Archives-February 2015

The present study aims to investigate whether upper-intermediate Iranian EFL learners can benefit from developing positive attitude toward learning English as an EFL. 32 female language learners from Shokoh-e-Andisheh language institute in Babolsar, were chosen as the participants of the study. The results of the study indicated that there is a significant relationship between language attitude and success in language learning of upper intermediate Iranian EFL learners.

The central aim of this study was to investigate the comparative effect of process-oriented approach vs. product-oriented approach in teaching ESP writing within the specific domain of banking English in-service training. The forty participants of the present study were selected from among 50bank staff taking part in upper intermediate level of banking English courses held in the educational department of Export Development Bank of Iran. Following the treatment, which lasted 8 weeks, two 90-minute sessions per week, altogether 24 hours of instruction, a post test of ESP writing, which was the same the pretest, was administered to the learners of both experimental groups. The outcome of the posttest data analysis clarified that both product and process-oriented approaches significantly affect the improvement in the ESP writing ability of the in-service trainees taking part in an ESP course of banking English writing. Meanwhile, it was revealed that the process-based group outperformed the product-based group on the posttest of ESP writing indicating that there was a significant difference between the two groups’ mean scores on the posttest of ESP writing. It was thus concluded that there was a significant difference between process-oriented and product-oriented approaches in teaching ESP writing to the banking English in-service training students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether training and feedback had any effect on the errors in descriptive and argumentative writing of Iranian EFL learners. 60 females upper_ intermediate Iranian learners in English Hermes language Institute participated in this study. The participants were selected via preliminary English Test (PET). The learners were placed into two groups serving the Experimental Group (N=30) that received training and feedback, and the Control Group (N=30) that received score. The learners are homogenous English proficiency level and they were randomly assigned to Experimental and Control groups. Both groups were pretested at the outset of the study. A unified post _ test was administered at the end of the experiment. The results of an independent samplest_ test revealed a significant difference between training and focused feedback on the numbers of errors in the descriptive and argumentative writing.

The mastery of writing skill is a crucial for ESL/EFL students. Scholars in the field of language teaching and learning have suggested so many strategies and methods to improve writing compositing. One of these methods is journal writing. However, whether the students actually realize that journal writing may improve a special kind of writing has not been explored. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of applying journal writing on the descriptive, reflective, and critical ability of EFL learners. The study included 80 male and female EFL learners of Hermes institute at the advanced level of language proficiency who were selected, and randomly assigned to experimental and control group. In the course of 10 sessions, the experimental group took the pretest and post test by which the teacher feedback and during which the treatment rubric were introduced. In control group, besides the pretest and posttest, they were provided with traditional writing with no treatment. Descriptive statistics and a paired sample t-test were utilized to analyze the data demonstrated that the two groups were significantly different regarding their writing ability. In order to compare the posttest of the three experimental groups while taking into account their initial differences on pretest (i.e. covariate) ANCOVA was administered. It was concluded that descriptive and reflective models of writing can lead to higher improvement in writing. In other words, the results of this study revealed that descriptive and reflective journal writing have positive effects on the learners’ writing achievements and provided opportunity for teachers to modify and revise their teaching performances in terms of allocating much time on the content of the learners’ writings to achieve the qualified teaching and learning.

Hydraulic jump type energy dissipaters are widely accepted methods of energy dissipation while designing the hydraulic structures like dams, weirs and barrages. They are popular for their simplicity and efficiency, but have certain limitations when there is variation in discharge conditions. The energy dissipaters satisfactorily function at design discharge condition. But in case of varying discharge conditions they are not efficient as the location of hydraulic jump tends to shift on apron. This would result in percentage reduction in energy dissipation and in turn damage hydraulic structures and adversely affect tail channel conditions. Therefore it is necessary to address the issue of controlling the location of hydraulic jump and evolve a new technique for the same. This paper discusses the design of hydraulic jump type stilling basin for the overflow weir of canal escape at Warana dam (India). It also throws light on the aspect of jump location and percentage energy dissipation. A physical model study is carried out by applying Froude’s model law.

Automatic annotation is in fact the process of classifying medical using global and local features of standard image codes (IRMA) while being extracted. This includes four technical data axes of providing image (modality), direction, anatomy, and biological system. A number of recent researches have been conducted on the extraction of the local binary pattern texture features for automatic annotation, but until now no complete comparison has been conducted on the accuracy of the different classifications in resolution and annotation of the images based on the local binary pattern texture features. The results from the known and famous classifiers used on the four characteristics of anatomy, direction, biological system and modality are presented in this paper, which show that Sequential Minimal Optimization is the most efficient classification group as far as accuracy is concerned.

In this paper Particle filter and SIFT algorithm are combined for moving objects tracking. SIFT key points constitute parts of particles to improve the distribution sample. The work, experiments of this study are performed using a movie from a soccer match. First, the ball is selected in the first frame by removing the background. Afterwards, key points are extracted via SIFT algorithm which are combined with particle filter. The particle filter algorithm tracks the ball till it is inside the scene.

In drilling mud formulation, evaluating the mud cuttings carrying capacity provides the means of establishing its wellbore hole cleaning potential. Thus, a synthetic-based mud was formulated from derived ester and evaluated for its mud weight and rheological properties: plastic viscosity and yield point. A two level-three factors (23) full factorial design was performed to evaluate the cuttings carrying index (CCI) of the formulated synthetic-based mud. This offers the privilege of assessing the combined effect of these factors: plastic viscosity, yield point and mud weight on the cuttings carrying capacity of the mud. The factors’ levels (low and high) from the formulated mud properties measurement were 6 and 17cp, 10 and 13lb/100ft2, and 8.63 and 9.50lb/gal for plastic viscosity, yield point and mud weight respectively. Thus, the experimental design results obtained, resulted ingood cuttings carrying capacity (adequate hole cleaning) as the obtained CCI values were above 0.5. Additionally, the results further revealed main effect from the formulated mud’s rheological properties and mud weight on its cuttings carrying capacity. Furthermore, the experimental design result depicted that there was interaction effect between the rheological properties, whilst there was no interaction effect between the rheological properties and the mud weight at the considered factors’ level. Therefore, a potential synthetic-based mud with adequate wellbore hole cleaning capacity could be formulated at the considered mud properties.

Mulberry, Morus Alba, (L.)Leaves are the predominant food source for silkworm, Bombyx mori rearing. Pink mealy bug infests the mulberry plants and cause Tukra diseases that leads to qualitative loss of mulberry plantation. Hence a preliminary study on protein profiles by SDS-PAGE was carried out using plant extracts as natural botanicals origin by spraying tukra infested mulberry leaves. The botanical extract sprayed to tukra infested mulberry leaves at earlier infection fed to the silkworms and its impact on protein profiles were assayed in tissues like silkgland, and haemolymph was studied. For the study, good healthy leaves(Control)and plant extracts viz., Azadirachta indica,Ocimum Sanctum,&parthenium hysterophorus were sprayed to tukra infested V1 mulberry variety and fed to Silkworm (CSR2 Bivoltine hybrid). The protein a profile has been characterized by the presence of bands when increased in all the tissues when fed with sprayed batch. There was no presence of some bands when fed with tukra fed batch. Foliar sprays of the extracts hold greater promise for control of tukra infested mulberry leaves and did not affect protein content in silkworms. This can sturdily suggest that the natural plant extract sprayed with infested mulberry leaves can be effectively utilized for the silkworm rearing instead of pesticides, insecticides for mulberry sericulturistes.

Providing better Internet services to users’ becomes a challenge to researchers’ and Internet Service Provider (ISP). The Quality of Service (QoS) may be improved by using web caching at server level. Web caching catch the frequently requested web objects into the memory of server. The memory is limited in size. Therefore web object replacement policy, which selects the web objects to be replaced from memory play an important role in web caching. In this paper web objects are selected on the basis of client Out-degree, server In-degree and frequency of URLs’ by using directed graph method between clients and servers. An experiment is performed on the real access.log file data of proxy server of central computing facility of the University. The results of experiment are satisfactory, which improve the QoS and best utilize the memory.