The present study on politeness is an attempt to examine (DIS)agreeing strategies utilized by EFL learners while chatting on the internet. Subjects of the study were forty male and thirty-three female Iranian natives whose internet relay chat (IRC) interactions, composed of 400 excerpts, were collected between December 2007 and September 2008. Data analysis was based on the general taxonomy of politeness strategies suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987) which is the baseline of many politeness studies today. The results indicate that IRC is a mode of communication whose characteristics are typically different from face-to-face and real-life conversational settings. Some common face threatening acts (FTAs) like ‘direct DISagreements’ are performed widely in chat channels. Furthermore, gender-oriented differences were found not to be statistically significant on the internet.

Different models of DISas ter resilience have been conducted to evaluate or promote resilience of cities prone to DISas ters. By considering resilience as a set of adaptive capacities, pre-event capacities influence resilience. Therefor providing a methodology and a set of indicators to measure the present conditions influencing DISas ter resilience within communities is the focal argument in assessment of resilience to natural hazards. As the resilience has different dimensions, one of the quantitative approaches to measure city DISas ter resilience is to cons truct a composite index. The composite index, which encompasses a set of resilience indicators, can help in resilience quantitative evaluation, comparison between geographic units in terms of resilience, and elucidate resilience spatial DIS tribution or assess resilience in a specific place in different periods of time. Tehran Metropolis, the capital of Iran, is located at the southern foot of Alborz Mountains, and surrounded by several fault lines. High vulnerability to DISas ters of Tehran Metropolis as well as the increasing population and the accumulation of resources in the capital highlight the importance of assessing the DISas ter resilience of this city in order to take appropriate measures to compensate for the shortcomings before the natural events occur. Based on the context represented here, the main objective of this s tudy is to cons truct a composite indicator for evaluating inherent community DISas ter resilience for Tehran metropolis. In this regard, a set of resilient indicators extracted from three evaluation models-Baseline Resilience Indicators for Communities (BRIC), Community Resilience Index (CRI) and Community DISas ter Resilience Index (CDRI)-were used to evaluate and cons truct a resilient composite index for Tehran metropolis. Taking into consideration indicators’ feasibility, operationability as well as data-accessibility, 34 of the 143 identified indicators from the three models were selected at the neighborhood level (for the 368 neighborhoods of the City). By using exploratory factor analysis, the inherent resilience dimensions are shown in five social, infras tructure, economic performance, community-neighborhood relations and community-participatory domains. The Kaiser– Meyer– Olkin (KMO) measure was 0. 785, indicating that the correlation between the data is suitable for factor analysis and the cumulative variance of 5 factors explain 71. 687 percent of the data variance. The spatial DIS tribution of composite DISas ter resilience and its dimensions in Tehran metropolis indicate that the wes tern and southwes tern neighborhoods of the city have the leas t inherent resilience. The northern and central neighborhoods are in a better position than the southern neighborhoods in terms of resilience. Among the resilience dimensions, the infras tructure dimension has had the mos t negative impact on the neighborhoods with an adverse resilience situation. To conclude, the quantitative DISas ter resilience evaluation provides a clear picture of the s tatus quo. Therefore, by assessing resilience in different geographic units, it is possible to compare and identify differences between areas, reduce shortcomings, and take advantage of opportunities. Besides, by measuring the resilience in different periods of time, one can unders tand any increase or decrease in resilience of a place and improve this quality before the events, especially in cities with high population density and prone to earthquakes like Tehran.

Aim: Investigating the relationship between land surface temperature and urban land uses can be used for urban management. However, one of the main problems in this field is the low spatial resolution of thermal images. This research aims to evaluate and select the best existing algorithm for achieving a high spatial resolution of thermal images to investigate and analyze changes in land surface temperature in Region 4 of Ahvaz. Material & method: For this purpose, the split window algorithm was used as one of the most common suitable algorithms to calculate land surface temperature, and SFIM and T sharp DISTrade algorithms in urban areas were applied to improve spatial resolution. Finding: Results show that the spatial resolution of the output image obtained by Split Window, T Sharp DISTrade, and SFIM algorithms is 30, 100, and 45 meters, respectively. The T Sharp DISTrade algorithm presented the output images with very good resolution so that different land uses could be separated according to their surface temperature. Split Window and SFIM algorithms did not provide acceptable results in land use evaluation. Also, the average land surface temperature values obtained from T Sharp DISTrade, Split Window algorithm, and SFIM are equal to 17.5, 23.5, and 28.25 degrees Celsius, respectively. This temperature difference of these algorithms is due to utilizing the fusion process. Conclusion: As a result, T Sharp DISTrade algorithm was more effective in improving the spatial resolution of thermal images. Innovation: Innovations of this research are: - simultaneous use of three mentioned algorithms for increasing spatial resolution of thermal images and DIScovering the best algorithm in this field, which has not been investigated in previous research, - improving spatial resolution of thermal images for evaluating urban land uses by using T Sharp DISTrade algorithm, and detail investigation of surface temperature changes.

The present study, on the one hand, attempted to investigate the strategies applied in DISpreferred responses by Iranian university students of English and the extent to which pragmatic transfer could occur. On the other hand, the study aimed to probe into the association between DISpreferred organization and turn-shape. To this end, 31 relevant naturally occurring conversations, totaling 120 min drawn from approximately 9 hr of audio-taped conversations from 40 voluntary students, were recorded from which the refusal strategies and complexity of turns were elicited. The findings suggested that a sizable number of the learners delivered responsibility to other sources using accounts and DIScourse markers. As for preference organization, the results showed that solidarity was the dominant aspect among the learners. Moreover, the study compared 2 measures of L2 competence: oral interaction and a DIScourse completion test (DCT). The results showed that the 2 methods induced somewhat different production samples from the learners in terms of frequency, type of refusal strategies, and turn shapes. These variations suggest that production through DCTs cannot depict the complexity of natural conversations in which the speakers find themselves free to control the conversation. Finally, it is important to consider cultural differences in language usage by emphasizing the significance of a curriculum that utilizes the act of refusal within its cultural contexts.