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Writing assessment literacy(WAL) for second or foreign language (L2) teachers, which refers to teachers’ knowledge, conceptions, and practice of writing assessment in L2 contexts, has lately received attention from scholars. Although there has been significant debate about the impact of contextual and conceptual factors on teachers’ assessment literacy, studies focusing on how such factors influence teachers’ WAL are lacking. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the way Iranian English writing teachers' conception of assessment, and macro, meso, and micro contextual variables impact their writing assessment practice. It also looked at how writing teachers make assessment decisions in order to negotiate and find a compromise when their assessment views and beliefs diverge from the assessment policies in their local contexts. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews with ten in-service l2 writing teachers in Iran. The findings show that participants had positive conceptions about formative writing assessments but they stated that they mostly used summative assessment in writing classes. Macro level contextual factors turned out to mostly impacted teachers’ writing assessment practices and conceptions. The results underscored the role of school and work experience in shaping and changing writing assessment conceptions. The findings of this study contribute to our current understanding of WAL development and provision of more efficient assessment training for language teachers in teacher education programs.

 

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The capacity of Qur'anic stories, which are texts full of meanings, always provides the ground for using various methods and approaches of studying and analyzing the text, so that the intertwined and overlapping layers of the text are opened and the process of making meaning becomes clearer for the audience. The present article is based on the model of the "semiotics square", one of the models of Grimas, the founder of the Paris School of Semiotics, which analyzes the mechanism of meaning construction in the text production process. The "semiotics" box teaches us the methodical reading of a text. Using this model, this article intends to analyze the textual structures of the duality of "honor and humiliation" in the Qur'anic story of Yusuf (AS) and explain the process of formation of their meanings in the Qur'anic discourse of this story. The conclusion of this research for the expansion of the semiotic square is that based on this model, it is possible to continuously move poles and categories in a text; This means that in the process of discourse, although in the dual analysis of "humiliation and dignity" we encounter eight forms at the level of content, but contrary to the usual that at the level of expression, the corresponding formulations can be several people or several things .In the story of Yusuf (AS), the corresponding formulation is one person, namely Yusuf the Prophet (AS

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The present article aims to analyze six contemporary short stories based on Halliday and Matthiesen's systemic functional grammar framework (2014). In functional grammar, the message and textual meaning of clauses will not be revealed to the reader without identifying the topical themes and the discourse factors influencing to highlight them. Thus a perfect interpretation of the message will not be obtained. The study answers the question how the thematic structure in clauses helps highlight and convey the author's messages. The study hypothesis is: the thematic structure conveys the author's message by highlighting the topical themes by means of syntactic tools. the study corpus contains six contemporary short stories, comprising 3736 clauses. The descriptive- analytic method were used to analyze all the 3736 clauses based on thematic structure in textual metafunction.  The data analysis showed that in unmarked clauses the topical themes were used in their natural place as subjects, mostly being participants to preserve and maintain the topic. However, when there were good discourse reasons such as new events, topic change and certain meaning, mostly preposed adjuncts were used as topical themes in marked declarative clauses. while the process was used as topical theme in imperatives to show the participants social status. Therefore, the readers by using the thematic structure and identifying the topical themes can understand the author's intended textual meaning and his message in unmarked and marked clauses.
 

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One of the challenges and important dimensions of assessment and evaluation in language teaching is test fairness, a broad concept that includes several factors and components. In the standards of educational and psychological assessment, test fairness means that there is no bias and advocacy and the same treatment with all subjects regardless of their race, religion, gender and age. The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception and attitude of Persian language instructors to non-Persian speakers about the definition of the concept of test fairness, essential components for a fair test and the general concept of test fairness. This research has been done by field and combined methods (quantitative and qualitative). 58 Persian language instructors for non-Persian speakers were selected by available sampling and participated as a statistical sample from the Persian language instructor’s community. Homayouni standard questionnaire (2015) was used to collect data, and SPSS version 23 were used for analysis of descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. In the qualitative part of the research, 9 semi-structured interviews were conducted with the instructors and the opinions of the instructors were extracted based on the content analysis of Krippendorff (2004). The analysis of descriptive statistics findings showed that experienced instructors have a better and deeper understanding of the general concept of test fairness, the definition of the concept of test fairness and the components necessary to conduct

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Nowadays, many people and companies enter the business world. So, rgarding the important and prominent role of internet and commercial advertisements in daily life, the relation between the business world and people should not be ignored. The purpose of this research is to examine the persuasive language in terms of type and number of persuasive steps in a number of Persian commercial internet textual advertisements based on the Cheung’s (2008, 2010) persuasive move schema model. This research is of descriptive-analytical kind. Therefore, To this end, a number of 120 Persian commercial internet textual advertisements collected through official Persian websites have been analyzed as research data based on the type and number of the persuasive steps. As to the type of persuasive steps, the results showed the most used type of persuasive step was steps of the persuasive move "offering suggestions" having been used with a frequency of 63.7%. On the other hand, the persuasive steps of "explicit stimulus actions" included the lowest frequency with a frequency of 0.1%. It was also shown the new persuasive step "motto" has been used with a frequency of 17%. Besides, the examination of the number of persuasive steps indicated the most used advertisements were "four-step" advertisements with a frequency of 26.7%. "Ten-step" advertisements were observed with a frequency of 0.9. Finally, the analysis of the type and number of persuasive steps revealed there was a significant difference not only between the type of steps examined but between their number as well.
 

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The efficient and systematic design of language education programs through deploying instructional strategies and techniques and with the knowledge of learners’ cognitive make-up and their environment helps develop increasingly effective and capable language learners. Effective instruction begins with effective educational design which involves a wide range of practices, the most important of which is informed and structured material development. In line with these, the present study was carried out to analyze exercises in Arabic textbooks for public junior high schools in Iran based on Nation and McAllister’s (2010) principles of format and presentation of learning materials and activities. The research employed a descriptive design using qualitative content analysis and to achieve more valid and reliable results, Shannon’s entropy for weighting codes and statistical tests of homogeneity of variance, univariate analysis, and Kruskal-Wallis were used. The population and the statistical sample of activities considered in the study were the same and included all the exercises in the selected Arabic textbooks for the 1401-1402 AH / 2022-2023 academic year. Content analysis was done following a researcher-made scheme based on the layers proposed in Nation and McAllister’s (2010) principles, i.e., meaning-oriented input, form-oriented input, meaning-oriented output, and form-oriented output.  The validity of the scheme was verified through expert opinion and its reliability was calculated using Pearson correlation. The results of the research showed that in these textbooks, there is no four-way balance in the activities and no harmony between the expected four types of activities on form, meaning, input, and output.

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The research focuses on the process of translating the word and identifying its significance and the meanings of symbols in the text, and the research also focuses on the difference between the semantic and the meaning and aims at accuracy in conveying information , whether verbal or symbolic, and obtaining an accurate text with accurate translation, the word is a signifier and the external thing intended or referred to, the meaning is associated with the symbol and gives it the image agreed between the writer and readers . The difference between sound or connotation and meaning is that the meaning is identical to the perception that exists and is agreed upon in the human mind , as for the connotation is the relationship of the indicative sound with the meaning and the external thing. The research shows that the meaning is  fixed in the dictionary for each term, while the connotation is phonetic symbols that carry meaning agreed upon by the participants in the conversation, and the connotation is mostly phonetic.

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In Khuzestan province of Iran, the number of traffic passes made by heavy farm machinery in sugarcane land preparation varies depending upon field conditions, ranging from a minimum of 10 to a maximum of 16 passes annually. To reduce energy, time and cost, it is imperative to use conservation tillage as well as controlled traffic systems. The objectives of this research were to develop, and evaluate a combined strip deep tillage machine equipped with a two-level deep tillage implement including a dual sideway-share and a winged subsoiler, cum with a set of discs. For optimizing the dual-sideway-share subsoiler, the effects of share rake angle (7.5 and 15°) and length (150 and 200 mm) on the implement field performance were examined. Also, to optimize the winged subsoiler, it was tested with its wing having different lengths (0, 200, 250, and 300 mm). Finally, the performance of the developed combined strip deep tillage machine was compared with a conventional subsoiler used for deep tillage in the fields. The results showed that the optimized combined strip deep tillage machine should be equipped with the dual sideway-share subsoiler having a share with a 7.5° rake angle and 150 mm length, and the winged subsoiler with 250 mm length for its wing. The results showed that the specific resistance of the developed machine as compared to the conventional subsoiler decreased by 34%. Therefore, the machine has higher efficiency and is an environmentally friendly implement for sustainable sugarcane production in southwest Iran.
 

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Nowadays, the seismic performance-based design of structures has been widely noticed by the engineering community. So, different methods for performance-based design have been presented by different researchers. This attitude has been included in the design code and regulations for seismic design of new buildings and retrofit of existing buildings. The FEMA P-58 performance-based design method presented by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) can quantify the consequences related to the seismic response of buildings. Therefore, using this method, the seismic performance of buildings can be directly evaluated. In addition, this performance-based design method can define simpler criteria such as repair cost, repair time, and casualties for seismic evaluation and decision-making process. The method is based on considering different sources of uncertainty in earthquake input and its intensity, structural response, associated damage, and repair cost, using the concepts of conditional probability and total probability theorem. In this method, the building is designed in such a way that it meets the expected and predetermined performance level in a specific level of seismic excitation. Since the performance levels of the building are determined based on the amount of damage caused to structural and non-structural members, one of the practical and effective ways to evaluate performance is to estimate the building repair cost. In the approach presented in FEMA P-58, the repair cost is defined in a probabilistic approach, as the cost needed to restore the damaged parts to their original state in the form of expected annual loss. In this research, first, three 4-, 12-, and 20-story office buildings with the lateral force resisting system of reinforced concrete special moment frames were selected in a high seismic risk area. Then, the nonlinear model of structures was provided in OpenSEES software. In order to reduce the computational cost and analysis time, the single-bay Substitute Frame model was used to simplify the multi-bay reinforced concrete moment frames. All four structures were subjected to Incremental Dynamic Analysis (IDA) for 30 earthquake records. A probabilistic relationship between the spectral acceleration of the earthquake and the main damage parameter (i.e. the inter-story drift), as well as the collapse fragility curve, was obtained. Then, the repair cost including the cost of repairing structural members as well as beams and columns, the cost of repairing non-structural members as well as partition and curtain walls, and the cost of replacing collapsed structures was calculated as expected annual loss. The results show that the repair costs at the Design-Based Earthquake (DBE) for 4-, 12-, and 20-story buildings are 3%, 2.5%, and 10% of the building replacement cost and at Maximum Credible Earthquake (MCE) are 22%, 23%, and 38% of the building replacement cost, respectively. In addition, in short buildings, most of the cost is caused by repairing structural and non-structural members, and in tall buildings, most of the cost is caused by replacing collapsed or severely damaged structures. Considering two nonstructural elements (i.e. partition and curtain walls) in repair cost, the analysis results show that the cost of repairing structural elements is more than the cost of repairing non-structural elements.

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Aluminum nano-films are one of the functional elements that have various applications in different fields such as strengthening cement base materials, improving the performance and efficiency of concrete, and enhancing the mechanical and volumetric properties of clay. In this study, the mechanical responses of aluminum nano-film are investigated under uniaxial tensile and compressive tests using the molecular dynamics (MD) method. The initial configuration of the nano-film is constructed based on a 3D aluminum core—alumina shell model that provides a suitable description of surface oxidation in the nano-film. This model is useful to determine the influence of surface oxidation on the mechanical behavior of nan-film. Because of the accuracy and competency, the inter-atomic interactions are evaluated using the EAM+CTI potential, which is a hybrid potential consisting of two components, i.e., EAM and CTI potential, such that it can also take into account the electrostatic interactions between the atoms. After establishing the initial configuration, the energy minimization process is performed on the nano-film, and then its temperature and pressure are adapted to the environmental conditions through the relaxation process. The MD analysis is accomplished by the open-source LAMMPS software, and the visualization of outputs is performed by the open-source OVITO software. The periodic boundary condition is imposed on the lateral sides of the nano-film to eliminate the free surface effect of the atomistic analysis. The tensile and compressive tests are applied to the nano-film in accordance with the experimental tests, and the stress—strain curves are determined. The concept of Virial stress is employed to calculate the stress of the atomic model, which is equivalent to the conventional Cauchy stress in classical mechanics. In order to diminish the dynamic effects, deformation is incrementally applied to the nano-film, such that at each increment, a small strain is gently imposed, then the nano-film is relaxed under the deformed conditions, and finally the stress and strains are evaluated. The numerical simulations are verified by comparing them with experimental data, which demonstrates the acceptable accuracy of the obtained numerical results. The influence of various parameters such as the thickness and the percentages of oxide layers are investigated on the mechanical response and stress-strain curve of aluminum nano-film under the uniaxial tests. It is demonstrated that the thickness of the oxide layer significantly impacts the mechanical behavior, such that the hardness and energy absorption capacity of the nano-film is increased considerably by increasing the percentage of the oxide layer thickness. However, increasing the total thickness of the nano-film leads to a decrease in the Young’s modulus and elastic limit of the specimen. It is because of the decrease in the percentage of oxide layer thickness by increasing the total thickness of the nano-film. Point defects are one of the important imperfections in the crystal structures of atomic configuration that have a significant effect on the mechanical behavior of materials. In order to investigate the influence of point defects, different percentages of voids are generated by randomly omitting some atoms in the nano-film domain. The generated specimens are analyzed under the uniaxial tests, and their mechanical characteristics are evaluated. The numerical simulations demonstrate that the hardness of the nano-film is significantly reduced by increasing the point defects.
 

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In order to facilitate the release of floods from the dams and to prevent their damage or collapse, a structure called a spillway is used. Due to the natural and variable flow of the input to the reservoirs of the dams, there are times when the river inflow exceeds the consumption amount in the downstream agricultural lands. In these cases, excess water is discharged over the crest of the weir and flows towards the spillway, which causes high velocities. This high velocity creates low pressure areas on the spillway concrete surface, which can cause major damage to the spillway or even endanger the integrity of the dam structure. Therefore, the dam spillway must safely dissipate the kinetic energy. One of the types of weirs is the stepped spillway to facilitate the passage of the flow over the dams. One of the most obvious practical features of stepped spillways compared to other spillways is the considerable energy dissipation along the spillway. Care should be taken in designing and selecting the type of spillway to prevent potential erosion and reduce kinetic energy as the water flow passes over the spillway. One possible solution is to use a stepped spillway instead of a smooth spillway. In this study, a numeral model of a stepped spillway with different steps and slopes is used. For this purpose, ANSYS software is used for modeling free surface with application of k-ε turbulence model. In the present study, numerical simulation using the Volume of Fluid (VOF) model was used to investigate the mixing phenomenon of two phases of air and water of the free surface flow. The flow field was continued until the residuals reached 10^-7. Compared to simpler models such as Mixture, which operates solely on the basis of averaging the properties of two phases, the VOF model, is separating the phases and considering the effects of the interface. The VOF model, is capable of more accurate simulation of phenomena such as fluid mixing, turbulent flows, and heat transfer in multiphase flows. A number of hydraulic specifications which are considered in designing the stepped spillways are the pressure on the surface of the steps, velocity distribution and energy dissipation. The results from the numerical models were compared with experimental studies. They showed acceptable agreement with physical simulations. Results show that discharge and spillway slope increment reduces the amount of energy loss. In the spillway with 5 steps, for a discharge of 0.063 m³/s, the amount of energy dissipation at a slope of 26.6 degrees changes from 85 to 82% at a slope of 45 degrees, which shows a decrease of 3%. With the increase in discharge, the flow depth increases and reduces the effect of the roughness of the steps on the upper layers of the flow. Increasing the height of the steps increases the rate of energy dissipation and also increases the occurrence of negative pressures in stepped spillway. In this case, the contact surface between the main flow and the eddy currents increases. With the increase in the height of the steps, the dimensions of the rotating vortices also increase and cause a larger radius of rotation on the steps. The presence of these large rotating vortices separates the flow from the bottom of the steps and reduces the pressure on the surfaces. The number and dimensions of steps can alter the energy dissipation rate. Increase in the number of steps in a spillway with constant height, reduces the energy loss as the result of steps dimensions being shrunk

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The design of earthquake-resistant structures and the reduction of damages caused by them have always been considered. One of the ways to reduce earthquake vibrations in steel frames is to use cable braces. In addition, one of the ways to improve the behavior of the structure against seismic loads is the use of dampers. In this research, magnetorheological damper and cable brace are used simultaneously. To check the effectiveness of the proposed system, four steel frames including, a steel frame without cables and dampers, a steel frame with cable braces, a steel frame with magnetorheological dampers and, a steel frame with cable braces along with magnetorheological dampers, which have one-span and two spans, were selected and the behavior of this frame Assuming different conditions, under nonlinear static lateral load and seismic loads, it has been checked in SAP2000 software. By examining the results obtained from the nonlinear static analysis of the case of a one span, it is concluded that the steel frame with cable brace and magnetorheological damper reduces the lateral displacement of the frame and often the internal forces of the beam and column more than other frames. gives by examining the results of the time-history dynamic analysis of one-span and two-span conditions, it is concluded that the proposed system reduces the lateral displacement of the frame and the internal forces of the beam and column more than other frames in most of the investigated earthquakes. In other words, using the proposed systems improves the performance of the structure against lateral loads.

 

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The term degradation is used to specify the status of the environment. It is often associated with ‘improper use’. ‘Use’ also implies environmental aspects other than physical ones and implies that the more intensive the use, the more susceptible the environment is to degradation, particularly if proper care for the environment is lacking. The question is, and has always been, how to map something which, apart from the physical aspects of landscape, is also influenced by socio-cultural and economic issues? The common approach in mapping degradation is based on indicators and the intention of this paper is to present three case studies: the Tabernas-Sorbas area in Spain; Iran (at the country level) and the Pico de Tancitaro area in Mexico. The geopedological map is combined with the land use-based map to produce the basis for the extraction of a considerable number of indicators.

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Abstract The aphid parasitoids, Aphidius colemnai Viereck and A. matricariae (Haliday) (Hymenoptera: Braconidae: Aphidiinae) have high potential as the most effective biological control agents for controlling the cotton aphis Aphis gossypii Glover (Hemiptera: Aphididae). In this investigation, the effect of five constant temperatures (10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 °C) on the reproductive parameters was studied at 65 ±5% relative humidity and a photoperiod of 16L: 8 D hours In this study, the newly laid (one- day old) eggs were reared on third instar nymphs of cotton aphid, and the pupal and adult stages of the parasitoids were recorded daily, until the last individual was found dead. The experiments were carried out with 15 replications at each temperature. The results revealed that the gross fecundity and fertility rates were significantly different at all tested temperatures for both species (P

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Otters at the top of the food chain and feeding largely on fish are likely to be especially vulnerable to the effects of bioaccumulating pollutants. This research reports the first data on mercury levels found in hairs of river otters (Lutra lutra) from Iran. Between June and December 2007, we collected museum and recent collections of river otter hair. These samples were collected from several provinces of three major regions of Iran. The mean of mercury concentration for all samples (recent and museum) was 5.819±1.557 mg/kg with 95% confidence interval for the mean. The concentrations of Total Hg (THg) in hair ranged from 0.293 to 12.382 mg/kg. No significant variation among the sample regions existed. A comparison of THg concentrations between two decades (1986-1996 and 1996-2006) showed that these differences were significant (p

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Background and Objectives:HBV and HTLV-I are life threatening infectious agents in patients who receive blood and blood products. Although serological methods have been proved to be useful, detection of these viruses has remained a challengingissue due to the many obstacles. By the advent of Nucleic Acid Testing methods, especially in multiplex format, more precise detection is possible.The objective of this study was to develop a reliable, rapid and cost- effective method tosimultaneously detect HBV and HTLV-I. Materials and Methods: We have developed a multiplex Real time-PCR assay for simultaneous detection of HBV and HTLV-I. Primer sets were designed for highly conserved regions of genome of each virus. Using these primers and standard plasmids, we determined the limit of detection, clinical and analytical specificity and sensitivity of the assay. Monoplex and multiplex Real-time PCRs were performed. Results: Analytical sensitivity was considered to be 1000 and 100 copies/ml for HBV and HTLV-I, respectively. High concentration of one virus had no adverse effect on detection of t low concentrations of the other one. By analyzing 30 samples, clinical sensitivity of the assay was determined to be 87% and 96% for HBV and HTLV-I, respectively. Using different viral and human genome samples, the specificity of the assay was verified to be 100%. Conclusions:We have developed a reliable, rapid and cost effective method tosimultaneously detect HBV and HTLV-I.Our results indicatedthe high capability of this simple and rapid method for detecting these viruses in clinical samples.