Given that Mandarin is a tone language and English is not, the present study investigated the perception of Mandarin tones in young school-aged children with or without tone language exposure. Mandarin Monolingual (MM), English-Mandarin Bilingual (EMB) and English Monolingual (EM) children aged 6 to 8 years participated in tone identification and discrimination tasks. Tone identification and di...

The main objective of this research is to find the extent to which the minimal variability Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) model of seismic vulnerability assessment is sensitive to variation of optimism degree. There are a variety of models proposed for seismic vulnerability assessment. In order to examine the efficiency of seismic vulnerability assessment models, the stability of results coul...

Three new species are described from Iran: Cortodera kukinae Danilevsky et Skrylnik, sp. n. (Tehran province), Dorcadion (Cribridorcadion) olegpaki and Phytoecia (Musaria) plyushchi (Gilan province). The illustrated redescription of (C.) cingulatum Ganglbauer, 1884 is given. New synonyms proposed: D. = ursulaheinzi Bernhauer, 2015, syn. invicinum Pic, 1902, stat. resurr. considered as a distinc...

BACKGROUND Chromosome instability is the most common form of genomic instability. Genomic instability can lead to tumorogenesis. High level of chromosomal aberrations in peripheral blood lymphocytes can be used as a biomarker for cancer. Air pollution is one of the most important factors that cause chromosomal instability (CIN). In this comparative study we used classic Cytogenetic technique to...

establishing equilibrium in various regions of a town is normally considered to be the main aims of all municipalities and the urban governance policies of the related organizations. but in spite of the elementary goals of urban renewal policies, some of the urban renovation projects lead to inverse consequences like urban gentrification or spatial segregation in urban areas. for analyzing such...

BACKGROUND Vehicle exhaust is a major source of exposure to Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in the urban atmosphere. Newsagents usually work close to heavy traffic flow. The purpose of this study was to assess the breathing zone exposure of newsagents to PAHs found in the urban atmosphere of Tehran City during summer and autumn seasons and comparing the levels of exposure in both ...