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Developing country workers mainly face important challenges when examining equality in health services utilization among the population and identifying influential factors. The purpose of this paper us to: understand health service use among households with different socio-economic status in Isfahan province; and to investigate probable inequality determinants in service utilization.

Almost 1,040 households living in Isfahan province participated in this cross-sectional study in 2013. Data were collected by a questionnaire with three sections: demographic characteristics; socio-economic status; and health services utilization. The concentration index was applied to measure inequality. Analysts used STATA 11.

Economic status, educational level, insurance coverage and household gender were the most influential factors on health services utilization. Those with a high socio-economic level were more likely to demand and use such services; although self-medication patterns showed an opposite trend.

Female-headed families face with more difficulties in access to basic human needs including health. Supportive policies are needed to meet their demands.

The authors used principle component analysis to assess households’ economic situation, which reduced the variables into a single index.

As hospitals are the most costly service providers in every healthcare systems, special attention should be given to their performance in terms of resource allocation and consumption. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate technical, allocative and economic efficiency in intensive care units (ICUs) of hospitals affiliated by Yazd University of Medical Sciences (YUMS) in 2015.

This was a descriptive, analytical study conducted in ICUs of seven training hospitals affiliated by YUMS using data envelopment analysis (DEA) in 2015. The number of physicians, nurses, active beds and equipment were regarded as input variables and bed occupancy rate, the number of discharged patients, economic information such as bed price and physicians’ fees were mentioned as output variables of the study. Available data from study variables were retrospectively gathered and analyzed through the Deap 2.1 software using the variable returns to scale methodology.

The study findings revealed the average scores of allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency to be relatively 0.956, 0.866, 0.883, 0.89 and 0.913. Regarding to latter three types of efficiency, five hospitals had desirable performance.

Given that additional costs due to an extra number of manpower or unnecessary capital resources impose economic pressure on hospitals also the fact that reduction of surplus production plays a major role in reducing such expenditures in hospitals, it is suggested that departments with low efficiency reduce their input surpluses to achieve the optimal level of performance.

The authors applied a DEA approach to measure allocative, economic, technical, managerial and scale efficiency of under-study hospitals. This is a helpful linear programming method which acts as a powerful and understandable approach for comparative performance assessment in healthcare settings and a guidance for healthcare managers to improve their departments’ performance.

This paper aims to propose a new nonlinear function estimation fuzzy system as a novel statistical approach to estimate nanofluids’ thermal conductivity.

A fuzzy system having a product inference engine, a singleton fuzzifier, a center average defuzzifier and Gaussian membership functions is proposed for this purpose.

Results indicate that the proposed fuzzy system can predict the thermal conductivity of Al₂O₃/paraffin nanofluid with appropriate precision and generalization and it also outperforms the classic interpolation methods.

A new nonlinear function estimation fuzzy system was introduced as a novel statistical approach to estimate nanofluids’ thermal conductivity for the first time.

Water/Al₂O₃ nanofluid with volume fractions of 0, 0.3 and 0.06 was investigated inside a rectangular microchannel. Jet injection of nanofluid was used to enhance the heat transfer under a homogeneous magnetic field with the strengths of Ha = 0, 20 and 40. Both slip velocity and no-slip boundary conditions were used.

The laminar flow was studied using Reynolds numbers of 1, 10 and 50. The results showed that in creep motion state, the constricted cross section caused by fluid jet is not observable and the rise of axial velocity level is only because of the presence of additional size of the microchannel. By increasing the strength of the magnetic field and because of the rise of the Lorentz force, the motion of fluid layers on each other becomes limited.

Because of the limitation of sudden changes of fluid in jet injection areas, the magnetic force compresses the fluid to the bottom wall, and this behavior limits the vertical velocity gradients. In the absence of a magnetic field and under the influence of the velocity boundary layer, the fluid motion has more variations. In creeping velocities of fluid, the presence or absence of the magnetic field does not have an essential effect on Nusselt number enhancement.

In lower velocities of fluid, the effect of the jet is not significant, and the thermal boundary layer affects the entire temperature field. In this case, for Hartmann numbers of 40 and 0, changing the Nusselt number on the heated wall is similar.

This study aims to investigate the association of vitamin D intake and the risk of depression, anxiety and stress among Tehranian female adolescents.

This cross-sectional analysis included 263 participants. A valid and reliable food frequency questionnaire was used to determine dietary intake of vitamin D. Depression, anxiety and stress scores were characterized by Depression Anxiety Stress Score-21 questionnaire. Multivariable logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) for the occurrence of depression, anxiety and stress according to the tertiles of vitamin D intake.

The mean ± standard deviation age and body mass index (BMI) of participants were 16.2 ± 1.0 years and 22.2 ± 4.1 kg/m², respectively. Mean score of depression, anxiety and stress of participants were 9.8 (low-grade depression), 8.4 (low-grade anxiety) and 14.0 (borderline for stress), respectively. In the final model, after adjustment for age, BMI, physical activity, mother/father’s education level, dietary fiber and total energy intake, the OR for depression in the highest compared to the lowest tertile of vitamin D intake was 0.53 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.24–0.98) (p for trend: 0.040). Moreover, based on the fully adjusted model, participants in the highest tertile of vitamin D intake had lower odds of stress (OR: 0.49; 95% CI: 0.23–0.93), in comparison to those in the lowest one (p for trend: 0.021).

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to assess the association of vitamin D intake and risk of psychological disorders, including depression, stress and anxiety in Middle East and North Africa region’s female adolescents.

The construction industry contributes to economic development by providing physical equipment and infrastructures. However, it also generates some undesirable outputs such as waste and environmental pollution, especially in developing countries. Due to the importance of the green supply chain management (GSCM) philosophy, for solving these problems, the current study aims to evaluate the drivers of GSCM adoption in the construction industry of Iran.

This research uses a descriptive and practical methodology. The participated experts in the study include senior managers of the construction department in Rasht municipality who had relevant academic education and suitable experiences in urban and industrial construction. The experts took part in both qualitative and quantitative phases of the research, namely verification of the drivers extracted from literature and ranking them in ascending order. In the quantitative phase, Step-Wise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (SWARA) as a new multi-criterion decision-making (MCDM) method is used to evaluate the drivers of GSCM adoption using MATLAB software.

The results show that environmental management systems, green product design and innovational capability with weights of 0.347, 0.218 and 0.143 are the most significant sub-drivers, respectively. The less important factor is an investment in environmental technology.

This study evaluated the motivational factors of GSCM in the construction industry. The findings help governments, companies and green supply chain (GSC) managers to improve their knowledge about GSCM and make the best decisions to decrease environmental pollution.

This study aims to investigate the relationship between the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs’) masculinity, CEO characteristics (accounting background, turnover and ethnicity/race) and earnings management (EM) in Malaysia. It also examined the moderating effect of the CEOs’ ethnicity/race (Bumiputera and non-Bumiputera) on the relationship between CEO masculinity and EM.

The analyses were based on a panel data set of 260 corporates listed on the Bursa Malaysia from 2009 to 2019. Python/code was used to calculate the facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), while testosterone (TESTN) was calculated based on CEO age and fWHR. To estimate the results, panel data analysis with a fixed effect model was used.

The result shows that fWHR and TESTN have a significant positive effect on EM. CEO race has a significant impact on EM, implying that non-Bumiputera CEOs are more likely to be associated with EM. There was no statistically significant evidence that race moderates the relationship between CEO masculinity and EM.

The research contributes to the growing evidence in the field of neuroscience that it is possible to infer aspects of an individual’s behavior based on their facial structure and their TESTN levels. The findings provide new evidence supporting Malaysian Government policies in reducing masculinity on boards of directors and senior executive positions, which will positively affect the integrity of financial reports.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first research to explain whether the ethnicity/race of CEOs is related to EM and whether it has a significant moderate effect on the relationship between masculinity and EM.

This research aims to identify and model metrics and sub-metrics that enhance sustainable performance measurement in agri-food supply chains.

The study evaluates five key metrics and 18 sub-metrics critical to this industry, establishing interrelationships among them to ensure a successful sustainable performance measurement system. The decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory technique was employed, integrated with fuzzy theory and expert opinions.

The findings suggest that metrics like information technology and organizational productivity, alongside the sub-metric of information integration, significantly contribute to sustainable supply chain performance.

This study proposes a performance measurement system that enables organizations to achieve optimal performance levels through a sustainable supply chain (SCC) and supply chain agility (SCA) framework, supported by digital technologies.