Determine of Surface Water Quality Index in Iran

In modeling complex of environmental problems, researchers often fail to define precise statements about input and outcomes of contaminants, but fuzzy logic could help to dominate this logical indecision. The goal of this work is to propose a new river water quality indicator using fuzzy logic. The proposed index combines six indicators, and not only does it exhibit a tool that accounts for the discrepancy between the two base indices, but also provides a quantifiable score for the determined water quality. These classifications with a membership grade can be of a sound support for decision-making, and can help assign each section of a river a gradual quality sub-objective to be reached. To show the applicability of the proposed approach, the new indicator was used to classify water quality in a number of stations along the basins of Qarah-chai and Siminehrood. The obtained classifications were then compared to the conventional physicochemical water quality indicator currently in use in Iran. The results revealed that the fuzzy indicator provided stringent classifications compared to the conventional index in 38% and 44% of the cases for the two basins respectively. These noted exceptions are mainly due to the big disagreement between the different quality thresholds in the two standards, especially for fecal coliform and total phosphorus. These large disparities put forward an argument for the Iranian water quality law to be upgraded. Keywords: Fuzzy logic; Qarah-chai basin; Siminehrood; Water quality inde

Societal Marketing Orientation And Marketing Performance: The Mediating Role Of Key Market-Based Capabilities And The Moderating Effect Of Institutional Context

Societal issues appear to be increasingly important in today’s business climate. Response to these issues by adopting societal marketing orientation is expected to enable firms to gain better competitive advantage. However, literature search reveals that there is a lack of research offering valid measurement and a systematic framework that demonstrates the underlying mechanisms and contingencies through which societal marketing orientation can help firms to achieve that end. Using a priori approach the study intended to propose a valid measure of societal marketing orientation and to investigate the extent of this orientation among large manufacturing firms in Malaysia

System-Level Modelling of Heterogeneous System-on-Chip Architectures Targeting Multi-Standard Wireless Applications

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An Empirical Study of Free Cash Flows and Firm's Profitability In Listed Companies of the Pakistan Stock Exchange

Every organization sets its goal to increase productivity, managers in corporate organizations, therefore, do every possible effort to enhance their performance and profitability. This study aims to determine how free cash flows affected Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX)'s profitability while taking into account a variety of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan's non-financial sectors. The existing literature has advanced the free cash flow hypothesis as one of the factors affecting corporate performance. This study is descriptive in nature. Secondary data from 2011-2022 gave enough data which was used in the analysis. The study's population included 84 companies from Pakistan's different 5 sectors, and 58 non-financial enterprises were selected to create a predictive model of how cash flow affects profitability.  Panel regression showed 72% variations in ROA and 25% variations in ROE.  FCF positively affects ROA (β= 0.04, p= 0.05). FCF negatively affects ROE (β=-0.26, p= 0.04), hence this study discovered significant and applicable insights for the users

Communication centric platforms for future high data intensive applications

The notion of platform based design is considered as a viable solution to boost the design productivity by favouring reuse design methodology. With the scaling down of device feature size and scaling up of design complexity, throughput limitations, signal integrity and signal latency are becoming a bottleneck in future communication centric System-on-Chip (SoC) design. This has given birth to communication centric platform based designs. Development of heterogeneous multi-core architectures has caused the on-chip communication medium tailored for a specific application domain to deal with multidomain traffic patterns. This makes the current application specific communication centric platforms unsuitable for future SoC architectures. The work presented in this thesis, endeavours to explore the current communication media to establish the expectations from future on-chip interconnects. A novel communication centric platform based design flow is proposed, which consists of four communication centric platforms that are based on shared global bus, hierarchical bus, crossbars and a novel hybrid communication medium. Developed with a smart platform controller, the platforms support Open Core Protocol (OCP) socket standard, allowing cores to integrate in a plug and play fashion without the need to reprogram the pre-verified platforms. This drastically reduces the design time of SoC architectures. Each communication centric platform has different throughput, area and power characteristics, thus, depending on the design constraints, processing cores can be integrated to the most appropriate communication platform to realise the desired SoC architecture. A novel hybrid communication medium is also developed in this thesis, which combines the advantages of two different types of communication media in a single SoC architecture. The hybrid communication medium consists of crossbar matrix and shared bus medium . Simulation results and implementation of WiMAX receiver as a real-life example shows a 65% increase in data throughput than shared bus based communication medium, 13% decrease in area and 11% decrease in power than crossbar based communication medium. In order to automate the generation of SoC architectures with optimised communication architectures, a tool called SOCCAD (SoC Communication architecture development) is developed. Components needed for the realisation of the given application can be selected from the tool’s in-built library. Offering an optimised communication centric placement, the tool generates the complete SystemC code for the system with different interconnect architectures, along with its power and area characteristics. The generated SystemC code can be used for quick simulation and coupled with efficient test benches can be used for quick verification. Network-on-Chip (NoC) is considered as a solution to the communication bottleneck in future SoC architectures with data throughput requirements of over 10GB/s. It aims to provide low power, efficient link utilisation, reduced data contention and reduced area on silicon. Current on-chip networks, developed with fixed architectural parameters, do not utilise the available resources efficiently. To increase this efficiency, a novel dynamically reconfigurable NoC (drNoC) is developed in this thesis. The proposed drNoC reconfigures itself in terms of switching, routing and packet size with the changing communication requirements of the system at run time, thus utilising the maximum available channel bandwidth. In order to increase the applicability of drNoC, the network interface is designed to support OCP socket standard. This makes drNoC a highly reuseable communication framework, qualifying it as a communication centric platform for high data intensive SoC architectures. Simulation results show a 32% increase in data throughput and 22-35% decrease in network delay when compared with a traditional NoC with fixed parameters

Relationship between ethical corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty: the mediating role of customers’ gratitude

The purpose of this study was to examine whether customer gratitude mediates the association between ethical corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty. A cross-sectional survey was adopted. A total of 430 individual customers of retail banks located in some selected towns in north-east region of Nigeria were selected using convenience sampling. Structured questionnaires were used to collect. Descriptive statistics and partial least square structural equation modeling were used in data analysis. Finding showed that ethical corporate social responsibility positively and significantly affected customer loyalty. Also, a positive and significant effect of ethical corporate social responsibility on customer gratitude was observed. Furthermore, it was observed that customer gratitude and customer loyalty are positively associated. Also, customer gratitude mediated between ethical corporate social responsibility and customer loyalty. This study concluded that customer gratitude mediated the influence of ethical corporate social responsibility on customer loyalty. The finding of this study will help managers of Nigerian retail banks to develop ethical corporate social practices which strongly create feelings of gratitude among their banks’ customers in order to take advantage of customers’ gratitude, and eventually cultivate customers’ loyalty

In-Service EFL Teachers’ Needs Assessment for Professional Development (PD) at Public Sector Universities in Sindh, Pakistan

This study aims to reveal English language teachers perception towards professional development and to identify their needs regarding professional development. Present study used quantitative method to describe needs of the English teachers. The study included 100 EFL teachers who are working at Universities of Sindh. In order to achieve aim of the study, researcher used questionnaire for data collection. Research questionnaire consisted of three sections each of it included statements. Findings of the study clarified that professional development is essential with the emergence of new trend in ELT, it also helps in improving students, success and achievement, and it improves teachers’ learning and teaching quality. Furthermore, teachers needed professional development training programs on teaching language skills, classroom management, teaching methods and techniques and assessment and evaluation. Key words: Needs Analysis, Professional Development, and Teachers’ Needs. DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/86-05 Publication date: March 28th 202

Customers' Satisfaction with primary health care: comparison of two district health centers with and without ISO certificate in Kerman University of Medical Sciences

Background and Aims: One of the principles of the quality management systems in organizations is attention to customer centered approach and one of the scales for evaluation of the efficacy of provided services is customer satisfaction. This research aimed to compare satisfaction levels of customers attending primary health care centers in Bardsir (with ISO certificate) and Zarand (without ISO certificate) districts affiliated to Kerman University of Medical Sciences. Material and Methods: This comparative and cross- sectional study was carried out in 2011 with 960 people (n= 480 in each district). The data gathering instrument was a validated self-construct questionnaire including two main parts of general and specialty services for evaluation of satisfaction rate. Data were analyzed through SPSS version 18.0 and using descriptive statistics, Chi-square, Pearson correlation and logistic regression model. Judgment criterion for desired satisfaction was attaining 75% of the score of each part. Results: The desired satisfaction level of customers of health centers affiliated to Zarand district was more than that of Bardsir district (83.3% vs. 70.2%, P <0.01). Moreover, there was a significant difference between two districts in regard to satisfaction levels of general services (P <0.05). Result of logistic regression model showed no significant relationship between total satisfaction and demographic variables. Discussion: As compared with Zarand district, implementation of ISO quality management system in the Bardsir district has not enriched total customers' satisfaction. Thus, the utilization of quality management approaches based on needs rather than organizational emotions and fashions are emphasized. Keywords: Satisfaction, Customer, ISO, Health centers, Health car