The current study is concerned with investigating the difficulties that Iraqi EFL learners of English may face when translating English collective nouns. Such collective nouns as committee, government, , jury , Parliament , etc. are considered singular when the concept of the unity as a group is emphasized , but when the concept of the individuals or numbers is emphasized they are treated as plural. A sample of twenty undergraduate students have been selected randomly to translate certain English collective nouns in some selected political texts in order to find out the difficulties they might face in rendering them into Arabic. It is hypothesized that most of the testees have used the singular form rather than the plural ignoring the notion of meaning of these nouns. Theoretically speaking, the most important conclusions that the present paper has come up with are: Firstly, English collective nouns may co-occur in the singular with either a singular or a plural form of the verb; secondly, in terms of form, three types of collective nouns can be recognized : (a) invariable singular collectives, (b) invariable plural collectives, (c) variable ( singular and plural); thirdly, in terms of meaning there are two types of collective nouns , i.e. human and non- human collectives. Empirically speaking, the paper shows the following conclusions: English collective nouns are problematic and difficult to translate due to the disparity between form and meaning of both languages , the inadequate knowledge of the function of some structural clues in determining the emphasized idea (i.e., singular or plural), and formal equivalence and literal translation are used by most testees.
In this work, the copper metal was treated using Nd:YAG laser with energy 1Joul to enhance corrosion resistance and improve surface properties. The copper metal has many applications in industry as well as water, oil and gas pipes. The same conditions, (laser power density, scan speed, distance between paths, medium gas-air) were applied in the laser surface treatment, After laser treatment, the samples microstructures were investigated using optical microscope (OM) to examine micro structural changes due to laser irradiation. Specimen surfaces were investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), macro hardness, and corrosion test before and after laser treatment to
... Show MoreThe most universal and basic damages caused by an earthquakes are buildings damage and human casualties. A simplified method, the RADIUS 99 Tool is used to calculate seismic intensity (shaking) distribution, buildings damage, number of casualties and lifelines damage, due to assumed earthquake scenario. In this study, Al - Kadhmiya sector in Baghdad city was chosen for assessing seismic risk, for this purpose, this area was divided into mesh of 1*1 km2 cell size, and a scenario of (Manjil) earthquake (that struck Iran in 1990) was utilized with following earthquake magnitudes (5 and 7), with epicenter distance (3, 10 and 100 km), and depths (2 and 5 km). It was found that, the best soil types for constructions are those with medium and h
... Show MoreUltrasound has been used as a diagnostic modality for many intraocular diseases, due its safety, low cost, real time and wide availability. Unfortunately, ultrasound images suffer from speckle artifact that are tissue dependent. In this work, we will offer a method to reduce speckle noise and improve ultrasound image to raise the human diagnostic performance. This method combined undecimated wavelet transform with a wavelet coefficient mapping function: where UDWT used to eliminate the noise and a wavelet coefficient mapping function used to enhance the contrast of denoised images obtained from the first component. This methods can be used not only as a means for improving visual quality of medical images but also as a preprocessing
... Show MoreBackground: Polyetheretherketone (PEEK) is a promising implant material due to its superior biomechanical strength. However, due to its hydrophobic nature and lack of cellular adhesion properties, it has poor integration with bone tissue. Methods: A fractional CO2 laser was used with various parameters for surface texturing of PEEK substrate to enhance its surface properties. An optical microscope and field-emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM) were used to examine the surface morphology of untextured and laser-textured samples. Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) was performed to determine the effect of the laser on the microstructure of PEEK. Surface microroughness, atomic force microscopy (AFM), and wettability were invest
... Show MoreAlumina thin films have significant applications in the areas of optoelectronics, optics, electrical insulators, sensors and tribology. The novel aspect of this work is that the homogeneous alumina thin films were prepared in several stages to generate a plasma jet. In this paper, aluminium nanoparticles suspended in vinyl alcohol were prepared using exploding wire plasma. TEM analysis was used to determine the size and shape of particles in aluminium and vinyl alcohol suspensions; the TEM images showed that the particle size is 17.2 nm. Aluminium/poly vinyl alcohol (Al/PVA) thin films were prepared using this suspension on quartz substrate by plasma jet technique at room temperature with an argon gas flow rate of 1 L/min. The Al/PV
... Show MorePseudomonas aeruginosa, a ubiquitous environmental organism, is a difficult-to-treat opportunistic pathogen due to its broad-spectrum antibiotic resistance and its ability to form biofilms. In this study, we investigate the link between resistance to a clinically important antibiotic, imipenem, and biofilm formation. First, we observed that the laboratory strain P. aeruginosa PAO1 carrying a mutation in the oprD gene, which confers resistance to imipenem, showed a modest reduction in biofilm formation.We also observed an inverse relationship between imipenem resistance and biofilm formation for imipenem-resistant strains selected in vitro, as well as for clinical isolates.We identified two clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa from the sputum
... Show MoreAbstract
Stainless steel (AISI 304) has good electrical and thermal conductivities, good corrosion resistance at ambient temperature, apart from these it is cheap and abundantly available; but has good mechanical properties such as hardness. To improve the hardness and corrosion resistance of stainless steel its surface can be modified by developing nanocomposite coatings applied on its surface. The main objective of this paper is to study effect of electroco-deposition method on microhardness and corrosion resistance of stainless steel, and to analyze effect of nanoparticles (Al2O3, ZrO2 , and SiC) on properties of composite coatings. I
... Show More