fatemeh taghipour

Some soil properties are spatiotemporally variable. The proper handling of soil as a source of food, improving factor for climate changes and the environment, as well as for the production of fossil fuels, is definitely essential. The spatial and temporal variations of different parameters affect the formation of soil and its characteristics. The high expenses of soil sampling operation and the inaccessibility of some parts, make the use of indirect methods for the prediction of soil properties including texture unavoidable. It is essential to use and establish methods, which minimize the time and expenses of sampling and analysis for soil texture mapping. Geostatistics can suitably investigate and predict soil properties such as texture in a large scale, by reducing time and expenses. Investigating the spatial variability of soil texture under different land uses is helpful for the determination and stimulation of soil ecosystem properties subjected to the different climate and environmental variation. The spatial variability of soil texture is a function of physical parameters and land uses, and accordingly, using suitable techniques for investigating the spatial variability of soil texture is essential. For this purpose, the IPMs and ANNs consisting of Simple-Kriging, Co-Kiriging, IDW and MLPs were used to study the spatial variability of textural components of the eastern Mazandaran.

In the present research, the study of the spatial variability of soil texture affected by different land uses and elevation at inaccessible places, was done by kriging, co-kriging, inverse distance weights (IDW) and also artificial neural network (ANN). Compound soil samples (249) were randomly collected from the 0-15 depth. The precision of each method was determined using mean error (ME) and residual mean square error (RMSE). The data of each parameter were log converted and plotted using the method of normal box-cox and variograms. The comparison of means affected by different land uses including farming, orchard, forest, rangeland and uncultivated as well the elevation was conducted by Statistixs 9. The study area consisted of different elevations including -20-0, 0-100, 100-500, and > 500 m. The variograms were plotted by spherical, Gaussian, exponential and linear models, and the amounts of semiovariograms were calculated in the GS+ software, and the soil map was plotted by Arc GIS software.

The normalization of data, which indicates the distribution of soil texture, was done by the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. The coefficient of variation of silt particles, which is affected by soil, fertilization and drainage activities was less than 50% indicating the rate of variation is not high in the study area. Accordingly, the exponential model was selected as the best fitted one for the prediction of soil texture affected by the experimental treatments. Although the amounts of clay were not significantly affected by different land uses, the amounts of sand and silt were significantly different as the amount of sand was the highest by rangeland, forest, farming, uncultivated and orchard, respectively, and the highest amount of silt was related to the orchard, farming, forest, uncultivated and rangeland. Similar research has also indicated that the change of land use from forest to farming, increases sand and decreases silt, which is due to soil erosion. In addition to different land uses, elevation (-20 - > 500 m) also significantly affected soil texture. The highest rate of sand, was related to the -20-0 m elevation. The highest and the least rate of clay was resulted by the 100-500 and > 500 m elevations, respectively, which is due to the leaching and erosion of clay particles from the higher elevation, resulting in the higher rate of sand in higher elevations, and higher rate of clay in the less elevated areas. 

Conclusions:

 Among the most important objectives of the present research was to investigate the possibility of predicting soil texture with an acceptable accuracy by kriging, co-kriging, inverse distance weighting and artificial neural network. According to the results, ANNs was the most suitable method for predicting soil texture affected by different land uses and elevation. It is suggested to: 1) examine the tested methods in other places, 2) other artificial methods be also tested for predicting soil texture, 3) if possible, a regular sampling be done in such types of research areas, and 4) the prepared mapping be used as a base for investigating the spatial and temporal variability of soil texture.

One prominent criterion to achieve efficient learning and instruction in an educational setting is the appropriate material(s) specifically developed for that particular group of learners, particularly in an English for Occupational Purposes (EOP) context. This study aimed at developing new EOP materials for pre-service cabin crew in an aviation school. To do so, initially the researchers performed the evaluation of the current EOP textbook through a checklist and interviews with 20 English teachers who did not express much satisfaction about it. Consequently, having been convinced about the unsatisfactory results, the researchers developed new materials for this group of learners. The new materials was later implemented on 30 learners as the experimental group as opposed to another 30 as the control group being instructed by the current material. The findings demonstrated significant differences in the experimental group achievement of language proficiency at the end of the course compared to their language proficiency at the beginning of the course. Moreover, the results expressed significant differences between the achievement of control and experimental groups at the end of EOP courses, in favor of the experimental group. The newly developed EOP materials for flight attendants could be widely instructed in the airlines and aviation schools based on the obtained findings.

Since English for Specific Purposes (ESP) programs have been one significant component of university and vocational schools, being informed of academic and professional language needs of the learners seems incredibly vital. This study aimed at exploring the pre-service flight attendants’ English language needs from their own perspectives along with their teachers’ at an aviation school. In order to accomplish this purpose, the data was collected from two different sources, including a needs analysis questionnaire in addition to semi-structured interviews with 120 learners and 20 English teachers. Results of the data analysis revealed that both learners and teachers indicated Communicative skills, Speaking, and Listening skill among the first most important skills/sub-skills in learning English; furthermore, poor Speaking and Listening Comprehension skills were reported as the learners’ weaknesses by both groups of participants. The obtained data also declared that both groups considered Understanding and Making Conversations, as well as Writing for Practical Purposes among the most concentrated aspect of the main language skills. Additionally, there were not any significant differences between the importance of English skills among learners and teachers, indicating that they perceived English skills and sub-skills quite similarly. The findings could be a great bonus to material developers as well as teachers instructing to-be cabin crew members.

This study was conducted to identify different stocks of big marine catfish (Netuma thalassina) as the most dominant marine catfish species in Hormozgan waters using morphological features. 209 big catfish were caught in three different habitats of marine Catfish in Persian Gulf and Oman Sea including Bandar Abbas, Bandar Lengeh and Jask, and the left side and ventral profiler of all samples were photographed. A total of 12 landmarks on the lateral side and 11 landmarks on the ventral homolog were defined on pictures, and digitized by using software tpsDig. Body. Moreover 20 geometric distances between ten landmarks, 9 traditional morphometric features were analyzed using discriminant function analysis (DFA) in different areas. The results of CVA analysis in ventral view of head shape and lateral view according to Mhala Anubis intervals showed that Jask catfish population separated from other groups. Based on ventral view of head shape, the most displacement of landmark parts were related to the tip of the snout, length and width of the head in the Lengeh population which had a shorter head length, wider head and mouth rather than Bandar Abbas and Jask catfish population. The total mean of lateral view showed that the most displacement between landmark points were related to the tip of the operculum, the height of the body and caudal peduncle area. On the other words, Jask catfish population had a thinner body height and longer body length compared to other groups. The results of discriminant function analysis (DFA) classified in an average of 94.7% individuals in their original population. In conclusion, our results showed a high phenotypic variation in big catfish stocks in Iranian coasts of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea.

Mobility has attained a considerable significance as a topic in social theory and research in recent years. The so-called “mobility turn” or “new mobilities paradigm” (Sheller & Urry, 2006) is the clearest effort to bring together different types of movements into a single analysis, and to challenge tendency of social sciences to treat stability as normal and mobility as problematic. The main reason for paying attention to the issue of urban mobilities and residential preferences in the past few decades was its social, demographic, cultural and spatial consequences. On the other hand, intra-urban migration which is done mainly from the old valuable urban cores into the new and the middle areas, influences the socio-spatial structure of urban areas and increases the exhaustion of old textures of urban areas. Now the problem of old urban areas is a major issue in most cities. Many studies (Lee, 1966 Kahn, 2007 Baker, 2002, (Pourahmad et al, 2011 Sajjad and Dastjerdi, 2008 Tavallaei and Yari, 2011 Yosefi & Agajani, 2011) have been done about the causes of residential mobility and their mechanisms. One of the classic and most cited works on residential mobility is Rossi’s ‘Why Families Move’ (1965) which suggested the lifecycle changes of families as the primary reason of their movements. Like Rossi, Speare et al (1974) also emphasize the adjustment to dissatisfaction. According to their analysis, dissatisfaction ultimately results in moving behavior and is the direct result of changes in the needs of a household, changes in the social and physical amenities offered by a particular location, or a change in the standards used to evaluate these factors. Lee and others (2011) have concluded that a subjective assessment of neighborhood has a significant impact on the thought of movement, but has little effect on the real movement. Besides these factors, increasing social capital and cohesion in neighborhood will strengthen neighborhood stability by encouraging residents to prolong their residence time. In the theory of relative deprivation, it is claimed that migration is not accidental behavior, but is a response to elimination of poverty. In general, most research projects conducted on the residential mobility tend to focus on the demographic characteristics of the household. These studies sometimes reported inconsistent results. Quigley and Weinberg (1977) mentioned many of the inconsistencies that have arisen from definitional differences, differing analytical methods and non-parallel sampling procedures. Having said all that, the theoretical framework of this study is a combination of different models in which most of the variables have been selected from the theoretical literature. While not relying on any particular theoretical approach or model, the sociological approach has the main weigh in the selection of variables. This research was conducted in survey method, with the unit of analysis being the individual and the level of analysis being micro. The population of the study consisted of 20-year-and-older citizens of Khomeinishahr, a city located in 12th km north-west of Isfahan and currently divided into old and new tissues. According to statistics of the 2011 General Census, this city has a population of 61,240 individuals over 20 years old. Using Cochran formula, sample size was calculated to include 240 subjects. Satisfaction of residence, social capital, religiosity, a sense of relative deprivation, and the importance of privacy constitute our independent variables and tendency toward moving to a new area is the dependent variable. Also variables such as age, gender, education and variables related to characteristics of housing such as type of housing, construction period and area where it is located were considered as control variables. Face validity was used to assess validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient was used to assess reliability of the measurement scale. Discussion of Results & Results indicate that the overall tendency of residents to movement is low to moderate (46.7 out of 100) and the mean of the behavioral dimension is higher than both dimensions of feelings and behavior. In addition, about 65% of subjects responded to the question of relocation, definitely. The overall mean of all items indicate that satisfaction rate of the facilities is moderate. About overall residential satisfaction, most of the respondents have moderate satisfaction from district facilities (mean 51 out of 100). However, the rate of satisfaction with life is moderate to low and most of them think the region and the local space in which they live is a good place to live in (mean 41.6 out of 100). The amount of social capital in neighborhood is moderate to low (42.9 out of 100) Findings indicate that respondents give great importance to the privacy and solitude and prefer to live more conveniently, untouched by informal controls. When it comes to the feeling of deprivation, most respondents believed that the status of welfare, income, education and housing in their neighborhood is not much different from new neighborhoods. The results show that more than 80% of respondents endorse religiosity of their family. Among the socio-demographic variables, only gender is significantly related to the tendency toward moving. This is consistent with the findings of the Kin (1961) whereas age, education, household size, and the old housing is not in a significant relationship with tendency towards moving. Also, results indicate that there is not a significant relationship between different income groups and tendency toward moving. However, the findings suggest that there is a negative correlation between religious beliefs and the tendency toward moving. Hierarchical regression analyzes indicate that among all independent variables entered into the model (satisfaction, social capital, religiosity, importance of privacy, relative deprivation) with the control of socio-demographic variables, only three variables, namely, privacy, satisfaction, and social capital were able to stay in the model and explain 39% of the variance of the tendency toward moving to new neighborhoods. Also, it is observed that among the socio-demographic variables, only gender is significant however, this has very little impact on the increasing adjusted R square coefficient so it can be ignored. Logistic regression analysis partially confirmed the results of the hierarchical regression.