according to coates’s (2004, as cited in zhang, 2010) definition of "conversational dominance" (p.111), it refers to the phenomenon of a speaker dominating others in interaction. specifically, it means how a speaker makes use of certain strategies to get the floor and maintain the floor. thus, the amount of talk is the main measurement for the dominance of the conversation. whether a speaker do...

among the low–dimensional allotropes of carbon, nanotubes and graphene have attracted very much attention from nano–science and nanotechnology specialists. they have been proposed as building blocks in nanometer device engineering. however, these structures are not defect–free. in this thesis, we focused on defective carbon nanotubes and graphene, and studied the effect of couple of very common...

insurers have in the past few decades faced longevity risks - the risk that annuitants survive more than expected - and therefore need a new approach to manage this new risk. in this dissertation we survey methods that hedge longevity risks. these methods use securitization to manage risk, so using modern financial and insurance pricing models, especially wang transform and actuarial concepts, ...

monumental changes occurring on a daily basis have altered the world into a global village of expanding technology and shrinking geography in which preparing language learners for intercultural communication seems to be a sine qua non for modern language education. employing a cross-sectional design in its first phase, this study investigated the intercultural sensitivity and language proficien...

in fact, this study focused on the following questions: 1. is there any difference between the effect of functional/notional approach and the structural approaches to language teaching on the proficiency test of efl learners? 2. can a rather innovative language test referred to as "functional test" ge devised so so to measure the proficiency test of efl learners, and thus be as much reliable an...

this study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences the results of the community model of teaching creative writing; i.e., group dynamics and group outcome (the quality of performance). the study adopted an experimental comparison group and microgenetic research design to observe the change process over a relatively short period of time. ...

the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between fear of negative evaluation (fne) and communication strategies (css) among iranian efl learners. it was aimed to examine the differences in the use of communication strategies between speakers with high or low degree of fear of negative evaluation. the current study was a case study consisting of 10 english learners at...

target tracking is the tracking of an object in an image sequence. target tracking in image sequence consists of two different parts: 1- moving target detection 2- tracking of moving target. in some of the tracking algorithms these two parts are combined as a single algorithm. the main goal in this thesis is to provide a new framework for effective tracking of different kinds of moving target...

two groups of students were assigned as experimental and control ones, and were given instruction on directed reading-thinking activities and after some treatment, they were post-tested. although the initial pre-test did not show any significant differences, the final post-test result revealed that the cooperative reading comprehension helped the experimental group. the cooperative students’...

in this study, the effects of oleothermal modification on physical and mechanical peroperties of fir wood (abeis sp.) blocks were examined. at first, some blocks of fir wood with 5 × 20 × 120 cm dimensions were prepared. the blocks were treated in soybean oil. the effects of 3 factors such as treatments temperature (180and 200 °c), holding time (12 and 15 h) and initial moisture content of wood...