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A rich fading biocultural diversity?A review of traditional herbal teas used by minorities in the Balkans
Get PDFEthnobotanical studies focusing on medicinal plant ingredients have always been conducted with the aim of protecting the local ecological knowledge (LEK) of these natural resources. In the globalized world, the rapid loss of biodiversity and cultural and linguistic homogenization have threatened the survival of the planet, together with leading us towards an extinction crisis. In this extreme situation, LEK is also facing serious challenges, especially that of minorities where the pressure is manifold. A number of studies have been carried out among minority groups in recent times, and scientists are attempting to devise solid policy recommendations to celebrate their LEK in future development programs. In this regard, the current review was planned to explore the diversity of LEK on herbal teas held by minority groups in the Balkans to mobilize policymakers to help foster cultural resilience in the region. We reviewed eleven different ethnobotanical studies conducted in the Balkan region, which recorded 162 plants used in herbal teas for medicinal and recreational purposes. The dominant botanical families, represented by a large number of taxa, were Lamiaceae, Rosaceae, and Asteraceae. The highest number of use reports was recorded for the Rosaceae family. Most of these herbal ingredients were used to treat digestive problems. Traditional ethnobotanical knowledge is highly vulnerable to change, and, therefore, cultural heritage should be reinforced through future educational programs. Considering the diversity of the gathered data on herbal teas, we argue that local wisdom on natural resources should be exploited in future conservation strategies. It is worth mentioning that the folk therapeutic uses of the quoted medicinal plants are very sensitive to change when exposed to scholarly or written knowledge, sometimes also osmotically mixing with that. The article is a useful compendium for medical plant scholars to tackle the issue of biodiversity loss and promote environmental and social sustainability in the region
Multifarious Trajectories in Plant-Based Ethnoveterinary Knowledge in Northern and Southern Eastern Europe
Get PDFOver the last century in the European context, animal production has been transformed by the dynamics of centralization and decentralization due to political and economic factors. These processes have influenced knowledge related to healing and ensuring the welfare of domestic animals. Therefore, our study aimed to document and compare current and past ethnoveterinary practices, and to identify trajectories in ethnoveterinary knowledge in study regions from both northern and southern Eastern Europe. In the summers of 2018 and 2019, we conducted 476 interviews, recording the use of 94 plant taxa, 67 of which were wild and 24 were cultivated. We documented 452 use reports, 24 of which were related to the improvement of the quality or quantity of meat and milk, while the other 428 involved ethnoveterinary practices for treating 10 domestic animal taxa. Cattle were the most mentioned target of ethnoveterinary treatments across all the study areas, representing about 70% of all use reports. Only four plant species were reported in five or more countries (Artemisia absinthium, Hypericum spp., Linum usitatissimum, Quercus robur). The four study regions located in Northern and Southern Eastern Europe did not present similar ethnoveterinary knowledge trajectories. Bukovinian mountain areas appeared to hold a living reservoir of ethnoveterinary knowledge, unlike the other regions. Setomaa (especially Estonian Setomaa) and Dzukija showed an erosion of ethnoveterinary knowledge with many uses reported in the past but no longer in use. The current richness of ethnoveterinary knowledge reported in Bukovina could have been developed and maintained through its peculiar geographical location in the Carpathian Mountains and fostered by the intrinsic relationship between the mountains and local pastoralists and by its unbroken continuity of management even during the Soviet era. Finally, our results show some patterns common to several countries and to the veterinary medicine promoted during the time of the Soviet Union. However, the Soviet Union and its centralized animal breeding system, resulted in a decline of ethnoveterinary knowledge as highly specialized veterinary doctors worked in almost every village. Future research should examine the complex networks of sources from where farmers derive their ethnoveterinary knowledge
Feed Forward Neural Network – Facial Expression Recognition Using 2D Image Texture
Get PDFFacial Expression Recognition (FER) is a very active field of study in a wide range of fields such as computer vision, human emotional analyses، pattern recognition and AI. FER has received extensive awareness because it can be employed in human computer interaction (HCI), human emotional analyses, interactive video, image indexing and retrieval. Human facial expression Recognition is one of the most powerful and difficult responsibilities of social communication. Face expressions are, in general terms, natural and direct methods of communicating emotions and intentions for human beings. GWT is applied as a preprocess stage. For the classification of face expressions, this study employs the well-known Feed Forward Propagating Algorithm to create and train a neural network
The Iraqi's Foreign Language Acquisition and Arabic as a Foreign Language
Get PDFAlthough decades have passed on language teaching techniques, foreign language teaching is still a subject that does not fall off the agenda and does not lose its originality. It is a fact that there are prejudices against foreign language learning among nation-state citizens or that they have no interest in learning a foreign language. The Iraqi state is in geography where dozens of nations live, and different languages are spoken, and although it is a nation-state, it does not have a mass of people who are closed to foreign language learning like the people of America, England or Turkey. Along with this fact, it is also true that there is a minimal audience that looks at foreign language learning with cultural prejudice. This article focuses on foreign language acquisition in Iraq, language acquisition of children and adults, and the position of Arabic as a foreign language
Early Childhood Dental Caries and Protective Strategies
Get PDFDental caries is the most common health problem of childhood caused by the bacteria, especially streptococcus mutant and sugary diet. So we should educate parents and caregivers about the causes of dental carries and how to protect their children from tooth decays. There are different causes of tooth caries such as the kind of nourishing food contents, oral hygiene, toothpaste contents, proper tooth brushing and daily tooth brushing. It is known that when the sugar containing food consumed in daily diet with the help of tooth decay bacteria as streptococcus the sugar is fermented and results in the formation of lactic acid. Finally, the pH of the environment decreases which will ends in the dental caries formation. The main idea of this review is to give a remarkable look at early childhood dental caries in terms daily nourishing, food contents, oral hygiene and its preventive ways with the help of parents and caregivers
Failure Control of an Electric Transmission Tower System under Strong Earthquakes
Get PDFThe aim of the project is to control the failure of the structural system of an electric transmission tower system during strong earthquakes. Optimization process is being applied by the support of both surrogate modeling and Hessian Matrix method using MATLAB codes. Latin Hypercube sampling method is dedicated to arrange twenty-five numerical models of the system in ABAQUS program. Five parameters are used in the optimization process which are the thickness of steel member of the transmission tower, the Modulus of Elasticity of the steel member, radius of the conductor steel wire, Modulus of Elasticity of the conductor steel wire, and the Peak ground acceleration of the earthquake. The first four parameters are controllable in the design but the last parameter is can’t be controlled because it is uncertain and it is related to the earthquake strength. The surrogate models for the maximum principal stress and maximum principal strain of the structural system are constructed. The coefficients of determination of both surrogate models were 97.02% and 92.06% respectively, which are considered excellent and reliable for representing and predicting the responses of the structural system. The results of the optimization all involved five parameters from the Hessian Matrix method for both surrogate models were very accurate and are optimum values through comparing the responses of them in the surrogate models with the numerical simulation results. The surrogate modeling and the Hessian Matrix method are great tools which can be utilized in the optimization of the design of the electric transmission tower system under strong earthquakes. Consequently, the failure of the structural system then can be easily controlled to a great extent in the design stage and after construction
Numerical Treatment of Allen’s Equation Using Semi Implicit Finite Difference Methods
Get PDFThis paper aims to propose the semi implicit finite difference method for discretizing Cahn-Allen equation. The stability and convergence analysis are proved. It is shown that the suggest scheme is stable for the usage of the Fourier-Von Neumann technique. The accuracy of the proposed method is first order in time and second order in space. A comparison between the numerical and the exact solutions is supported with two examples. Numerical results are shown that there is a good agreement between the approximate solution and exact solution
Arousing Students: Motivation in ESL Classrooms; Increasing and Enhancing Participation, Interaction and Production
Get PDFThe ESL classrooms plan an animated role to enhance the support for English as a second language in most of the areas of the world. The global village has dominated the context of newness and support for the use of English this is why the use of the language is increased. The need for increasing enhancement is high for the classrooms’ output in the context of production and interaction. This is why the participation rate needs to be more in the classes. The role of motivation is promising in this regard to cultivating support for more output from ESL classrooms. Motivation is an action tool that may lead to the growth of the learning process. It is a scheduled practice that may allow the learners to grow with time. Motivation is an important concern in this regard to enhance the tendency of learning. It is evaluated by Li (2020) that most of the students can learn better only because they are highly motivated while those students who are less motivated may drop the course. English is an easy language if the motivation might exist to learn it with continuity. In addition, both internal and external motivational factors are essential in this regard. Motivation has an animated role to enhance the concerns of motivation which may allow the boost to learning it not as a formality but with dedication and support (Htun, 2019). There is a dire need of applying smart tools and see the promising growth of varied instruments in this regard for the professional growth of individuals. English has justified itself to be an essential tool in moving ahead in the world. The analysis has evaluated the motivation role with the aid of relevant tools of qualitative investigation plan of methodology via secondary analysis support
The Effects of Metalinguistic Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) on Language Preparatory School Students` TOEFL Independent Writing Section Score
Get PDFVaried feedback strategies are prevalent to enhance learners` skills in an Academic Writing course. However, there has been an ongoing discussion on classifying one as the most efficient strategy. In this regard, this study investigated the impacts of metalinguistic feedback on the TOEFL IBT Independent Writing Section Score of language preparatory school students over 12 weeks using pre-test and post-test. Initially, 40 students were separated into two groups through simple random sampling method. Experimental group followed the regulations of metalinguistic feedback strategy, whereas control group students were exposed to direct feedback throughout the study. Each student wrote 6 essays to improve their writing skills. Additionally, their feedback type was arranged according to their groups. IBM SPSS 23. was employed to analyze quantitative data through independent and paired samples t test. It was measured that students in experimental group increased their success rate significantly by considering .000 p-value in independent and paired samples t test respectively. However, no significant improvement was noticed in control group. Likewise, the questionnaire and interview analysis confirmed that metalinguistic feedback was more effective than direct feedback. Findings of this study suggest that metalinguistic feedback strategy can increase students` motivation and enthusiasm so that the learners can boost their performance in Academic Writing courses
Teacher Motivation towards the Implementation of Bologna Process in Erbil-Kurdistan
Get PDFThe concept of Bologna Process has first been introduced in 2019 in Kurdistan. The lack of research about how the 4-year-old Bologna reform persists in a handful of universities implementing it in Kurdistan made it necessary to conduct the current research. Hence, this study aims to investigate teachers’ level of motivation towards the implementation of Bologna Process in Noble Technical Institute-Erbil (NTI) and examine whether there is any difference between the level of motivation of teachers who took Pedagogical Training Course and those who didn’t. It further unveils the factors that negatively affect teacher motivation towards the implementation of Bologna Process. To achieve the aims, a mixed methods approach has been adopted. To identify the teachers’ level of motivation, a survey questionnaire was distributed to the 50 teachers at Noble Technical Institute. Later, an unstructured interview was carried out as a qualitative research tool to investigate the factors that demotivate the teachers. The results show that teachers at NTI are not motivated to a good extent and there is a significant difference between the motivation level of the trained and untrained teachers. Trained teachers are way more motivated than the untrained ones. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that the factors that negatively affect teacher motivation towards Bologna Process implementation are; lack of training, technological and teaching materials are not well provided, the subjects taught do not ensure students’ employability, teachers’ fees, lack of promotion of teachers who perform better, fear of teachers for not having their contracts prolonged. The findings will benefit all the trustees, boards and faculty members in institutes and universities in Erbil that implement or aim to implement Bologna Process and want to have their teachers motivated