Search results for: Mohsen Mehdi Zadeh

Authors: Gholamhassan Kakha, Mohsen Jami, Daniel Alex Merino Natorce

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Sustainable development refers to the creation of a balance between the development and the environment too; it consists of three key principles namely environment, society and economy. These three parameters are related to each other and the imbalance occurs in each will lead to the disparity of the other parts. Mining is one of the most important tools of the economic growth and social welfare in many countries. Meanwhile, assessment of the environmental impacts has directed to the attention of planners toward the natural environment of the areas surrounded by mines and allowing for monitoring and controlling of the current situation by the designers. In this look upon, a semi-quantitative model using a matrix method is presented for assessing the environmental impacts in the BOOG Granite Mine located in Sistan and Balouchestan, one of the provinces of Iran for determining the effective factors and environmental components. For accomplishing this purpose, the initial data are collected by the experts at the next stage; the effect of the factors affects each environmental component is determined by specifying the qualitative viewpoints. Based on the results, factors including air quality, ecology, human health and safety along with the environmental damages resulted from mining activities in that area. Finally, the results gained from the assessment of the environmental impact are used to evaluate the sustainability by using Philips mathematical model. The results show that the sustainability of this area is weak, so environmental preventive measures are recommended to reduce the environmental damages to its components.

Keywords: sustainable development, environmental impacts' assessment, BOOG granite, Philips mathematical model

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Authors: Mohsen Akhlaghi, Tahereh Ebrahimi

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Pricing strategy is a vital component in achieving the balance between customer value and business profitability. The aim of this study is to provide insights into the factors, techniques, and approaches involved in pricing decisions. The study utilizes a descriptive approach to discuss various aspects of pricing strategy in marketing, drawing on concepts from market research, consumer psychology, competitive analysis, and adaptability. This approach presents a comprehensive view of pricing decisions. The result of this exploration is a framework that highlights key factors influencing pricing decisions. The study examines how factors such as market positioning, product differentiation, and brand image shape pricing strategies. Additionally, it emphasizes the role of consumer psychology in understanding price elasticity, perceived value, and price-quality associations that influence consumer behavior. Various pricing techniques, including charm pricing, prestige pricing, and bundle pricing, are mentioned as methods to enhance sales by influencing consumer perceptions. The study also underscores the importance of adaptability in responding to market dynamics through regular price monitoring, dynamic pricing, and promotional strategies. It recognizes the role of digital platforms in enabling personalized pricing and dynamic pricing models. In conclusion, the study emphasizes that effective pricing strategies strike a balance between customer value and business profitability, ultimately driving sales, enhancing brand perception, and fostering lasting customer relationships.

Keywords: business, customer benefits, marketing, pricing

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Authors: Mohsen Azarmjoo, Yasaman Azarmjoo, Zahra Alikhani Koopaei

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The increasing global population and continued growth in energy consumption underscore the need for renewable and sustainable energy sources more than ever. Soil batteries are a method for generating electrical energy by using recycled materials. Recycled materials include galvanized and copper sheets and recycled tires. Additionally, hydrogen, being a clean and efficient fuel, has the potential to replace fossil fuels. Consequently, hydrogen production from water presents a sustainable solution for energy supply. By utilizing aged materials, hydrogen production becomes more cost-effective and environmentally friendly. This article focuses on energy-deprived agricultural lands, explaining how soil batteries and hydrogen can provide the necessary energy for agricultural equipment, such as irrigation, lighting, greenhouse ventilation, and heating. The article explores the benefits of utilizing this method, emphasizing its potential to reduce environmental pollution through the use of recyclable materials. It is worth mentioning that these technologies face challenges, but their progress toward achieving zero-energy consumer standards positions them as promising future technologies for electricity generation. This article provides detailed insights into emerging technologies using a constructed case study involving soil batteries and a hydrogen fuel production device.

Keywords: electricity generation, soil batteries, tires, hydrogen, heat supply, water, aged materials, recycling, agricultural lands

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Authors: Seyed Fakhreddin Hejazi, Leili Iranirad, Mohammad Sadeghi, Mohsen Talebizadeh

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Background: Contrast-induced nephropathy (CIN) remains to be a potentially serious complication of radiographic procedures. We performed this clinical trial to assess the preventive effect of allopurinol against CIN in high-risk patients undergoing coronary angiography. Methods: In this prospective randomized controlled trial, 140 patients with at least two risk factors for CIN undergoing coronary angiography were randomly assigned to either the allopurinol group or the control group. Patients in the allopurinol group received 300 mg allopurinol 24 hours before a procedure and intravenous hydration for 12 hours before and after coronary angiography, whereas patients in the control group received intravenous hydration. Serum creatinine (SCr), blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and uric acid were measured before contrast exposure and at 48 hours. CIN was defined as an increase of 25% in serum creatinine (SCr) or >0.5 mg/dl 48 hours after contrast administration. Results: CIN occurred in 11 out of 70 (7.9%) patients in the control group and in 8 out of 70 (5.7%) patients in the allopurinol group. There was no significant difference in the incidence of CIN between the two groups at 48 hours after administering the radiocontrast agent (p = 0.459). However, there were significant differences between the two groups in SCr, BUN, uric acid, and eGFR 48 hours after radiocontrast administration (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Our findings revealed that allopurinol had no substantial efficacy over hydration protocol in high-risk patients for the development of CIN.

Keywords: contrast-induced nephropathy, allopurinol, coronary angiography, contrast agent

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Authors: Mehdi Damaliamiri, Firouzeh Akbari

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Teaching literature to children at an early age is of great importance, and there have been different methods to facilitate learning literature. Based on the law, all children going to school in Iran should learn the Persian language and literature. This has been concomitant with two different levels of learning related to urban or rural bilingualism. For bilingual children living in the villages, learning literature and a new language (Persian) turns into a big challenge as it is done based on the translation the teacher does while in the city, it is easier as the confrontation of children with the Persian language is more. Over recent years, to change the trend of learning Persian by children speaking another language, the TV and radio programs have been considered to be effective, but the scores of the students in Persian language national exams show that these programs have not been so effective for the bilingual students living in the villages. To identify the determinants of weak learning of Persian by bilingual children, two different regions were chosen, Turkish-speaking and Kurdish-speaking communities, to compare their learning of Persian at the first and second levels of elementary school. The criteria of learning was based on the syllabification of Persian words, word order in the sentence, and compound sentences. Students were taught in Persian how to recognize syllabification without letting them translate the words in their own languages and were asked to produce simple sentences in Persian in response to situational questions. Teaching methods, language relatedness with Persian, and exposure to social media programs, especially TV and radio, were the factors that were considered to affect the potential of children in learning Persian.

Keywords: bilingualism, persian, education, Literature

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Authors: Elham Dehghan, A. Shirzadi Javid, Mohsen Tadayon

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Labor productivity is very important and gained special concerns among professionals in the construction industry, worldwide. Productivity improvements on labors achieve higher cost savings with minimal investment. Due to the fact that profit margins are small on construction projects, cost savings associated with productivity are crucial to become a successful contractor. This research program studies and highlights the factors affecting labor productivity in Iranian construction industry. A questionnaire was used to gather the relevant data from respondents who involve in managing various types of projects in wide areas in Iran. It involved ranking 57 predefined factors divided into 5 categories: Human/Labor; Financial; Management; Equipments/Materials and Environmental. Total 62 feedbacks were analyzed through the Relative Importance Index (RII) technique. The top ten factors affecting construction labor productivity in Iran are: 1) Professional capability of contractor project manager, 2) skills of contractor’s project management team, 3) professional capability of owner project manager, 4) professional capability of Consulting Project manager, 5) discipline working, 6) delay payments by the owner, 7) material shortages, 8) delays in delivery of materials, 9) turnover power of the owner, 10) poor site management. Recommendations have been made in the study to address these factors. The research has direct benefits to key stakeholders in Iranian construction industry.

Keywords: Iranian construction projects, labor, productivity, relative importance index

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Authors: Muhammad Akbar Hussain, Muhammad Mehdi Hussain, Waqar Haider

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There are tens of thousands of undetected and uncatalogued pieces of space debris in the Low Earth Orbit (LEO). They are not only difficult to be detected and tracked, their sheer number puts active satellites and humans in orbit around Earth into danger. With the entry of more governments and private companies into harnessing the Earth’s orbit for communication, research and military purposes, there is an ever-increasing need for not only the detection and cataloguing of these pieces of space debris, it is time to take measures to take them out and clean up the space around Earth. Current optical and radar-based Space Situational Awareness initiatives are useful mostly in detecting and cataloguing larger pieces of debris mainly for avoidance measures. Smaller than 10 cm pieces are in a relatively dark zone, yet these are deadly and capable of destroying satellites and human missions. A network of mobile observatories, connected to each other in real time and working in unison as a single instrument, may be able to detect small pieces of debris and achieve effective triangulation to help create a comprehensive database of their trajectories and parameters to the highest level of precision. This data may enable ground-based laser systems to help deorbit individual debris. Such a network of observatories can join current efforts in detection and removal of space debris in Earth’s orbit.

Keywords: space debris, low earth orbit, mobile observatories, triangulation, seamless operability

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Authors: El Mehdi Haily, Lahcen Bih, Mohammed Azrour, Bouchaib Manoun

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The effects of xBi₂O₃-yBaO-zP₂O₅ (BBP) glass addition on the sintering, structural, and dielectric properties of BaTiO₃ ceramic (BT) are studied. The BT ceramic was synthesized by the conventional solid-state reaction method while the glasses BaO-Bi₂O₃-P₂O₅ (BBP) were elaborated by melting and quenching process. Different composites BT-xBBP were formed by mixing the BBP glasses with BT ceramic. For each glass composition, where the ratio (x:y:z) is maintained constant, we have developed three composites with different glass weight percentage (x = 2.5, 5, and 7.5 wt %). Addition of the glass helps in better sintering at lower temperatures with the presence of liquid phase at the respective sintering temperatures. The results showed that the sintering temperature decreased from more than 1300°C to 900°C. Density measurements of the composites are performed using the standard Archimedean method with water as medium liquid. It is found that their density and molar volume decrease and increase with glass content, respectively. Raman spectroscopy is used to characterize their structural approach. This technique has allowed the identification of different structural units of phosphate and the characteristic vibration modes of the BT. The electrical properties of the composite samples are carried out by impedance spectroscopy in the frequency range of 10 Hz to 1 MHz under various temperatures from 300 to 473 K. The obtained results show that their dielectric properties depend both on the content of the glass in the composite and the Bi/P ratio in the glasses.

Keywords: phosphate, glasses, composite, Raman spectroscopy, dielectric properties

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Authors: Mohsen Yaghmor, Sima Radmanesh

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Rapid environmental changes have been threatening the life of many organizations. Enabling and productivity of human resource should be considered as the most important issue in order to increase performance and ensure survival of the organizations. In this research, the effectiveness of management factory in productivity and inability of human resource have been identified and reviewed at glance. Afterwards, answers were sought to questions "What are the factors effecting productivity and enabling of human resource?" and "What are the priority order based on effective management of human resource in Fars Poultry Complex?". A specified questionnaire has been designed regarding the priorities and effectiveness of the identified factors. Six factors were specified consisting of: individual characteristics, teaching, motivation, partnership management, authority or power submission and job development that have most effect on organization. Then a questionnaire was specified for priority and effect measurement of specified factors that were reached after collecting information and using statistical tests of Keronchbakh alpha coefficient r = 0.792, so that we can say the questionnaire has sufficient reliability. After information analysis of specified six factors by Friedman test their effects were categorized. Measurement on organization respectively consists of individual characteristics, job development or enrichment, authority submission, partnership management, teaching and motivation. Lastly, approaches has been introduced to increase productivity of manpower.

Keywords: productivity, empowerment, enrichment, authority submission, partnership management, teaching, motivation

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Authors: Alimohamad Asghari, Ahmad Daneshi, Mohammad Farhadi, Arash Bayat, Mohammad Ajalloueyan, Marjan Mirsalehi, Mohsen Rajati, Seyed Basir Hashemi, Nader Saki, Ali Omidvari

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Evidence suggests that Cochlear Implantation (CI) is a beneficial approach for auditory and speech skills improvement in children with severe to profound hearing loss. However, it remains controversial if implantation in children <12 months is safe and effective compared to older children. The present study aimed to determine whether children's ages affect surgical complications and auditory and speech development. The current multicenter study enrolled 86 children who underwent CI surgery at <12 months of age (group A) and 362 children who underwent implantation between 12 and 24 months of age (group B). The Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) and Speech Intelligibility Rating (SIR) scores were determined pre-impanation, and "one-year" and "two-year" post-implantation. Four complications (overall rate: 4.65%; three minor) occurred in group A and 12 complications (overall rate: 4.41%; nine minor) occurred in group B. We found no statistically significant difference in the complication rates between the groups (p>0.05). The mean SIR and CAP scores improved over time following CI activation in both groups. However, we did not find significant differences in CAP and SIR scores between the groups across different time points. Cochlear implantation is a safe and efficient procedure in children younger than 12 months, providing substantial auditory and speech benefits comparable to children undergoing implantation at 12 to 24 months of age. Furthermore, surgical complications in younger children are similar to those of children undergoing the CI at an older age.

Keywords: cochlear implant, Infant, complications, outcome

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Authors: Rezzouq Asiya, Bouftou Abderrahim, Belfadil Doha, Taoufyk Azzeddine, El Bouchti Mehdi, Zyade Souad, Cherkaoui Omar, Majid Sanaa

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Plastic packaging is widely used, but its pollution is a major environmental problem. Solutions require new sustainable technologies, environmental management, and the use of bio-based polymers as sustainable packaging. Cellulose acetate (CA) is a biobased polymer used in a variety of applications such as the manufacture of plastic films, textiles, and filters. However, it has limitations in terms of thermal stability and rigidity, which necessitates the addition of plasticizers to optimize its use in packaging. Plasticizers are molecules that increase the flexibility of polymers, but their influence on the chemical and physical properties of films (CA) has not been studied in detail. Some studies have focused on mechanical and thermal properties. However, an in-depth analysis is needed to understand the interactions between the additives and the polymer matrix. In this study, the aim is to examine the effect of two types of plasticizers, glycerol (a conventional plasticizer) and an ionic liquid, on the transparency, mechanical, thermal and barrier properties of cellulose acetate (CA) films prepared by the solution-casting method . Various analytical techniques were used to characterize these films, including infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), water vapor permeability (WVP), oxygen permeability, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), opacity, transmission analysis and mechanical tests.

Keywords: cellulose acetate, plasticizers, biopolymers, ionic liquid, glycerol.

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Authors: Mehdi Moayyedian, Kazem Abhary, Romeo Marian

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This paper presents an evaluation of a plastic defect in injection molding before it occurs in the process; it is known as the short shot defect. The evaluation of different parameters which affect the possibility of short shot defect is the aim of this paper. The analysis of short shot possibility is conducted via SolidWorks Plastics and Taguchi method to determine the most significant parameters. Finite Element Method (FEM) is employed to analyze two circular flat polypropylene plates of 1 mm thickness. Filling time, part cooling time, pressure holding time, melt temperature and gate type are chosen as process and geometric parameters, respectively. A methodology is presented herein to predict the possibility of the short-shot occurrence. The analysis determined melt temperature is the most influential parameter affecting the possibility of short shot defect with a contribution of 74.25%, and filling time with a contribution of 22%, followed by gate type with a contribution of 3.69%. It was also determined the optimum level of each parameter leading to a reduction in the possibility of short shot are gate type at level 1, filling time at level 3 and melt temperature at level 3. Finally, the most significant parameters affecting the possibility of short shot were determined to be melt temperature, filling time, and gate type.

Keywords: injection molding, plastic defects, short shot, Taguchi method

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Authors: Farzad Jalilian, Mehdi Mirzaei Alavijeh

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Background: E-interventions as a universal approach to prevent a high-risk behavior, such as alcohol drinking. This study was conducted to evaluate web-based alcohol drinking preventative intervention efficiency among medical university students in Iran. Methods: Overall, 150 freshman and sophomore male student’s college students participated in this study as intervention and control group. This was a longitudinal randomized pre- and post-test series control group design panel study to implement a behavior modification based intervention to alcohol drinking prevention among college students. Cross-tabulation, t-test, repeated measures, and GEE by using SPSS statistical package, version 21 was used for the statistical analysis. The participants were followed up for 6 months with data collection scheduled at baseline, 3 and 6 months. The primary outcomes are attitude, self-control, and sensation seeking. Furthermore, the secondary outcome is comparing alcohol drinking among the study groups. Results: It was found significant reduce in average response for an attitude towards alcohol drinking and sensation seeking among intervention group (P < 0.05). But after intervention not significant difference between intervention and control group of improve self-control and reduce alcohol drinking (P > 0.05). Conclusion: Our intervention has been accompanied with reducing alcohol use rate. These findings indicate that e-intervention may be effectiveness approach to address the alcohol prevention among college students.

Keywords: e-interventions, alcohol drinking, students, Iran

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Authors: Golayeh Yousefi, Mehdi Homaee, Ali Akbar Norouzi

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Ongoing monitoring of soil contamination by heavy metals is critical for ecosystem stability and environmental protection, and food security. The conventional methods of determining these soil contaminants are time-consuming and costly. Spectroscopy in the visible near-infrared (VNIR) - short wave infrared (SWIR) region is a rapid, non-destructive, noninvasive, and cost-effective method for assessment of soil heavy metals concentration by studying the spectral properties of soil constituents. The aim of this study is to derive spectral bands and important ranges that are sensitive to heavy metals and can be used to estimate the concentration of these soil contaminants. In other words, the change in the spectral properties of spectrally active constituents of soil can lead to the accurate identification and estimation of the concentration of these compounds in soil. For this purpose, 325 soil samples were collected, and their spectral reflectance curves were evaluated at a range of 350-2500 nm. After spectral preprocessing operations, the partial least-squares regression (PLSR) model was fitted on spectral data to predict the concentration of Cu and Ni. Based on the results, the spectral range of Cu- sensitive spectra were 480, 580-610, 1370, 1425, 1850, 1920, 2145, and 2200 nm, and Ni-sensitive ranges were 543, 655, 761, 1003, 1271, 1415, 1903, 2199 nm. Finally, the results of this study indicated that the spectral data contains a lot of information that can be applied to identify the soil properties, such as the concentration of heavy metals, with more detail.

Keywords: heavy metals, spectroscopy, spectral bands, PLS regression

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Authors: Sahabeh Safarpour, Khiruddin Abdullah, Hwee San Lim, Mohsen Dadras

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Air pollution is a growing problem arising from domestic heating, high density of vehicle traffic, electricity production, and expanding commercial and industrial activities, all increasing in parallel with urban population. Monitoring and forecasting of air quality parameters are important due to health impact. One widely available metric of aerosol abundance is the aerosol optical depth (AOD). The AOD is the integrated light extinction coefficient over a vertical atmospheric column of unit cross section, which represents the extent to which the aerosols in that vertical profile prevent the transmission of light by absorption or scattering. Seasonal aerosol optical depth (AOD) values at 550 nm derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor onboard NASA’s Terra satellites, for the 10 years period of 2000-2010 were used to test 7 different spatial interpolation methods in the present study. The accuracy of estimations was assessed through visual analysis as well as independent validation based on basic statistics, such as root mean square error (RMSE) and correlation coefficient. Based on the RMSE and R values of predictions made using measured values from 2000 to 2010, Radial Basis Functions (RBFs) yielded the best results for spring, summer, and winter and ordinary kriging yielded the best results for fall.

Keywords: aerosol optical depth, MODIS, spatial interpolation techniques, Radial Basis Functions

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Authors: Seyed Mehdi Hashemi, Gholamreza Raisali, Mehran Taheri

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One of the important problems of using high energy linacs at IMRT is the production of photoneutrons. Besides the clinically useful photon beams, high-energy photon beams from medical linacs produce secondary neutrons. These photoneutrons increase the patient dose and may cause secondary malignancies. The effect of the shield on the reduction of photoneutron dose equivalent produced by a high energy medical linac at the patient plane is investigated in this study. To determine the photoneutron dose equivalent received to the patient a Varian linac working at 18 MV photon mode investigated. Photoneutron dose equivalent measured with Polycarbonate films of 0.25 mm thick. PC films placed at distances of 0, 10, 20, and 50 cm from the center of X-ray field on the patient couch. The results show that by increasing the distance from the center of the X-ray beam towards the periphery, the photoneutron dose equivalent decreases rapidly for both open and shielded fields and that by inserting the shield in the path of the X-ray beam, the photoneutron dose equivalent was decreased obviously compared to open field. Results show the shield, significantly reduces photoneutron dose equivalent to the patient. Results can be readily generalized to other models of medical linacs. It may be concluded that using this kind of shield can help more safe, inexpensive and efficient employment of high energy linacs in radiotherapy and IMRT.

Keywords: photoneutron, Linac, PMMA shield, equivalent dose

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Authors: Mehdi Bakhtiarzadeh, Reza Efatnejad, Kambiz Rezapour Rezapour

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Due to the limited resources of fossil fuels and their harmful effects on the environment and human health, research on renewable energy applications in industrial and scientific communities has become particularly important. Only one percent of freshwater resources are available for use in the domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors. On the other hand, the rapid growth of industry and the increase of population in most countries of the world, including Iran, have led to an increase in demand for freshwater. Among renewable energies, there is the potential of solar energy in Iran. As a result, solar distillation systems can be used as a solution to supply fresh water in remote rural areas. Therefore, in the present study, a solar water desalination device was designed and manufactured using two heat exchangers and a photovoltaic system. Its evaluation was done during September and October of 2020. During the evaluation of the device, environmental variables such as total solar radiation, ambient temperature and cooling tower temperature were recorded at intervals of one hour from 9 am to 5 pm. The effect of these variables on solar concentrator performance, heat exchanger, and daily freshwater production was evaluated. The results showed that using two heat exchangers and a photovoltaic system has led to the daily production of 5 liters of fresh water and 46% economic efficiency.

Keywords: solar water desalination, heat exchanger, photovoltaic system, technical and economic evaluation

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Authors: Hamed Movahedizadeh, Annuar Md Nassir, Mehdi Karimimalayer, Navid Samimi Sedeh, Ehsan Bagherpour

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The aim of this paper is to evaluate Tehran’s Stock Exchange (TSE) performance regarding with impact of four macroeconomic factors including world crude Oil Price (OP), World Gold Price (GP), Consumer Price Index (CPI) and total Supplied Oil by Iran (SO) from January 2006 to December 2012 that Iran faced with economic and oil sanctions. Iran's exports of crude oil and lease condensate reduced to roughly 1.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) in 2012, compared to 2.5 million bbl/d in 2011 due to hard sanctions. Monthly data are collected and subjected to a battery of tests through ordinary least square by EViews7. This study found that gold price and oil price are positively correlated with stock returns while total oil supplied and consumer price index have negative relationship with stock index, however, consumer price index tends to become insignificant in stock index. While gold price and consumer price index have short run relationship with TSE index at 10% of significance level this amount for oil price is significant at 5% and there is no significant short run relationship between supplied oil and Tehran stock returns. Moreover, this study found that all macroeconomic factors have long-run relationship with Tehran Stock Exchange Index.

Keywords: consumer price index, gold price, macroeconomic, oil price, sanction, stock market, supplied oil

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Authors: Mohsen Yaghmoor, Sima Radmanesh

Abstract:

Rapid environmental changes have been threaten the life of many organizations .Enabling and productivity of human resource should be considered as the most important issue in order to increase performance and ensure survival of the organizations. In this research, the effectiveness of management factory in productivity & inability of human resource have been identified and reviewed at glance. Afterward there were two questions they are “what are the factors effecting productivity and enabling of human resource” . And ”what are the priority order based on effective management of human resource in Fars Poultry Complex". A specified questionnaire has been designed in order to priorities and effectiveness of the identified factors. Six factors specify to consist of: Individual characteristics, teaching, motivation, partnership management, authority or power submission and job development that have most effect on organization. Then specify a questionnaire for priority and effect measurement of specified factor that reach after collect information and using statistical tests of keronchbakh alpha coefficient r=0.792 that we can say the questionnaire has sufficient reliability. After information analysis of specified six factors by Friedman test categorize their effect. Measurement on organization respectively consists of individual characteristics, job development or enrichment, authority submission, partnership management, teaching and motivation. At last it has been indicated to approaches to increase making power full and productivity of manpower.

Keywords: productivity, empowerment, enrichment, authority submission, partnership management, teaching, motivation

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Authors: Mehdi Nasr-Esfahani, Leila Mohammad Bagheri, Ava Nasr-Esfahani

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Root and collar rot disease caused by Phytophthora capsici (Leonian) is one of the most serious diseases in pepper, Capsicum annuum L. In this study, a diverse collection of 37 commercial edible and ornamental pepper genotypes infected with P. capsici were investigated for biomass parameters and enzymatic activity of peroxidase or peroxide reductases (EC), superoxide dismutase (SOD), polyphenol oxidase (PPOs), catalase (CAT) and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL). Seven candidate DEG genes were also evaluated on resistant and susceptible pepper cultivars, through measuring product formation, using spectrophotometry and real-time polymerase chain reaction. All the five enzymes and seven defense-gene candidates were up-regulated in all inoculated pepper accessions to P. capsici. But, the enzymes and DEG genes were highly expressed in resistant cv. 19OrnP-PBI, 37ChillP-Paleo, and “23CherryP-Orsh". The expression level of enzymes were 1.5 to 5.6-fold higher in the resistant peppers, than the control non-inoculated genotypes. Also, the transcriptional levels of related candidate DEG genes were 3.16 to 5.90-fold higher in the resistant genotypes. There was a direct and high correlation coefficient between resistance, bio-mass parameters, enzymatic activity, and resistance gene expression. The related enzymes and candidate genes expressed herein will provide a basis for further gene cloning and functional verification studies, and also will aid in an understanding of the regulatory mechanism of pepper resistance to P. capsici.

Keywords: AP2/ERF, cDNA, enzymes, MIP gene, q-RTPCR, XLOC

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Authors: Razieh Karimian, Kim Burton, Mohammad Mehdi Naghizadeh, Maryam Karimian

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Introduction: Habitual upper body postures are associated with online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored whether adding an exercise routine to an ergonomic advice intervention improves these postures. Methods: In this randomized trial, 42 male adolescent students with a forward head posture were randomly divided into two equal groups, one allocated to ergonomic advice alone and the other to ergonomic advice plus an exercise routine. The angles of forward head, shoulder, and back postures were measured with a photogrammetric profile technique before and after the 8-week intervention period. Findings: During home quarantine, 76% of the students used their mobile phones, while 35% used a table-chair-computer for online learning. While significant reductions of the forward, shoulder, and back angles were found in both groups (P < 0.001), the effect was significantly greater in the exercise group (P < 0.001: forward head, shoulder, and back angles reduced by some 9, 6, and 5 degrees respectively, compared with 4 degrees in the forward head, and 2 degrees in the shoulder and back angles for ergonomic advice alone. Conclusion: The exercise routine produced a greater improvement in habitual upper body postures than ergonomic advice alone, a finding that may extend beyond online learning at home.

Keywords: randomized trial, online learning, adolescent, posture, exercise, ergonomic advice

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Authors: Mohsen Farhadloo, Majid Farhadloo

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Aspect-level opinion mining that aims at discovering aspects (aspect identification) and their corresponding ratings (sentiment identification) from customer reviews have increasingly attracted attention of researchers and practitioners as it provides valuable insights about products/services from customer's points of view. Instead of addressing aspect identification and sentiment identification in two separate steps, it is possible to simultaneously identify both aspects and sentiments. In recent years many graphical models based on Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) have been proposed to solve both aspect and sentiment identifications in a single step. Although LDA models have been effective tools for the statistical analysis of document collections, they also have shortcomings in addressing some unique characteristics of opinion mining. Our goal in this paper is to address one of the limitations of topic models to date; that is, they fail to directly model the associations among topics. Indeed in many text corpora, it is natural to expect that subsets of the latent topics have higher probabilities. We propose a probabilistic graphical model called focus-LDA, to better capture the associations among topics when applied to aspect-level opinion mining. Our experiments on real-life data sets demonstrate the improved effectiveness of the focus-LDA model in terms of the accuracy of the predictive distributions over held out documents. Furthermore, we demonstrate qualitatively that the focus-LDA topic model provides a natural way of visualizing and exploring unstructured collection of textual data.

Keywords: aspect-level opinion mining, document modeling, Latent Dirichlet Allocation, LDA, sentiment analysis

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Authors: Mohsen Maraoui

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In the aim of natural language processing applications improvement, such as information retrieval, machine translation, lexical disambiguation, we focus on statistical approach to semantic indexing for multilingual text documents based on conceptual network formalism. We propose to use this formalism as an indexing language to represent the descriptive concepts and their weighting. These concepts represent the content of the document. Our contribution is based on two steps. In the first step, we propose the extraction of index terms using the multilingual lexical resource Euro WordNet (EWN). In the second step, we pass from the representation of index terms to the representation of index concepts through conceptual network formalism. This network is generated using the EWN resource and pass by a classification step based on association rules model (in attempt to discover the non-taxonomic relations or contextual relations between the concepts of a document). These relations are latent relations buried in the text and carried by the semantic context of the co-occurrence of concepts in the document. Our proposed indexing approach can be applied to text documents in various languages because it is based on a linguistic method adapted to the language through a multilingual thesaurus. Next, we apply the same statistical process regardless of the language in order to extract the significant concepts and their associated weights. We prove that the proposed indexing approach provides encouraging results.

Keywords: concept extraction, conceptual network formalism, fuzzy association rules, multilingual thesaurus, semantic indexing

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Authors: Mehdi Mirzaei Alavijeh, Farzad Jalilian

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Background: Marijuana is the most widely used illicit drug worldwide, especially among adolescents and young adults, which can cause numerous complications. The aim of this study was to determine the pattern, motivation use, and factors related to marijuana use among Iranian youths based on the integrative model of behavioral prediction Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 174 youths marijuana user in Kermanshah County and Isfahan County, during summer 2014 which was selected with the convenience sampling for participation in this study. A self-reporting questionnaire was applied for collecting data. Data were analyzed by SPSS version 21 using bivariate correlations and linear regression statistical tests. Results: The mean marijuana use of respondents was 4.60 times at during week [95% CI: 4.06, 5.15]. Linear regression statistical showed, the structures of integrative model of behavioral prediction accounted for 36% of the variation in the outcome measure of the marijuana use at during week (R2 = 36% & P < 0.001); and among them attitude, marijuana refuse, and subjective norms were a stronger predictors. Conclusion: Comprehensive health education and prevention programs need to emphasize on cognitive factors that predict youth’s health-related behaviors. Based on our findings it seems, designing educational and behavioral intervention for reducing positive belief about marijuana, marijuana self-efficacy refuse promotion and reduce subjective norms encourage marijuana use has an effective potential to protect youths marijuana use.

Keywords: marijuana, youth, integrative model of behavioral prediction, Iran

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Authors: Mehdi Soltani Howyzeh, Neda Kardoni, Mani Mojadam

Abstract:

To evaluate the vigor of wheat seeds and stress of premature aging effects on germination percentage, root length and shoot length of five wheat cultivars that include Vynak, Karkheh, Chamran, Star and Kavir which underwent a period of zero, two, three, four days in terms of premature aging with 41 °C temperature and 100% relative humidity. Seed germination percentage, root length and shoot length in these conditions were measured. This experiment was conducted as a factorial completely randomized design with four replications in laboratory conditions. The results showed that each of aging treatments used in this experiment can be used to detect differences in vigor of wheat varieties. Wheat cultivars illustrated significant differences in germination percentage, root length and shoot length in terms of premature aging. The wheat cultivars; Astar and Vynak had maximum germination percentage and Karkheh, respectively Kavir and Chamran had lowest percentage of seed germination. Reactions of root and shoot length of wheat cultivars was also different. The results showed that the seeds with a stronger vigor affected less in premature aging condition and the difference between the percentage of seed germination under normal conditions and stress was significant and the seeds with the weaker vigor were more sensitive to the premature aging stress and the premature aging had more severe negative impact on seed vigor.

Keywords: wheat cultivars, seed vigor, premature aging effects, germination

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Authors: Mehdi Khakzand, Flora Fakourian

Abstract:

It has been seen in recent years that architects are using virtual modeling to help them visualize their projects. Research has indicated that virtual media, particularly virtual reality, enhances architects' comprehension of design and spatial perception. Creating a communal experience for active learning is an essential component of the design process in architecture pedagogy. It has been particularly challenging to replicate design principles as a critical teaching function, and this is a complex issue that demands comprehension. Nonetheless, the usage of simulation should be studied and limited as appropriate. In conjunction with extensive technology, 3D geometric illustration can bridge the gap between the real and virtual worlds. This research intends to deliver a pedagogical experience in the architecture basics course to improve the architectural design process utilizing virtual reality tools. This tool seeks to tackle current challenges in current ways of architectural illustration by offering building geometry illustration, building information (data from the building information model), and simulation results. These tools were tested over three days in a design workshop with 12 architectural students. This article provided an architectural VR-based course and explored its application in boosting students' active experiences. According to the research, this technology can improve students' cognitive skills from challenging simulations by boosting visual understanding.

Keywords: active experience, architecture pedagogy, virtual reality, spatial perception

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Authors: Pegah Farshadmanesh, Jamshid Mohammadi, Mehdi Modares

Abstract:

In nearly all earthquakes of the past century that resulted in moderate to significant damage, the occurrence of postearthquake fire ignition (PEFI) has imposed a serious hazard and caused severe damage, especially in urban areas. In order to reduce the loss of life and property caused by post-earthquake fires, there is a crucial need for predictive models to estimate the PEFI risk. The parameters affecting PEFI risk can be categorized as: 1) factors influencing fire ignition in normal (non-earthquake) condition, including floor area, building category, ignitability, type of appliance, and prevention devices, and 2) earthquake related factors contributing to the PEFI risk, including building vulnerability and earthquake characteristics such as intensity, peak ground acceleration, and peak ground velocity. State-of-the-art statistical PEFI risk models are solely based on limited available earthquake data, and therefore they cannot predict the PEFI risk for areas with insufficient earthquake records since such records are needed in estimating the PEFI model parameters. In this paper, the correlation between normal condition ignition risk, peak ground acceleration, and PEFI risk is examined in an effort to offer a means for predicting post-earthquake ignition events. An illustrative example is presented to demonstrate how such correlation can be employed in a seismic area to predict PEFI hazard.

Keywords: fire risk, post-earthquake fire ignition (PEFI), risk management, seismicity

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Authors: Noor Akhmazillah Fauzi, Mohammed Mehdi Farid, Filipa V. Silva

Abstract:

The aim of this paper is to investigate if different concentration of Manuka honey (as a model food) has a major influence on the inactivation of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (as the testing microorganism) after subjecting it to HPP. Honey samples with different sugar concentrations (20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 °Brix) were prepared aseptically using sterilized distilled water. No dilution of honey was made for the 80 °Brix sample. For the 0 °Brix sample (control), sterilized distilled water was used. Thermal treatment at 55 °C for 10 min (conventionally applied in honey pasteurisation in industry) was carried out for comparison purpose. S. cerevisiae cell numbers in honey samples were established before and after each HPP and thermal treatment. The number of surviving cells was determined after a proper dilution of the untreated and treated samples by the viable plate count method. S. cerevisiae cells, in different honey concentrations (0 to 80 °Brix), subjected to 600 MPa (at ambient temperature) showed an increasing resistance to inactivation with °Brix. A significant correlation (p < 0.05) between cell reduction and °Brix was found. Cell reduction in high pressure-treated samples varied linearly with °Brix (R2 > 0.9), confirming that the baroprotective effect of the food is due to sugar content. This study has practical implications in establishing efficient process design for commercial manufacturing of high sugar food products and on the potential use of HPP for such products.

Keywords: high pressure processing, honey, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, °Brix

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Authors: Mazyar Ahrari, Ramin Khajavi, Mehdi Kamali Dolatabadi, Tayebeh Toliyat, Abosaeed Rashidi

Abstract:

Fabric as the first and most common layer that is in permanent contact with human skin is a very good interface to provide coverage, as well as heat and cold insulation. Phase change materials (PCMs) are organic and inorganic compounds which have the capability of absorbing and releasing noticeable amounts of latent heat during phase transitions between solid and liquid phases at a low temperature range. PCMs come across phase changes (liquid-solid and solid-liquid transitions) during absorbing and releasing thermal heat; so, in order to use them for a long time, they should have been encapsulated in polymeric shells, so-called microcapsules. Microencapsulation and nanoencapsulation methods have been developed in order to reduce the reactivity of a PCM with outside environment, promoting the ease of handling, decreasing the diffusion and evaporation rates. Methods of incorporation of PCMs in textiles such as electrospinning and determining thermal properties had been summarized. Paraffin waxes catch a lot of attention due to their high thermal storage density, repeatability of phase change, thermal stability, small volume change during phase transition, chemical stability, non-toxicity, non-flammability, non-corrosive and low cost and they seem to play a key role in confronting with climate change and global warming. In this article, we aimed to review the researches concentrating on the characteristics of PCMs and new materials and methods of microencapsulation.

Keywords: thermoregulation, microencapsulation, phase change materials, thermal energy storage, nanoencapsulation

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Authors: Hamdi Amroun, Yacine Benziani, Mehdi Ammi

Abstract:

In this paper, we propose an approach of detecting the behavior of the viewers of a TV program in a non-controlled environment. The experiment we propose is based on the use of three types of connected objects (smartphone, smart watch, and a connected remote control). 23 participants were observed while watching their TV programs during three phases: before, during and after watching a TV program. Their behaviors were detected using an approach based on The Dempster Shafer Theory (DST) in two phases. The first phase is to approximate dynamically the mass functions using an approach based on the correlation coefficient. The second phase is to calculate the approximate mass functions. To approximate the mass functions, two approaches have been tested: the first approach was to divide each features data space into cells; each one has a specific probability distribution over the behaviors. The probability distributions were computed statistically (estimated by empirical distribution). The second approach was to predict the TV-viewing behaviors through the use of classifiers algorithms and add uncertainty to the prediction based on the uncertainty of the model. Results showed that mixing the fusion rule with the computation of the initial approximate mass functions using a classifier led to an overall of 96%, 95% and 96% success rate for the first, second and third TV-viewing phase respectively. The results were also compared to those found in the literature. This study aims to anticipate certain actions in order to maintain the attention of TV viewers towards the proposed TV programs with usual connected objects, taking into account the various uncertainties that can be generated.

Keywords: Iot, TV-viewing behaviors identification, automatic classification, unconstrained environment

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