How to develop strategic and operational plan for research institute; a qualitative approach

Background: Spiritual health is recognized as one of the dimensions of health in Iran and in recent years many studies are conducted in this field in the country. This study aimed to review the experience of developing a five-year strategic plan and a one-year operational plan for the Spiritual Health Research Center (SHRC) of Iran University of Medical Sciences. Methods: The study was conducted in three phases in a qualitative approach. first, researches on spiritual health in Iran, upstream documents, and stakeholders in this area were reviewed. Then the situation of SHRC was analyzed. Based on the information obtained in the previous phases, the center’s strategic plan was developed including vision, mission, and values ​​of the SHRC along with strategic objectives until 2023. The plan was presented during a focused group discussion meeting to the members of the research council of SHRC and finalized after receiving feedback. Results: Totally, 23 strategic five-year objectives were set for the SHRC to be archived by 2023. Then, the specific goals, activities, outcomes and indicators for the evaluation for the first year were determined. Conclusions: This study proposed a methodology for developing strategic and operational plan for research institutes. The methodology presented here can be applied to other national and international bodies and institutions

A Review of Biochar as a Stable Adsorbent for Removing Antibiotics from Wastewater

One of the most recent environmental concerns is the emergence of new pollutants, such as antibiotics, and increasing antimicrobial resistance in bacteria. Therefore, achieving effective methods for treating these pollutants is very important and considerable. Extensive studies have been conducted on antibiotic removal from water by carbon-based materials. Engineered biochar-based adsorbents and biochar composites can effectively increase the yield of antibiotics adsorption. Adsorbents based on biochars are made from various raw materials at different conditions. Also, physically and chemically modified biochars and their composites could be used. The structure and physicochemical properties of adsorbents and antibiotics and the environmental conditions affect the absorption of antibiotics by biochars. Research has shown that biochar has many advantages, including a wide variety of available raw materials, and they are cheap. Furthermore, it could be regenerated and reused by efficient management, which is the significant advantage of biochar-based adsorbents. Although biochar usage is a good choice for removing antibiotics from aqueous solutions, it is possible to improve its adsorption capacity with more studies to optimize the main parameters and new methods in its production and thus cause economic benefits

Kinetic Modeling of the Sulfide Pollutant Removal in the Activated Sludge Bioreactor in the Presence of Silica Nanoparticles and Graphene Oxide

Nowadays, the presence of sulfurous compounds in aqueous media has become one of the most serious risks due to their high toxicity. Therefore, selecting and assessing a suitable and efficient method for decreasing or eliminating these pollutants is a vital issue. In this study, a comprehensive comparative analysis among various specific growth kinetic models of biomass were carried out to investigate the biological removal of sulfide pollutant in different bioreactors. For this aim, three types of bioreactor systems, including activated sludge without nanoparticles, in the presence of silica nanoparticles, and graphene oxide nanosheets were employed. Batch process experiments were performed to investigate the effect of different concentration of sulfide pollutant on the specific growth rates of biomass and also to study the growth of biomass during 14 days for all three bioreactor systems. Moreover, different biokinetic models, such as Monod, Haldane, Andrews and Noack, Yano and Koga and Webb were compared using obtained experimental data in a batch activated sludge process. According to the results, the maximum specific growth rates of EM, SS and GO bioreactor systems were mmax= 0.1871, 0.667, and 0.1277/ day-1, respectively. The Yano and Koga kinetic model had better fit with the experimental specific growth rate data than the other models thorough sulfide concentrations ranges with the correlation coefficients (R2) of 0.954 0.965 and 0.941 for EM, SS and GO bioreactor systems, respectively. In addition, the analysis of different error functions including, SSE, ARE, HYBRID and MPSD, showed that the bioreactor containing SiO2 nanoparticles has the best performance towards the other systems. Development and using these kinetic models and predictive methods can be considerably useful and efficient due to their analyzability and investigation of different operational parameters in the biological process of pollutants removal

Simulation of Biosynthesis Gas Process from Palm Oil Mill Effluent Sewage by Aspen HYSYS and SuperPro Designer

In this work, the process of biogas production from palm oil factory effluent was simulated and then the produced biosynthetic gas was sweetened. For this purpose, the biogas production process from wastewater treatment was simulated using SuperPro Designer v9.0 software. Then, the resulting biogas entered the chemical absorption and reforming sections for sweetening and conversion to syngas, respectively, and these steps were simulated with Aspen HYSYS v11.0 software. The simulation results of the first stage showed that the effluent feed of this factory with a flow rate of 42000 kg/h and COD of 62000 mg/L leads to the production of 1786 kg/h biogas containing various compounds such as methane, carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide and water with the molar fraction of 0.446, 0.245, 0.178 and 0.040, respectively. In the chemical absorption section, MEA solvent 10 %wt. and solvent-to-gas molar ratio of 13.51 were used, which led to the efficient removal of CO2 and H2S up to 1 ppm and 99.99%, respectively. The examination of temperature changes in the absorption tower also showed that the temperature increases along the absorption tower. In the methane steam-reforming unit, two different strategies were used: 1) plug flow reactor (with fluid package of Peng-Robinson-Stryjek–Vera) and 2) conversion and equilibrium reactors (with fluid package of Peng-Robinson). The results showed that the purity of hydrogen in the biogas produced in the second strategy (conversion and equilibrium reactors) was higher than the first one (plug flow reactor), and on the other hand, the purity of CO2 was zero in the second strategy

Should cross-border banking benefit from the financial safety net?

Using bank-level data from 84 countries, we find that a higher degree of bank internationalization is associated with higher interest expenses. Internationalization is proxied by a bank's share of foreign liabilities in total liabilities or a Herfindahl index of international liability concentration. Bank interest expenses rise relatively more with internationalization if the bank is underperforming or headquartered in a country with weak public finances, and especially at times of weak world output growth. These results suggest that liability holders of distressed internationalized banks expect less from the financial safety net since lack of an efficient recovery and resolution regime for international banks can make their insolvency very costly to deal with.post-prin

Measuring the in situ California Bearing Ratio of a new constructed forest road using DCP

Despite the cost of forest roads, they are essential infrastructure to provide access for resource management. The quality of roads pavement depends largely on the material used, particularly type of pavement that sometimes includes up to 70% of total cost. The purpose of this study was to use the DCP for CBR assessment of a newly completed road segment. Therefore, a DCP and a penetrometer were used to assess penetration resistance. Then penetration index of DCP was converted to field CBR. The results showed that bearing ratio of sections with clay material (which treated with Ionic stabilizer) was significantly lower than sections with clay and gravel material. There is a significant positive correlation between values of DCP and penetrometer. CBR values of the investigated road were less than expected and improper for passing traffic, which road destruction and wheel rut caused by traffic pass at the end of summer, confirms the achieved result. Regarding the lack of CBR tests in forest road projects due to its cost-time consuming and road surface destruction, using DCP as a simple, efficient and non destructive tool is suggested for estimating field CBR

Assessment of Cu(II) adsorption from water on modified membrane adsorbents using LS-SVM intelligent approach

Membrane adsorbents have emerged as effective engineering tools for the elimination of heavy metal ions from water resources. Our previous works presented novel modified chitosan/poly(vinyl) alcohol membrane adsorbents for Cu(II) adsorption from water. This communication presents an expert mathematical model to predict the equilibrium adsorption of Cu(II) using Least-Squares Support-Vector-Machine (LS-SVM) intelligent approach. The model has been developed and tested using a total set of 72 experimentally measured equilibrium adsorption data. Membrane types, initial ion concentrations and temperature were selected as input parameters for the model. Equilibrium adsorption results were assigned as output parameters. The data points were categorized into three random sets: 70% assigned for the model development, 15% for validation and the remaining 15% for verification of the model applicability. The statistical Leverage analysis was employed for the examination of the outlier and doubtful data. According to the Williams plot and Hat matrix, all the data fall within the ranges of 0 ⩽ H ⩽ 0.055 and −1 ⩽ R ⩽ 1. These ranges are much better confidence limits relative to the requirement of the model. The results show that the developed model is quite accurate and reliable with the average absolute relative deviation of 4.8% and correlation coefficients close to unity. In addition, it is obtained that the model can appropriately predict the actual trend of the equilibrium adsorption as a function of initial metal concentration at different temperatures

Health and its Social Determinants: A Study on Health Inequalities among Tabriz Citizens

Introduction Health is one of the most important needs of humans. Healthy people can perform social roles completely and in competition with others can obtain good positions. For this reason, attention to health and its distribution is one of the most interesting fields of investigation in sociology, because it is related to social justice and good governance in all societies. On the other hand, health inequalities exist in all societies and countries. New studies show that inequalities in health distribution are deepened in recent years among different groups of people inside countries, among poor and reach countries alike. These observations and scientific facts confronts sociologists with very important and basic question. What are the reasons of these health inequalities? After World War II, sociologists entered to medical institutions and universities and studied health problems in order to answer this important question. They stated that if health, illness and disease were entirely biological in origin then we would expect the incidence to be similar across geographical locations and social groupings. However this is not the case and the social patterns of health provides evidence that disease and illness do not affect all sectors of society equally. Methods and Materials This study examines the impact of social factors on health inequalities among residents of urban areas in the city of Tabriz. Environmental, social and economic variables are considered as independent variables. Presuming to affect the health status of people in the community. Therefore, specific attention is paid to people's health awareness, education, health literacy, social support and lifestyle along with other variables such as education, socio-economic status, work and living conditions. This study is an effort towards contribution of sociologists in research activities related to health inequalities among people. Sample size included 650 families, living in Tabriz. The research method is survey and citizens among 15-65 year old were eligible to enter in the study. The main research question is whether or not social factors can influence physical health outcomes, mental and individual perceptions of health status in Tabriz? Demographic factors and lifestyle considered as independent variables and their effects on health were examined using appropriate statistical methods. Health, as a dependent variable, was measured through SF36 questionnaire, which is known as a health related quality of life questionnaire. It has 8 dimensions, 4 of which are related to physical health, and 4 to mental health. Discussion of Results and Conclusions The results of this study showed that, compared to women, men have higher levels of health scores (75/7 vs. 71/5), and people with high education have health scores higher than those with law education. This research proved the effectiveness of health awareness, education, healthy lifestyle and social protection of citizens on increase of health level. Also, an indirect and powerful correlation was observed among age and health related quality of life. This result shows that aging is a very important variable in health status of people. Aged people have mental health problems in particular. On the other hand, there were very significant differences between men and women in mental health scores. Women have a very bad condition in this regard. The results of this study showed the importance of social factors in health inequalities among citizens. As a result, attention should be paid to social factors and attempts should be made to diminish social and economic inequalities and discriminations in society