration of anterior abdominal fascia, laparotomy was performed which showed visceral injuries in 11 (18%) cases. Conclusions: All in all, 82 percent of laparotomies in patients with penetrated anterior abdominal fascia without visceral evisceration, who had no signs of peritoneal irritation, were negative. So, we recommended further evaluation in these patients. However, visceral evisceration is an indication for exploratory laparotomy, since in our study; the majority of patients had organ damages

Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) model for seismic vulnerability assessment (SVA) of urban residential buildings

© 2018 by the authors. Earthquakes are among the most catastrophic natural geo-hazards worldwide and endanger numerous lives annually. Therefore, it is vital to evaluate seismic vulnerability beforehand to decrease future fatalities. The aim of this research is to assess the seismic vulnerability of residential houses in an urban region on the basis of the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) model, including the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and geographical information system (GIS). Tabriz city located adjacent to the North Tabriz Fault (NTF) in North-West Iran was selected as a case study. The NTF is one of the major seismogenic faults in the north-western part of Iran. First, several parameters such as distance to fault, percent of slope, and geology layers were used to develop a geotechnical map. In addition, the structural construction materials, building materials, size of building blocks, quality of buildings and buildings-floors were used as key factors impacting on the building’s structural vulnerability in residential areas. Subsequently, the AHP technique was adopted to measure the priority ranking, criteria weight (layers), and alternatives (classes) of every criterion through pair-wise comparison at all levels. Lastly, the layers of geotechnical and spatial structures were superimposed to design the seismic vulnerability map of buildings in the residential area of Tabriz city. The results showed that South and Southeast areas of Tabriz city exhibit low to moderate vulnerability, while some regions of the north-eastern area are under severe vulnerability conditions. In conclusion, the suggested approach offers a practical and effective evaluation of Seismic Vulnerability Assessment (SVA) and provides valuable information that could assist urban planners during mitigation and preparatory phases of less examined areas in many other regions around the world

Sinkhole susceptibility mapping: A comparison between Bayes-based machine learning algorithms

Land degradation has been recognized as one of the most adverse environmental impacts during the last century. The occurrence of sinkholes is increasing dramatically in many regions worldwide contributing to land degradation. The rise in the sinkhole frequency is largely due to human-induced hydrological alterations that favour dissolution and subsidence processes. Mitigating detrimental impacts associated with sinkholes requires understanding different aspects of this phenomenon such as the controlling factors and the spatial distribution patterns. This research illustrates the development and validation of sinkhole susceptibility models in Hamadan Province, Iran, where a large number of sinkholes are occurring under poorly understood circumstances. Several susceptibility models were developed with a training sample of sinkholes, a number of conditioning factors, and four different statistical approaches: naïve Bayes, Bayes net (BN), logistic regression, and Bayesian logistic regression. Ten conditioning factors were initially considered. Factors with negligible contribution to the quality of predictions, according to the information gain ratio technique, were discarded for the development of the final models. The validation of susceptibility models, performed using different statistical indices and receiver operating characteristic curves, revealed that the BN model has the highest prediction capability in the study area. This model provides reliable predictions on the future distribution of sinkholes, which can be used by watershed and land use managers for designing hazard and land-degradation mitigation plans