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Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies worldwide. This study aimed to compare the level of knowledge and attitude of females regarding Breast cancer and to determine the role of knowledge, attitude and barriers in performing regular self-examination.

Non-physician females aged 18 years old or above were enrolled in this cross-sectional study in two groups of usual clients and healthcare staff from January 2018 to January 2019 from a healthcare center in Sari, a major city in the northern district of Iran. A questionnaire was used to score the participants’ knowledge and attitude levels using questions about the participants' knowledge and attitude towards Breast cancer along with their status on Breast self-examination and barriers. Mean scores were used for statistical analysis using SPSS V25. p < 0.05 was considered significant.

A final dataset of 279 females were collected. A significant difference in the knowledge and attitude regarding breast cancer was found between the two study groups (p < 0.001). The practice of BSE was significantly lower in the usual clients compared to non-physician healthcare staff (p < 0.001). The most frequent barriers for not performing a regular BSE were fear of finding a mass in usual clients (17.8%) and lack of confidence in healthcare staff (3.8%).

Limitations include single-centered sample selection.

Given the importance of early detection in breast cancer prevention and the general taboo regarding breast cancer screening methods in certain parts of the world, leading to poor results in early detection and prevention, the authors believe that it is of superior importance to address and promote positive attitudes in general population towards breast self-examination.

Given the importance of early detection in breast cancer prevention, and the general taboo regarding breast cancer screening methods in certain parts of the world, leading to poor results in early detection and prevention, the authors believe that it is of superior importance to address and promote positive attitudes in general population toward breast self-examination. The authors of this study believe that the manuscript represents honest and original work.

Nowadays, universities increasingly consider reputation as a key component for improving quality and rankings. A positive reputation opens doors to added value and diverse opportunities. This paper aims to explore Middle Eastern higher education managers' perceptions of university reputation components.

Given the significance of this concept in Middle Eastern universities, a descriptive phenomenological qualitative approach is adopted to identify these key components. The study includes interviews with university managers, and data are collected through semi-structured interviews and analyzed thematically.

The findings reveal that, from the perspective of higher education managers, university reputation is influenced by four main components: university management and leadership, quality and performance, identity and image and social responsibility. These components are tailored to the context of Middle Eastern countries.

Practical implications are clearly laid out in the form of four key themes for higher education managers in Middle Eastern countries to manage reputation.

The study’s outcomes can be used as a guide for university managers in developing countries to change the situation in their favor and achieve great success in the competitive condition of universities by planning and making policies in this direction. Also, the managers of higher education in the Middle Eastern countries can take advantage of the components of this study to improve the quality and quantity of their universities and take an important step towards increasing the university’s reputation at the international level.

Supplier selection in the supply chain network (SCN) has strategic importance and involves multiple factors. The multi-criteria nature of the problem coupled with environmental uncertainty requires several procedures and considerations. The issue of decision-making in selecting the best among various qualified suppliers remains the major challenge in the pharmaceutical industry. This study investigated the multi-criteria multi-supplier decision-making process and proposed a model for supplier selection problems based on mixed-integer linear programming.

The concept of principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce data dimensionality, and the four best criteria have been considered and selected. The result is subjected to decision-makers’ (DMs’) reliability test using the concept of a triangular fuzzy number (TFN). The importance of each supplier to each measure is established using fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution approach, and the suppliers have ranked accordingly.

This study proposes a mixed integer linear programming model for supplier selection in a pharmaceutical company. The effectiveness of the proposed model has been demonstrated using a numerical example. The solution shows the model's applicability in making a sound decision in pharmaceutical companies in the space of reality. The model proposed is simple. Readily commercial packages such as LINDO/LINGO and GAMS can solve the model.

This research contributed to the systematic manner of supplier selection considering DMs’ value judgement under a fuzzy environment and is limited to the case study area. However, interested researchers can apply the study in other related manufacturing industries. However, the criteria have to be revisited to suit that system and might require varying ratings based on the experts' opinions in that field.

This work suggests more insights practically by considering a realistic and precise investigation based on a real-life case study of pharmaceutical companies with six primary criteria and twenty-four sub-criteria. The study outcome will assist organizations and managers in conducting the best decision objectively by selecting the best suppliers with their various standards and terms among many available contenders in the manufacturing industry.

In this paper, the authors attempted to identify the most critical attributes to be preserved by the top managers (DMs) while selecting suppliers in pharmaceutical companies. The study proposed an MILP model for supplier selection in the pharmaceutical company using fuzzy TOPSIS.

Supply chain (SC) research has boomed over the past two decades. Significant contributions have been made to the field from various analytical and decision-making perspectives. This paper, a comprehensive bibliometric study, aims to identify the key research contributors, institutions and themes.

A comprehensive knowledge domain visualization of over 1,000 articles, published between 2000 and 2022, is carried out to construct a bird’s eye view of the field in terms of research production, key authors, main publication outlets, geographic disparity of the contributions and emerging research trends. Additionally, collaboration patterns among researchers and institutions are mapped to highlight the communication networks underlying research initiatives.

Results show an explosive growth in the number of articles tackling supply chain optimization (SCO) issues with a significant concentration of the contributions in a relatively small cluster of authors, journals, institutions and countries. Among the many important findings, our analysis indicates that mixed-integer linear programming is the most commonly used model, while robust optimization is the method of choice for handling uncertainty. Furthermore, most SC models are developed at only one level of the organizational hierarchy and consider only one planning horizon. The importance of developing integrated SCO systems is key for future research.

The study fills the optimization techniques gap that exists in SC management bibliometric studies and presents a thematic map for the SCO research highlighting the various research foci.