The Effect of Task-Based Writing Instruction on Iranian Pre-Intermediate EFL Learners’ Self-Efficacy and Epistemic Beliefs

Generally, writing—and second-language (L2) writing in particular—causes a lot of challenges. Indeed, many L2 students who are very proficient in speaking and reading may encounter many difficulties while composing a letter or a biography. They suffer from a low level of self-efficacy and confidence in this respect. Therefore, this research was aimed at shedding light on the effects of task-based writing instruction on improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners\u27 self-efficacy and epistemic beliefs associated with writing skills. To this end, a sample of 36 Iranian male and female pre-intermediate learners took part in this research. They formed two groups: experimental and control. The participants in the experimental group took part in 18 intensive writing sessions which were held three times a week. In each session, the teacher and students collaborated to write a text. They took part in carrying out some writing tasks in which they cooperated to write. This was followed by two interviews with different sets of questions conducted with four participants, as representatives of all students, in the second and sixth weeks of the study. The data were also collected using two interviews, the writing self-efficacy scale, and the Epistemological Beliefs Survey. The results showed the positive effect of task-based writing instruction concerning writing skills, self-efficacy, and epistemic beliefs. This study has implications for educators who can use this method to develop EFL learners’ self-efficacy and epistemic beliefs, which, in turn, can enhance their writing skills as well

Composite Shallow & Deep Foundation in Karst Geology for the Countryside Christian Center New Sanctuary Clearwater, Florida

Evaluation, design, construction, and monitoring of foundations in karst geology are challenging tasks. The random presence of karst features, the variation in size, extent, and depth of karst features, and the different origin and geological characteristics of karst features make site characterization and investigation difficult. A balance between non-intrusive filed tests is useful to improve the site characterization. Non-intrusive field tests which provide multi-dimensional mapping such as Electrical Resistivity Imaging (ERI) or Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) can provide spatial coverage instead of point data. Non-intrusive field tests which are not sensitive to moisture such as shear wave velocity measurements can better characterize the qualitative variations observed in ERI or GPR imaging. Intrusive field tests such as SPT and CPT can provide detailed characterization and quantitative measurements for design at targeted locations which are selected by pre-screening of non-intrusive test data rather than random choice of test locations. If the site characterization indicates the presence of karst features such as voids or raveling zones, alternative foundation options should be studied to see which option or combination of options can be suitable. Consequence of failure can be critical in determining the extents of the foundation deign for the presence of karst features and costs associated. Foundation elements should be designed to handle “manageable risk” scenarios. Possible loss of support and importance of redundancy should be taken into deign consideration and the random nature of loss of support can be taken into account as part of an assessment with and without a factor of safety evaluation. At least a case history (Countryside Christian Center) will be presented to demonstrate a foundation design in karst geology using intrusive and non-intrusive field measurements and with “manageable risk”. Evaluations resulted in recommending a shallow foundation / slab assuming possible loss of soil support in a limited area under the shallow foundation (slab) and also deep foundation elements taking into account possible loss of lateral support or loss of a limited number of piles. This paper encourages implementation of a smarter targeted field investigation rather than randomly punching holes in the ground and missing the voids and raveling zones. The extent and the level of the sophistication of foundation design are subject to the consequence of failure. Redundancy becomes important cost may by reduced by checking to see if the foundation can satisfy ultimate rather than service design condition when addressing the random loss of soil / rock support

An Architecture for Multilevel Learning and Robotic Control based on Concept Generation

Robot and multi-robot systems are inherently complex systems, for which designing the programs to control their behaviours proves complicated. Moreover, control programs that have been successfully designed for a particular environment and task can become useless if either of these change. It is for this reason that this thesis investigates the use of machine learning within robot and multi-robot systems. It explores an architecture for machine learning, applied to autonomous mobile robots based on dividing the learning task into two individual but interleaved sub-tasks. The first sub-task consists of finding an appropriate representation on which to base behaviour learning. The thesis explores the viability of using multidimensional classification techniques to generalise the original sensor and motor representations into abstract hierarchies of 'concepts'. To construct concepts the research used standard classification techniques, and experimented with a novel method of multidimensional data classification based on 'Q-analysis'. Results suggest that this may be a powerful new approach to concept learning. The second sub-task consists of using the previously acquired concepts as the representation for behaviour learning. The thesis explores whether it is possible to learn robotic behaviours represented using concepts. Results show that is possible to learn low-level behaviours such as navigation and higher-level ones such as ball passing in robot football. The thesis concludes that the proposed architecture is viable for robotic behaviour learning and control, and that incorporating Q-analysis based classification results in a promising new approach to the control of robot and multi-robot systems

Estrogen actions in the growth plate cartilage

Estrogens may influence bone growth locally or systemically via the estrogen receptors alpha (ERα), beta (ERβ) and G protein-coupled estrogen receptor 1 (GPER-1). In Paper I, our study showed that the treatment of ovariectomized C57BL/6 mice with a selective ERα agonist 1,3,5-tris(4-hydroxyphenyl)-4-propyl-1H-pyrazole (PPT) reduced growth plate height and hypertrophic zone height suggesting that the effect was induced via ERα. Furthermore, chondrocyte proliferation in the growth plate was also inhibited by 17β-estradiol (E2) or PPT as evaluated by proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) staining. Furthermore, tibiae and femur bones were shorter in E2- or PPT-treated mice when compared to vehicle-treated controls. In contrast, bone lengths in mice treated with a selective ERβ agonist 2,3-bis(4- hydroxyphenyl)-propionitrile (DPN) were similar to bone lengths in controls. These results showed that estrogenic effects on bone growth and growth plate maturation are mainly mediated via ERα. In contrast, the selective GPER-1 agonist G1 had no effects on either metatarsal bone growth ex vivo or tibia and femur growth in treated metatarsals or mice when compared to control groups. Thus, the results from Paper I and II demonstrated that, ligand stimulation of GPER-1 and ERβ does not influence bone growth in mice. In Paper III, target genes and signaling pathways affected by E2 were identified. The enriched pathways inhibited by E2 included estrogen response early and late, apoptosis, epithelial mesenchymal transition and angiogenesis. Also, the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling pathway, which regulates chondrocyte proliferation and differentiation, was significantly inhibited by E2. Among the most strongly affected genes, the expression of peptide YY, a negative regulator of bone formation and mineral density, was inhibited by E2 treatment. Furthermore, epidermal growth factor and oxidative phosphorylation signalling pathways and subgroups of genes regulated by Myc and genes important for mitotic spindle assembly were among the enriched pathways upregulated by E2. Our data showed that E2 actions on bone growth and growth plate maturation are mainly mediated via ERα. In contrast, ligand stimulation of either ERβ or GPER-1 did not influence bone growth in mice. Also, our study has identified target genes and pathways influenced by E2 in the growth plate. Further studies are required to determine the specific mechanisms involving E2-regulated genes. Our findings may have direct implications for the development of new and more selective treatment modalities of extreme tall stature using selective ER modulators that may have fewer side effects than high-dose E2 treatment

The Seven Valleys for Orchestra and a Study of Music Composition Pedagogy

This dissertation consists of two parts. The first part consists of an original orchestral work, The Seven Valleys, featuring seven movements, each of which presents various musical elements. The piece is a symphonic poem inspired by a chapter with the same name in the celebrated masterpiece of Persian literature, The Conference of the Birds, by the 12th-century poet Farid ud-Din Attar. The second part presents a study of music composition pedagogy, investigating past and present pedagogical practices in music composition. Chapter 3 provides a conceptual and historical examination of music composition pedagogy. Chapter 4 surveys the curriculum and methodology of a selection of music/composition professors. Chapter 5 presents an integrated model of music composition pedagogy, featuring an overview and examination of the data from Chapter 4 as well as perspectives from other resources and my own views

Novel measure of olfactory bulb function in health and disease

Present neuroimaging techniques are capable of recording the neural activity from all over the brain but the olfactory bulb (OB). The OB is the first olfactory processing stage of the central nervous system and the site of insult in several neurological disorders, particularly Parkinson’s disease (PD). It has been suggested that the OB has a pivotal role in the olfactory system anal-ogous to primary visual cortex (V1) and thalamus in the visual system. However, due to the existing technical limitations, there has not been any non-invasive technique that can reliably measure the OB function in humans, consequently limiting its functional recording to one in-tracranial study dating back to the 60s. Initially in Study I, a non-invasive method of measuring the function of human OB is devel-oped, so-called electrobulbogram (EBG). In line with previous animal literature as well as the only intracranial study in human OB, it was demonstrated that gamma oscillations on the EBG electrodes occurred shortly after the odor onset. Subsequently, applying source recon-struction analysis provided evidence that observed oscillations were localized to the OB. Ad-ditionally, the OB recording with the EBG method showed a test-retest reliability comparable with visual event related potentials. Notably, the detected gamma oscillations were demon-strated to be insensitive to habituation, the OB’s marked characteristic which has previously been demonstrated in rodents. Last, but not least, assessing the EBG response in an individual who did not have the bilateral OB indicated that the lack of OB results in disappearance of gamma oscillations in the EBG electrodes. Given that Study I determined the possibility of reliably measuring the function of the OB using the EBG, in Study II, I assessed the functional role of OB’s oscillations in the pro-cessing of the odor valence. Odor valence has been suggested to be linked to approach–avoidance responses and therefore, processing of odor valence is thought to be one of the core aspects of odor processing in the olfactory system. Consequently, using combined EBG and EEG recording, OB activity was reconstructed on the source level during processing of odors with different valences. Gamma and beta oscillations were found to be related to va-lence perception in the human OB. Moreover, the early beta oscillations were associated with negative but not positive odors, where these beta oscillations can be linked to preparatory neural responses in the motor cortex. Subsequently, in a separate experiment, negative odors were demonstrated to trigger a whole-body motor avoidance response in the time window overlapping with the valence processes in the OB. These negative odor-elicited motor re-sponses were measured by a force plate as a leaning backward motion. Altogether, the results from Study II indicated that the human OB processes odor valence sequentially in the gamma and beta frequency bands, where the early processing of negative odors in the OB might be facilitating rapid approach-avoidance behaviors. To further evaluate the functional role of the OB in odor processing, in Study III, OB’s communication with its immediate recipient, namely piriform cortex (PC), was assessed. These two areas are critical nodes of the olfactory system which communicate with each other through neural oscillations. The activity of the OB and the PC were reconstructed using a combination of EBG, EEG, and source reconstruction techniques. Subsequently, the cross spectrogram of the OB and the PC was assessed as a measure of functional connectivity where temporal evolution from fast to slow oscillations in the OB–PC connectivity was found during the one second odor processing. Furthermore, the spectrally resolved Granger causal-ity analysis suggested that the afferent connection form the OB to the PC occurred in the gamma and beta bands whereas the efferent connection from the PC to the OB was concen-trated in the theta and delta bands. Notably, odor identity could be deciphered from the low gamma oscillatory pattern in the OB–PC connectivity as early as 100ms after the odor onset. Hence, findings from this study elucidate on our understanding of the bidirectional infor-mation flow in the human olfactory system. Olfactory dysfunction, due to neurodegeneration in the OB, commonly appears several years earlier than the occurrence of the PD-related characteristic motor symptoms. Consequently, a functional measure of the OB may serve as a potential early biomarker of PD. In Study IV, OB function was assessed in PD to answer whether the EBG method can be used to dissociate individuals with a PD diagnosis from healthy age-matched controls. The spectrogram of the EBG signals indicated that there were different values in gamma, beta, and theta for PDs compared with healthy controls. Specifically, six components were found in the EBG re-sponse during early and late time points which together dissociate PDs from controls with a 90% sensitivity and a 100% specificity. Furthermore, these components were linked to med-ication, disease duration and severity, as well as clinical odor identification performance. Overall, these findings support the notion that EBG has a diagnostic value and can be further developed to serve as an early biomarker for PD. In the last study, Study V, the prevalence of COVID-19 was determined using odor intensity ratings as an indication of olfactory dysfunction. Using a large sample data (n = 2440) from a Swedish population, odor intensity ratings of common household items over time were found to be closely associated with prevalence prediction of COVID-19 in the Stockholm region over the same time-period (r = -.83). Impairment in odor intensity rating was further correlated with the number of reported COVID-19 symptoms. Relatedly, individuals who progressed from having no symptoms to having at least one symptom had a marked decline in their odor intensity ratings. The results from this study, given the relatively large sample size, provided a concrete basis for the future studies to further assess the potential association between the deficits in the OB function and olfactory dysfunction in COVID-19. In conclusion, our proposed method for non-invasive measurement of the OB function was shown to provide a reliable recording with a potential as a diagnostic tool for PD. Combining EBG and EEG allowed for reconstruction of the OB signal at the source level, where specific oscillations were found to be critical for odor valence processing and rapid avoidance re-sponse. Moreover, oscillations in different frequency bands were found to be critical for the OB reciprocal communications and transfer of odor identity information to higher order ol-factory subsystems. Finally, COVID-19 was found to be associated with a decline in olfactory acuity which might originate from damage to the patient’s OB. In conclusion, the results from the studies within this thesis provide a new perspective on the functional role of oscillations in the human OB

A social work study on job satisfaction

Job satisfaction plays an important role on having sustainable growth in any business units. When an unsatisfied employee leaves, the business unit not only loses an employee but also it loses an intangible asset. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate overall job satisfaction occasionally and provide some guidelines for improving work conditions. The proposed study of this paper uses five questionnaires, which are associated with job motivation, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. We have selected 25 sample employees who work for the case study of this research located in west region on Iran. Using some statistical tests we analyze the data and the preliminary results indicate that employee have an average job satisfaction. The results indicate that there are some positive relationships between job satisfaction and other factors including wage increase, psychological needs, physical equipments, entertainment equipment and work-team

Perceived Attributions of Discourse Goals for Using Metaphors and Similes by Iranian EFL Undergraduates

The bulk of L2 research on figures of speech boils down to the comprehension domain. By contrast, little work has been conducted on the investigation of the discourse goals for the speaker or the writer's figurative production. This study, going beyond the customary metalinguistic approaches to figurative investigation, aimed at shedding light into a number of different discourse goals as they were identified by Iranian EFL undergraduates in sentences containing figurative language based on 4 independent variables: Figure Type, Tenor Concreteness, Context, and Modality. The participants were given a number of sentences, containing both metaphors and similes, and were asked to choose as many 12 discourse goals as possible which they considered to be the reasons for triggering the utterances. The results indicated that the discourse goal of Compare Similarities was more frequently selected for similes than for metaphors by the participants. The Context variable turned out to have significant interaction with the choice of the discourse goals of Provoke Thought, Get Attention, Clarify, and Contrast Differences, whereas the factor of Modality influenced only Add Emphasis. Also, 3 goals, Add Interest, Clarify, and Show Positive Emotion significantly affected Tenor Concreteness. Comparatively, some marked differences were noticed between Iranian L2 learners and native speakers. L2 teachers are, therefore, advised to more emphasize the correct attributions of discourse goals for metaphors and similes