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 speaker

Learning the vocabulary of a language has great impact on acquiring that language. Many scholars in the field of language learning emphasize the importance of vocabulary as part of the learner's communicative competence, considering it the heart of language. One of the best methods of learning vocabulary is to focus on those words of high frequency. The present article is a corpus based approach to the study of vocabulary whereby the research data are analyzed quantitatively using the software program "AntWordprofiler". This program analyses new input research data in terms of already stored reliable corpora. The aim of this article is to find out whether the vocabularies used in the English textbook for Intermediate Schools in Iraq are con

Feature selection (FS) constitutes a series of processes used to decide which relevant features/attributes to include and which irrelevant features to exclude for predictive modeling. It is a crucial task that aids machine learning classifiers in reducing error rates, computation time, overfitting, and improving classification accuracy. It has demonstrated its efficacy in myriads of domains, ranging from its use for text classification (TC), text mining, and image recognition. While there are many traditional FS methods, recent research efforts have been devoted to applying metaheuristic algorithms as FS techniques for the TC task. However, there are few literature reviews concerning TC. Therefore, a comprehensive overview was systematicall

Solid dispersion (SD) formulation has attracted much attention due to its potential in enhancing dissolution performances of poorly soluble active pharmaceutical ingredients (API). Recently, a review on dissolution performances of SDs classifies the improvement into 3 categories, where 82 % of the studies showed improved bioavailability, 8 % showed reduced bioavailability and 10 % revealed similar bioavailability as compared to pure APIs. This indicates the inconsistent degrees of dissolution improvement of poorly soluble APIs in SD. Although a few factors related to the choice of carriers have been suggested to contribute to the dissolution improvement, however, the underlying factor determining the discrepancy in the degree of dissolution

Background: The longevity of any prosthesis depends on the materials from which it was fabricated, that is why, defects in the material properties may reduce the service life of prosthesis and necessitate its replacement. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of adding different concentrations of Polyamide-6 (Nylon-6) on the tear and tensile strength of A-2186 RTV silicone elastomer. Materials and Methods: 80 samples were fabricated by the addition of 0%, 1%, 3% and 5% by weight PA-6 micro-particles powder to A-2186 platinum RTV silicone elastomer. The study samples were divided into four (4) groups, each group containing 20 samples. One control group was prepared without PA-6 micro particles and three experimental groups were pr

Different cooking conditions were examined for aluminum content in food cooked while wrapped with aluminum foil. The influence of each anticipated factor (the acidity of the cooking medium, type of acids normally used in cuisines namely acetic and tartaric acids, various cooking temperatures, influence of the presence of sodium chloride salt, the effect of cooking oil, and the length of time of cooking) was studied thoroughly as a function of aluminum degraded out of the aluminum foils to the medium. The experimental samples were digested with nitric acid upon fulfillment of examining each factor separately before quantifying aluminum with the sensitive technique of atomic absorption spectroscopy. The outcomes of the study have shown that t