dr. m. meshkat

Cryptosporidium species belong to Apicomplexa phylum and are opportunistic protozoans that infect the gastrointestinal and respiratory systems of some animals and humans. This study was conducted to investigate the prevalence, detection, and identification of Cryptosporidium species by nested PCR and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) in calves in Shahroud town.  A total number of 256 calves was collected from fecal samples of pre-weaned calves (≤2 months) in Shahroud town, and positive samples were stained by Ziehl-Neelsen (ZN) staining method. Specific primers were used to investigate the Nested-PCR and sub-species were investigated by RFLP method. The microscopic results showed that 27 samples (10.54 %) of the samples were positive. The results for nested-PCR showed that out of samples, 92.59 % and 7.41 % of samples were positive for C. parvum and C. Andersoi, respectively. The results showed that 25 samples were affected by VSP enzyme in regions of 104 and 628 bp that belong C. parvum bovine, and genotype A gene sub-species. The samples were affected by Ssp I enzyme and the results showed bands in regions of 385 and 448 bp that show C. muris/C. andersoni sub-species. The results for dde enzyme showed bands in regions of 156, 186, and 224 bp that confirm C. muris sub-specie. The different species and sub-species were identified by different methods and can help to control of the cryptosporidiosis.

The present study was designed to find out the relationship between Iranian junior high-school learners’ attitudes towards CALL and academic self-regulation in learning English as a foreign language. Two hundred and thirteen junior high-school students participated in the study. The CALL Attitude Questionnaire and Academic Self-Regulated Learning survey were distributed among learners and the data were gathered from participants based on the information in the questionnaires. Correlation Coefficient procedure was used to answer the research question. The analysis of the results revealed that there is a significant and positive relationship between learners’ CALL attitudes and academic self-regulation (r=0.29, p<0.00). The findings showed that the more learners have positive attitudes towards CALL, they more they are likely to be selfregulated in language learning.

Emotional intelligence is defined as a construct involving the ability of an individual to monitor their own and others’ emotions, to discriminate among the positive and negative effects of emotion, and to use emotional information to guide their thinking and actions. This study was carried out to find the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and academic success and the association between emotional intelligence and major of study.  The scores obtained on EQ-i and the GPA of 187 students of physical education, chemistry, mathematics, English and medicine were correlated. Results show a coefficient of correlation of 0.161 which is significant at 0.05 level of significance. This indicates no significant relationship between EI and academic success. The result of a correlational analysis between assertiveness and academic success shows an r = 0.318 at 0.03 level of significance that is not a statistically significant association. The F value of 1.461 at the level of significance of 0.205 indicates that there is no significant difference between the different majors regarding their EI. Hence major has no relationship with the EI of students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether self-assessment as a metacognitive strategy has any obvious effect on improving grammatical knowledge of Iranian EFL students. To achieve the purpose, 60 male junior high school students with the age range of 13-16 participated in this study. A Nelson test was administered to homogenize the two groups regarding language proficiency and outliers were discarded. The researcher had one experimental and one control group. To determine students' level of grammatical knowledge a pre-test developed by Farhady (2000) was administered. The result showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups. After the pre-test the treatment began. The control group received no extra instruction and underwent traditional assessment. Whereas the experimental group went through the process of self-assessment whereby they checked their own activities and found their own strengths and weaknesses. Self-assessment was practiced for six sessions during three months. A session after the treatment was over; a post-test developed by Farhady (2000) was administered. The results were compared through an independent t-test. The value of t was 3.417 with a significance of .001 depicting a significant difference between the two groups in the study. The outcome showed that self-assessment had a positive effect on improving students' grammatical knowledge. The findings of this study will be an incentive for syllabus designers as well as teachers and students to allocate specific time to self-assessment. Teachers can use self-assessment along with other activities to improve grammatical knowledge.