data envelopment analysis (dea) is a powerful tool for measuring relative efficiency of organizational units referred to as decision making units (dmus). in most cases dmus have network structures with internal linking activities. traditional dea models, however, consider dmus as black boxes with no regard to their linking activities and therefore do not provide decision makers with the reasons...

there are two major theories of measurement in psychometrics: classical test theory (ctt) and item-response theory (irt). despite its widespread and long use, ctt has a number of shortcomings, which make it problematic to be used for practical and theoretical purposes. irt tries to solve these shortcomings, and provide better and more dependable answers. one of the applications of irt is the as...

abstract the present study deals with a comparison between reactive and pre-emptive focus-on-form in terms of application and efficiency. it was conducted in an intermediate english class in shahroud. 15 male learners participated in this research and their age ranged from 18 to 25. a course book, new interchange 3, and a complementary book were used. every session the learners gave lectures o...

attempts have been made to study the thermodynamic behavior of 1,3 butadiene purification columns with the aim of retrofitting those columns to more energy efficient separation schemes. 1,3 butadiene is purified in two columns in series through being separated from methyl acetylene and 1,2 butadiene in the first and second column respectively. comparisons have been made among different therm...

the present study aimed to investigate representation of discourse markers and metadiscourse markers in conversations and readings of general elt coursebook series used in the language centers of iran. to this aim, four elt coursebooks popularly taught in language centers of this country were analyzed based on fung and carter’s (2007) framework regarding discourse markers and hyland’s (2005) fr...

for several years, researchers in familiarity of efl teachers with post-method and its role in second and foreign language learners’ productions have pointed out that the opportunity to plan for a task generally develops language learners’ development (ellis, 2005). it is important to mention that the critical varies in language teaching was shown is the disappearances of the concept of method ...

fluorescence chemical sensors for the highly sensitive and selective determination of pb2+ , hg2+, co2+ and fe3+ ions in aqueous solutions are described. the ion sensing system was prepared by incorporating lipophilic ligand (l) as a neutral ion-selective fluoroionophore in the plasticized pvc membrane containing sodium tetraphenylborate or potasium tetrakis (p-chlorophenyl) borate as a liphoph...

the major purpose of this study was to develop the translation teacher competency test (ttct) and examine its construct and predictive validity. the present study was conducted in two phases: a qualitative phase as well as a quantitative phase. in the first phase of the study, the author attempted to find out the major areas of competency required for an academic translation teacher. the second...

this study attempted to explore if teaching english collocations through two different modes of awareness-raising and input flooding has any possible differential effect on immediate retention as well as retention in a delayed assessment. it also compared the possible differential effect of teaching english collocations implicitly and explicitly on actively using the items in writing. m...

purpose a metabolic abnormality such as obesity is a major obstacle in the maintenance of the human health system and causes various chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, as well as various cancers. this study was designed to summarize the recent scientific knowledge regarding the anti-obesity role of curcumin (diferuloylmethane), which is isolated f...