Showing 13 results for Zahiri
Volume 3, Issue 2 (6-2015)
Abstract
Aim: Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the main contributor to disability and the leading cause of death in Iran and worldwide. This study was done to determine the effect of education on behaviors related to CVDs among Yazd city restaurants` chefs.
Method: In an experimental study, the intervention factor for case group was education through lectures, pamphlets, and videos. All the restaurant and hotel chefs of Yazd were divided into two groups: intervention and control (each group 39). Data were gathered through a researcher-made questionnaire with confirmed validity and reliability. All registered data were transformed to the SPSS program and analyzed under Mann-Whitney's U, Wilcoxon's, McNemar's, Marginal homogeneity, Spearman's correlation, and Chi-square tests.
Findings: Before training, the average scores of knowledge, attitude and practice had no significant differences between the case and control groups (p≥0/05), but this difference was significant immediately and three months after education (p>0/05). Significant differences were observed in the scores of the knowledge and attitude of the intervention group between prior and immediately and three months after education (p>0/05). Also three months after the intervention, the mean score of practice was increased in the intervention group. The main information source of the subjects was media (63.5%) with physicians being their preferred source (62.2%).
Conclusion: According to the average knowledge of chefs before the intervention and significant role of chefs on cardiovascular health, improving their information through regular training programs (in consultation and health education centers), posters, pamphlets, and media is suggested.
Volume 3, Issue 5 (Supplementary Issue - 2014)
Abstract
The laelapid mite, Gaeolaelapsaculeifer (Canestrini) is widespread in soil habitats and feeds on different small arthropods, fungi and nematodes. The development and fecundity of G. aculeifer feeding on Rhizoglyphus echinopus (Fumouze & Robin) as prey was studied at eight different constant temperatures which include: 16, 17.5, 20, 22.5, 25, 27.5, 30 and 32.5 ºC, with relative humidity of 60 ± 5%, and a 16:8 h (Light: Dark) photoperiod. The results showed that the development time of immature stages were 30.80 ± 0.68, 30.57 ± 0.42 days at 16 °C; 8.66 ± 0.09, 8.20 ± 0.18 days at 30 °C and 9.86 ± 0.19, 9.77 ± 0.22 days at 32.5 °C for females and males, respectively. The pre-oviposition period considerably varied from 7.60 ± 3.02 days at 16 °C to 0.81 ± 0.09 days at 30 °C and then increased to 2.07 ± 0.25 days at 32.5 °C. The oviposition period decreased with increasing temperature from 36.93 ± 2.66 days at 20 °C to 17.67 ± 1.90days at 32.5 °C. The average life span of females was 102.40 ± 8.08 days at 16 °C and 37.21 ± 1.98 days at 32.5 °C. The mean daily oviposition per female increased from 0.49 ± 0.14 at 16 °C to 3.76 ± 0.13 at 30 °C and decreased to 1.88 ± 0.15 at 32.5 °C.
Volume 7, Issue 3 (fall 2019)
Abstract
The emergence of the formalism school in the early years of the twentieth century has had a profound impact on the way in which literary and artistic texts are analyzed. Hence, the study of literacy in a cinematic work is not limited to vocabularies and also includes linguistic, visual and content aspects of the work. As in literature, the use of figures of speech (semantics eloquence rhetoric) in words and speech makes the text eloquent in the cinema these figures of speech with the help of images, montage, mise en scene, lighting , … create eloquent meaning differently. The present paper, based on formalists and neo-formalist views, seeks to study and analyze the film “mother” by Ali hatami from the point of view of literary and explaining its artistic and literary aspects. For this purpose in addition to analyzing the text of the script rhetoric has been analyzed in its images. According to the analysis it should be said that the use of many literary arrays in the dialogue between the characters of the story and the use of methods and techniques for the transfer of concepts by the image-these methods have a long history in the literature- made the work of hatami prominent in literary style and gave it an independent identity that with every time exposed by the informed audience to this work the literary capacity and influence of the lexical and concept terms of classical Persian literature are more than ever evident.
Volume 9, Issue 2 (Spring 2018)
Abstract
Aims: The production of biofuels has been one of the promising efforts in biotechnology in the past decades. Unicellular cyanobacteria are widespread phototrophic microorganisms that can be suitable chassis for production of valuable organic materials like biofuels. The aim of this study was the reconstruction and modeling of integrated metabolic network of a cyanobacterium to increase the production of biofuels.
Materials and Methods: In the present computational study, a software for integrating reconstructed metabolic networks was developed to optimize and increase their efficiency and was named as iMet. First, iMet was used to integrate the 3 pre-reconstructed metabolic networks of Synechocystis PCC6803. In the next step, the reconstructed network was modeled to produce 4 types of biofuels, including ethanol, propanol, butanol, and isobutanol.
Findings: The new merged model had 808 reactions and 560 metabolites. The amount of flux or flow in the integrated model was calculated to be 0.0295 hours per hour. This showed a remarkable increase compared to the previous three models. The cells were divided once every 24 hours. The amount of flux of 4 types of alcohol and their maximum theoretical efficiency increased in the integrated model compared to the previous 3 models. The flux of ethanol production was greater in all models than flux of 3 other alcohols, and the ethanol production reactions were closer to the flow or the central flux of carbon.
Conclusion: The analyses of flow equilibrium in the metabolic network coverage show an increase in the production of biofuels and a decrease in the number of blocked reactions in the new model, thereby the efficiency of the developed iMet software is proved.
Volume 9, Issue 4 (Fall 2018)
Abstract
Aims: Information of the protein structure is essential to understand the protein functions. Flexibility is one of the most important characteristics related to protein functions. Knowledge about flexibility of the protein structures can be helpful to improve protein structure prediction and comprehend their function. This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the flexibility prediction of protein structures, using support vector machine.
Materials and Methods: In this study, a balanced dataset containing 95 proteins was used. The features used in the present study for modeling amino acids formed a 33-dimensional vector. Some of them were obtained by crawling a window with the length of 17 focusing on the target amino acid on the protein chain, and some were only related to the target amino acid. To define the flexibility factor, the characteristics based on the information derived from the two-dimensional angular variations was used. The information was calculated for each amino acid by considering the position of each amino acid alone and for the adjacent amino acid pairs in a seventeenth window, and the support vector machine method was used for prediction.
Findings: The accuracy was 73.1%, F-measure was 71%, precision was 73%, and sensitivity was 73.2%. Acceptable superiority of the proposed method was confirmed in comparison with the current methods. The angular representation of each protein was able to accurately demonstrate the 3D characteristics and properties of the protein structure.
Conclusion: The accuracy is 73.1%, F-measure is 71%, precision is 73%, and sensitivity is 73.2% and angular aspect is the best descriptor for flexibility prediction. Angular representation of each protein can accurately reflect the 3D characteristics and properties of the protein structure.
Volume 10, Issue 2 (Spring 2019)
Abstract
Genome editing using targetable nucleases is an emerging technology for precise genome modification in many organisms with hight ability and capability. All targeted genome engineering relies on the introduction of a site-specific double-strand break (DSB) in a pre-determined genomic locus by a rare-cutting DNA endonuclease. Subsequent repair of this DSB by non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) or homology-directed repair (HDR) generates the desired genetic modifications such as gene disruption, gene insertion, gene correction, etc. Three types of endonucleases, namely ZFNs (zinc finger nucleases), TALENs (transcription activator-like effector nucleases), and the CRISPR (clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic regions) associated (Cas9) system have been predominantly utilized for gene editing. Targeted genome engineering or editing enables researchers to modify genomic loci of interest in a precise manner, which has a turning point in medicine, biological research, and biotechnology. Treatment of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection with ZFN-mediated CCR5 gene disruption is one of the indicator examples of the ability of ZFNs in genome editing. The emergence of TALENs in 2010 has enabled the genome modification of non- model organisms, while the emergence of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in 2013 as a revolutionary genome-editing tool has allowed us to anticipate the forthcoming new era of genome editing research. Soon, it is likely that tgenome editing also will provide the possibility of treating genetic diseases. Genome editing is also hoped to be available for use in the generation of crops and livestock with useful traits. An example would be the production of edible fungi resistant to browning by inactivation of the genes encoding polyphenol oxidase in 2016 under the non-GMO genetically edited crop plants and production of herbicide-resistant rice and rapeseed using CRISPR/Cas9 systems. In this article, we review essential genome editing tools, summarize their applications in crop improvement, as well as, next-generation crop breeding and their computational resources will be discussed.
Volume 10, Issue 2 (Summer 2022)
Abstract
From ancient times, poets and writers have used rhetorical techniques and indirect expressions to convey their concepts. The use of these techniques is one of the fundamental differences between artistic language and other common language types such as scientific language, that is the language that tries to convey the concept to the audience with the most explicit terms and far from ambiguity. In cinema as a modern art, which has a deep and inseparable relationship with literature, figures of speech always help cinematographers to convey the concepts. The cinematographers, knowingly or unknowingly, supported by the linguistic and literary culture in which they have been raised, use these devices to illustrate their purposes.
The role of literature in cinema can be examined at three levels of language, image, and content. This study, focuses on the images and the case of “Taste of cherry” directed by by Abbas Kiarostami as one of the most prominent Iranian artists in cinema in order to use the images, their role in conveying the concepts and figures of speech used in the film. Investigating figures of speech in the image of a cinematic work makes the audience closer to the intellectual world of the filmmaker, reveals how his works interact with written literature, gives a deeper understanding regarding the link between the two arts, and shows the influence of the past written legacy in the cinema, as the most recent human art.
Volume 10, Issue 4 (Fall 2019)
Abstract
Hordeum vulgare is a one-year-old herb of the Poaceae family. It is an important cereal used by humans which has been applied in many cases instead of wheat. The limitation of experimental methods is one of the important problems for identifying protein-protein interactions. So, in recent years, computational methods have played an important role in predicting and identifying protein-protein interactions. In this study, for constructing protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, the experimental PPI information of six model organisms includes Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, Homo sapiens, Oryza sativa, and Arabidopsis thalian were extracted from the Intact database. Inparanoid was used for identifying barley orthologous proteins with model organisms. The Interolog method which was used in this study can predict protein-protein interactions by mapping protein interactions of the model organisms on orthologous proteins. After removing repetitive interactions, the final predicted barley PPI network contained 235966 interactions between 7350 proteins. This study is the first report presented on protein-protein interaction prediction in barley.
Volume 11, Issue 43 (Fall 2018)
Abstract
Despite the harmony and consistency in Ferdowsi's Shahnameh's with Hegel's belief in his aesthetic lessons about the features of “proper epic”, he calls Shahnameh incommensurate and lacking an independent functional center. He knows the proper epic, the manifestation of the totality of the world of a nation, which is the result of the human manifestation of incomprehensible myths. Therefore, the original epic poetry, as the first stage of the self-consciousness of the absolute soul, can be regarded as absolute art, which, by creating a kind of collective consciousness in the historical community, has the highest degree of consistency between the subject and the object. The aesthetics of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh also focuses on the actual fulfillment of mythological content, namely: "the controversy of the opposing forces. In this paper, first, using Hegel's views on proper epic, we have answered his criticism about Shahnameh, and then, relying on the categories of "Hegelian philosophy", including: the family, the system of needs, and the country or goverment, in the category of social ethics, in a comparative analysis method, we will prove that Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, like some of the world's greatest epic, unlike Hegel's views, has the most prominent features of an proper epic with the power to convey the common religious and moral understanding of the world, is a global and lasting art.
Volume 12, Issue 2 (1-2022)
Abstract
Introduction: The present study reports a case of familial episodic coma in which three girls manifesting refractory seizures followed by coma. Targeted gene panel of epilepsy using next-generation sequencing (NGS) technique was requested to identified disease -causing variant(s) in the patients.
Materials and Method: After obtaining a written informed consent from our patient, genomic DNA was extracted from venous blood, for identifying mutations in epilepsy genes, at first, coding regions as well as all intron–exon boundaries of the 72 genes were captured by Sure Select Target Enrichment System
V4 kit (Agilent, Santa Clara, CA),
then captured libraries were sequenced on an Illumina HiSeq 4000(Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA, USA), sequenced reads were aligned with a reference human genome and Picard tools was used to remove duplicated reads; variant calling was performed using the Genome Analysis Tool Kit (GATK). ANNOVAR was used to annotated variants, then
all variants were filtered out based on minor allele frequency (MAF) <1 % according to data bases of nucleotide including dpSNP, 1000 Genome project. In silico tools was performed to evaluated pathogenicity of variant(s).
Result: According to databases of pathogenicity prediction of gene, no specific mutation in epilepsy genes was found in our patients, but several polymorphisms were reported.
Conclusion: Given polymorphisms in genes related to epilepsy were found in our study, failed to provide us with an acceptable diagnosis of this condition, further research is needed to reveal the cause of the disease.
Key word: episodic coma, NGS, gene panel, epilepsy
Volume 14, Issue 4 (September & October 2023)
Abstract
With the development of the language-based learning approach, language pedagogy takes more advantage of Child and Adolescent literature in teaching to non-native speakers. Besides, language plans were driven to adopt certain expected features; such as modern grammatical and morphological structures, expressing tangible meanings and events of everyday life, being pleasant, equipping learners with eloquence methods, and applying general and universal language pedagogy issues. Since literary texts have various levels and types, language education policymakers need to consider them in designating language plans. With survey methods, this paper illustrates the significance role of Child and Adolescent literature in teaching Persian to non-Persian learners. To achieve this goal, the authors created a questionnaire with eight literary genres in Child and Adolescent literature at three levels of language proficiency. The questionnaire was sent non-randomly to 94 Iranian teachers, experts in teaching Persian to non-Persian speakers and acquaintance with Persian literature. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS 22, calculating one-way Chi-square, applying Friedman and Mann-Whitney statistical test. Data analysis reveals that the relevant indices for beginner levels are either minor or insignificant. However, in the intermediate and advanced levels children’s tales and stories, along with adolescent poetry, are more emphasized.
1. Introduction
Children and adolescent literary texts retain an important role in teaching English as a second/foreign language, as some of the features of this literature have turned it into an indisputable pedagogy tool. Some of the many beneficial characteristics of this literature include the vocabulary and modern language structures which are close to the standard criteria of a language (due to novelty and lack of archaism), expression of tangible concepts and everyday events of the learners’ lives (due to categorization of the audience), introduction of eloquence methods to the learners simply and pleasantly, benefitting from general and global concepts, the ability to adjust the length and difficulty level of these texts to the goals and levels of the learners, and uniformity of the features and elements of this literature with the optimal structures of extensive-reading sources. Although, in many languages and especially in Persian, this literary category consists of many different sub-categories, and the choice of suitable texts requires thorough study and research. Hence, using the survey method and inquiring about the views of expert teachers in teaching Persian to non-native learners, the present study aims to determine the position of each of these sub-categories in teaching Persian to adult non-native learners at different (learning) levels.
The questions that the present study is posing to answer are as follows:
1. From the POV of expert teachers of Persian as a second/foreign language, how important are children and adolescent literature indices in teaching Persian to non-native learners at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels?
2. What is the best order of application of children and adolescent content, based on the degree of importance, in teaching Persian to non-native learners of beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels?
3. How effective is the experience level of teachers in the determination of the importance of children and adolescent literature in teaching Persian to non-native speakers?
2. Methodology
The present study, which has been conducted across the universities and Persian language institutes of the country (Iran), has used the survey method. The study sample consisted of 94 Iranian teachers with experience in the field of teaching Persian as a second/foreign language who were also familiar with Persian literature. They were therefore chosen by a non-random, purposeful method based on accessibility.
The measuring tool of the study is a researcher-made questionnaire which was designed by using a five-point Likert scale based on the importance scale, degree of significance, and accordingly, the significance of applying examples of children and adolescent literature in creating educational material for teaching Persian to non-native speakers of beginner, intermediate and advanced levels and teaching Persian based on children and adolescent literature content from the point of view of expert and skilled Persian teachers.
To examine the validity of the questionnaire, two methods of face validity (views and modifications of experts on the statements of the questionnaire) and construct validity (the number of initial similarities between the statements) were employed. Hence, the face validity of the questionnaire was confirmed according to the opinion of experts, and the construct validity was verified by the minimum number of similarities between statements (0/7) at three levels beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Next, the final questionnaire was distributed online to be answered by the sample population.
To check the reliability of the questionnaire, an initial sample of 30 completed questionnaires was examined as a pre-test. Then, Cronbach's alpha coefficients of the questionnaires were calculated using the obtained data from the initial sample. The amount of Cronbach’s alpha coefficient for the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels were 0,881, 0,943, and 0,933, respectively, which confirms the acceptable reliability of the questionnaire.
3. Summary and Conclusion
Examination of some of the educational material used for teaching Persian to non-natives shows little evidence of using children and adolescent literature, which could be a result of consecutive cognitive issues about examples of this literature. This means that the consciousness of the authors of examined teaching materials about the differences between the dominant narrative in children’s literature and adult literature might have led them to believe that instances of children’s literature cannot present an appropriate learning template for adult Persian learners and, in other words, this literary category might be inappropriate for an adult audience.
Also, research results show that the sample population distinguishes between examples of children and adolescent literature, such as 4 indices of folklore children’s literature including lullabies, nursery rhymes, game songs, and tales, and formally-recognized children and adolescent literature that consists of 4 manifestations including children and adolescent poetry and prose(stories). They identify the former category (folklore) as unimportant, but they permit the use of children’s poetry on an intermediate level, adolescent poetry, and children’s and adolescent prose (stories) on intermediate and advanced levels. Therefore, the aforementioned criteria can be used to compose educational texts for teaching Persian to non-native learners. By correctly choosing the material, the issue of balance between the topics and concepts and the adult audience can be resolved.
Amin Shahbani Zahiri, Hassan Hassanzadeh, Mohammad Mohsen Shahmardan, Mahmood Norouzi,
Volume 17, Issue 6 (8-2017)
Abstract
In this paper, the heat transfer of viscoelastic fluid flow have numerically simulated inside a symmetric planar channel with 1:3 abrupt expansion. For modeling the rheological and nonlinear behavior of inertial flow related to the viscoelastic fluid, exponential form of the Phan Thien-Tanner (EPTT) model has been used. The thermal boundary condition of constant temperature has been considered at the inlet and on the walls of channel. Also, velocity is uniform and constant at the inlet of channel and its value is determined by the Reynolds number of flow. Due to the significant effect of temperature on the viscoelastic fluid properties, viscosity, relaxation time, specific heat capacity and thermal conductivity have been taken as a function of temperature and dissipation term has been employed in the energy equation. For coupling the governing equations, the PISO algorithm is utilized and finite volume method (FVM) is employed for discretizing these equations. In this study, the effect of inertial force is investigated on the velocity distribution, temperature distribution and variation of local and average Nusselt numbers in the expanded part of channel. Despite the symmetry in the planar channel, increasing the Reynolds number forms the symmetric and asymmetric flows inside the expanded part of channel. For asymmetric flows, increase of Reynolds number from 40 to 100 (growth of 2.5 times the Reynolds number) resulted in a 1.7-fold increase for the maximum values of local Nusselt numbers in the vicinity of the upper and lower walls of the channel expanded part.
Amir Pooyan Zahiri, Ehsan Roohi,
Volume 17, Issue 12 (2-2018)
Abstract
“Minimum-dissipation sub-grid models” are simple alternatives to the Smagorinsky-type approaches to imposing sub-grid scales (SGS)' effects in the large-eddy simulation (LES) approach. Recently, a new model in this family called “anisotropic minimum-dissipation (AMD)” model is represented. AMD is classified as a static type eddy-viscosity sub-grid scale model. The model is more cost effective than the dynamic Smagorinsky model, furthermore; it is not only able to consider the effect of various directions in computing sub-grid stress but also capable of operating for transitional flows from laminar to turbulent. In this study, this sub-grid model has been implemented in the open source package OpenFOAM and its performance is evaluated in the prediction of the flow field inside a channel with a pressure driven air flow. The accuracy of the model has been investigated at different Reynolds numbers including transient and fully turbulent flows and compared with the dynamic Smagorinsky model as well as direct numerical simulation (DNS) solutions. Results reveal that this sub-grid model is quite accurate over a broad range of Reynolds numbers once calculating velocity profiles as well as first and second-order turbulent quantities.