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This paper aims to discuss, analyze and compare members of a group of actuators with adjustable stiffness, namely: AwAS, AwAS-II and CompACT variable stiffness actuator (VSA) developed at Italian Institute of Technology (IIT).

These actuators are among series type of VSAs where one main motor is dedicated for link positioning and a secondary motor, in series with the first one, regulates the output link stiffness. Regulating the stiffness in this group of actuators is based on the lever concept. Initially, springs were moved along the lever to tune the stiffness while in the later versions stiffness was regulated through relocating pivot point along the lever.

This paper discusses how different mechanisms have been employed in realization of the lever concept in these actuators and what are the advantages and disadvantages of each realization.

Today’s robots are not supposed to be solid, isolated and rigid anymore but rather adaptive, cooperative and compliant entities in our daily life. The new attitudes demand for novel technologies substantially different from those developed for industrial domains both at the hardware and the software levels. This work presents latest three state-of-the-art actuators, developed at IIT, which are great answers to the needs of tomorrow’s robot.

These novel actuators are really ready for commercial exploitation, as they are compact and reliable. The main novelty is based on employing concept of lever mechanism for stiffness regulation. They have been designed and manufactured in a very professional and optimized way.

The purpose of this research is to explore the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), brand image (BI) and brand equity (BE) in the banking industry of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Using the deductive approach as the methodology and 213 valid questionnaires returned by customers of Iranian banks in four big cities of Iran, this study tests the relationship between CSR, BI and BE in eight hypotheses. The data were analyzed by the partial least squares method.

The results of this research show that CSR has a significant direct effect on BI. Also, BI has a significant direct effect on BE.

This research provides valuable insight for studying the relationship between CSR, BI and BE. The results of this study provide a better understanding of the role of CSR in customers’ attitudes and behaviors in the banking industry.

The purpose of this paper is to present a formal verification method to prove the correctness of social customer relationship management (CRM)-based service composition approach. The correctness of the proposed approach is analyzed to evaluate the customer behavioral interactions for discovering, selecting and composing social CRM-based services. In addition, a Kripke structure-based verification method is presented for verifying the behavioral models of the proposed approach.

Evaluating the customer behavioral interactions using the social CRM-based service composition approach is an important issue. In addition, formal verification has an important role in assessing the social CRM-based service composition. However, model checking can be efficient as a verification method to evaluate the functional properties of the social CRM-based service composition approach.

The results of model checking satisfied the logical problems in the proposed behavior model analysis. In the statistical testing, the proposed URM mechanism supported the four knowledge creation process conditions. It was also shown that the percentage of state reachability in the URM with KCP conditions is higher than the URM mechanism without supporting KCP conditions.

The comparison of time and memory consumption of the model checking method shows that the social CRM-based service composition approach covers knowledge process features, which makes it an efficient method.

Organizations are social entities comprising multiple people that are goal-directed and have coordinated activities that are also linked to the external environment. As information technology improves, the organizational performance is also improved and it results in positive changes and development in the organizations. Near field communication (NFC) is one of such technologies that can be implemented and utilized in an organization. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the important variables impacting the adoption of NFC in organizations and propose an applicable model for it.

In this paper, to have a successful NFC implementation in organizations and analyze main factors impacting the NFC technology adoption in organizations, a technology acceptance model-based approach is used.

The findings show that the main variables impacting NFC adoption are ease of use, potential risk, usefulness and cost. The obtained results indicate that the model has adequate and sufficient reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity.

In this paper, the factors impacting the NFC adoption in organizations are pointed out, and the proposed model is tested on samples gathered from Azerbaijan railway employees and for statistical analysis of questionnaires, the SMART-PLS 2.0 software package is used.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how formal verification strategies have been utilized to assess the correctness of Knowledge Creation Process (KCP) in the social systems. This paper analyzes a User Relationship Management (URM) approach in term of human behavior connection in the social systems. A formal framework is displayed for the URM which consolidates behavioral demonstrating strategy.

Evaluating the human behavior interactions is an important matter in the social systems. For this analysis, formal verification is an essential section in the complex information systems development. Model checking results satisfied the logical problems in the proposed behavior model analysis.

Model checking results represent satisfaction of the logical problems in the proposed behavior model analysis. In the statistical testing, the proposed URM mechanism supported KCP conditions. Also, the percentage of state reachability in the URM with KCP conditions is higher than the URM mechanism without supporting KCP conditions.

The model checking results show that the proposed URM mechanism with supporting the KCP conditions satisfies comprehensively behavioral interactions rather than the mechanism without KCP conditions in the social networks.

Heavy metals constitute one of the most hazardous substances that could be accumulated in biota coming from human activities such as agricultural and industrial wastes. This paper aims to study the levels of some of the most common heavy metals in muscles of the fish caught in the Karun River (Ahvaz, Iran) and to assess the health risks associated with their consumption.

In present study, the concentrations of three heavy metals (Pb, Cd and Cu) in the muscle of highly consumed fish species Ctenopharyngodon Idella (Cyprinidae) collected from three selected markets (Khoram Kooshk, Ahvaz-e Qadim and Padad Shahr; total number of samples was 45) in Ahvaz city and human health risk associated with their consumption were detected by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS).

The results indicated that the highest and lowest accumulated metal concentrations were related to Cu (20.36 ± 0.84) and Cd (0.53 ± 0.02), respectively. In addition, the mean difference for Pb and Cu across two pairwise of sampling sites were significant (Ahvaz-e Qadim and Khoram Kooshk, P for Pb = 0.025, P for Cu = 0.033; Ahvaz-e Qadim and Padad Shahr, p for Pb = 0.018, p for Cu = 0.039). The estimated daily intake of all metals in muscles of fish in this study were below the legal limit, and mean differences were not statistically significant among the sampling sites, except for Cu (Ahvaz-e Qadim and Khoram Kooshk, p =0.048; Ahvaz-e Qadim and Padad Shahr, p =0.041). Target hazard quotient values were also all below 1.

It can be concluded that the fishes from Ahvaz city markets are comparatively clean and do not constitute a risk for human health.

Expert Cloud as a new class of Cloud computing systems enables its users to request the skill, knowledge and expertise of people by employing internet infrastructures and Cloud computing concepts without any information of their location. Job scheduling is one of the most important issue in Expert Cloud and impacts on its efficiency and customer satisfaction. The purpose of this paper is to propose an applicable method based on genetic algorithm for job scheduling in Expert Cloud.

Because of the nature of the scheduling issue as a NP-Hard problem and the success of genetic algorithm in optimization and NP-Hard problems, the authors used a genetic algorithm to schedule the jobs on human resources in Expert Cloud. In this method, chromosome or candidate solutions are represented by a vector; fitness function is calculated based on response time; one point crossover and swap mutation are also used.

The results indicate that the proposed method can schedule the received jobs in appropriate time with high accuracy in comparison to common methods (First Come First Served, Shortest Process Next and Highest Response Ratio Next). Also the proposed method has better performance in term of total execution time, service+wait time, failure rate and Human Resource utilization rate in comparison to common methods.

In this paper the job scheduling issue in Expert Cloud is pointed out and the approach to resolve the problem is applied into a practical example.

The ongoing economic impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic upon national and international economies has provided a novel set of challenges and barriers for organisations; particularly for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This has led to an increased focus on sustainable decision-making and long-term survival and growth strategies, such as internationalisation opportunities, for SMEs during obscure times and fluctuating economies. Thus, examining how SMEs within ambiguous economies are adopting innovative decision-making to continue to sustain and grow their enterprises provides a vital perspective and understanding of not only enterprise survival but enterprise growth during times of economic uncertainty. This chapter proposes a conceptual framework that explores internationalisation opportunities through an intersectional lens. The framework depicts that intersectionality as an enabler during ambiguous times for Maldivian women entrepreneurs generates innovative decision-making towards internationalisation as part of sustainable growth practices. The conceptual framework offers theoretical implications for empirical studies of an inductive or deductive nature and offers pragmatic importance for women entrepreneurs considering internationalisation through sustainable growth during obscure times and fluctuating economies. This chapter contributes to the growing body of knowledge in the field of international entrepreneurship, particularly innovative decision-making, and sustainable growth through internationalisation opportunities of women entrepreneurs, whilst advancing our understanding of gender and entrepreneurship studies. Studying innovative decision-making and sustainable growth practices of women entrepreneurs additionally provides a new perspective on intersectional works within entrepreneurial growth during uncertain times.

This paper aims to study the application of high-tolerance and flexible indigenous bacteria and fungi, along with the co-metabolism in recycled paper and cardboard mill (RPCM) wastewater treatment (WWT).

The molecular characterization of isolated indigenous bacteria and fungi was performed by 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA gene sequencing, respectively. Glucose was used as a cometabolic substrate to enhance the bioremediation process.

The highest removal efficiency was achieved for both chemical oxygen demand (COD) and color [78% COD and 45% color removal by Pseudomonas aeruginosa RW-2 (MZ603673), as well as approximately 70% COD and 48% color removal by Geotrichum candidum RW-4 (ON024394)]. The corresponding percentages were higher in comparison with the efficiency obtained from the oxidation ditch unit in the full-scale RPCM WWT plant.

Indigenous P. aeruginosa RW-2 and G. candidum RW-4 demonstrated effective capability in RPCM WWT despite the highly toxic and low biodegradable nature, especially with the assistance of glucose.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between personality traits (introversion versus extroversion) and knowledge acquisition (KA) techniques.

The major methodology of the current study is survey. Results are based on 152 usable responses provided by experts in different industries including electronic, communication, information technology, computer and biology. The major analytical technique used is Pearson correlation analysis.

According to the results, there are significant relationships between personality traits (i.e. introversion versus extroversion) and KA techniques.

This study was conducted on data from 152 Iranian experts which limits the generalizability of the results. This limitation can be addressed by future studies conducting similar studies on cross-country samples. Further, due to the analytical technique adopted in this study, causality implications cannot be drawn from the results.

This study reveals linkages between personality traits (i.e. introversion versus extroversion) and KA techniques. Results shed light on the KA process for both scholars and practitioners involved in KA programs in the organizations.