Islamic Azad University of Zanjan

In this research, we identify factors influencing the behavior of knowledge sharing and customer purchasing intention based on two theories of social capital and social interaction. The conceptual model, designed based on theoretical foundations, includes the dimensions of these two theories. Moreover, knowledge/information sharing is considered as a moderate variable and is attempted to examine the relationship between these variables and customers’ purchase intention in the context of social commerce. Statistical sample is 254 individuals, who have bought more than 5 times from social commerce sites. The results show that the dimensions of social capital theory and social interaction theory have a significant relationship with knowledge/information sharing. Additionally, “knowledge/information sharing” has a mediating role in the proposed model.

BACKGROUND: Nosocomial infections and persistence of multidrug resistant biofilm forming Acinetobacter baumannii in hospitals has made it as a serious problem in healthcare settings worldwide. METHODS: , bfmS, ptk, pgaB, csgA, kpsMII), integron characterization and molecular typing based on REP-PCR. RESULTS: All isolates were resistant to three or more categories of antibiotics and considered as multidrug resistant (MDR). A total of 32 isolates were resistant to all tested antibiotics and 91% were extensively drug-resistance (XDR). All isolates were able to produce biofilm and 58% of isolates showed strong ability to biofilm formation. All strong biofilm forming A. baumannii isolates were XDR. All A. baumannii isolates carried at least one biofilm related gene. The most prevalent gene was csuE (100%), followed by pgaB (98%), epsA and ptk (95%), bfmS (92%) and ompA (81%). 98% of isolates carried more than 4 biofilm related genes, simultaneously. Class I integron (67%) was more frequent in comparison with class II (10%) (P < 0.05). The REP-PCR patterns were classified as 8 types (A-H) and 21 subtypes. The A1 (23%) and C1 (15%) clusters were the most prevalent among A. baumannii isolates (P < 0.05). According to the REP-PCR patterns, 23% of all isolates had a clonal relatedness. CONCLUSION: Our study revealed the high frequency of biofilm forming XDR A. baumannii in ICU patients, with a high prevalence of biofilm related genes of csuE and pgaB. It seems that the appropriate surveillance and control measures are essential to prevent the emergence and transmission of XDR A. baumannii in our country.

In this paper, a new optimization method is proposed to solve the optimal sizing and siting problem of distributed generation (DG) in a distribution system (DS). The optimization problem is solved using a new ant lion optimizer (ALO) with considering different objectives. These objectives are reduction of purchased energy cost from upstream network (due to DGs’ power generation), reliability improvement, reduction of DGs’ application cost, reduction of DS losses and reduction of buses’ voltage deviation. This problem is solved as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) in addition of a single-objective optimization (SOO). The proposed DGs optimal sizing and siting is implemented on 33 and 69-bus IEEE networks. The obtained results show that the ALO has the best performance in extracting the solution of DGs optimal sizing and siting problem in comparison to particle swarm optimization (PSO) and genetic algorithm (GA).

This study presents an intelligent fault classification method for identification of transformer winding fault through transfer function (TF) analysis. For this analysis support vector machine (SVM) is used. The required data for training and testing of SVM are obtained by measurement on two groups of transformers (one is a classic 20 kV transformer and the other is a model transformer) under intact condition and under different fault conditions (axial displacement, radial deformation, disc space variation and short circuit of winding). Two different features extracted from the measured TFs are then used as the inputs to SVM classifier for fault classification. The accuracy of proposed method is compared with the accuracy of past well-known works. This comparison indicates that the proposed method can be used as a reliable method for transformer winding fault recognition.

INTRODUCTION: Diagnosis of cancer can cause huge spiritual crisis in a person and affect different aspects of life. At this stage, patients have certain spiritual needs. AIM: This study was conducted to explain spiritual needs of cancer patients in Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this qualitative study, 18 cancer patients, referred to the Cancer Institute of Imam Khomeini Hospital in Tehran were selected using purposive sampling method, and their spiritual needs emerged out of conventional content analysis of interviews conducted with them. RESULTS: From 1850 initial codes, 4 themes (connection, peace, meaning and purpose, and transcendence) were identified that contained categories of social support, normal behavior, inner peace, seeking forgiveness, hope, acceptance of reality, seeking meaning, ending well, change of life meaning, strengthening spiritual belief, communication with God, and prayer. CONCLUSIONS: Spiritual needs of cancer patients should be recognized, realized, and considered in care of patients by the medical team. An all-out support of health system policy makers to meet patients' spiritual needs is particularly important.

Now a day’s due to emerging global economy, e-commerce and e-business have increasingly become a necessary component of business strategy and a strong catalyst for economic development. The integration of information and communications technology in business has revolutionized relationships within organizations and those between and among organizations and individuals. The new information technology is becoming an important factor in the future development of financial services industry, and especially banking industry. The results of this study shows that e-banking serves several advantages to Iranian banking sector, however, the study also shows that the Iranian customers have not enough knowledge regarding e-banking which is rendering by banking sector in Iran.

Abstract The knowledge of aridity is needed to explain landscape characteristics and the rational utilization of water resources. With global warming, an increase in aridity is expected for many parts of the world. This study was undertaken to analyse monthly and annual aridity index ( I A ), utilizing ratio of precipitation ( P ) over reference evapotranspiration (ET o ), at ten stations located in critical agricultural regions in Iran. The Kendall and Spearman tests with considering serial correlation effect were used for analysis. An increase in aridity, as the P /ET o index decreased, was found during the study period, and the increase was more obvious in the semi‐arid region of Iran than in the humid region. The increase of aridity was caused by the concurrent occurrences of negative P trends and positive ET o trends. The results indicated the lowest numbers of the negative I A trends in the July series and the highest numbers in the January, February and March series. According to the Theil–Sen's estimator, the annual P of the semi‐arid and humid regions decreased at the average rates of (−)22.87 and (−)6.24 mm year −1 per decade respectively, whereas the annual ET o values in the semi‐arid and humid regions increased by (+)11.42 and (+)6.82 mm year −1 per decade, respectively. Copyright © 2012 Royal Meteorological Society

BACKGROUND: Measuring the quality of life (QOL) is a benchmark in today's world of medicine. The aim of the present study was to determine the general health and QOL of infertile women and certain affecting conditions. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, 161 infertile women referring to Dr. Rostami's Infertility Center of Shiraz, Southern Iran, in 2013 were enrolled by the convenience sampling method. Data were collected via a socio-demographic, general health (GHQ28), and the QOL Questionnaire of Infertile Couples and analyzed using descriptive and analytical statistics. RESULTS: According to 146 completely filled-out questionnaires, the mean age of the participants and their spouses were 29.4 ± 5.4 and 33.8 ± 5.8 years, respectively. Moreover, the general health of 57 (39%) patients was normal and that of 89 (61%) patients showed a degree of impairment. The scores for depression and physical symptoms were the highest and lowest, respectively. In addition, quite positive, positive, neutral, and negative specific QOL of infertile women were detected in 4 (2.8%), 72 (49.3%), 70 (47.9%), and 0 (0%) individuals, respectively. The total QOL scores had maximum correlation with GHQ anxiety (r = -0.596, P < 0.001) and general health scores had the highest correlation with physical QOL (r = -0.637, P < 0.001). The QOL was economically (P = 0.027), emotionally (P = 0.004), sexually (P = 0.017), physically (P = 0.037), and psychologically (P = 0.001) less for the women living in rural areas than other infertile women. However, university education (P = 0.015) and higher income per month (P = 0.008) had positive associations with QOL. CONCLUSION: General health of more than half of the infertile women indicated a degree of disorder. These women face the risk of anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression. Educational status, monthly income, and rural/urban residency are the major factors influencing the QOL.

Summary Nowadays, using renewable energy (RE) is faster growing by each country. The managerial and designer of supply chain network design (SCND) have to plan to apply RE in pillars of supply chain (SC). This research indicates resilience and sustainable SCND by considering RE (RSSCNDRE) for the first time. A two‐stage new robust stochastic optimization is embedded for RSSCNDRE. The first stage locates facility location and RE and the second stage defines flow quantity between SC components. We solve the model by GAMS‐CPLEX solver to locate components of SC and RE. Effects of changing conservative coefficient and demand are investigated and by increasing 20% for conservative coefficient, the cost function increase by 0.5%. Also, when demand is high, activating RE is economically feasible and we cannot buy and supply energy by the government power network and have to supply energy by RE. After activating RE, by increasing 20% for demand, the cost function increases by 6%. We contribute fix‐and‐optimize strategy to define the upper bound for a large‐scale problem. The proposed upper bound for the main model is less than 10% and appropriate for estimating the cost of large‐scale problems. This research suggested to equip SC by RE that SC becomes resilient against demand fluctuation and sustainable energy resource compatible with sustainable development goal (SGD7).

In this study, we present a biological method for synthesis of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) using Streptomyces sp. ERI-3 cell-filtrate. AgNO3 solution (1 mM) was added to the cell-free culture supernatant and the mixture was incubated at 28 °C for 48 h in the dark in an orbital shaker. The AgNPs were characterized using UV–visible spectroscopy, X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The nanoparticles exhibited maximum absorbance at 430 nm in UV–Vis spectroscopy. The XRD spectrum exhibited 2⊖ values corresponding to the silver nanocrystals. TEM and SEM micrographs revealed the extracellular formation of spherical nanoparticles in the size range of 10–100 nm. AgNPs formed flower-like self-assembled structures after three months incubating at room temperature in the dark. The study provides the evidence that the factors in the cell-free culture supernatant facilitate synthesis of AgNPs. This study is the first report on the biosynthesis of AgNPs using supernatant of Streptomyces sp. ERI-3 bacterium.

This paper proposes an effective method for very accurate parameter estimation of single- and double-diode solar cell models. For this purpose, unknown parameters of model are estimated by minimization of an objective function using a new highly effective modified version of artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm. The proposed algorithm is used for parameter estimation of single- and double-diode models and the results are compared, from different aspects, with recently developed related works (including those applied GA, CPSO, PS, SA, IGHS, ABSO, ABC, GGHS, and IADE for this purpose). The proposed algorithm is also compared with other modified explanations of ABC algorithm. The results show that the proposed strategy is considerably faster and more accurate compared to all the previous studies.

Passerini reaction involving an oxo component, an isocyanide, and a nucleophile in a single step to prepare α-acyloxy carboxamide, was first discovered by Passerini about 90 years ago. Various modifications of this reaction have already been developed such as Lewis acids catalysis, in situ oxidation of alcohols to aldehydes, in situ oxidation of aldehydes to carboxylic acids, direct alkylative Passerini reaction, etc. The Passerini reaction has developed in organic synthesis, the total synthesis of natural products, synthesis of polycyclics, macrocycles, heterocycles and pharmaceutical industry for the synthesis of drug-like compounds. The Passerini products could be later cyclized by another type of ring-closing reaction. The aim of this review is to provide an overview of synthetic applications of Passerini reaction. Keywords: Passerini reaction, multicomponent reaction, isocyanide, α-acyloxy carboxamide, heterocycles, multicomponent reactions (MCRs), domino process, α-acyloxy carboxamide moiety, macrocycles, carboxylic acid, N-protected amino acid, aliphatic, aromatic, heteroaromatic carboxylic ester derivatives

Terminal drought stress during grain filling period has recently become more common in the semiarid Mediterranean regions, where wheat ( Triticum aestivum L.) is grown as an important winter cereal crop. The objective of this experiment was to study the effect of terminal drought stress on grain yield, gas exchange variables, and some physiological traits of nine bread wheat cultivars. An experiment was carried out in a split-plot arrangement using randomized complete blocks design with three replications during the 2010-2011 season at the research farm of Razi University, Iran. Based on the results obtained, post anthesis water deficit significantly decreased grain yield, biomass, 1,000 grain weight, and harvest index of wheat cultivars. Under terminal drought stress and control treatments, there were significant differences between cultivars in terms of all traits studied. Also, terminal drought stress decreased leaf net photosynthesis rate (Pn), stomatal conductance (gs), transpiration rate, Chlorophyll a, b, and a/b, and increased leaf temperature and sub-stomatal CO 2 concentration. Cultivars differed in their response to water stress. In general, tolerant cultivars showed a higher Pn and gs and leaf water content under both moisture conditions compared with susceptible ones. A greater reduction in gs and transpiration rate and smaller reduction in P n under stress condition led to a remarkably higher photosynthetic water use efficiency of the tolerant cultivars. Finally, it can be concluded that planting wheat variety DN-11 in areas with post-anthesis water stress was recommendable for maximizing grain yield.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of using a natural substance, curcumin, encapsulated in CD44-targeting hyaluronate–polylactide (HA-PLA) nanoparticles (NPs) for the modulation of macrophage polarity from the pro-inflammatory M1 to anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype. For this purpose, the characterization of the NPs was monitored using 1HNMR, FTIR, DLS and FE-SEM. The effects of curcumin-encapsulated HA-PLA NPs on the viability of LPS/IFN-γ stimulated peritoneal macrophages were determined using MTT assay. The cellular uptake of free curcumin and nano-formulated curcumin was assessed using confocal microscopy. Also, the expression levels of iNOS-2 (M1 marker), Arg-1 (M2 marker) and also pro-inflammatory cytokines were measured by real-time PCR. Data showed that the nano-formulated curcumin with spherical shape, an average diameter of 102.5 nm and high cellular uptake was significantly less toxic to peritoneal macrophages. Furthermore, the nano-formulated curcumin effectively indicated a reduction in iNOS-2 and an increase in Arg-1 levels than free curcumin. The change in macrophage phenotype by curcumin-encapsulated HA-PLA NPs could suppress the inflammation in LPS/IFN-γ stimulated macrophages as evidenced by a major reduction in pro-inflammatory cytokines. Conclusively, the results suggested that the curcumin formulation with CD44-targeting HA-PLA NPs might be a promising platform for the treatment of inflammatory diseases.

In this paper, we extend the p-metric space to an M-metric space, and we shall show that the definition we give is a real generalization of the p-metric by presenting some examples. In the sequel we prove some of the main theorems by generalized contractions for getting fixed points and common fixed points for mappings.

Cloud computing is one of today's most exciting technologies, because it can reduce the cost and complexity of applications, and it is flexible and scalable.These benefits changed cloud computing from a dreamy idea into one of the fastest growing technologies today.Actually, virtualization technology is built on virtualization technology which is an old technology and has had security issues that must be addressed before cloud technology is affected by them.In addition, the virtualization technology has limit security capabilities in order to secure wide area environment such as the cloud.Therefore, the development of a robust security system requires changes in traditional virtualization architecture.This paper proposes new security architecture in a hypervisor-based virtualization technology in order to secure the cloud environment.

Magnetically nano Fe3O4 efficiently catalyzes green oxidation of primary and secondary benzylic and aliphatic alcohols to give the corresponding carbonyl products in good yields. The reactions were carried out in an aqueous medium in the presence of hydrogen peroxide as an oxidant at 50°C. In addition, the magnetically nano Fe3O4 catalyst could be reused up to four runs without any significant loss of activities. Catalyst was characterized by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray powder diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, vibrating sample magnetometer, and IR.

Summary Cloud computing is a type of parallel, configurable, and flexible system, which refers to the provision of applications on virtual data centers. However, reducing the energy consumption and also maintaining high computation capacity have become timely and important challenges. The concept of replication is used to face these challenges. By increasing the number of data replicas, the energy consumption, the performance, and also the cost of creating and maintaining new replicas also are increased. Deciding on the number of required replicas and their location on the cloud system is an NP‐hard problem. In this paper, the problem is formulated as an optimization problem and a hybrid metaheuristic algorithm is offered to solve it. The algorithm uses the global search capability of the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm and the local search capability of the Tabu Search (TS) to get high‐quality solutions. The efficiency of the method is shown by comparing it with simple PSO, TS, and Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) algorithm on different test cases. The obtained results indicate that the method outperforms all of them in terms of consumed energy and cost.

Targeted drug delivery and increasing the biological activity of drugs is one of the recent challenges of pharmaceutical researchers. Niosomes are one of the new targeted drug delivery systems that enhances the biological properties of drugs. In this study, for the first time, the green synthesis of selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs), and its loading into niosome was carried out to increase the anti-bacterial and anti-cancer activity of SeNPs. Different formulations of noisome-loaded SeNPs were prepared, and the physical and chemical characteristics of the prepared niosomes were investigated. The antibacterial and anti-biofilm effects of synthesized niosomes loaded SeNPs and free SeNPs against standard pathogenic bacterial strains were studied, and also its anticancer activity was investigated against breast cancer cell lines. The expression level of apoptotic genes in breast cancer cell lines treated with niosome-loaded SeNPs and free SeNPs was measured. Also, to evaluate the biocompatibility of the synthesized niosomes, their cytotoxicity effects against the human foreskin fibroblasts normal cell line (HFF) were studied using the MTT (3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5 diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) assay. The results illustrated that the optimal formulation had an average size of 177.9 nm, a spherical shape, and an encapsulation efficiency of 37.58%. Also, the results revealed that the release rate of SeNPs from niosome-loaded SeNPs and free SeNPs was 61.26% and 100%, respectively, in 72 h. Also, our findings demonstrated that the niosome-loaded SeNPs have significant antibacterial, anti-biofilm, and anticancer effects compared to the free SeNPs. In addition, niosome-loaded SeNPs can upregulate the expression level of Bax, cas3, and cas9 apoptosis genes while the expression of the Bcl2 gene is down-regulated in all studied cell lines, significantly. Also, the results of the MTT test indicated that the free niosome has no significant cytotoxic effects against the HFF cell line which represents the biocompatibility of the synthesized niosomes. In general, based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that niosomes-loaded SeNPs have significant anti-microbial, anti-biofilm, and anti-cancer effects, which can be used as a suitable drug delivery system.

In this paper, a methodology of sizing optimization of a stand-alone hybrid PV/wind/battery power generation system (HPWGS) is proposed. The main objective of this optimization is to minimize the total annual cost (TAC) of the hybrid system considering power balanced constraint and determination of the optimal number of wind turbines, PV panels, and batteries. For this purpose, a new meta-heuristic nature-inspired algorithm, called Grey Wolf Optimizer is utilized. The obtained results show that the proposed methodology finds optimal sizing of the HPWGS easily with fast convergence and lower cost. Comparing the results of this new method with the well-known published works in the literature, the superior capabilities of this proposed method are demonstrated. Moreover, the results show that the reliability characteristics are weakened with decreasing the component availability, and the supply reliability of the HPWGS is improved by increasing the inverter efficiency while the TAC is decreased. Furthermore, the HPWGS can cover the load demand variations with high reliability.