Due to the new hopes for treatment of multiple sclerosis (MS) diseases by Teriflunomide (TFN), in this project, a cheap, robust, and fully validated method has been developed both for determination of assay content in API (active pharmaceutical ingredient), and for related impurities analysis (RIA). To operate the method, a common C18, end-capped (250 × 4.6) mm, 5µm liquid chromatography column, was applied. The mobile phase A was prepared by dissolving 2.74 g (20mM) of PDP (potassium dihydrogen phosphate) and 3.72 g (50mM) of PC (potassium chloride) in water (1000 mL). Then, pH was adjusted to 3.0 by adding OPA (ortho-phosphoric acid) 85%; while, the mobile phase B was acetonitrile (ACN) (100%). In order to confirm the experimental data about the λmax of TFN, we have used the Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) simulations, quantum mechanics (QM), and TD-DFT calculations. According to the results, the method showed a high level of suitability, specificity, linearity, accuracy, precision, repeatability, robustness, and reliable detection limit.

In this study, we attempted to conduct a comprehensive review of the existing and pertinent literature on the topic of factor investment. We performed Scientometric analysis of studies published in reputable finance journals, i.e., The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Asset Management and others, during the years 2014 to 2023. To obtain the research data for our study, we gathered and examined a collection of 76 bibliographic records sourced from the Web of Science database. This database provided a comprehensive and reliable source of scholarly publications in the field of finance. To analyze the data, we employed Scientometric networks as part of our analytical approach. Scientometric networks allowed us to explore the relationships and connections between different publications, authors, and keywords within the domain of factor investment. To visualize and present the research findings, we utilized the Bibliometrix package for R, a powerful tool specifically designed for bibliometric analysis. This package enabled us to generate insightful visualizations that showcased the key patterns, trends, and interconnections within the literature on factor investment. By employing Scientometric analysis and leveraging the capabilities of the Bibliometrix package, we aimed to provide a comprehensive overview of the existing scholarly research in this field and contribute to the understanding of factor investment.

In today's financial landscape, individuals face challenges when it comes to determining the most effective investment strategies. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as a recent and enticing option for investment. This paper focuses on forecasting the price of Ethereum using two distinct methods: artificial intelligence (AI)-based methods like Genetic Algorithms (GA), and econometric models such as regression analysis and time series models. The study incorporates economic indicators such as Crude Oil Prices and the Federal Funds Effective Rate, as well as global indices like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and Standard and Poor's 500, as input variables for prediction. To achieve accurate predictions for Ethereum's price one day ahead, we develop a hybrid algorithm combining Genetic Algorithms (GA) and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Furthermore, regression analysis serves as an additional prediction tool. Additionally, we employ the Autoregressive Moving Average (ARMA) model to assess the relationships between variables (dependent and independent variables). To evaluate the performance of our chosen methods, we utilize daily historical data encompassing economic and global indices from the beginning of 2019 until the end of 2021. The results demonstrate the superiority of AI-based approaches over econometric methods in terms of predictability, as evidenced by lower loss functions and increased accuracy. Moreover, our findings suggest that the AI approach enhances computational speed while maintaining accuracy and minimizing errors.

In recent years, the rapid transmission of information and interconnectedness of global financial markets have amplified the convergence and influence among them. Consequently, the occurrence of spillover effects in one market can significantly impact other markets. Accurately identifying and understanding these spillover effects is crucial for effectively managing and controlling market fluctuations. This research aims to measure and analyze the spillover effects between China's stock market and selected emerging economies in the Middle East, with a focus on exploring diversification opportunities. The analysis encompasses three distinct time periods, including the overall period from May 1, 2005, to May 31, 2023. The sub-periods consist of the first sub-period from May 1, 2005, to October 31, 2009, and the second sub-period from December 1, 2010, to May 31, 2023. Multivariate Generalized Heterogeneous Autoregression (MGARCH) is employed in this study to examine the spillover effects between China's economy and the emerging economies under consideration. The Granger causality analysis reveals a unidirectional causality running from the Chinese stock market to Jordan, as well as from the UAE to China throughout the entire observation period. However, no spillover effects are found between China and Saudi Arabia in either direction during any of the periods. Notably, a two-way causality is detected between the Chinese and UAE markets in the second sub-period. Furthermore, MGARCH results indicate no spillover effects from China to the emerging economies during the overall period, first sub-period, or second sub-period. The findings of this research offer valuable insights for investment portfolio managers in the Chinese economy, who may consider the examined emerging economies as potential destinations for risk diversification.

Nowadays, in order to increase construction of tall structures, the importance of choosing optimum systems, with a huge energy absorption capacity against wind and earthquake loads, has been widely considered. Since four decades ago, steel shear walls had been used as a stiff and high performance lateral system. This study is about the effect of concrete filled steel tubes (CFT) columns as vertical boundary elements of steel shear wall on seismic behavior of steel structures. Due to do this, three 10-storey steel structures, with similar plans and lateral load career systems of steel shear wall, coinciding X-bracing, and moderate steel frame were analyzed by means of non-linear, time-history method through SAP2000 software, and the results of roof displacement of them were compared with each other. Also after validating a two-storey, single-span frame sample with steel shear walls and CFT columns, 3 single-storey structures were analyzed by means of hysteresis and pushover, through ABAQUS software. The results of this study showed that a shear wall system presents suitable stiffness, resistance and ductility in comparison with other lateral bearing systems.

Due to the important environmental effects on human life and the conflict between the mining process and environmental factors, the enactment of protectionist environmental laws in the mineral industry has received extensive attention especially in countries with high mining potential. In this regard, using an extended fuzzy TOPSIS method, this study develops a novel conceptual framework to identify the key protection laws in Iran by considering the mineral successful laws and regulations in mineral-developed countries such as Australia, Chile, India, Turkey, Canada, South Africa, and China. This helps to apply the experiences of the abovementioned countries in resolving similar conflicts in Iran’s mineral industry. The key protection laws are selected based on their national and international environmental treaties, mines’ environmental protection laws, conflict solution methods, social responsibilities in mining activity, and laws for the abandoned mines. The proposed framework demonstrates that Iran’s mineral laws require revision and more transparency to avoid ambiguity and conflict with mineral property laws and governmental rights.

This paper presents a review of clustering and mathematical programming methods and their impacts on cell forming (CF) and scheduling problems. In-depth analysis is carried out by reviewing 105 dominant research papers from 1972 to 2017 available in the literature. Advantages, limitations and drawbacks of 11 clustering methods in addition to 8 meta-heuristics are also discussed. The domains of studied methods include cell forming, material transferring, voids, exceptional elements, bottleneck machines and uncertain product demands. Since most of the studied models are NP-hard, in each section of this research, a deep research on heuristics and metaheuristics beside the exact methods are provided. Outcomes of this work could determine some existing gaps in the knowledge base and provide directives for objectives of this research as well as future research which would help in clarifying many related questions in cellular manufacturing systems (CMS).

Rotating shafts have a vast application in various industries especially in the aerospace industry such as engines, compressors and turbines. The researchers have performed considerable efforts on the rotating shafts’ dynamic behavior because of their sensitivity to the rotor specifications and different parameters such as supports. In this paper by employing a pipe elbow element, an especial finite element formulation is derived to investigate dynamic behavior of rotating shaft in the presence of support clearance. The proposed element consists of four nodes with twenty-four degrees of freedom, which also accounts for the shear and gyroscopic effects. Within a finite element analysis framework, the focus of the paper is proposing a formulation to account for the dynamic behavior of a rotating shaft with much less number of elements. The element is implemented in a finite element code and then is used to model and analyze some rotating shaft examples. In order to verify the developed formulation, results are compared with those obtained from other schemes reported in the literature.

Aggregate production planning (APP) is concerned with determining the optimum production and workforce levels for each period over the medium term planning horizon. It aims to set overall production levels for each product family to meet fluctuating demand in the near future. APP is one of the most critical areas of production planning systems. After the state-of-the-art summaries in 1992 by Nam and Logendran [ Nam, S. J., & Logendran, R. (1992). Aggregate production planning—a survey of models and methodologies. European Journal of Operational Research, 61(3), 255-272. ], which specifically summarized the various existing techniques from 1950 to 1990 into a framework depending on their abilities to either produce an exact optimal or near-optimal solution, there has not been any systematic survey in the literature. This paper reviews the literature on APP models to meet two main purposes. First, a systematic structure for classifying APP models is proposed. Second, the existing gaps in the literature are demonstrated in order to extract future directions of this research area. This paper covers a variety of APP models’ characteristics including modeling structures, important issues, and solving approaches, in contrast to other literature reviews in this field which focused on methodologies in APP models. Finally some directions for future research in this research area are suggested.

Bidding strategy is an important part of a negotiation strategy in automated multi-issue negotiations. In order to present good offers, which help maximize the agent’s utility, we need to search the outcome space and find appropriate bids. Bid search can become challenging in large outcome spaces with more than ten thousands of possible bids. The traditional search methods such as exhaustive or binary search are not efficient enough to find the right bids in a large space. This is mostly due to the high number of issues, high number of possible values for each issue, and increased time complexity of usual search methods. In this paper, we investigate the potential of using meta-heuristic methods for optimizing bid search in large outcome spaces. We apply some of the most popular meta-heuristic algorithms for bid search in bidding strategy of baseline negotiating agents and evaluate their impacts on negotiation performance in different negotiation domains. The evaluation results obtained through comprehensive experiments show how meta-heuristic algorithms can help improve bid search capability and consequently negotiation performance of the agents on different performance criteria. In addition, we show which search algorithm is most suitable for improving any particular performance criterion.