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This study aims to examine the influence of brand awareness on brand equity with the mediating role of brand association and perceived quality.

This research is applied in terms of the objective and descriptive survey in terms of methodology because its objective is to describe the studied conditions or phenomena and also the relationship between research variables that have been conducted in the field method.

The results explained that 53% of respondents are female and 47% of respondents are male. Most respondents are between 30 and 40 years old, and the youngest respondents are less than 30 years old. Most respondents were specialists, and the 134 respondents were subspecialists. The results explained that the significance level of the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for research variables is less than 0.05 and has an abnormal distribution. The abnormality of the data in this study directed the authors to use PLS software to analyze the data.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that research is prepared to study the impact of these marketing parameters on dentists’ prescription behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a dynamic model for implementing performance-based budgeting (PBB) in Ministry of Health and Medical Education (MOHME) in Iran.

The insights from PBB, organizational theory and theory of system were integrated based on system dynamic approach. The primary data were gathered in a two-step process through in-depth interviews and focus groups. The data gathered from the interviews were analyzed using thematic analysis and were considered as a basis for modeling based on system dynamic. The dynamic model was verified in the MOHME of Iran based on the data gathered from the focus group.

An analytical implementation model was adopted for the PBB, including comprehensive variables at both external (country) and internal (organizational) levels and accordingly the relationships were established among these variables based on system dynamics (SD). In addition, verifying this model in the MOHME of Iran sets the stage for gaining a deeper understanding of what is required for successful implementation of PBB.

This paper introduces an efficient modeling methodology based on SD, which explains how soft methodology can be used in management science for designing an implementation model of PBB in healthcare sector of Iran.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into how engineering employees perceive the functional, ethical and political dimensions of the corporate brand and its meaning(s) for other stakeholders.

The paper explores brand meaning and brand attachment in the case of employees in an engineering consultancy firm operating within the defense and artillery systems sector. In-depth interviews with managers and consultants at a cross-section of organizational levels along with thematic and reflexive interpretation of qualitative data have been carried out.

Identity-based definitions of the brand, the definitions of a “strong engineering brand”, associations of the corporate brand with engineers’ personal brands, brand essence and integration and the meanings of a military brand have all been raised, explored and discussed from the engineer’s perspective.

This paper is among the first of its kind to pursue brand research in an engineering-intensive firm with military and defense brand associations. Future research is encouraged to add further detail and verification to the themes and findings of this paper.

The military context is enmeshed with high levels of sensitivity and difficult research access particularly upon brand-related academic research. This has led in part to very limited marketing and branding knowledge into this setting despite its significance.

Given that the engineering consulting sectors are among the top drivers of employment and knowledge advancement, and given that brand associations have considerable impacts on employees’ identification, self-awareness and emotional well-being, understanding the dynamism and complexities of employee-brand associations is inevitable in these settings.

The defense context has unique characteristics and has hitherto remained an under-researched context with respect to branding. This is despite that the defense sector deserves to be in the spotlight because professionals’ voices are rarely heard and acknowledged within the branding literature.

Almost all projects in the world are delayed, and sometimes even lead to the full bankruptcy of their beneficiaries. These delays can be calculated using techniques, but most importantly, there must be a fair and realistic division of delays between project beneficiaries. The most valid delay calculation techniques belong to the SCL Global Protocol, but they also have significant drawbacks, such as these: (1) They do not have the capability to prevent project delays (Delay Risk Management); (2) The protocol identifies and introduces any delays in activities with a ratio of one to one as a delay (Effective Delay); (3) It also does not offer the capability to share delays between stakeholders, which is a huge weakness. Floating in the base schedule activities is one of the cost control tools of projects, but it can hide project delays. In this paper, the researchers believe that the floating ownership belongs to the project and not belong to the stakeholders. This is the main tool for analyzing and sharing delays in this research.

The research methodology adopted included an extensive literature review, expert interviews, use of questionnaire and designing three innovative linked together models by researchers.

In this research, an integrated technique is introduced which has the following capabilities; delay risk control, result-based delay analysis and stakeholders delay sharing. This technique with an incursive and defensive approach implements claims management principles and calculates, respectively, non-attributable and attributable delays for each beneficiary.

This creativity led to the introduction of the Incursive and Defensive (In-De) technique; in the SCL protocol techniques, none of these capabilities exist.

Increasing heat transfer rate in spiral heat exchangers is possible by using conventional methods such as increasing number of fluid passes and counter flowing. In addition, newer ideas such as using pillows as baffles in the path of cold and hot fluids and using nanofluids can increase heat transfer rate. The purpose of this study is to simulate turbulent flow and heat transfer of two-phase water-silver nanofluid with 0-6 Vol.% nanoparticle concentration in a 180° path of spiral heat exchanger with elliptic pillows.

In this simulation, the finite volume method and two-phase mixture model are used. The walls are subjected to constant heat flux of q″ = 150,000 Wm⁻². The inlet fluid enters curves path of spiral heat exchanger with uniform temperature T_in = 300 K. After flowing past the pillows and traversing the curved route, the working fluid exchanges heat with hot walls and then exits from the section. In this study, the effect of radiation is disregarded because of low temperature range. Also, temperature jump and velocity slipping are disregarded. The effects of thermophoresis and turbulent diffusion on nanofluid heat transfer are disregarded. By using finite volume method and two-phase mixture model, simulations are performed.

The results show that the flow and heat transfer characteristics are dependent on the height of pillows, nanoparticle concentration and Reynolds number. Increasing Reynolds number, nanoparticle concentration and pillow height causes an increase in Nusselt number, pressure drop and pumping power.

Turbulent flow and heat transfer of two-phase water-silver nanofluid of 0-6 per cent volume fraction in a 180° path of spiral heat exchanger with elliptic pillows is simulated.

In the present study, laminar steady flow of nanofluid through a trapezoidal channel is studied by using of finite volume method. The main aim of this paper is to study the effect of changes in geometric parameters, including internal and external dimensions on the behavior of heat transfer and fluid flow. For each parameter, an optimum ratio will be presented.

The results showed that in a channel cell, changing any geometric parameter may affect the temperature and flow field, even though the volume of the channel is kept constant. For a relatively small hydraulic diameter, microchannels with different angles have a similar dimensionless heat flux, while channels with bigger dimensions show various values of dimensionless heat flux. By increasing the angles of trapezoidal microchannels, dimensionless heat flux per unit of volume increases. As a result, the maximum and minimum heat transfer rate occurs in a trapezoidal microchannel with 75° and 30 internal’s, respectively. In the study of dimensionless heat flux rate with hydraulic diameter variations, an optimum hydraulic diameter (Dh) was observed in which the heat transfer rate per unit volume attains maximum value.

This optimum state is predicted to happen at a side angle of 75° and hydraulic diameter of 290 µm. In addition, in trapezoidal microchannel with higher aspect ratio, dimensionless heat flux rate is lower. Changing side angles of the channels and pressure drop have the same effect on pressure drop. For a constant pressure drop, if changing the side angles causes an increase in the rectangular area of the channel cross-section and the effect of the sides are not felt by the fluid, then the dimensionless heat flux will increase. By increasing the internal aspect ratio (t_2/t_3), the amount of t_3 decreases, and consequently, the conduction resistance of the hot surface decreases.

The effects of geometry of the microchannel, including internal and external dimensions on the behavior of heat transfer and fluid flow for pressure ranges between 2 and 8 kPa.

Images taken from construction site interiors often suffer from low illumination and poor natural colors, which restrict their application for high-level site management purposes. The state-of-the-art low-light image enhancement method provides promising image enhancement results. However, they generally require a longer execution time to complete the enhancement. This study aims to develop a refined image enhancement approach to improve execution efficiency and performance accuracy.

To develop the refined illumination enhancement algorithm named enhanced illumination quality (EIQ), a quadratic expression was first added to the initial illumination map. Subsequently, an adjusted weight matrix was added to improve the smoothness of the illumination map. A coordinated descent optimization algorithm was then applied to minimize the processing time. Gamma correction was also applied to further enhance the illumination map. Finally, a frame comparing and averaging method was used to identify interior site progress.

The proposed refined approach took around 4.36–4.52 s to achieve the expected results while outperforming the current low-light image enhancement method. EIQ demonstrated a lower lightness-order error and provided higher object resolution in enhanced images. EIQ also has a higher structural similarity index and peak-signal-to-noise ratio, which indicated better image reconstruction performance.

The proposed approach provides an alternative to shorten the execution time, improve equalization of the illumination map and provide a better image reconstruction. The approach could be applied to low-light video enhancement tasks and other dark or poor jobsite images for object detection processes.

Agricultural waste and food sources are some of the pollutants of the environment. One of these wastes is the peel of fruits that cannot be consumed as food. In this regard, walnut husk (WH) and oleaster peel (PO) are known as two important sources of tannin and are bulky wastes. Because of the high percentage of tannin, these materials can be used as a natural source for the preparation of bio-mordant in the dyeing process.

In this study, Reseda and Madder were used as natural dyes in the presence of a mixture of two bio-mordants. WH and PO were selected as bio-mordant. All natural resources are extracted to obtain the juice. The phenolic percentage of tannin-containing extracts was evaluated and then it was used for wool yarns by premordanting method. The results of evaluating the fastness properties using the ISO method.

The most important achievement of this research is the use of agricultural waste in the dyeing process to reduce environmental pollution and create added value. All compounds rich in tannin have some phenolic components, therefore the amount of phenolic content of these extracts was evaluated. The effect of mixing the mordant on the color characteristics of the yarns was investigated and the results showed that changing the ratio of the combination of two mordant is effective on the K/S values. The results of evaluating the fastness properties using the ISO method showed that the washing, rubbing and light fastness in the presence of mordant is good, good and moderate, respectively.

In this paper, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for the first time, the combination of two natural extracts obtained from agricultural waste has been used to create a new bio-mordant on fibers and improve stability.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the peroxide value (PV), p‐anisidine and total oxidation value (TOTOX) values of imported edible oils in Iran.

A total 196 oil samples of different origin and types (corn, olive, canola and grape‐seed oil) were collected randomly from Boushehr port of Iran and a total 27 oil samples were also collected from frying pans used to deep‐fry local food items at different restaurants in Boushehr city.

The PVs ranged from 1.38‐13.74, 3.90‐20.00, 0.83‐2.99, 0.67‐11.95 and 0.00‐9.96 mequiv/kg found in refined olive oil, virgin olive oil, canola oil, grape‐seed oil and corn oil, respectively. The results showed that PVs of 18.37 percent of imported oil and 62.96 percent of frying oils from restaurant exceeded the maximum acceptable limits set by Institute of Standards and Industrial Research of Iran (ISIRI) (2‐20 mequiv/kg for different types of oils). P‐anisidine value ranged from 0.89‐27.56 mequiv/kg in imported oils and 2.21‐30.76 mequiv/kg found in frying oil from restaurants. The TOTOX value increased linearly with peroxide values and p‐anisidine values. It ranged from 0.89‐76.62.

Fried foods are very common in Iranians' diet. A major portion of the edible oils in Iran are imported from other countries through Boushehr port. ISIRI has set maximum acceptable limit for PVs in different oils imported to the country. The possible effects of storage on oil oxidation are the original criteria of this research. The results of the study indicate that inappropriate storage of edible oils and their use in frying applications at restaurants facilitate oil oxidation and deterioration.