Task

The present study investigates the impact of English metaphorical awareness on the vocabulary retention by 60 intermediate EFL learners in Iran. Participants in this study were all English as a Foreign language (EFL) learners placed in the intermediate level of both genders ranging from 16 to 20 years of age at Qeshm language institute, Kerman, Iran. An Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to homogenize the participants and divided them into two intact experimental and control groups. The experimental group was exposed to and performed on 20 minutes English metaphorical awareness tasks of Pictorial Idioms, Poems, and Matching in sixteen 90-minute sessions. The controllgroup received the vocabulary exercises in New Cutting Edge (3rd Edition) (Cunningham, Moor & Eales 2007) in turn The experimental group outperformed the controlgroup in this study. In an independent sample t-Test, and a high effect size (Cohn’s d=2.84) supported the positive impact of metaphorical awareness on...

Abstract: The paper is a molecular dynamics (MD) study of the structure of rarefied and densified lead-silicate glass of the PbSiO3 composition. Simulations have been performed in the constant volume regime for systems with densities of 3000, 4000, 5000, 5970 (normal density), ...

With the growing number of the elderly, we see a greater demand for home care, and the vision of pervasive computing is also floating into the domain of the household that aims to build a smart home which can assist inhabitants (users) to live more conveniently and harmoniously. Such health-care
pervasive applications in smart home should focus on the inhabitant’s goal or task in diverse situations, rather than the various complex devices and services. The core challenge for homecare design is to perceive the environment and assess occurring situations, thus allowing systems to behave intelligently according to the user’s intent. Due to the dynamic and heterogeneous nature of pervasive computing environment, it is difficult for an average user to obtain right information and service and in right place at right time. This paper proposes a context-driven task-oriented middleware (CDTOM) to meet the challenge. The most important component is its task model that provides an adequate high-level description of user-oriented tasks and their related contexts. Leveraging the model multiple entities can easily
exchange, share and reuse their knowledge. Based on the hierarchy of task ontology, a novel task recognition approach using CBR (case-based reasoning) is presented and the performance of task recognition is evaluated by task number, context size and time costing. Moreover, a dynamic mechanism
for mapping the recognized task and services is also discussed. Finally, we present the design and implementation of our task supporting system (TSS) to aid an inhabitant’s tasks in light of his lifestyle and environment conditions in pervasive homecare environment, and the results of the prototype system show
that our middleware approach achieves good efficiency of context management and good accuracy of user’s activity inference, and can improve efficiently quality of user’s life.