The effect of drought stress and exogenous abscisic acid on growth, protein content and antioxidative enzyme activity in saffron (Crocus sativus L.)

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of drought and abscisic acid (ABA) on growth, protein content and antioxidative enzyme activity in leaves, roots and corms of Crocus sativus L. A comparative study of sample and control showed that leaf relative water content (RWC), length and number of leaves decreased due to drought and ABA when compared to control. Drought and ABA were effective in increasing root length in comparison to control. Though drought and ABA improved the protein content in corms, leaves and roots, maximum protein content was detected in corms. Drought and ABA increased superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POX) activitiy in roots, leaves and corms when compared to that of the control. The highest SOD activity was observed in the roots, followed by leaves and corms, respectively. Furthermore, highest POX activity was observed in roots.Key words: Drought, ABA-treatment, Crocus sativus, peroxidase, superoxide dismutase

The Effect of Transformational Leadership Style on Urban Supply Chain Governance in Ahvaz City

Abstract- This paper reports a study of the effect of transformational leadership style on urban supply chain governance in Ahvaz city. We adopted a qualitativequantitative approach to conduct interviews. Two survey questionnaires (for transformational leadership style and urban supply chain governance indicators) were used to collect data from managers and employees working in 8 municipal regions in Ahvaz city, Iran. In order to collect data for this study, our research sample are (N=205) working managers and employees. Our results suggest that transformational leadership style has a significant positive and direct effect on urban supply chain governance. Our findings also show a strong impact between transformational leadership style and participation as urban supply chain governance index. This study offers that extending leadership styles and their applications and influences in urban studies could have great importance, especially urban management and governance. Key word- transformational leadership, urban supply chain governance, participation, effectiveness, Ahva

A green vehicle routing problem with customer satisfaction criteria

This paper develops an MILP model, named Satisfactory-Green Vehicle Routing Problem. It consists of routing a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles in order to serve a set of customers within predefined time windows. In this model in addition to the traditional objective of the VRP, both the pollution and customers' satisfaction have been taken into account. Meanwhile, the introduced model prepares an effective dashboard for decision-makers that determines appropriate routes, the best mixed fleet, speed and idle time of vehicles. Additionally, some new factors evaluate the greening of each decision based on three criteria. This model applies piecewise linear functions (PLFs) to linearize a nonlinear fuzzy interval for incorporating customers' satisfaction into other linear objectives. We have presented a mixed integer linear programming formulation for the S-GVRP. This model enriches managerial insights by providing trade-offs between customers' satisfaction, total costs and emission levels. Finally, we have provided a numerical study for showing the applicability of the model

Structure of bottle-brush brushes under good solvent conditions. A molecular dynamics study

We report a simulation study for bottle-brush polymers grafted on a rigid backbone. Using a standard coarse-grained bead-spring model extensive molecular dynamics simulations for such macromolecules under good solvent conditions are performed. We consider a broad range of parameters and present numerical results for the monomer density profile, density of the untethered ends of the grafted flexible backbones and the correlation function describing the range that neighboring grafted bottle-brushes are affected by the presence of the others due to the excluded volume interactions. The end beads of the flexible backbones of the grafted bottle-brushes do not access the region close to the rigid backbone due to the presence of the side chains of the grafted bottle-brush polymers, which stretch further the chains in the radial directions. Although a number of different correlation lengths exist as a result of the complex structure of these macromolecules, their properties can be tuned with high accuracy in good solvents. Moreover, qualitative differences with "typical" bottle-brushes are discussed. Our results provide a first approach to characterizing such complex macromolecules with a standard bead spring model.Comment: To appear in Journal of Physics Condensed Matter (2011

Religious attitudes and spiritual health among elderly inpatient adults in Shahrekord hospitals

Background and Objectives: Human is a multidimensional creature and spiritual domain is the central dimension which has an undeniable effect on gaining health. The most important part of nursing care with family based approach is to help people in achieving optimal level of health. On the other hand, religious attitudes and spiritual health is an important domain of life in ageing period. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the religious attitudes and spiritual health among elderly inpatients in Shahrekord hospitals. Methods: This descriptive correlational study was conducted in 1392 in Shahrekord hospitals. A total of 308 geriatric patients who were admitted to a surgical ward, were recruited through random sampling. Two sets of questionnaires regarding religious and spiritual health were used as the instruments. After collecting the data, descriptive (frequency, mean, variance, standard deviation) and analytical (independent t test, Pearson correlation) statistics were used by SPSS statistical software. Results: The results showed that 68.8% of patients possessed large religious attitude with an average of 140.68 ±30.14. Spiritual health in 51.3 percent of samples was described to be low while the obtained average score was 86.18 ± 16.61. However, Pearson test showed that there is a positive significant correlation between religious attitudes and spiritual health (r =0.83, P =0.05). Conclusions: The present study revealed that there is a significant relationship between religious attitudes and spiritual health and people with high religious attitudes have high spiritual health

Bacterial Heat Shock Protein Activity

Bacteria are exposed to different types of stress in their growth conditions. They have developed appropriate responses, modulated by the re-modeling of protein complexes and by phosphorylation dependent signal transduction systems, to adapt and to survive in a variety range of nature. Proteins are essential components for biologic activity in the eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell. Heat Shock Proteins (HSP) have been identified from various organisms and have critical role in cell hemostasis. Chaperone can sense environment and have different potential role in the organism evolution