A highly sensitive, accurate and simple spectrophotometric method was established for determination of naproxen (NAP). The method involved ion-pair complex formation between naproxen and bromophenol blue (BPB). The colored product was measured at 432 nm. The reaction conditions were optimized. The absorbance was found to increase linearly with increase in concentration of NAP which was corroborated by correlation coefficient value. Beer’s law was obeyed in the concentration range of 1-110 µg mL-1 with molar absorptivity of 9.756×103 L mol-1 cm-1. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantitation (LOQ) for the proposed method are 0.292 and 0.973 µg mL-1, respectively. Recovery of the method was carried out by standard addition method. Recovery studies and statistical data proved the accuracy, reproducibility and the precision of the proposed method. The common excipients did not interfere in this analysis. Hence the method is useful for routine estimation of naproxen in pharmaceutical formulation and human serum samples.

Food industries as one of the most important industries in country, needs appropriate planning at both macro and micro levels. One of the important parts, which need to be discussed is the supply chain management in this industry. In this study, the importance of supply chain in food industries is studied. The proposed study determines different suppliers and using various criteria, the study applies Fuzzy Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to rank different alternatives. The preliminary results indicate that the proposed model of this paper is capable of determining appropriate suppliers in food industry.

There is a concern that auditors and the public may have different beliefs about the auditors’ responsibilities and the messages delivered by audit reports. During the past few years, some spectacular and well‐publicized corporates such as Anderson consulting collapse and the subsequent implication of the reporting auditors have emphasized on the audit expectation gap. It appears that public misperceptions represent a major reason for the legal liability crisis facing the accounting profession. The objective of this paper is to present an empirical investigation on the audit expectation gap for some privately hold firms in Iran. The population of this survey includes two groups of official auditing officials and management of some privately held firms. The results of the survey have indicated that there were some meaningful difference between management and audit group’s perceptions in terms of the auditors’ roles and responsibilities. However, there was no meaningful relationship between management and audit group’s perceptions in terms of the auditors’ independence.

Management teams are always expected to provide transparent financial reports for public. Different characteristics such as honesty, conservatism as well as management capability may play essential role for the success of businesses in supply chain. The proposed study of this paper considers the effects of three factors; namely management capability, management honesty and management conservatism on quality of financial statements. The proposed study collects the information of 92 firms from Tehran Stock Exchange over a nine-year period from 2004 to 2012. Using some statistical tests, the study has concluded that only management honesty could influence on quality of financial reports. In our study, conservatism did not have any impact on the quality of financial reports and it seems that managers have to take more risk in order to reach financial objectives.

Construction sites are accident-prone locations and therefore safety management plays an im-portant role in these workplaces. This study presents an adaptive algorithm for performance as-sessment of project management with respect to resilience engineering and job security in a large construction site. The required data are collected using questionnaires in a large construction site. The presented algorithm is composed of radial basis function (RBF), artificial neural networks multi-layer perceptron (ANN-MLP), and statistical tests. The results indicate that preparedness, fault-tolerance, and flexibility are the most effective factors on overall efficiency. Moreover, job security and resilience engineering have similar statistical impacts on overall system efficiency. The results are verified and validated by the proposed algorithm.

In competitive electricity markets, power needed for the network’s reserve is purchased from the ancillary service market. In this market, producing units and buyers alike announce their offers. As will be seen, energy market and reserve market implementation is possible with simultaneous method and serial method by choosing each of the methods based on the type of market and other conditions. In this paper, the energy market and the active power reserve market are simulated in two formations as serial and simultaneous for a uniform pricing system. In each method, limitations of transferring power over the lines, based on available transfer capacity (ATC), is considered alongside the other constraints in the energy market and the active power reserve market. Then, during network overload, economic dispatch is accomplished between winner units in the reserve market by using a linear optimization problem, and needed power is provided from these units at a minimal cost. Finally, our proposed methods are implemented on an IEEE 39-bus test system and results are analyzed.

The effect of football neck collar on the right external carotid blood flow was investigated for ten healthy subjects using Echo-Doppler technique and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. Carotid is in charge of blooding head’s parts including the brain and eyes. Hence, the evaluation of affected carotid flow by using neck collars is crucial for an improved ergonomic design. The testings were divided into three main categories; participants without wearing neck collar (Category 1), wearing neck collar (Category 2), and finally wearing neck collar with an embedded gap adjacent to the carotid artery position (Category 3). The experimental and numerical results revealed that wearing the neck collar (Category 2) reduced the average blood carotid flow by 28% compared to the case with no neck collar (Category 1). This average blood carotid flow reduction was improved by 15% when a gap separates the collar from the carotid artery position (Category 3). The results of this paper suggest a new design for the next generation of the neck collar by devising an appropriate gap near to carotid artery. The numerical results were validated and were in a reasonable agreement with the experimental data.

Human resource management plays an essential role on development of any business organization. Selection of employee normally depends on various criteria such as employee commitment, necessary skills, etc. Therefore, a good strategy to hire appropriate employee is a multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) specially the ones, which could handle uncertainty, properly. In this paper, we present a method to use MCDM techniques for hiring employees. In fact, the present work proposes a Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process (FAHP) as one of the most popular multi-criteria decision making techniques. A computer application is developed where it receives the configuration of the employee selection problem, evaluates the candidates and ranks them using the appropriate voting system.

Ferrocene and their derivatives are well-known redox active materials and were extensively used by construction of modified electrodes for the design of electrochemical sensors and biosensors. Substituent derivatization of ferrocene offers the prospect of controlling ferrocene moiety properties such as solubility, stability, reversibility of oxidation wave (important for their role as an electron transfer mediator) and oxidation potential, which is critical in the electrochemical determination of biological compounds. A new series of rigid alkynylferrocene including of 2-ferrocenylethynyl fluoren (3a), 2-ferrocenylethynyl fluoren-9-one (3b), 4-ferrocenylethynyl aniline (3c) and 3-ferrocenylethynyl-1-trifluoromethyl benzene (3d) have been prepared in good yields by Sonogashira coupling reaction. All products were characterized by 1H and 13C NMR, FT-IR, and elemental analysis. The redox chemistry of these compounds has been investigated by cyclic voltammetry. The half-wave potential of the terminal ferrocenyl moieties increases progressively in the order of 3c & LT; 3a & LT; 3b & LT; 3d, which is consistent with the electron density on the ferrocenyl unit.

During the past few years, information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized banking industry in the world. People are now able to do their business banking activities such as bill payments, transfer funds, etc. through the art of ICT features such as automatic teller machines, internet or telephone banking services. This paper performs an empirical investigation to find important factors influencing ICT implementation in Iranian banking industry. The survey uses factor analysis to find important factors using a questionnaire consist of 26 variables. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.901, which validates the questionnaire. The survey detects six factors influencing ICT including efficiency approach, new advanced technological achievements, human resource management, service strategy, growth strategy and supporting systems.