The present research aimed at spotting any possible biased coverage a typical Western newspaper such as The Economist gives to the issue of Iran's nuclear power program at large and specifically to the way in which the main actors involved in the controversy are portrayed and the actions thereof -most notably, the act of delegitimating Iran's nuclear program -are represented. To this end, a critical discourse analytic approach centered around Wodak's 'discursive strategies' and Van Leeuwen's representational resources was applied to 23 argumentative articles of The Economist, all dealing exclusively with Iran's nuclear contention. The results showed that the differential treatment the Western paper gave to the issue at hand, in terms of scope and complexity, was in line with the advocated policy of the aforementioned paper, that is imposing more sanctions on the country.

The current study investigated the ways in which two major U.S. political arena social actors, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, presented themselves to capture the audience's attention in the 2012 election campaign speeches. The data consisted of 30 speeches delivered by Obama as the representative of the Democratic Party and Romney as the Republican Party representative from 2011 to 2012. Through the resources of Critical Discourse Analysis (henceforth CDA), common strategies in the speeches, most notably positive self-representation, others' negative representation, legitimization, delegitimization, and persuasion which are commonly used in political discourse to win voters' attention, were identified.The findings revealed that Obama frequently focused on evoking the myth of the "American dream", whereas Romney mostly used the others' negative representation strategy. In conclusion, it seems that Obama was successful in implementing and conveying his message through rhetorical devices. However, Romney's excessive use of others' negative representation seemed to be unsuccessful in attaining his goals.

Water after sludge dewatering, also known as reject water from anaerobic digestion, is recycled back to the main wastewater treatment inlet in the wastewater treatment plant Porsgrunn, Norway, causing periodic process disturbance due to high ammonium of 568 (±76.7) mg/L and total chemical oxygen demand (tCOD) of 2825 (±526) mg/L. The main aim of this study was the simultaneous treatment of reject water ammonium and COD using two pilot-scale sequential moving bed biofilm reactors (MBBR) implemented in the main wastewater treatment stream. The two pilot MBBRs each had a working volume of 67.4 L. The biofilm carriers used had a protected surface area of 650 m2/m3 with a 60% filling ratio. The results indicate that the combined ammonia removal efficiency (ARE) in both reactors was 65.9%, while the nitrite accumulation rate (NAR) and nitrate production rate (NPR) were 80.2 and 19.8%, respectively. Over 28% of the reject water’s tCOD was removed in both reactors. The heterotrophic nitrification and oxygen tolerant aerobic denitrification were the key biological mechanisms found for the ammonium removal in both reactors. The dominant bacterial family in both reactors was Alcaligenaceae, capable of simultaneous heterotrophic nitrification and denitrification. Moreover, microbial families that were found with equal potential for application of simultaneous heterotrophic nitrification and aerobic denitrification including Cloacamonaceae, Alcaligenaceae, Comamonadaceae, Microbacteriaceae, and Anaerolinaceae.

Based on the expert observation that the teacher "supervisor's role is, in part, culturally defined" (Bailey, 2006, p.6), and the perceived gap that few supervisors receive formal training, in the current study, the researchers report on the views of Ministry of Education (MOE) teachers and supervisors in the Iranian context as to what constitutes the knowledge base of supervisors. Having conducted qualitative content analysis on the data gleaned from interviews with the teachers and supervisors and open-ended questionnaires, we came up with a framework of supervisory skill/knowledge domains-one encompassing public relations skills, subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and contextual sensitivity. The results show that teachers by and large, by voicing their discontent with current supervisory routines, opt for humanistic supervisory procedures. The study, hoping to be taken up with more supervisory knowledge base studies, ends with advice on building supervisory preparation courses into existing teacher development programs.

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