A study on the effects of different factors influencing on customer loyalty, profitability and word of mouth advertisement for gaining competitive advantage in tourism industry

This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of various factors influencing on customer loyalty, profitability and word of mouth advertisement for gaining competitive advantage in tourism industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among a random sample of 500 people who purchased some tours from travel agencies. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined a positive and meaningful impact of pricing strategy, amenity, tourism services, content of trip, marketing mix elements, brand equity, competitive advantage and being exclusive on gaining competitive advantage. In addition, being exclusive and value creation influence positively on word of mouth advertisement. Finally, value creation influences on profitability, positively

Heart failure: a prevalence-based and model-based cost analysis

IntroductionHeart failure (HF) imposes a heavy economic burden on patients, their families, and society as a whole. Therefore, it is crucial to quantify the impact and dimensions of the disease in order to prioritize and allocate resources effectively.MethodsThis study utilized a prevalence-based, bottom-up, and incidence-based Markov model to assess the cost of illness. A total of 502 HF patients (classes I–IV) were recruited from Madani Hospital in Tabriz between May and October 2022. Patients were followed up every two months for a minimum of two and a maximum of six months using a person-month measurement approach. The perspective of the study was societal, and both direct and indirect costs were estimated. Indirect costs were calculated using the Human Capital (HC) method. A two-part regression model, consisting of the Generalized Linear Model (GLM) and Probit model, was used to analyze the relationship between HF costs and clinical and demographic variables.ResultsThe total cost per patient in one year was 261,409,854.9 Tomans (21,967.21 PPP). Of this amount, 207,147,805.8 Tomans (17,407.38 PPP) (79%) were indirect costs, while 54,262,049.09 Tomans (4,559.84 PPP) (21%) were direct costs. The mean lifetime cost was 2,173,961,178 Tomans. Premature death accounted for the highest share of lifetime costs (48%), while class III HF had the lowest share (2%). Gender, having basic insurance, and disease class significantly influenced the costs of HF, while comorbidity and age did not have a significant impact. The predicted amount closely matched the observed amount, indicating good predictive power.ConclusionThis study revealed that HF places a significant economic burden on patients in terms of both direct and indirect costs. The substantial contribution of indirect costs, which reflect the impact of the disease on other sectors of the economy, highlights the importance of unpaid work. Given the significant variation in HF costs among assessed variables, social and financial support systems should consider these variations to provide efficient and fair support to HF patients

E-Readiness Assessment at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences

Introduction: E-readiness assessment is the evaluation of one’s ability to accept and use information technologies and their relevant applications. E-readiness assessment helps us identify and study the strengths and weaknesses and consequently find solutions and formulate strategies to improve e-readiness which is considered as a guarantee for the implementation of knowledge development programs. This study aimed to assess ereadiness at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences. Methods: The current research is an analytical study using a questionnaire designed by the researchers to assess e-readiness at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2010-2011. Using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, the questionnaire reliability was estimated 0.85. Researchers have randomly selected 520 of managers, IT experts, professors and students at Tabriz university of Medical Sciences. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS. Results: In general, the academic staff, students, managers and IT experts have assessed e-readiness as good, measuring 54.46±9.63. Conclusion: The study showed that the overall e-readiness rates were good at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences and suitable platforms were also provided for the University to enter into the field of IT. The condition will further improve if the officials dedicate more attention and support to the activities of Computer Department

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

An overview on properties and usage of nanostructured materials in the food sector

The population growth causes an increasing pressure on food sector so that the problem of malnutrition is a further concern in the today’s world. Nanotechnology is one of the new emergent technologies of the present century that would largely influence the world future. Convergence of nanotechnology and food science may lead to emerging abundant potentialities; thus, it is particularly paid attention in the new century. Nanomaterials provides a wide range of applications in producing, storing, packaging, bioavailability, and conductivity of nutrients. On the other hand, scholars and food producers industry mainly concern for the effect of using nanomaterials on the food safety due to unknown features and effects of nanomaterials. Regarding the wonderful potential of applying nanotechnology, a great revolution will be expected in this area. In this review, benefits and health risks of nanomaterial in nutrition and food sciences are highlighted

Application of Various Types of Liposomes in Drug Delivery Systems

Liposomes, due to their various forms, require further exploration. These structures can deliver both hydrophilic and hydrophobic drugs for cancer, antibacterial, antifungal, immunomodulation, diagnostics, ophtalmica, vaccines, enzymes and genetic elements. Preparation of liposomes results in different properties for these systems. In addition, based on preparation methods, liposomes types can be unilamellar, multilamellar and giant unilamellar; however, there are many factors and difficulties that affect the development of liposome drug delivery structure. In the present review, we discuss some problems that impact drug delivery by liposomes. In addition, we discuss a new generation of liposomes, which is utilized for decreasing the limitation of the conventional liposomes

Rheumatic Aortic Regurgitation in a Patient with Large Congenital Fenestrations in All Three Leaflets

Fenestrations of the aortic valve rarely produce significant valvular regurgitation. These are typically described as incidental findings with little clinical significance because they generally lie above their closing edges. Rarely however, when unusually large or multiple, they can lead to massive aortic regurgitation (AR), mostly in patients with chronic hypertension and/or aortic annular dilation. We operated a 52 year old normotensive male with chronic rheumatic AR and found large fenestrations in all three aortic cusps, hardly ever reported in rheumatic valvular involvement in the literature

The role of brand image congruity in Iranian consumers’ demand for auto parts

One of the primary issues in handling demands for auto parts in the world is to build a mutual trust between consumers and vendors. When people trust a brand, they purchase more easily and it is possible to develop market. In Iran, there is a growing interest in demand for auto parts and each year, tens of millions of auto parts are getting sold. This paper presents an empirical investigation to detect the effects of brand image on demand for auto parts. Using a sample of 202 randomly selected people who buy/sell auto parts in city of Tehran, Iran, the study determines three variables including brand strength, brand attributes and consumer trust through the implementation of structural equation modeling

Idiopathic Great Saphenous Phlebosclerosis

Arterial sclerosis has been extensively described but reports on venous sclerosis are very sparse. Phlebosclerosis refers to the thickening and hardening of the venous wall. Despite its morphological similarities with arteriosclerosis and potential morbid consequences, phlebosclerosis has gained only little attention. We report a 72 year old male with paralysis and atrophy of the right leg due to childhood poliomyelitis who was referred for coronary artery bypass surgery. The great saphenous vein, harvested from the left leg, showed a hardened cord-like obliterated vein. Surprisingly, harvested veins from the atrophic limb were normal and successfully used for grafting