Videogames are currently one of the most widespread means of digital communication and entertainment; their releases are attracting considerable interest with growing number of audience and revenues each year. Videogames are examined by a variety of disciplines and fields. Nevertheless, scholarly attention concerned with the discourse of videogames from a linguistic perspective is relatively scarce, especially from a pragma-stylistic standpoint. This book addresses this vital issue by providing a pragma-stylistic analysis of the digital discourse of two well-known action videogames (First Person Shooter Games). It explores the role of the digital discourse of action videogames in maintaining real-like interactivity between the game and the

Background: The most crucial mechanism of genetic variation in N. meningitidis is the slipped strand mispairing, this mechanism generates Phase variation using simple sequence repeat (SSR) and is commonly used by the N. meningitidis to escape the immune system despite its function in eradicating the pathogenic and commensal bacteria. Some of simple sequence repeats (SSRs) that located within the genome works as phase variation while other SSRs have no role in generating phase variation mechanisms. Therefore, Aim: the main goal of the current in silico study was to detect the probability of SSR to enroll with phase variation for the entire N. meningitidis genome. Methods: Different criteria were used to judge SSR as

Background: Cystinosis is a rare autosomal recessive lysosomal storage disease with high morbidity and mortality. It is caused by mutations in the CTNS gene that encodes the cystine transporter, cystinosin, which leads to lysosomal cystine accumulation. It is the major cause of inherited Fanconi syndrome, and should be suspected in young children with failure to thrive and signs of renal proximal tubular damage. The diagnosis can be missed in infants, because not all signs of renal Fanconi syndrome are present during the first months of life. Elevated white blood cell cystine content is the cornerstone of the diagnosis. Since chitotriosidase (CHIT1 or chitinase-1) is mainly produced by activated macrophages both in normal and inflammator

A prey-predator interaction model has been suggested in which the population of a predator consists of a two-stage structure. Modified Holling's disk equation is used to describe the consumption of the prey so that it involves the additional source of food for the predator. The fear function is imposed on prey. It is supposed that the prey exhibits anti-predator behavior and may kill the adult predator due to their struggle against predation. The proposed model is investigated for existence, uniqueness, and boundedness. After determining all feasible equilibrium points, the local stability analyses are performed. In addition, global stability analyses for this model using the Lyapunov method are investigated. The chance of occurrence of loc

The cathodic deposition of zinc from simulated chloride wastewater was used to characterize the mass transport properties of a flow-by fixed bed electrochemical reactor composed of vertical stack  of stainless steel nets, operated in batch-recycle mode. The electrochemical reactor employed potential value in such a way that the zinc reduction occurred under mass transport control. This potential was determined by hydrodynamic voltammetry using a borate/chloride solution as supporting electrolyte on stainless steel rotating disc electrode. The results indicate that mass transfer coefficient (K_m) increases with increasing of flow rate (Q) where .The electrochemical reactor proved to be efficient in removing zinc and was abl

In this study, the flexural performance of a new composite beam–slab system filled with concrete material was investigated, where this system was mainly prepared from lightweight cold-formed steel sections of a beam and a deck slab for carrying heavy floor loads as another concept of a conventional composite system with a lower cost impact. For this purpose, seven samples of a profile steel sheet–dry board deck slab (PSSDB/PDS) carried by a steel cold-formed C-purlins beam (CB) were prepared and named “composite CBPDS specimen”, which were tested under a static bending load. Specifically, the effects of the profile steel sheet (PSS) direction (parallel or perpendicular to the span of the specimen) using different C-purlins c