Criticism is inherently impolite and a face-threatening act generally leading to conflicts among interlocutors. It is equally challenging for both native and non-native speakers, and needs pre-planning before performing it. The current research examines the production of non-institutional criticism by Iraqi EFL university learners and American native speakers. More specifically, it explores to what extent Iraqi EFL learners and American native speakers vary in (i) performing criticism, (ii) mitigating criticism, and (iii) their pragmatic choices according to the contextual variables of power and distance. To collect data, a discourse-completion task was used to elicit written data from 20 Iraqi EFL learners and 20 American native speakers. Findings revealed that though both groups regularly used all strategy types, Iraqi EFL learners criticized differently from American speakers. When expressing criticism, Iraqi learners tended to be indirect whereas American speakers tended to be direct. In mitigating their criticism, Iraqi learners were significantly different from American speakers in their use of internal and external modifiers. Furthermore, both groups substantially varied their pragmatic choices according to context. The differences in their pragmatic performance could be attributed to a number of interplaying factors such as EFL learners’ limited linguistic and pragmatic knowledge, the context of learning and L1 pragmatic transfer. Finally, a number of conclusions and pedagogical implications are presented.
Cryptosporidiosis is mainly cause a persistent diarrhea in immune compromised patients, BALB/c mice have been suppressed by dexamethasone, tissue Th1, Th2 and Th17 cytokines concentrations in the ileum were significantly diminished in both infected and immunosuppressed mice. Level of IFN-g, TNF-a, IL-12, IL-6, IL-17A was increased in level, IL-4 didn’t increases, in both ileal and spleen tissue. Levels of above cytokines were examined in spleen in order to follow the proliferation of CD4+ T-cell during C. parvum infection.
The liver is an important organ in the body that can be affected by many drugs and toxins. The hepatotoxins can cause oxidant stress that lead to activation of inflammatory cells and cause liver damage. Drug induced bile duct injuries are related to drug toxicity, multiple drugs have been known to cause the development of liver granulomas. Carbamazepine (CBZ) among other antiepileptic drugs is believed to cause hepatic injury. In this study we investigated the effect of (CBZ) 20mg/kg/day on female mice liver after 14 and 30 days of treatment. The histological findings showed that (CBZ) can cause histological alterations in the liver components such as bile duct proliferation, biliary hypertrophy, ductopenia, inflammatory cells infiltration
... Show MoreBackground: Preeclampsia (PE) is a major cause of maternal morbidity and mortality, complicating 3-14% of all pregnancies. Although the etiology remains unknown, placental hypoperfusion and diffuse endothelial cell injury are considered to be the central pathological process; many endocrinological changes have been linked to the etiology of preeclampsia including parathyroid hormone and calcium level. Objective: to compare serum parathyroid hormone and total serum calcium levels in mild and severe preeclampsia versus normal pregnancy. Patients and methods: Serum parathyroid hormone (PTH) level and total serum calcium level were measured in thirty normotensive pregnant women and thirty women with mild preeclampsia and thi
... Show MoreThe Electric Discharge (EDM) method is a novel thermoelectric manufacturing technique in which materials are removed by a controlled spark erosion process between two electrodes immersed in a dielectric medium. Because of the difficulties of EDM, determining the optimum cutting parameters to improve cutting performance is extremely tough. As a result, optimizing operating parameters is a critical processing step, particularly for non-traditional machining process like EDM. Adequate selection of processing parameters for the EDM process does not provide ideal conditions, due to the unpredictable processing time required for a given function. Models of Multiple Regression and Genetic Algorithm are considered as effective methods for determ
... Show MoreThe evolution of the Internet of things (IoT) led to connect billions of heterogeneous physical devices together to improve the quality of human life by collecting data from their environment. However, there is a need to store huge data in big storage and high computational capabilities. Cloud computing can be used to store big data. The data of IoT devices is transferred using two types of protocols: Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). This paper aims to make a high performance and more reliable system through efficient use of resources. Thus, load balancing in cloud computing is used to dynamically distribute the workload across nodes to avoid overloading any individual r
... Show MoreThere is a great risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and vascular thrombosis in patients with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD). These patients exhibit numerous abnormalities in coagulation, fibrinolytic, inhibitory protein abnormalities in multiple levels. The study aimed to assess hypercoagulable changes by measuring the levels of antithrombin, plasma fibrinogen and FXII activity in patients with ESRD, and to find their correlation with Hemoglobin (Hb) level, WBC count, reticulocyte percentage and platelet count. This study was conducted at Al-Hayat center, Al Karama Teaching Hospital on 50 ESRD patients aged < 60 years of both genders. In addition, 20 apparently healthy individuals were included as a control group. The mean Hb level, total
... Show MoreThe oncolytic viruses are promising form of cancer therapy which is based on the selectively killing of the cancer cells. This study was aimed to investigate the role of Newcastle disease virus (NDV) Iraqi strain AD2141 in apoptosis. Firstly, the virulence of AD2141 was detected in embryonated chicken eggs after 48hrs of infection. It was observed a hemorrhage in the skin of infected embryos that led to death. Then, the ability of this strain for regression cancer cell lines was examined. By using cytotoxicity test, it was found 128 HAU/ml of AD2141 had a potent inhibition against growth of RD and AMN3 after 72hrs of exposure time; the inhibition rate was 86.8% and 86.98% respectively. Moreover, the apoptotic activity of AD2141 was exami
... Show MoreRecent studies have revealed some conflicting results about the health effects of caffeine. These studies are inconsistent in terms of design and population and source of consumed caffeine. In the current study, we aimed to evaluate the possible health effects of dietary caffeine intake among overweight and obese individuals.
In this cross-sectional study, 488 apparently healthy individuals with overweight and obesity were participated. Dietary intake was assessed by a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and