Cancer registry in Iran: A brief overview

Cancer registry is an important tool for any successful cancer control program. The first formal cancer related data from Iran were published in 1956. In 1969, observations documenting a high incidence of esophageal cancer in the Caspian Littoral, urged researchers to set up the first population-based cancer registry in this region. This cancer registry was established jointly by University of Tehran and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). In 1976, another cancer registry started its activities in Fars Province. In 1984, the Parliament passed a bill mandating the report of all tissues "diagnosed or suspected as cancer tissue" to the Ministry of Health. While only 18% of all estimated cancer cases were reported in first reports, this rate increased to 81% in 2005 In 1998, Tehran Population-Based Cancer Registry started to collect data from cases of cancer referred to the treatment and diagnostic facilities throughout the Tehran metropolis. Digestive Disease Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, established four new population-based cancer registries in Northern Iran and another in Kerman Province in the south. These five provinces have a total population of about 9.5 million, and constitute about 16% of the total population of Iran. While the pathology-based cancer registration is in place, we hope that the addition of the population-based cancer registries, and establishment of new registries in poorly-covered areas, will improve cancer reporting in the country

Development of Production Scheduling Model With Constraint Resources and Parallel Machines

In this paper, a production scheduling model with constraint resources and parallel machines has been investigated. This problem is proposed as a multi-product production problem. Shortage is not allowed and the production horizon is indefinite. The objective is to maximize the level of resource usage and support the management’s standpoint (delays reduction). In this paper, this problem is modeled as the popular Knapsack problem in 0 and 1 programming. Then due to being NP-hard type for this kind of problems to obtain an optimal solution, A heuristic approach has been used to obtain the acceptable solution. By using the branch-and bound method, a near optimal solution is provided. Finally, resultant solutions by the proposed approach have been compared with the optimal solutions of some real-world problems and it has been observed that deviation from the optimal solution is negligible that indicates the accuracy of the proposed approach

Investigating the excess return of contrarian strategy in the active insurance firms in Tehran Stock Exchange

Obtaining the appropriate rate of return is the most important expectation of  investors in the investment process and different statategies have been used by investors to gain a required rate of return. Contrarian strategy is one the strategies used recently to predict the return of stock using the historical information.  Contrarian strategy suggests that an excess return can be gained by selling winners stock and buying losers stock. This study examines the excess return of contrarian strategy in the active insurance firms in Tehran Stock Exchange. For this purpose, data of five insurance firms activated from 2007 to 2011 has been collected and analyzed. The variables in this stuey are return of contrarian strategy indaily, monthly and seasonal courses. Data analysis and hypotheses testing include Philips model and AVOVA and T-test statistic has been used to examine the significance of test and the confidence level. The results of study shows that the return of contrarian stratgiey is effective in daily, monthly and seasonal courses.Keywords: Excess Return, Contrarian Strategy, Insurance Firms, Winner Stock, LoserStoc

Increasing the elevated-temperature strength of a beta titanium alloy through thermomechanically-induced phase tranformation

The effects of temperature and thermomechanical loading on the elevated-temperature tensile strength, deformation behavior, and phase transformation were studied for a low-cost metastable beta titanium alloy: Ti-13Cr-1Fe-3Al (wt.%). In-situ and ex-situ tensile tests were performed at temperatures between 25 °C to 500 °C. TEM was performed to investigate the phase transformation behavior, and the strength and Vickers hardness were compared at different loading conditions. The beta phase transformed to the omega phase under a combination of load and time at temperature. The temperature range of the phase transformation was investigated by dynamic mechanical analysis and compared with data from differential scanning calorimetry and electrical resistivity techniques. Slip trace analysis indicated that dislocation slip is the primary deformation mechanism. Both temperature and thermomechanical loading have a significant influence on deformation mode, phase transformation, and tensile strength, which can be increased by over fifty percent at elevated temperatures