after the soviet union dissolution, a chaotic period was begun in the russia. russia lost its glory and felt disgrace. the first group of elites came to power under yeltsin; they tried to re-define russia’s identity as a european country and build a foreign policy on this baseline. therefore russia tried to become closer with the west especially with the u.s. according to their view the sovie...

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...

seismic retrofit strategies have been developed in the past few decades following the introduction of new seismic provisions and the availability of advanced materials and methods. it can be observed that new approaches to deal with more lateral forces are more innovative and more energy absorbent. in line with this, there is a growing trend toward the use of steel shear walls as a system with ...

abstract type-ii fuzzy logic has shown its superiority over traditional fuzzy logic when dealing with uncertainty. type-ii fuzzy logic controllers are however newer and more promising approaches that have been recently applied to various fields due to their significant contribution especially when the noise (as an important instance of uncertainty) emerges. during the design of type- i fuz...

the purpose of this study is to investigate and explore the causes of identity crisis as one of the debilitating consequences of colonial project after the withdrawal of colonial power. in order to do justice to the full-length severity of displacement that was the fruit of indentureship, v. s. naipauls west indian epic, a house for mr biswas, has been scrutinized with the main focus being the ...

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, ...

august wilson is undoubtedly one of the rare black playwrights whose works have attracted streams of attention and worldwide audience. the present study aims at analyzing fences and piano lesson which are two of the most successful plays in his pittsburgh cycle from the perspective of michel foucault’s theories and ideas. studying these two plays from foucault’s perspective opens new windows in...

the present study has tried to accomplish an analysis of margaret atwood’s novels oryx and crake, and the year of the flood in the light of posthuman and cyborg theories. considering posthumanism as a critical reading of some notions of humanism focus of which in this thesis has been identity, new definitions for humanity and human identity are formed. haraway’s cyborg, as one possible new figu...

this thesis attempts to study the representations of the third-world intellectuals in three fictional works by the british-educated trinidadian nobel-winner v. s. naipaul: the mimic men, a bend in the river, and magic seeds. the first one recounts the story of ralph singh’s sense of alienation, his experiences as a colonial politician, and his struggle to give order to his disorderly world thro...

a large number of single research studies on the effects of strategy-based instruction (sbi) in teaching english as a foreign or second language has been conducted so far. however, the lack of a comprehensive meta-analysis targeting the effectiveness of english language sbi is observed. moreover, the findings of experimental studies regarding the context of the english language, proficiency lev...