Effects of different production processing stages on mechanical and surface characteristics of polylactic acid and PET fibre fabrics

This paper reports study on the polylactic acid (PLA) and polyester (PET) knitted fabrics mechanical and surface characteristics at low-stress and the influence of typical commercially applied different production processing stages on the properties. The KES-FB is used for the investigation of low-stress bending, compression, tensile, shear and surface characteristics. The results show remarkable changes after each processing stage, such as scouring, drying, dyeing, heat setting and softening, in mechanical and surface characteristics of PLA and PET fibre knitted fabrics. PLA knitted fabrics represent higher values in bending, shear and surface properties after different processing stages as compared to PET knitted fabrics. The values of bending rigidity (B), bending hysteresis (2HB), shear stiffness (G), and shear hysteresis (2HG and 2HG3) have been significantly decreased after the scouring treatment. There is a considerable decrease in B, 2HB, G, 2HG and 2HG3 values and an improvement in tensile elongation (EMT) after dyeing of PET and PLA fabrics. A slight reduction in shear and bending properties of polylactic acid fibre fabrics shows that softening treatment decreases the inter fibre and inter yarn friction. LT (linearity of load-extension curve), RT (recovery from tensile deformation), LC (linearity of compression curve) and RC (recovery from compression deformation) properties are not found quite sensitive for different production processing stages in case of both the fabrics

Impulsive/compulsive sexual behaviors; Model fit test

The purpose of this study was to present and test a structural model to explain the occurrence of impulsive/compulsive sexual behaviors. The method of this research was path analysis. The statistical population of this study included all in relation people (male and female) referred to counseling and psychology centers in Tehran in 1998/99, which based on the clinical record and expert diagnosis with one of the complaints related to: sexual hyperactivity, sexual addiction, High-risk sexual behaviors, pornography and impulsive /compulsive sexual behaviors. Based on the analyzes of Herk, Black, Babin, and Anderson (2009) on sample size in structural equation models, they suggest the minimum sample size for models with 7 structures or less and the low share rate in factor 300 models; The statistical sample of this study was 257 men and women referring to 2 counseling and psychology centers in Tehran in 1998/99, who after obtaining informed consent were selected as available and participated in this study. From Coleman, Miner, Ohlerking &Nancy Raymond (2001) list of impulsive /compulsive sexual behaviors questionnaire, Persian version of Jackson five-factor questionnaire, Collins and Reed attachment style questionnaire (1990), Walker and Thompson intimacy scale (1983), Halbert Sexual Desire Questionnaire (1992), Sex Knowledge and Attitude Scale (2005) and the Hofmann, & Kahdan (2010) Emotional Self-Regulation Questionnaire were used. The research data were tested using structural equation modeling and partial least squares method. SPSS statistical software version 21 was used for data analysis. The results showed that examination of model fit indices shows a relatively good fit of the measurement model; The results of testing the final model of the research showed that: direct and indirect path of a large number of model variables to impulsive /compulsive sexual behaviors is significant. A number of intermediate effects between model components were also confirmed. The obtained results can help in better drawing the psychological profile of people with impulsive-compulsive sexual behaviors, and as a result, the necessary interventions can be designed based on this

Comparative effects of Nucleostemin silencing in human Molt-4 and Jurkat leukemia T-ALL cells

     Nucleostemin (NS), a stem cell-abundant nucleolar protein, is critical for maintaining the self-renewal and proliferative properties of normal and cancerous stem cells. Recent data suggests that NS signaling is important for proliferation of T-cells and leukemia cells. This study was conducted to verify the role of NS in pathogenesis and treatment of T-cell acute lymphocytic leukemia (T-ALL). Our results revealed that RNA interference-mediated NS silencing primarily affected clonogenicproperty of T-ALL cells by limiting their self-renewal potential in vitro.These effects were accompanied with inhibition of proliferation and early apoptosis in Jurkat cells (p53-null) while late apoptosis in Molt-4 (p53 functional) T-ALL cells. Collectively, our results suggest that NS is a critical regulator in self-renewal and apoptosis of differentT-ALL cells. This suggests therapeutic potential of this gene in leukemia

Managerial Pattern and Work Relations at Traditional Pond in Pangkajene and the Island District (Milkfish Aquaculture Case in Bonto Manai Village)

Improving the quality of traditional farmers on a technical, social and economic scale, is strongly influenced and determined by the capacity to carry out pond business activities related to managerial patterns and work relationships that are formed.  This research was conducted in October – December 2021. Milkfish (Chanos-chanos) aquaculture business in Bonto Manai Village was chosen as the case, because the aquaculture system managed by the community is dominated the traditional aquaculture system. The purpose of this research is to analyze the knowledge of traditional aquaculture as a technical practice in managing aquaculture businesses, as well as to analyze the work relations of traditional aquaculture businesses which are internalized in the local culture of the community. The methodology used is a case research method with a descriptive qualitative data analysis approach described in the life history of the informants. The results showed that traditional farmers in milkfish (Chanos-chanos) aquaculture in Bonto Manai Village have acquired knowledge gained through experience passed down from generation to generation, starting from the construction and management of pond subgrade, seed stocking, rearing, harvest and post-harvest. Accompanied by rituals based on belief as a traditional value. The managerial pattern and work relations in the management of traditional pond business have three types of management, namely; aquaculture business which is self managed by the owner of the aquaculture land with involving two to three workers, aquaculture business which is managed based on a leasing system, and aquaculture business which is managed by a rapture system. Keywords: Managerial Pattern, Work Relations, Traditional Pond, Milkfish

Bibliometric and Content Analysis of Scientific Outputs Relevant to Health Education and Promotion in Iran during 1998-2011

Background: Since the aim of health research is to improve the quality of community life, the results obtained from these research could be used in health policies and practices. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the bibliometric and content analysis of research relevant to health education and promotion performed in Iran during 1998-2011. Methods: This is a descriptive content analysis study. Data were collected from online databases (IranMedex, Medlib, SID, ISI, and PubMed), and all published articles relevant to health education and promotion in Iran up to the end of March 2011 were included in this study. In order to do content analysis a researcher-made checklist approved by experts was used for identifying the variables. Data was entered into SPSS 21 and descriptive statistics and percents were calculated. Results: From 1227 documents retrieved, 817 were published in Persian and 410 in English. A great share of retrieved documents belonged to the articles published in the scientific journals (87.4%). Mental health (10.7%), family planning and reproductive health (10.2 %), and chronic non-communicable diseases (10.2%) were the most frequent subject areas in research relevant to health promotion, respectively. Most of the studies were cross-sectional (52.1%), the most widely used method was simple random sampling (27.7%), and most of the studies were performed locally in provinces (83.7%). Conclusion: Doing more studies by outlining the exact perspective of health promotion research in Iran and comparison of the current status of Iran with that of other countries are recommended

A Hybrid Metaheuristic Algorithm for Robust Two-stage Flexible Flow Shop scheduling with Dedicated Assembly Lines under Uncertainty

In this paper, the problem of scheduling and sequencing of multi-objective two-stage flexible flow shop with dedicated assembly lines, which produce various products during multiple planning periods, is proposed. The objectives of the proposed model are minimizing maximum completion time of products and total average weighted tardiness of production products. The first stage of the proposed flexible flow shop involves of several different parallel machines in site I and one machine in site II, and the second stage involves of two specific dedicated assembly lines. Each product has a specific bill of materials as well as has its own specific configuration which leading to difference processing times to assemble. Products composed of only single-process components are assigned to the first assembly line and products composed of at least a two-process component are assigned to the second assembly line. Components are placed on the associated dedicated assembly line in the second phase after completion of production process on the assigned machines in the first phase and final products will be produced by assembling the components. Uncertainty of demand of final products is handled via robust optimization technique based on the concept of uncertainty budget. The main contribution of this paper is development of a new mathematical model in flexible flow shop scheduling problem with dedicated assembly lines under uncertainty and presentation of a novel hybrid meta-heuristic for solving the proposed model. Due to the NP-hard nature of the proposed multi-objective problem, a hybrid evolutionary metaheuristic based on the strange Pareto evolutionary algorithm II is developed that incorporates a customized adaptive large neighborhood search as its local search heuristic. Extensive computational results illustrate the efficiency of the proposed model and solution algorithm in dealing with robust multi-objective flexible flow shop problem

Multi-Objective Hybrid Metaheuristic Search Algorithm for Distributed Reentrant Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling Via Considering Preventive Maintenance under Uncertainty

Abstract: Distributing the production activities among the supply chain facilities with regard to the considered criteria can have a significant impact on the productive management. In this paper, a comprehensive mathematical model for reentrant permutation flow shop scheduling via considering a preventive maintenance and distributed jobs on different facilities is proposed. The uncertainty of the time of preventive maintenance operation is handled using robust optimization technique based on the uncertainty budget approach. Job assignment to production facilities and job scheduling are determined in the proposed model by considering multiple objectives include Cmax minimization, production cost minimization, and average tardiness. Due to the NP-hard nature of the proposed flow shop scheduling problem, a new hybrid meta-heuristic based on the novel adaptive large neighborhood search and the simulated annealing is adopted. The obtained results from an extensive numerical experimentation indicate the efficiency of the proposed model and solution algorithm to tackle the proposed problem. Introduction: In certain manufacturing industries, it has been observed that the classical assumption of flow shop scheduling, stating that each job visits each machine exactly once, is occasionally violated. The prime example can be noticed in the high-tech industries, i.e. semiconductor wafer fabrication in which the operation processes of the jobs are performed by re-visiting some workstations (Gupta & Sivakumar, 2006). The scheduling problem of this nature of processing is categorized as a distinct flow shop with reentrant line configuration, called reentrant flow shop scheduling (RFS) (Katragjini et. al., 2015). The significance of RFS is the processing layers l. Each layer begins from the  first workstation and completes on the last workstation. It means that once a job finished a layer of a set of operations, it will repeat its process to the next layer starting on the first workstation until all operations are completed. The RFS scheduling has been an active research area and attracted a considerable attention since the past decade due to the development and improvement of high-tech industry. The complexity of RFS cannot be circumvented since it involves more operations than the classical flow shop. Moreover, the cyclic operations where the jobs with higher layers may overlap other jobs in the same work station are essential to be considered. As a result, these complexities have triggered the development of the efficient scheduling approaches to improve the system performance. Various researchers surveyed the scheduling techniques in semiconductor manufacturing and providing the global view on reentrant scheduling problems. Another form of RFS is reentrant permutation flow shop (RPFS) where at each level no passing is permitted, that is, not only the machine sequence the same for all jobs, but also the job sequence is the same for each machine (Rifai et al., 2016).    Despite the enormous literature on the RFS, most studies -if not all- base their research on the assumption that the process only involves a single production line. Some studies exploredthe problem on hybrid RFS where the production stages have more than one machines available to process the jobs. Nevertheless, hybrid RFS is based on the single production line. Nowadays, single factory firms are less common, with multi-plant companies and supply chains taking a more important role in practice. Several literatures mentioned that multiple production lines with more than one production center, named as distributed manufacturing system, enables companies to achieve higher product quality, lower production costs and lower management risks. However, existing studies focused more on the economic field anddistributed finite capacity scheduling is seldom tackled. Materials and Methods:In this section, a novel hybrid meta-heuristic via considering the specific assumptions of the flow shop problem as a NP-hard problem is proposed. The proposed solution algorithm incorporates adaptive large neighborhood search and the simulated annealing algorithms. Various new construction and deconstruction neighborhood structures are applied in the proposed adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm. Details of the proposed algorithm is presented in Fig.1. Results and Discussion: The results of the proposed solution algorithm assessment are presented based on the two common performance assessment criteria which are proposed in the literature after 10 times runs of the applied solution algorithms. These criteria are the average number of obtained Pareto solution at each iteration of  the algorithm and average number of Pareto solutions which are not dominated by solutions from  other compared algorithms. In addition, computational time is considered as a third criteria for performance assessment of the proposed solution algorithm (See Table 1). Obtained results indicate the superiority of the  proposed solution algorithm.       Fig. 1- Peseudo code of the proposed solution algorithm   Table 1- Performance assessment of the proposed solution algorithm Compared Alg. Proposed Alg. Pro. Compared Alg. Proposed Alg. Pro. 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 0.7270 39.30 72.01 0.4129 25.95 57.12 15 0.6120 18.71 3392.26 0.5114 13.80 3019.18 75 0.6991 34.43 180.23 0.5972 28.80 152.11 30 0.6523 18.01 5900.74 0.5304 11.20 5631.07 90 0.9009 48.23 479.19 0.6543 38.10 398.06 45 0.6914 15.23 6801.69 0.5713 11.83 6594.29 105 0.9207 47.3 1308.21 0.7810 36.30 1200.47 60                 Conclusion: In this study, a comprehensive optimization model for an extended reentrant permutation flow shop scheduling via considering a preventive maintenance and distributed jobs on different facilities is proposed. To enhance the applicability of the proposed model, uncertainty of the time of preventive maintenance operation is handled using robust optimization technique based on the uncertainty budget approach. In the proposed mathematical model, multiple objectives include Cmax minimization, production cost minimization, and average tardiness are considered. The aim of the proposed model is to determine the job assignment to production facilities and job scheduling. A new hybrid meta-heuristic based on the novel adaptive large neighborhood search and the simulated annealing is applied as a consequence of the NP-hard nature of the proposed flow shop scheduling problem,. The obtained results from an extensive numerical experimentation indicate the efficiency of the proposed model and solution algorithm to tackle the proposed problem.   References Gupta, A. K., & Sivakumar, A. I. (2006). “Job Shop Scheduling Techniques In Semiconductor Manufacturing”. Int. J. Adv. Manuf. Technol, 27(11), 1163-1169. Katragjini, K., Vallada, E., & Ruiz, R. (2015). “Rescheduling Flowshops Under Simultaneous Disruptions”. Paper presented at the 6th IESM Conference, Seville, Spain. Rifai, A. P., Nguyen, H. T., & Dawal, S. Z. M. (2016). “Multi-Objective Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search For Distributed Reentrant Permutation Flow Shop Scheduling”. Applied Soft Computing, 40(1), 42–57

Effects of different production processing stages on mechanical and surface characteristics of polylactic acid and PET fibre fabrics

31-37This paper reports study on the polylactic acid (PLA) and polyester (PET) knitted fabrics mechanical and surface characteristics at low-stress and the influence of typical commercially applied different production processing stages on the properties. The KES-FB is used for the investigation of low-stress bending, compression, tensile, shear and surface characteristics. The results show remarkable changes after each processing stage, such as scouring, drying, dyeing, heat setting and softening, in mechanical and surface characteristics of PLA and PET fibre knitted fabrics. PLA knitted fabrics represent higher values in bending, shear and surface properties after different processing stages as compared to PET knitted fabrics. The values of bending rigidity (B), bending hysteresis (2HB), shear stiffness (G), and shear hysteresis (2HG and 2HG3) have been significantly decreased after the scouring treatment. There is a considerable decrease in B, 2HB, G, 2HG and 2HG3 values and an improvement in tensile elongation (EMT) after dyeing of PET and PLA fabrics. A slight reduction in shear and bending properties of polylactic acid fibre fabricsshows that softening treatment decreases the inter fibre and inter yarn friction. LT (linearity of load-extension curve), RT (recovery from tensile deformation), LC (linearity of compression curve) and RC (recovery from compression deformation) properties are not found quite sensitive for different production processing stages in case of both the fabrics

An Alliance of Carbapenem-Resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae with Precise Capsular Serotypes and Clinical Determinants: A Disquietude in Hospital Setting

Carbapenemase-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae (CRKP) is a genuine burden for physicians and researchers. We aimed at carbapenemase resistance and its relation with capsular serotyping in K. pneumoniae and studied some clinical determinants, which may influence the clinical infections. Initially, 61 K. pneumoniae isolates obtained from various clinical specimens were confirmed at the molecular level and then antimicrobial susceptibility test was performed followed by capsular serotyping performed by multiplex PCR. All isolates were subjected to the detection of carbapenemase genes including blaKPC, blaNDM-1, blaOXA-48, blaVIM, and blaIMP. Clinical and demographic data of all patients were reviewed including age, gender, underlying diseases, and the treatment obtained. Multidrug-resistance was a predominant feature in 77% K. pneumoniae strains. Presence of extended-spectrum beta-lactamase was detected phenotypically in 59% K. pneumoniae strains. Carbapenem resistance was noticed phenotypically in 24.6% isolates. blaOXA-48 and blaNDM-1 were the most frequent carbapenemase genes. blaNDM-1 positive isolates correlated with gentamicin, amikacin, imipenem, and meropenem resistance (p<0.05). The nosocomial isolates mostly harbored blaOXA-48 gene (p<0.02). Amongst all the K. pneumoniae isolates, 59% isolates could be typed and serotype K54 had the highest prevalence followed by K20 and K5. Correlation between the carbapenemase genes, serotype and type of infection showed that blaOXA-48 positive strains had a significant association with K20 serotype and urinary tract infections (p=0.2) while, K20 serotype and blaKPC positive strains were significantly associated with wound infections (K20, p=0.3 and blaKPC, and p=0.4). Mucoid phenotype was not found related to presence of specific carbapenemase genes or serotypes except serotype K20 (p<0.001). Patients with monotherapy had treatment failure in comparison to the combination therapy for blaKPC-associated infections. In conclusion, the present investigation exhibited the significant association between K20 serotype with blaOXA-48. The predominance of K54 reveals the possibility of endemicity in our hospital setting. K. pneumoniae isolated from wound specimens significantly harbors K20 serotype and blaKPC gene. Comprehensive clinical information and the distribution of antibiotic resistance genes, and serotypes may play important roles in the treatment process