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Education is a human right and access to high quality education is key to sustainable socioeconomic development. Improving the quality of higher education institutes is essential for generating the productive human resources. Assessing the quality of higher education from the students’ perspective can be considered a crucial factor in the monitoring of service quality in universities. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the quality of educational services in a higher education institute, the Kermanshah University of Medical Sciences (KUMS), in the west of Iran.

A multistage sampling method was used to select 346 students from the KUMS, who were enrolled in the second semester of the academic year 2015-2016. The SERVQUAL questionnaire was used to gather data on students’ perceptions and their expectations about the quality of educational services. The authors used a statistical significance level of 0.05 to examine the gap between the students’ expectations and their perceptions of service quality in five dimensions, namely tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, empathy and assurance.

The results showed that there was a negative service quality gap in all five dimensions. The overall mean score of students’ expectations and their perceptions was 3.19±0.44 and 2.4±0.45, respectively. The score gap between the overall mean score of perceptions and expectations of students was −0.79, which was statistically significant (p<0.0001). The highest and lowest quality gaps were related to the assurance (−0.84) and tangible (−0.70) dimensions, respectively.

The study indicated that the quality of educational services provided in the KUMS did not meet students’ expectations in five dimensions of service quality. Thus, it warrants further investigations to determine how to improve the quality of educational services in higher education institutes such as the KUMS.

This study provides an integrated risk-based cost and time estimation approach for deep excavation projects. The purpose is to identify the best practices in recent advances of excavation risk analysis (RA) and integrate them with traditional cost and time estimation methods.

The implemented best practices in this research are as follows: (1) fault-tree analysis (FTA) for risk identification (RI); (2) Bayesian belief networks (BBNs), fuzzy comprehensive analysis and Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) for risk analysis; and (3) sensitivity analysis and root-cause analysis (RCA) for risk response planning (RRP). The proposed approach is applied in an actual deep excavation project in Tehran, Iran.

The results show that the framework proposes a practical approach for integrating the risk management (RM) best practices in the domain of excavation projects with traditional cost and time estimation approaches. The proposed approach can consider the interrelationships between risk events and identify their root causes. Further, the approach engages different stakeholders in the process of RM, which is beneficial for determining risk owners and responsibilities.

This research contributes to the project management body of knowledge by integrating recent RM best practices in deep excavation projects for probabilistic estimation of project time and cost.

The purpose of this study is to reduce energy consumption in bakeries. Due to fulfill this demand, quite a few parameters such as energy and exergy efficiency, energy waste and fuel consumption by different traditional flatbreads bakeries (Sangak, Barbari, Taftun and Lavash should be monitored and their roles should not be neglected.

In the present study, experimental measurements and mathematical modeling are used to scrutinize and investigate the effects of the aforementioned parameters on energy consumption by bakeries.

The results show that by doing reported methods in this paper, the wasted energy of the walls can be decreased by about 65 per cent; and also, by controlling the combustion reaction to perform with 5 per cent excess air, the wasted energy of excess air declines by about 90 per cent. And finally, the energy and exergy efficiency of bakeries is increased, and as a result, the annual energy consumption of Sangak, Barbari, Taftun and Lavash bakeries diminish about 71, 59, 57 and 40 per cent, respectively.

As evidenced by the literature review, it can be observed that neither numerical studies nor experimental investigations have been conducted about energy and exergy analyses of Iranian machinery traditional flatbread bakeries. It is clear that due to a high preference of Iranians to use the traditional bread and also the popularity of baking this kind of bread in Iran, if it is possible to enhance the traditional oven conditions to decrease the loss of natural gas instead of industrializing the bread baking, the energy consumption in the country can be optimized.

Contributing to the literature on movement structure in authoritarian regimes, this analysis focuses on the structure of two Iranian movements. We use a multi-method approach to analyze the organization of the student and women’s movements in Iran between 1997 and 2008. From 1997 to 2004, a reform government opened political opportunities. The period between 2005 and 2008 was characterized by increased repression. The student movement was organized during the first period as a hybrid composed of several networks linked in a federal structure. As the political context changed, the movement became less centralized. Its strategy shifted from one based in alliance with governing reformers to coalition building outside of the regime. In contrast, the women’s movement was organized as a densely linked web of noncentralized campaigns. The women’s movement overcame divisions as political opportunities closed in the mid-2000s and built a grassroots strategy during the latter part of the decade.

The purpose of this paper is to present the numerical solutions of surface radiation and combined natural convection heat transfer in a solar cavity receiver. The paper aims to discuss sundry issues that take place in the said model.

The numerical solutions are developed by means of second-order upwind scheme using the SIMPLE algorithm.

The effects of physical factors such as Rayleigh number (10⁴ ≤ Ra ≤ 10⁶), inclination angels of insulated walls (0º ≤ θ ≤ 10º) and the wall surface emissivity (0 ≤ ε ≤ 1) on natural convection-surface radiation heat transfer rate are analyzed. Impact of sundry parameters on flow quantities are discussed and displayed via graphs and tables. Stream lines and isothermal lines have also been drawn in the region of cavity. The numerical results reveal that increasing the Rayleigh number, wall surface emissivity and inclination angels of insulated walls in an open cavity enhances the mean total Nusselt number. The variations of the surface radiation and natural convection heat transfer mean Nusselt numbers are very small to the inclination angle of θ, while a significant change is noted for the case of Rayleigh number and emissivity.

To the best of authors’ knowledge, this model is reported for the first time.

Green manufacturing (GM) has emerged as a vital strategy to minimize environmental impacts and maximize resource efficiency in industrial production. The main aim of this work is to identify and validate essential criteria for GM and prioritize drivers of successful GM implementation frameworks for the manufacturing industry based on Best–Worst Methodology (BWM).

This work explores the essential factors required to achieve long-term success in GM, followed by their comparison using the BWM to determine the most and least important indicators. The study conducted purposive sampling to gather data from 15 experts representing diverse industries in the manufacturing sector. The research methodology consists of three main steps: criteria identification through literature review, criteria validation using the content validity ratio (CVR) method and the BWM application to rank the indicators.

The main success factors identified included top management commitment, organizational culture, employee training, cost saving, investment in innovation and technology, environmental regulation, zero-emission and waste management. The results obtained through BWM indicated top management commitment, investment in innovation and technology and organizational culture as the most critical factors for successful GM implementation. Other factors, such as zero-emission, waste management and cost savings, were also significant but ranked lower in significance. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of top management commitment to successfully adopting GM initiatives.

This research provides insights into the key success factors, through which decision-makers are assisted in prioritizing efforts and implementing sustainable and eco-friendly practices in manufacturing processes. However, further research is recommended to address existing gaps and foster a deeper understanding of crucial success factors for successful GM implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to solve difficult estimation problem on aircraft sudden fault by proposing a new pre-estimating method according to the energy evolution degree of the sensitive parameters to estimate the sudden fault. The sudden fault affects seriously the flight safety of aircraft.

It is based on the dissipative structure theory, and the evolution process of energy parameters is utilized. First, the evolution key points of sudden fault are determined by the time-varying entropy of sensitive parameters and the frequency band energy distribution. Then, we can obtain the evolution degree of sample while the evolution key points import the logistic regression (LR) model, and one can establish the pre-estimation model by means of relevance vector machine (RVM). While the evolution feature vector imports the RVM pre-estimation model, one can pre-estimate the sudden fault of aircraft.

The simulation results showed that this method can not only track the evolution process of aircraft sudden fault but also estimate its evolution degree, and it has a higher pre-estimating accuracy.

It provides a new way to forecast the sudden fault and increase the security of aircraft.

This paper proposes a pre-estimating method on aircraft sudden fault. It is based on the dissipative structure theory and the energy-sensitive parameters of the sudden faults are used. This method can enhance the security of aircraft and increase the protective ability of sudden fault on aircraft.

In casting a new look at city; this study interprets the urban form in respect of the role played by human perception of space. The main aim of this research at a macro level is to attain a strong theorical basis through a multi-dimensional approach to the city. The method of analyzing and carrying out a critique of it at an applied level will clarify the impact, which cultural factors have in the formation of urban form. This preliminary recognition and idealism is based on a hermeneutic and deductive method that is particular to the intellectual sciences In the process of devising theories, studying the urban planning texts related to the subject of study and the conclusion from the field study which is carried out in the Isfahan Naghshe Jahan square in the Safavy period played a key role in the research in addition to the goals and questions.