Environmental impact assessment (EIA) is an intrinsically complex multi-dimensional process, involving multiple criteria and multiple actors. Multi-criteria methods can serve as useful decision aids for carrying out the EIA. This paper proposes the use of a multi-criteria technique, namely the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), for the purpose. AHP has the flexibility to combine quantitative and...

introduction automatic human emotion recognition is one of the most interesting topics in the field of affective computing. however, development of a reliable approach with a reasonable recognition rate is a challenging task. the main objective of the present study was to propose a robust method for discrimination of emotional responses thorough examination of heart rate variability (hrv). in t...

We investigate the impact of the environment (i.e. the impact of socio-political and socio-economic exogenous events) on the emergence of ordered phases of locally interacting individual economic sentiment variables (consumer confidence, business confidence etc.). The sentiment field is modeled as a (non-critical) Ising field with nearestneighbor interactions on a (two-dimensional) square latti...

the data for this study has been collected from a questionnaire examining the relationship between birth weight of the new born and some physical and socio-economic characteristics of the mother. between dec.1975 to jan.1976, 1553 women who had referred to two hospitals in tehran for labor: 981 to farah maternity and 572 to firoozgar hospital have been interviewed. the results of the study have...

The Tobacco CMO (Common Market Organization) is involved in a intense debate between the European tobacco industry and those who are against to a crop whose transformed product is dangerous to the health. European institutions have shown a strong interest in this complex issue introducing two Reforms (1992 and 1998) and one revision in 2004. This paper aims to analyse and investigate the socio-...

In the developing economies, optimal forest regimes should incorporate the socio-economic characteristics of the user groups. And, since socio-economic factors will change with time, optimal forest regimes will also follow a dynamic path. The two most important socio-economic factors are the heterogeneity of the user group with respect to forest management and the direct dependence of the user ...

People in low socio-economic positions are over-represented in suicide statistics and are at heightened risk for non-fatal suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Few studies have tried to tease out the relationship between individual-level and area-level socio-economic position, however. We used data from Ten to Men (the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health) to investigate the relationship b...