Archives-August 2013

The thermal power plants are used to generate power. The thermal power plants are designed based on required conditions, but actually inlet conditions are not as per the designed conditions. Variations in the power outputs from power plant are always a matter of disputes. So correction curves for power and heat rate are generated. In this paper, the thermodynamic analysis of 120MW thermal power plant has been done at a different inlet pressure (123.14 bar) and at different inlet temperatures (507.78°C, 517.78°C, 527.78°C, 537.78°C, 547.78°C, 557.78°C, 567.78°C). The correction curves for power and heat rate have been generated for the combined effect of inlet pressure and different inlet temperatures. These curves indicate that if inlet conditions vary then power output and heat rate also vary.

This study investigates the learning strategies of students for the reading comprehension courses in a semi-distance educational system in Iran called Payam-e-Noor University with over 500,000 students in different branches all over the country. By using qualitative data, i.e. interview, this study intends to examine the viewpoints of students regarding how the reading comprehension tests in Payam-e-Noor University can influence the way they learn. The results indicate that the washback effect works quickly in bringing about changes in learning strategies of students.

Communication is an important element in each society. Through communication, people express themselves, their attitudes, their beliefs and opinions. They interact with other people as well. But how well this interaction continues depends on different factors. For example, the way you use language, the choices you make, and the way you express your wants and attitudes all are important and affect your interaction with others. According to Coulmas (2005, p. 84), "speakers make many choices when speaking, including the politeness level of their utterances". Every verbal utterance, as it is an instance of language use, has certain degree of politeness. This article aimed at investigating the reflection of politeness principle and face theory in EFL students' writing in Iran. For this purpose, a sample of 50 undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language, were selected from Hakim Sabzevari University. After administering a standard language proficiency test, a writing task was given to participants to investigate whether this aspect of sociolinguistics is reflected in Iranian writing. After analyzing the papers based on Brown and Levinson (1987) framework, it was found that politeness principle and face theory are reflected in the writing of Iranian EFL learners to a considerable extent.

Fault diagnosis research deals with real world problems in terms of plant efficiency, maintainability and reliability. Fault in process and manufacturing industries are crucial in order to improve production efficiency, quality of the product and the cost of production. This work is focused on the development of a fault diagnosis method for application to an actuator benchmark specifically designed for industrial fault diagnosis. The performance of the proposed approach is demonstrated on the DAMADICS benchmark problem.

There are several types of neural network architectures and training techniques that can be used to make an artificial neural network capable of fault detection and identification. They possess powerful characteristics such as fast learning, fault tolerance and ability to produce correct output when fed with partial inputs. Different Neural networks offer variety of framework for modeling and control based on their structure, dynamics and learning methods. The performance of different artificial neural networks in fault diagnosis task have been demonstrated in this paper.

Fungal sinusitis (FS) is an important health care problem both in immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals; but which is less understood. Clinically FS patient presents with Chronic Rhino Sinusitis (CRS) refractory to medical and surgical treatment and they should be properly evaluated with history, CT scan, histopathology, fungal culture and allergic markers. Total of 300 patients with documented CRS based on clinical and radiological findings in the ENT clinic were enrolled as study group. Sinus washings, biopsy samples from sinusoidal mucosa and polyposis were collected in 2 sterile containers, for microbiology and histopathology and blood for various allergic parameters (total IgE concentration, absolute eosinophil count and precipitation test using fungal antigens). Total prevalence of fungal sinusitis was 13% in CRS patients. Commonly affected age group was between 21-40 years (69.3%) and male preponderance was noted in our study (1.6:1). Aspergillus species (87.1%) were the predominant isolate in our study. Allergic fungal sinusitis was commonest clinical presentation (61.5%). This study revealed that the prevalence of fungal sinusitis in CRS patients was significantly high. To estimate the real magnitude of the problem, multicentric study as well as compulsory fungal screening for the all the CRS patients should be undertaken.

Waste is an unavoidable by product of human activities. All the human activities ie., domestic, commercial, industrial, healthcare, organizations, generates solid wastes that are normally discarded as useless or unwanted. The wastes generated from these activities of more advanced society produce more complex and heterogeneous wastes because of living standards and changing food habits. With rising urbanization, change in life style and improving living standards in cities; have led to increase in per capita waste generation and complexity of generated waste in the recent years. The problem in cities lies not only in the quantity but also in the quality and composition of the wastes, which have changed from being dense and almost entirely organic to voluminous and increasing non-biodegradable with higher percentage of toxic substance. The exponential growths of human population & resource consumption have left outstripped the ability of the natural environment to assimilate it and municipal authorities to manage it. Increasing migration, high-density population will make waste management a difficult issue to handle in the near future.

This study is an attempt to find the differences of the progressive aspect in English and Persian, concerning both form and function. To find such differences, first, the structure and the functions of progressive forms in English and Persian are compared and contrasted. And it is explained how differences in grammatical and lexical aspects in these languages account for a higher frequency of progressive forms in English. Then, all the past progressive verbs in a selected English text are compared with their counterparts in the Persian translation text. The selected texts consist of 11 chapters of the English novel ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Bronte (1950) and its Persian translation by Mohammad Taghi Bahrami-harran (1998). The data shows a clearly higher frequency of progressive form in English compared with the Persian. Based on the contrastive analysis done the reasons for such difference are; differences in functions related to lexical aspects inherited in verbs, employing an imperfective form in the Persian system which has no grammatical realization in English, expressing progressive meaning through lexical realization in some Persian sentences, and impermissibility of negative progressive form in Persian.

In this paper we have reported the Stokes Parameters of excited Magnesium atom using non-relativistic (DW) and relativistic distorted wave approximation theories (RDW) at incident electron energies 15 and 45 eV. Good agreement has been found on comparison of both DW and RDW methods with each other and the importance of relativistic effect is also explored.

The aim of the present work is to study the effect of laser shock peening (LSP) on fatigue life of aluminum alloy (3003-H18) by using different (LSP), single spot, 2-spots with 50% overlap and 3-spots 100% full overlap on the surface to be treated. The effect of laser shock peening (LSP) on the fatigue life were investigated with constant amplitude stress at stress ratio R=-1 at room temperature. The results showed that the fatigue life increment over the life of samples without (LSP) in range (12%) for 1-spot LSP, (18%) for 2-spors LSP and (77%) for 3-spots LSP for aluminum alloy 3003-H18 at 100MPa amplitude stress. Also the results show that the highest fatigue strength was for samples with 3-spots LSP.