technology foresight is a methodology for making the complexity and advanced nature of new technologies of future more comprehensible and transparent. the objective of this survey is to analyze and interpret weakness and strength of the current situation of iran organizations regarding utilization of foresight activities of developing new technologies and its influence over the country by usin...

in this article, we will estimate efficiency amountof decision-making unit by offering the continuous piecewise polynomialextrapolation and interpolation by ccr model input-oriented on the assumptionthat it is constant returns to scale in different times. and finally, we willestimate efficiency amount of decision-making unit indifferent times byoffering an example.

background and objectives: patient satisfaction is a key feature of quality improvement in modern health care systems. the focus of patient satisfaction studies has been on inpatient satisfaction measurement. as such, valid and reliable instruments for assessment of outpatient satisfaction are lacking in the field. this study aimed to develop and validate a brief scale to facilitate assessing o...

sueyoshi and sekitani in 2007 presented a paper that explores the measurement of returns to scale under a possible occurrence of multiple solution in a reference set and a supporting hyperplane. the occurrence ofmultiple solutions is classified into type i and type ii. type i is an occurrence of multiple solutions in a reference set. type ii is an occurrence of multiple solutions on a supportin...

one of the main distinctions between geomaterials and other engineering materials is the spatial variation of their properties in different directions. this characteristic of geomaterials -so called heterogeneity- is studied herewith. several spatial distributions are introduced to describe probabilistic variation of geotechnical properties of soils. among all, the absolute normal distribution ...

background: a common, early postpartum concern of the breastfeeding mother is nipple pain. because of a lack of effective treatment and opposing results about lanolin, we decided to compare the effect of lanolin ointment and aloe vera gel on nipple soreness treatment. methods: this clinical blind trial was performed in mashhad, iran, from february 2008 to may 2009. sampling was nonrandom and pu...

introduction: users’ performance and their interaction with information retrieval systems can be observed in development of their mental models. users, especially users of health, use mental models to facilitate their interactions with these systems and incomplete or incorrect models can cause problems for them . the aim of this study was the adjustment and development of health user’s mental m...

this paper presents the thermal vibration analysis of double-layer graphene sheet embedded in polymer elastic medium, using the plate theory and nonlocal continuum mechanics for small scale effects. the graphene is modeled based on continuum plate theory and the axial stress caused by the thermal effects is also considered. nonlocal governing equations of motion for this double-layer graphene s...

the permeability and tortuosity of pore-scale two and three-dimensional random porous media were calculated using the lattice boltzmann method (lbm). effects of geometrical parameters of medium on permeability and tortuosity were investigated as well. two major models of random porous media were reconstructed by computerized tomography method: randomly distributed rectangular obstacles in a uni...