Search results for: linguistic variables

Authors: Mary Rosa Espinosa-Ochoa

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The study of overgeneralization in inflectional morphology provides evidence for understanding how a child's mind works when applying linguistic patterns in a novel way. High-frequency inflectional forms in the input cause inappropriate use in contexts related to lower-frequency forms. Children learn verbs as lexical items and new forms develop only gradually, around their second year: most of the utterances that children produce are closely related to what they have previously produced. Spanish has a complex verbal system that inflects for person, mood, and tense. Approximately 200 verbs are irregular, and bare roots always require an inflected form, which represents a challenge for the memory. The aim of this research is to investigate i) what kinds of overgeneralization errors children make in verb production, ii) to what extent these errors are related to verb forms previously produced, and iii) whether the overgeneralized verb components are also frequent in children’s linguistic inventory. It consists of a high-density longitudinal study of a middle-class girl (1;11,24-2;02,24) from Mexico City, whose utterances were recorded almost daily for three months to compile a unique corpus in the Spanish language. Of the 358 types of inflected verbs produced by the child, 9.11% are overgeneralizations. Not only are inflected forms (verbal and pronominal clitics) overgeneralized, but also verbal roots. Each of the forms can be traced to previous utterances, and they show that the child is detecting morphological patterns. Neither verbal roots nor inflected forms are associated with high frequency patterns in her own speech. For example, the child alternates the bare roots of an irregular verb, cáye-te* and cáiga-te* (“fall down”), to express the imperative of the verb cá-e-te (fall down.IMPERATIVE-PRONOMINAL.CLITIC), although cay-ó (PAST.PERF.3SG) is the most frequent form of her previous complete inventory, and the combined frequency of caer (INF), cae (PRES.INDICATIVE.3SG), and caes (PRES.INDICATIVE.2SG) is the same as that of as caiga (PRES.SUBJ.1SG and 3SG). These results provide evidence that a) two forms of the same verb compete in the child’s memory, and b) although the child uses her own inventory to create new forms, these forms are not necessarily frequent in her memory storage, which means that her mind is more sensitive to external stimuli. Language acquisition is a developing process, given the sensitivity of the human mind to linguistic interaction with the outside world.

Keywords: inflection, morphology, child language acquisition, Spanish

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Authors: Adriana Salgado, Sandra Castaneda, Ivan Perez

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Learning to read and write is a complex process involving several cognitive skills, contextual, and cultural environments. The basis of this development is linguistic skills, such as the ability to name and understand vocabulary, retell a story, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, among others. In children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), one of the main concerns is related to language disorders. Nevertheless, most of the children with ASD are able to decode written information but have difficulties in reading comprehension. The research of these processes in the Spanish-speaking population is limited. However, the increasing prevalence of this diagnosis (1 in 115 children) in Mexico has implications at different levels. Educational research is an important area of interest in ASD children, such as emergent literacy. Reading and writing expand the possibilities of academic, cultural, and social information access. Taking this information into account, the objective of this research was to identify the relationship between language skills, alphabet knowledge, phonological awareness, and early reading and writing in ASD Spanish-speaking children. The method used for this research was based on tasks that were selected, adapted and in some cases designed to measure initial reading and writing, as well as language skills (naming, receptive vocabulary, and narrative skills), phonological awareness (similar phonological word pairs, beginning sound awareness and spelling) and letter knowledge, in a sample of 45 children (38 boys and 7 girls) with prior diagnosis of ASD. Descriptive analyses, as well as bivariate correlations, cluster analysis, and canonical correspondence, were obtained for the data results. Results showed that variability was large; however, it was possible to characterize the sample in low, medium, and high score groups regarding children performance. The low score group (46.7% of the sample), had a null or deficient performance in language skills and phonological awareness, some could identify up to five letters of the alphabet, showed no early reading skills but they could scribble. The middle score group was characterized by a highly variable performance in different tasks, with better language skills in receptive and naming vocabulary, some narrative, letter knowledge, and phonological awareness (beginning sound awareness) skills. The high score group, (24.4% of the sample) had the best performance in language skills in relation to the sample data, as well as in the rest of the measured skills. Finally, scores were canonically correlated between naming, receptive vocabulary, narrative, phonological awareness, letter knowledge and initial learning of reading and writing skills for the high score group and letter knowledge, naming and receptive vocabulary for the lower score group, which is consistent with previous research in typical and ASD children. In conclusion, the obtained data is consistent with previous studies. Despite large variability, it was possible to identify performance profiles and relations based on linguistic, phonological awareness, and letter knowledge skills. These skills were predictor variables of the initial development of reading and writing. The above has implications for a future program and strategies development that may benefit the acquisition of reading and writing in ASD children.

Keywords: autism, autism spectrum disorders, early literacy, emergent literacy

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Authors: Afef Badri

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The role of metaphor in creating the coherence and the cohesion of discourse in online interactive talk has almost received no attention. This paper intends to provide some theoretical reflections on metaphorical coherence as a jointly constructed process that evolves in online, face-to-face interactions. It suggests that the presence of a global conceptual structure in a conversation makes it conceptually cohesive. Yet, coherence remains a process largely determined by other variables (shared goals, communicative intentions, and framework of understanding). Metaphorical coherence created by these variables can be useful in detecting bias in media reporting.

Keywords: coherence, cohesion, face-to-face interactions, metaphor

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Authors: Ubaidillah Zuhdi, Shunsuke Mori, Kazuhisa Kamegai

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The purpose of this study is to forecast the influences of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on the structural changes of Japanese economies based on Leontief Input-Output (IO) coefficients. This study establishes a statistical analysis to predict the future interrelationships among industries. We employ the Constrained Multivariate Regression (CMR) model to analyze the historical changes of input-output coefficients. Statistical significance of the model is then tested by Likelihood Ratio Test (LRT). In our model, ICT is represented by two explanatory variables, i.e. computers (including main parts and accessories) and telecommunications equipment. A previous study, which analyzed the influences of these variables on the structural changes of Japanese industrial sectors from 1985-2005, concluded that these variables had significant influences on the changes in the business circumstances of Japanese commerce, business services and office supplies, and personal services sectors. The projected future Japanese economic structure based on the above forecast generates the differentiated direct and indirect outcomes of ICT penetration.

Keywords: forecast, ICT, industrial structural changes, statistical analysis

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Authors: Abubakar O. Sulaiman

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Agriculture was the main stay of Nigeria’s economy before the oil boom of the 1970s caused a gradual but steady shift from agriculture to crude oil as the major source of revenue and foreign exchange. The economy later experienced many symptoms of the 'Dutch disease', with exchange rate appreciation and erosion of competitiveness of the non-oil tradable goods. In order to reverse the worsening economic situations -high unemployment, galloping inflation, deteriorating balance of payment, declining economic growth, and fiscal deficits among others- the government, embarked on austerity measures in 1982 and Structure Adjustment Programme (SAP) in 1986. One of the cornerstones of SAP is the diversification of the economy from oil to non-oil. In the form of stocktaking, this paper investigates the impact of non-oil revenue on economic growth in Nigeria using quarterly time-series data from 1980 to 2019. The findings revealed that a long-run relationship exists between the variables (non-oil variables) and economic growth in Nigeria. Among the variables, (agriculture revenue, manufacturing revenue, revenue from services, and company income tax) contributed substantially to economic growth. The paper recommends that the government should continue to intensify efforts and policies in the diversification of the economy as it will bring about sustainable non-oil revenue and economic growth.

Keywords: non-oil revenue, economic growth, export, long run relationship

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Authors: Yu-Tzu Hsu, Alice Wu, Hsiang-Kuang Tseng

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Introduction: Hepatitis A virus causes acute hepatitis and is usually transmitted by a fecal-oral route of food contamination, which is more prevalent in areas with poor hygienic practices. However, we described a hepatitis A outbreak associated with a fecal-oral route of sexual behavior in men who has sex with men (MSM) in Northern Taiwan. Methods: We retrospectively collected patients with acute HAV infection in MacKay Memorial Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan between July 2015 and November 2016. Demographic data (age, gender, onset time and infection risk), laboratory data (GOT, GPT, bilirubin, HIV status, HBsAg, HCV antibody and syphilis), clinical symptoms and travel history with a foreign tour were analyzed. We compared variables between HIV and non-HIV group. Unless otherwise stated, continuous variables were expressed as mean ± SD, and categorical variables were expressed as number (percentage) for each item. The t test for continuous variables was applied for the comparison between two groups and chi-square for categorical variables were applied for measures of association. Results: We collected 80 cases during the study period. Among them, 54 (67.5%) cases were MSM and 43 (53.8%) cases were HIV positive. The average age was 32.6±7.59 years-old. The average value of initial liver function was 1324 IU/L for AST (GOT), 2100 IU/L for ALT (GPT), and 5.82 mg/dL for bilirubin. We found seven (8.6%) cases were in the status of HBV carrier, five (6.3%) cases were positive for HCV antibody, and 15 (18.6%) cases were co-infected with syphilis. With regards to associated symptoms, 32 (40%) had fever, 46 (57.5%) had nausea, 34 (42.5%) had abdominal discomfort and 46 (57.5%) had general malaise. To compare the non-HIV patients with HIV patients, HIV patients were more likely to be male (p=0.008), MSM (p=0.000), co-infected syphilis (p=0.000) and slowly improving liver function of transaminases (p=0.033, 0.027). Conclusion: The HAV outbreak in Northern Taiwan was mainly occurred in MSM population. Hereafter, our cohort data support a policy in Taiwan to provide one dose of free HAV vaccine shot in this population. Hopefully, the outbreak could be stop by the free vaccine policy and public education.

Keywords: acute hepatitis A, men who has sex with men, human immunodeficiency virus, vaccine

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Authors: Isaiah Ifeanyichukwu Agbo

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Human speech is capable of serving many purposes. Power and control are not always exercised overtly by linguistic acts, but maybe enacted and exercised in the myriad of taken-for-granted actions of everyday life. Domination, power control, discrimination and mind control exist in human speech and may lead to asymmetrical power relations. In discourse, there are persuasive and manipulative linguistic acts that serve to establish solidarity and identification with the 'we group' and polarize with the 'they group'. Political discourse is crafted to defend and promote the problematic narrative of outright controversial events in a nation’s history thereby sustaining domination, marginalization, manipulation, inequalities and injustices, often without the dominated and marginalized group being aware of them. They are designed and positioned to serve the political and social needs of the producers. Political crisis speeches in Nigeria, just like in other countries concentrate on positive self-image, de-legitimization of political opponents, reframing accusation to one’s advantage, redefining problematic terms and adopting reversal strategy. In most cases, the people are ignorant of the hidden ideological positions encoded in the text. Few researches have been conducted adopting the frameworks of critical discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics to investigate this situation in the political crisis speeches in Nigeria. In this paper, we focus attention on the analyses of the linguistic, semantic, and ideological elements in selected political crisis speeches in Nigeria to investigate if they create and sustain unequal power relations and manipulative tendencies from the perspectives of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). Critical Discourse Analysis unpacks both opaque and transparent structural relationships of power dominance, power relations and control as manifested in language. Critical discourse analysis emerged from a critical theory of language study which sees the use of language as a form of social practice where social relations are reproduced or contested and different interests are served. Systemic function linguistics relates the structure of texts to their function. Fairclough’s model of CDA and Halliday’s systemic functional approach to language study are adopted in this paper. This paper probes into language use that perpetuates inequalities. This study demystifies the hidden implicature of the selected political crisis speeches and reveals the existence of information that is not made explicit in what the political actors actually say. The analysis further reveals the ideological configurations present in the texts. These ideological standpoints are the basis for naturalizing implicit ideologies and hegemonic influence in the texts. The analyses of the texts further uncovered the linguistic and discursive strategies deployed by text producers to manipulate the unsuspecting members of the public both mentally and conceptually in order to enact, sustain and maintain unhealthy power relations at crisis times in the Nigerian political history.

Keywords: critical discourse analysis, language, political crisis, power relations, systemic functional linguistics

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Authors: Sepehr Moradi, Mehdi Asadi Rad

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The aim of this study is to evaluate and compare live weight of pure and mixed races Tizpar 30-day pigeons to investigate about their sex, race, and some auxiliary variables. In this paper, 70 pieces of pigeons as 35 male and female pairs with equal age are studied randomly. A natural incubation was done from each pair. All produced chickens were weighted at 30 days age before and after hunger by a scale with one gram precision. A covariance analysis was used since there were many auxiliary variables and unequal observations. SAS software was used for statistical analysis. Mean weight of live in pure race (Tizpar-Tizpar) with 12 records, 182.3±60.9 gr and mixed races of Tizpar-Kabood, Tizpar-Parvazy, Tizpar-Namebar, Kabood-Tizpar, Namebar-Tizpar, and Parvazy-Tizpar with 10, 10, 8, 6, 12, and 12 records were 114.3±71.6, 210.6±71.7, 353.2±86, 520.8±81.5, 288.3±65.6, and 382.6±70.4 gr, respectively. Effects of sex, race and some auxiliary variables were also significant in 1% level (P < 0.01). Difference live weight of 30-day of Tizpar-Tizpar race with Tizpar-Namebar and Parvazi-Tizpar mixed races was significant in 5% level (P < 0.05) and with Kabood-Tizpar mixed races was significant in 1% level (P < 0.01) but with Tizpar-Kabood, Nmaebar-Tizpar and Tizpar-Parvazy mixed races was not significant. The results showed that most and least weights of live belonged to Kabood-Tizpar and Tizpar-Kabood.

Keywords: squabs, Tizpar race, 30-day live weight, pigeons

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Authors: Tannistha Dasgupta

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This study explores the aspects of second language (L2) spoken fluency that are related to L2 linguistic knowledge and processing skill. It draws on Levelt’s ‘blueprint’ of the L2 speaker which discusses the cognitive issues underlying the act of speaking. However, L2 speaking assessments have largely neglected the underlying mechanism involved in language production; emphasis is given on the relationship between subjective ratings of L2 speech sample and objectively measured aspects of fluency. Hence, in this study, the relation between L2 linguistic knowledge and processing skill i.e. Cognitive Fluency (CF), and objectively measurable aspects of L2 spoken fluency i.e. Utterance Fluency (UF) is examined. The participants of the study are L2 learners of English, studying at high school level in Hyderabad, India. 50 participants with intermediate level of proficiency in English performed several lexical retrieval tasks and attention-shifting tasks to measure CF, and 8 oral tasks to measure UF. Each aspect of UF (speed, pause, and repair) were measured against the scores of CF to find out those aspects of UF which are reliable indicators of CF. Quantitative analysis of the data shows that among the three aspects of UF; speed is the best predictor of CF, and pause is weakly related to CF. The study suggests that including the speed aspect of UF could make L2 fluency assessment more reliable, valid, and objective. Thus, incorporating the assessment of psycholinguistic mechanisms into L2 spoken fluency testing, could result in fairer evaluation.

Keywords: attention-shifting, cognitive fluency, lexical retrieval, utterance fluency

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Authors: Nayyra Zeb, Fu Qiang, Sundas Rauf

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Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is often seen as a significant factor of economic development in developing countries like Pakistan. The aim of this article is to investigate the effect of FDI on Pakistan’s economic growth during 1972–2012. Besides FDI, three other variables such as trade openness, political instability and terrorist attacks are also used in this study. The least square method has been applied to check the effect of these variables on GDP of Pakistan. The results show that FDI has a positive significant effect on economic growth of Pakistan.

Keywords: FDI inflows, trade openness, political instability, terrorist attacks

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Authors: K. A. Adeleke

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Often in epidemiological research, introducing stratified Cox model can account for the existence of interactions of some inherent factors with some major/noticeable factors. This research work aimed at modelling correlated variables in infant mortality with the existence of some inherent factors affecting the infant survival function. An alternative semiparametric Stratified Cox model is proposed with a view to take care of multilevel factors that have interactions with others. This, however, was used as a tool to model infant mortality data from Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) with some multilevel factors (Tetanus, Polio, and Breastfeeding) having correlation with main factors (Sex, Size, and Mode of Delivery). Asymptotic properties of the estimators are also studied via simulation. The tested model via data showed good fit and performed differently depending on the levels of the interaction of the strata variable Z*. An evidence that the baseline hazard functions and regression coefficients are not the same from stratum to stratum provides a gain in information as against the usage of Cox model. Simulation result showed that the present method produced better estimates in terms of bias, lower standard errors, and or mean square errors.

Keywords: stratified Cox, semiparametric model, infant mortality, multilevel factors, cofounding variables

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Authors: Muthana A. M. Jameel Al-Jaboori

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In this paper, we will present a mathematical model to design a system able to generate electricity from ocean-sea waves. We will use the basic principles of the transfer of the energy potential of waves in a chamber to force the air inside a vertical or inclined cylindrical column, which is topped by a wind turbine to rotate the electric generator. The present mathematical model included a high number of variables such as the wave, height, width, length, velocity, and frequency, as well as others for the energy cylindrical column, like varying diameters and heights, and the wave chamber shape diameter and height. While for the wells wind turbine the variables included the number of blades, length, width, and clearance, as well as the rotor and tip radius. Additionally, the turbine rotor and blades must be made from the light and strong material for a smooth blade surface. The variables were too vast and high in number. Then the program was run successfully within the MATLAB and presented very good modeling results.

Keywords: water wave, models, Wells turbine, MATLAB program

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Authors: Sadeq Al Yaari, Fayza Al Hammadi, Ayman Al Yaari, Adham Al Yaari, Montaha Al Yaari, Aayah Al Yaari, Sajedah Al Yaari, Salah Al Yami

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Background: When we further take Arabic grammatical issues into account in accordance with applied linguistic investigations on Arabic as Second Language (ASL) learners, a fundamental issue arises at this point as to the production of speech in Arabic: Oral grammatical errors committed by ASL learners. Aims: Using manual rating as well as computational analytic methodology to test a corpus of recorded speech by Second Language (ASL) learners of Arabic, this study aims to find the areas of difficulties in learning Arabic grammar. More specifically, it examines how and why ASL learners make grammatical errors in their oral speech. Methods: Tape recordings of four (4) Arabic as Second Language (ASL) learners who ranged in age from 23 to 30 were naturally collected. All participants have completed an intensive Arabic program (two years) and 20 minute-speech was recorded for each participant. Having the collected corpus, the next procedure was to rate them against Arabic standard grammar. The rating includes four processes: Description, analysis and assessment. Conclusions: Outcomes made from the issues addressed in this paper can be summarized in the fact that ASL learners face many grammatical difficulties when studying Arabic word order, tenses and aspects, function words, subject-verb agreement, verb form, active-passive voice, global and local errors, processes-based errors including addition, omission, substitution or a combination of any of them.

Keywords: grammar, error, oral, Arabic, second language, learner, applied linguistics.

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Authors: Patricia Silva, Iolanda Costa Galinha, Cristina Costa-Lobo

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The present research aims to evaluate, in the context of formal learning, the influence of affections, through subjective well-being, as well as the influence of personality, in the metacognition levels. There are few studies that analyze the influence of affection and personality on metacognition. The sample of this study consists of 300 Portuguese adolescents, male and female, aged between 15 and 17 years. The main variables of this study are affections, personality, ascertained through neuroticism and extraversion, and metacognition, namely the knowledge of cognition and the regulation of cognition. Initially, the sociodemographic questionnaire was constructed and administered to characterize the sample in its variables. To evaluate the affective experience in adolescents was administered PANAS-N, that is a measure of self-assessment of positive and negative affectivity in children and adolescents. To evaluate the personality, in its variables extroversion and neuroticism, the NEO-FFI was applied. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory, MAI, was used to assess knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. The data analysis was performed using the statistical software IBM SPSS 22.0. After analyzing and discussing the results, a set of theoretical interdisciplinary reflection, between the sciences of education and psychology, is concretized, contributing to the reflection on psychoeducational intervention, opening the way for future studies.

Keywords: affections, personality, metacognition, psychoeducational intervention

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Authors: Pedro A. Medina-Rios, Marly Yolie Quintana-Daza

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Having the opportunity to communicate in a social, academic and work context is very relevant for any individual and more for a deaf person when oral language is not their natural language, and written language is their second language. Currently, in Colombia, there is not a specialized dictionary for our best knowledge in sign language archiving. Archival is one of the areas that the deaf community has a greater chance of performing. Nourishing new signs in dictionaries for deaf people extends the possibility that they have the appropriate signs to communicate and improve their performance. The aim of this work was to illustrate the importance of designing pedagogical and technological strategies of knowledge management, for the academic inclusion of deaf people through proposals of lexicon in Colombian sign language (LSC) in the area of archival. As a method, the analytical study was used to identify relevant words in the technical area of the archival and its counterpart with the LSC, 30 deaf people, apprentices - students of the Servicio Nacional de Aprendizaje (SENA) in Documentary or Archival Management programs, were evaluated through direct interviews in LSC. For the analysis tools were maintained to evaluate correlation patterns and linguistic methods of visual, gestural analysis and corpus; besides, methods of linear regression were used. Among the results, significant data were found among the variables socioeconomic stratum, academic level, labor location. The need to generate new signals on the subject of the file to improve communication between the deaf person, listener and the sign language interpreter. It is concluded that the generation of new signs to nourish the LSC dictionary in archival subjects is necessary to improve the labor inclusion of deaf people in Colombia.

Keywords: archival, inclusion, deaf, thesaurus

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Authors: Enya Trenholm-Jensen

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This paper employs various semiotic methodologies to examine the mechanism of soft power. Soft power refers to a country’s global reputation and their ability to leverage that reputation to achieve certain aims. South Korea has invested heavily in their soft power strategy for a multitude of predominantly historical and geopolitical reasons. On account of this investment and the global prominence of their strategy, South Korea was considered to be the optimal candidate for the aims of this investigation. Having isolated the entertainment industry as one of the most heavily funded segments of the South Korean soft power strategy, the analysis restricted itself to this sector. Within this industry, two entertainment products were selected as case studies. The case studies were chosen based on commercial success according to metrics such as streams, purchases, and subsequent revenue. This criterion was deemed to be the most objective and verifiable indicator of the products general appeal. The entertainment products which met the chosen criterion were Netflix’ “Squid Game” and BTS’ hit single “Butter”. The methodologies employed were chosen according to the medium of the entertainment products. For “Squid Game,” an aesthetic analysis was carried out to investigate how multi- layered meanings were mobilized in a show popularized by its visual grammar. To examine “Butter”, both music semiology and linguistic analysis were employed. The music section featured an analysis underpinned by denotative and connotative music semiotic theories borrowing from scholars Theo van Leeuwen and Martin Irvine. The linguistic analysis focused on stance and semantic fields according to scholarship by George Yule and John W. DuBois. The aesthetic analysis of the first case study revealed intertextual references to famous artworks, which served to augment the emotional provocation of the Squid Game narrative. For the second case study, the findings exposed a set of musical meaning units arranged in a patchwork of familiar and futuristic elements to achieve a song that existed on the boundary between old and new. The linguistic analysis of the song’s lyrics found a deceptively innocuous surface level meaning that bore implications for authority, intimacy, and commercial success. Whether through means of visual metaphor, embedded auditory associations, or linguistic subtext, the collective findings of the three analyses exhibited a desire to conjure a form of positive arousal in the spectator. In the synthesis section, this process is likened to that of branding. Through an exploration of branding, the entertainment products can be understood as cogs in a larger operation aiming to create positive associations to Korea as a country and a concept. Limitations in the form of a timeframe biased perspective are addressed, and directions for future research are suggested. This paper employs semiotic methodologies to examine two entertainment products as mechanisms of soft power. Through means of visual metaphor, embedded auditory associations, or linguistic subtext, the findings reveal a desire to conjure positive arousal in the spectator. The synthesis finds similarities to branding, thus positioning the entertainment products as cogs in a larger operation aiming to create positive associations to Korea as a country and a concept.

Keywords: BTS, cognitive semiotics, entertainment, soft power, south korea, squid game

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Authors: Umme Hani, Mohammed Rahmatulla, Mohammed Ghazwani, Ali Alqahtani, Yahya Alhamhoom

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Background and introduction: Neratinib is a potent anticancer drug used for the treatment of breast cancer. It is poorly soluble at higher pH, which tends to minimize the therapeutic effects in the lower gastrointestinal tract (GIT) leading to poor bioavailability. An attempt has been made to prepare and develop a gastro-retentive system of Neratinib to improve the drug bioavailability in the GIT by enhancing the gastric retention time. Materials and methods: In the present study a three-factor at two-level (23) factorial design based optimization was used to inspect the effects of three independent variables (factors) such as sodium alginate (A), sodium bicarbonate (B) and sodium citrate (C) on the dependent variables like in vitro gelation, in vitro floating, water uptake and percentage drug release. Results: All the formulations showed pH in the range 6.7 ±0.25 to 7.4 ±0.24, percentage drug content was observed to be 96.3±0.27 to 99.5 ±0.28%, in vitro gelation observed as gelation immediate remains for an extended period. Percentage of water uptake was in the range between 9.01±0.15 to 31.01±0.25%, floating lag time was estimated form 7±0.39 to 57±0.36 sec. F4 and F5 showed floating even after 12hrs. All formulations showed a release of around 90% drug release within 12hr. It was observed that the selected independent variables affect the dependent variables. Conclusion: The developed system may be a promising and alternative approach to augment gastric retention of drugs and enhances the therapeutic efficacy of the drug.

Keywords: neratinib, 2³ factorial design, sodium alginate, floating, in situ gelling system

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Authors: Paula A. Cruise, Carvell McLeary

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Employee turnover leads to lowered productivity, decreased morale and work quality, and psychological effects associated with employee separation and replacement. Yet, it remains unknown why talented employees willingly withdraw from organizations. This uncertainty is worsened as studies; a) priorities organizational over individual predictors resulting in restriction in range in turnover measurement; b) focus on actual rather than intended turnover thereby limiting conceptual understanding of the turnover construct and its relationship with other variables and; c) produce inconsistent findings across cultures, contexts and industries despite a clear need for a unified perspective. The current study addressed these gaps by adopting the theory of planned behavior (TPB) framework to examine socio-cognitive factors in organizational trust and individual turnover intentions among bankers and energy employees in Jamaica. In a comparative study of n=369 [n_bank= 264; male=57 (22.73%); n_energy =105; male =45 (42.86)], it was hypothesized that organizational trust was a predictor of employee turnover intention, and the effect of individual, group, cognitive and socio-affective variables varied across industry. Findings from structural equation modelling confirmed the hypothesis, with a model of both cognitive and socio-affective variables being a better fit [CMIN (χ²) = 800.067, df = 364, p ≤ .000; CFI = 0.950; RMSEA = 0.057 with 90% C.I. (0.052 - 0.062); PCLOSE = 0.016; PNFI = 0.818 in predicting turnover intention. The findings are discussed in relation to socio-cognitive components of trust models and predicting negative employee behaviors across cultures and industries.

Keywords: context-specific organizational trust, cross-cultural psychology, theory of planned behavior, employee turnover intention

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Authors: Amirmohsen Behjat, Aleck Ostry, Christina Miewald, Bernie Pauly

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Farmers’ Markets have become one of the important healthy food suppliers in both rural communities and urban settings. Farmers’ markets are evolving and their number has rapidly increased in the past decade. Despite this drastic increase, the distribution of the farmers’ markets is not even across different areas. The main goal of this study is to explore the socioeconomic, geographic, and demographic variables which affect the establishment of farmers’ market in rural communities in British Columbia (BC). Thus, the data on available farmers’ markets in rural areas were collected from BC Association of Farmers’ Markets and spatially joined to BC map at Dissemination Area (DA) level using ArcGIS software to link the farmers’ market to the respective communities that they serve. Then, in order to investigate this issue and understand which rural communities farmer’ markets tend to operate, a binary logistic regression analysis was performed with the availability of farmer’ markets at DA-level as dependent variable and Deprivation Index (DI), Metro Influence Zone (MIZ) and population as independent variables. The results indicated that DI and MIZ variables are not statistically significant whereas the population is the only which had a significant contribution in predicting the availability of farmers’ markets in rural BC. Moreover, this study found that farmers’ markets usually do not operate in rural food deserts where other healthy food providers such as supermarkets and grocery stores are non-existent. In conclusion, the presence of farmers markets is not associated with socioeconomic and geographic characteristics of rural communities in BC, but farmers’ markets tend to operate in more populated rural communities in BC.

Keywords: farmers’ markets, socioeconomic and demographic variables, metro influence zone, logistic regression, ArcGIS

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Authors: S. K. Ashiquer Rahman

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The proper policy handling might not able to attain the target since some of recessions, e.g., pandemic-led crises, the variables shocks of the economics. At the level of this situation, the Central bank implements the monetary policy to choose increase the exogenous expenditure and level of money supply consecutively for booster level economic growth, whether the monetary policy is relatively more effective than fiscal policy in altering real output growth of a country or both stand for relatively effective in the direction of output growth of a country. The dispute with reference to the relationship between the monetary policy and fiscal policy is centered on the inflationary penalty of the shortfall financing by the fiscal authority. The latest variables socks of economics as well as the pandemic-led crises, central banks around the world predicted just about a general dilemma in relation to increase rates to face the or decrease rates to sustain the economic movement. Whether the prices hang about fundamentally unaffected, the aggregate demand has also been hold a significantly negative attitude by the outbreak COVID-19 pandemic. To empirically investigate the effects of economics shocks associated COVID-19 pandemic, the paper considers the effectiveness of the monetary policy and fiscal policy that linked to the adjustment mechanism of different economic variables. To examine the effects of economics shock associated COVID-19 pandemic towards the effectiveness of Monetary Policy and Fiscal Policy in the direction of output growth of a Country, this paper uses the Simultaneous equations model under the estimation of Two-Stage Least Squares (2SLS) and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) Method.

Keywords: IS-LM framework, pandemic. Economics variables shocks, simultaneous equations model, output growth

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Authors: Na Young Kim

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This is a study on the relation between the introduction bill of the Whistle Blowing Act and the CPI (Corruption Perception Index) from 1998 to 2019. It shows that the degree of corruption can be relatively lowered when WBA is introduced, and the system is matured. And when WBA was introduced at the national level and matured, it was found that it could have a greater impact on corruption. Secondly, it shows that OECD countries may have relatively low levels of corruption. In addition to the two variables representing democracy, when additional control variables (GDP (economic power), population size, HDI (education level), etc.) are controlled under the same conditions, the degree of corruption in countries with high political rights can be low (it means clean), while those with high civil freedom can be serious (it means not clean).

Keywords: Whistle Blowing Act, anti-corruption, CPI, GDP

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Authors: Martina Katalin Szabó, Bernadett Lipóczi, Csenge Guba, István Uveges

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In this study, an exhaustive analysis was carried out about the historical development of negative emotive intensifiers in the Hungarian language via NLP methods. Intensifiers are linguistic elements which modify or reinforce a variable character in the lexical unit they apply to. Therefore, intensifiers appear with other lexical items, such as adverbs, adjectives, verbs, infrequently with nouns. Due to the complexity of this phenomenon (set of sociolinguistic, semantic, and historical aspects), there are many lexical items which can operate as intensifiers. The group of intensifiers are admittedly one of the most rapidly changing elements in the language. From a linguistic point of view, particularly interesting are a special group of intensifiers, the so-called negative emotive intensifiers, that, on their own, without context, have semantic content that can be associated with negative emotion, but in particular cases, they may function as intensifiers (e.g.borzasztóanjó ’awfully good’, which means ’excellent’). Despite their special semantic features, negative emotive intensifiers are scarcely examined in literature based on large Historical corpora via NLP methods. In order to become better acquainted with trends over time concerning the intensifiers, The exhaustively analysed a specific historical corpus, namely the Magyar TörténetiSzövegtár (Hungarian Historical Corpus). This corpus (containing 3 millions text words) is a collection of texts of various genres and styles, produced between 1772 and 2010. Since the corpus consists of raw texts and does not contain any additional information about the language features of the data (such as stemming or morphological analysis), a large amount of manual work was required to process the data. Thus, based on a lexicon of negative emotive intensifiers compiled in a previous phase of the research, every occurrence of each intensifier was queried, and the results were stored in a separate data frame. Then, basic linguistic processing (POS-tagging, lemmatization etc.) was carried out automatically with the ‘magyarlanc’ NLP-toolkit. Finally, the frequency and collocation features of all the negative emotive words were automatically analyzed in the corpus. Outcomes of the research revealed in detail how these words have proceeded through grammaticalization over time, i.e., they change from lexical elements to grammatical ones, and they slowly go through a delexicalization process (their negative content diminishes over time). What is more, it was also pointed out which negative emotive intensifiers are at the same stage in this process in the same time period. Giving a closer look to the different domains of the analysed corpus, it also became certain that during this process, the pragmatic role’s importance increases: the newer use expresses the speaker's subjective, evaluative opinion at a certain level.

Keywords: historical corpus analysis, historical linguistics, negative emotive intensifiers, semantic changes over time

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Authors: Sunthorn Sittisakuljaroen

Abstract:

The edge waviness in hot rolled steel is a common defect. Variables that effect for such defect include as raw material and machine. These variables are necessary to consider. This research studied the defect of edge waviness for SS 400 of metal sheet manufacture. Defect of metal sheets divided into two groups. The specimens were investigated on chemical composition and mechanical properties to find the difference. The results of investigate showed that not different to a standard significantly. Therefore the roll milled machine for sample need to adjustable rollers for press on metal sheet which was more appropriate to adjustable at both ends.

Keywords: edge waviness, hot rolling steel, metal sheet defect, SS 400, roll leveller

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Authors: Jing Yuan, Hongwei Yang

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This paper aims to understand U.S. middle school students’ mathematics achievements by examining relevant student and school-level predictors. Through a variance component analysis, the study first identifies evidence supporting the use of multilevel modeling. Then, a multilevel analysis is performed under Bayesian statistical inference where prior information is incorporated into the modeling process. During the analysis, independent variables are entered sequentially in the order of theoretical importance to create a hierarchy of models. By evaluating each model using Bayesian fit indices, a best-fit and most parsimonious model is selected where Bayesian statistical inference is performed for the purpose of result interpretation and discussion. The primary dataset for Bayesian modeling is derived from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2012 with a secondary PISA dataset from 2003 analyzed under the traditional ordinary least squares method to provide the information needed to specify informative priors for a subset of the model parameters. The dependent variable is a composite measure of mathematics literacy, calculated from an exploratory factor analysis of all five PISA 2012 mathematics achievement plausible values for which multiple evidences are found supporting data unidimensionality. The independent variables include demographics variables and content-specific variables: mathematics efficacy, teacher-student ratio, proportion of girls in the school, etc. Finally, the entire analysis is performed using the MCMCpack and MCMCglmm packages in R.

Keywords: Bayesian multilevel modeling, mathematics education, PISA, multilevel

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Authors: Hamid Reza Nikkhah, Abbas Toloei Eshlaghi, Hossein Ali Momeni

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One of the most important services of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) is collaboration service which plays a decisive role in organization efficiency. Cloud computing as one of the latest IT technologies has brought a new paradigm in delivering services and communications. In this research, we evaluate the impact of cloud computing on the collaboration service of KMS and for doing so, four variables of cloud computing and three variables of the collaboration service were detected to be assessed.It was found that cloud computing has a far-fetching direct impact on the collaboration service.

Keywords: cloud computing, collaboration service, knowledge management systems, cloud computing

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Authors: Jeffrey Tzu-Hao Tsai, Yi-Shan Wong

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This article proposes a cohort-age-period (CAP) model to characterize multi-population mortality processes using cohort, age, and period variables. Distinct from the factor-based Lee-Carter-type decomposition mortality model, this approach is empirically based and includes the age, period, and cohort variables into the equation system. The model not only provides a fruitful intuition for explaining multivariate mortality change rates but also has a better performance in forecasting future patterns. Using the US and the UK mortality data and performing ten-year out-of-sample tests, our approach shows smaller mean square errors in both countries compared to the models in the literature.

Keywords: longevity risk, stochastic mortality model, multivariate mortality rate, risk management

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Authors: Mahnaz Hosseinzadeh, Aliyeh Kazemi

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In this paper, a method is proposed for solving Fuzzy Multi-Objective Linear Programming problems (FMOLPP) with fuzzy right hand side and fuzzy decision variables. To illustrate the proposed method, it is applied to the problem of selecting suppliers for an automotive parts producer company in Iran in order to find the number of optimal orders allocated to each supplier considering the conflicting objectives. Finally, the obtained results are discussed.

Keywords: fuzzy multi-objective linear programming problems, triangular fuzzy numbers, fuzzy ranking, supplier selection problem

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Authors: Prapaipan Phingchim

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The number of women approaching menopausal age in Thailand is increasing, making menopause an important health topic. In order to understand Thai women's different ways of interpreting menopausal experiences and the way they construct meaning relating to menopause, it is necessary to include the context in which meaning is constructed as well as the background of cultural attitudes to menopause existing in the Thai society. The aim of this study was to describe different discourses on menopause in Thailand that present themselves to menopausal women through the use of language and to analyze linguistic strategies used to represent such identity. This study adopts discourse theory and a close pragmatic analysis to examine the discursive construction of menopause for Thai women. Two hundreds and fifteen pieces of text under the heading or subject of `menopause' or `becoming a middle-aged woman', published from 2010 to 2019, were included. All material was addressed to Thai women, and consisted of booklets and informational material, articles from newspapers and magazines and popular science books. Five different discourses on menopause were identified: the biomedical discourse; the health-promotion discourse; the consumer discourse; the alternative discourse; and the feminist/ critical discourse. The biomedical discourse on menopause was found to be dominant, but was expanded or challenged by other discourses by offering different scopes of action and/or resting on different fundamental values. The discourses constructed and positioned individual women differently; thus, the women's position varied noticeably from one discourse to another. There are seven major linguistic strategies used to construct those identities. That is, lexical selection, presupposition manipulation, presupposition denial, the use of implication, the use of passive construction, using the cause and effect sentence structure, and rhetoric questions.

Keywords: discourse analysis, discursive construction, menopause, Thai women

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Authors: Sabiu Bala Muhammad, Rosli Saad

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Multiple linear regression (MLR) models for fast estimation of true subsurface resistivity from apparent resistivity field measurements are developed and assessed in this study. The parameters investigated were apparent resistivity (ρₐ), horizontal location (X) and depth (Z) of measurement as the independent variables; and true resistivity (ρₜ) as the dependent variable. To achieve linearity in both resistivity variables, datasets were first transformed into logarithmic domain following diagnostic checks of normality of the dependent variable and heteroscedasticity to ensure accurate models. Four MLR models were developed based on hierarchical combination of the independent variables. The generated MLR coefficients were applied to another data set to estimate ρₜ values for validation. Contours of the estimated ρₜ values were plotted and compared to the observed data plots at the colour scale and blanking for visual assessment. The accuracy of the models was assessed using coefficient of determination (R²), standard error (SE) and weighted mean absolute percentage error (wMAPE). It is concluded that the MLR models can estimate ρₜ for with high level of accuracy.

Keywords: apparent resistivity, depth, horizontal location, multiple linear regression, true resistivity

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Authors: Iryna Biskub

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The interdisciplinary approach to modern linguistic studies is exemplified by the merge of various research methods, which sometimes causes complications related to the verification of the research results. This methodological confusion can be resolved by means of creating new techniques of linguistic analysis combining several scientific paradigms. Modern linguistics has developed really productive and efficient methods for the investigation of cognitive and communicative phenomena of which language is the central issue. In the field of discourse studies, one of the best examples of research methods is the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA can be viewed both as a method of investigation, as well as a critical multidisciplinary perspective. In CDA the position of the scholar is crucial from the point of view exemplifying his or her social and political convictions. The generally accepted approach to obtaining scientifically reliable results is to use a special well-defined scientific method for researching special types of language phenomena: cognitive methods applied to the exploration of cognitive aspects of language, whereas communicative methods are thought to be relevant only for the investigation of communicative nature of language. In the recent decades discourse as a sociocultural phenomenon has been the focus of careful linguistic research. The very concept of discourse represents an integral unity of cognitive and communicative aspects of human verbal activity. Since a human being is never able to discriminate between cognitive and communicative planes of discourse communication, it doesn’t make much sense to apply cognitive and communicative methods of research taken in isolation. It is possible to modify the classical CDA procedure by means of mapping human cognitive procedures onto the strategic communicative planning of discourse communication. The analysis of the electronic petition 'Block Donald J Trump from UK entry. The signatories believe Donald J Trump should be banned from UK entry' (584, 459 signatures) and the parliamentary debates on it has demonstrated the ability to map cognitive and communicative levels in the following way: the strategy of discourse modeling (communicative level) overlaps with the extraction of semantic macrostructures (cognitive level); the strategy of discourse management overlaps with the analysis of local meanings in discourse communication; the strategy of cognitive monitoring of the discourse overlaps with the formation of attitudes and ideologies at the cognitive level. Thus, the experimental data have shown that it is possible to develop a new complex methodology of discourse analysis, where cognition would meet communication, both metaphorically and literally. The same approach may appear to be productive for the creation of computational models of human-computer interaction, where the automatic generation of a particular type of a discourse could be based on the rules of strategic planning involving cognitive models of CDA.

Keywords: cognition, communication, discourse, strategy

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