The present study aims to show the importance of ESL reading ability in acquiring English as a second language. The study involves 92 college students (males and females) from the Department of English at Nizwa College of Applied Sciences, Sultanate of Oman. They represent two groups, the foundation year students and the first year English majors. A number of tests were used to measure students’ overall proficiency in English as well as their reading ability (i.e., the ability to contribute to the main idea of the text, scanning, skimming, to derive word meanings from context, to use a dictionary to find meanings, definitions, to identify prefixes, antonyms and synonyms). Students’ ability to read was correlated to their proficiency

This study aims to study argumentation in political debates by figuring out the logical fallacies employed in the debates of Clinton and Trump, the presidential nominees of the 2016 elections, and Biden and Trump, the leading contenders in the 2020 United States presidential election. The study attempts to answer the questions: (1) What relevance fallacies are adopted in the debate between Trump and Clinton? (2) What rhetorical devices are used to influence the audience and gain voters besides fallacies in the debates selected? The study analyses two texts from two arguments using Damer's (2009) taxonomy of relevance fallacy and rhetorical devices based on Perrine’s (1969) model of communication and interpersonal rhetoric to answe

The wake potential and wake phenomena for swift proton in an amorphous carbon target were studied by utilising various dielectric function formalisms, including the Drude dielectric function, the Drude–Lorentz dielectric function and quantum dielectric function. The Drude model results exhibited a damped oscillatory behaviour in the longitudinal direction behind the projectile; the pattern of these oscillations decreases exponentially in the transverse direction. In addition, the wake potential extends slightly ahead of the projectile which also depends on the proton coordinate and velocity. The effect of electron binding on the wake potential, characterised by the ratio to 0.1, has been studied alongside the Drude–Lorentz dielectric

Selexipag is an orally selective long-acting prostacyclin receptor agonist, which indicated for the treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension. It is practically insoluble in water ( class II, according to BCS). This work aims to prepare and optimized Selexipag nanosuspensions to achieve an enhancement in the in vitro dissolution rate. The solvent antisolvent precipitation method was used for the production of nanosuspension, and the effect of formulation parameters (stabilizer type, drug: stabilizer ratio, and use of co-stabilizer) and process parameter (stirring speed) on the particle size and polydispersity index were studied. SLPNS prepared with Soluplus® as amain stabilizer (F15) showed the smallest particle size 47nm wi

Loud noise can be extremely harmful to the auditory system as well as to human health. Noise pollution is primarily caused by traffic noise. The study's goal was to determine how various vehicle types and speeds affected the amount of noise generated by traffic. The two factors were investigated at seven different arterial streets throughout Kirkuk city to measure the noise levels. The measurements were performed during peak hours to compare the result with WHO standards for noise specification. Traffic volume and vehicle speed are shown to be the key elements that determine an increase in noise level. 

Flexible pavement design and analysis were carried out in the past with semi-experimental methods, using elastic characteristics of pavement layers. Due to the complex interferences between various layers and their time consumption, the traditional pavement analysis, and design methods were replaced with fast and powerful methods including the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the Discrete Element Method (DEM). FEM requires less computational power and is more appropriate for continuous environments. In this study, flexible pavement consisting of 5 layers (surface, binder, base, subbase, and subgrade) had been analyzed using FEM. The ABAQUS (6.14-2) software had been utilized to investigate the influence of the base layer depth on ver

Diabetic retinopathy is an eye disease in diabetic patients due to damage to the small blood vessels in the retina due to high and low blood sugar levels. Accurate detection and classification of Diabetic Retinopathy is an important task in computer-aided diagnosis, especially when planning for diabetic retinopathy surgery. Therefore, this study aims to design an automated model based on deep learning, which helps ophthalmologists detect and classify diabetic retinopathy severity through fundus images. In this work, a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) with transfer learning and fine tunes has been proposed by using pre-trained networks known as Residual Network-50 (ResNet-50). The overall framework of the proposed

The basic concept of diversity; where two or more inputs at the receiver are used to get uncorrelated signals. The aim of this paper is an attempt to compare some possible combinations of diversity reception and MLSE detection techniques. Various diversity combining techniques can be distinguished: Equal Gain Combining (EGC), Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC), Selection Combining and Selection Switching Combining (SS).The simulation results shows that the MRC give better performance than the other types of combining (about 1 dB compare with EGC and 2.5~3 dB compare with selection and selection switching combining).