Effectiveness of Value Engineering in Reducing Delay in Urban Projects

Because of misappropriate design, technology complications, excessive number of organizations and involving people in the project, variation of needed qualifications and extensive number of activities, development projects don’t execute within primary determined cost and time constraint. Therefore presence of a regular system for optimizing investment in development and urban plans is needed. Optimization methods causing project implementation within primary cost and time constraint work are effective to eliminate negative effects of mentioned factors. The objective of this research is to investigate the effect of using value engineering in order to eliminate causes of delays in the urban projects of country. Regarding the results of this research, the most and least effect of value engineering are in order to eliminate delay causes arising from integration and human resource mismanagement. Moreover, value engineering must be employed for refinement and optimization of processes before and during project execution in order to decline time delay and costs and to increase value of projects. Value engineering studies, specifically whenever strategic decisions should be taken, could affect positively on the project execution. Finally, employing value engineering technique and compounding these methods to project management science can increase the value index of urban projects

'Love the whole and not the part': An investigation of the rhetorical structure of Book One of the "Mathnawi" of Jalal al-Din Rumi.

This thesis investigates the narrative and thematic structure of Boole One of the Mathnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi. The Mathnawi, of the thirteenth century, is one of the most highly acclaimed mystical poems in classical Persian. Consisting of around 26,000 verses, arranged in six books, it has appeared to both traditional and western scholars alike as being randomly composed and lacking in structure or architecture. Since, however, Rumi was a highly skilled poet, able to create any impression he desired, it is improbable he would have written a defective work. When this is coupled with his constant affirmation that the world of appearances is not the real world, there is reason thoroughly to scrutinise both the structure of the work and the scholarly consensus concerning its apparent randomness. This is done here by a detailed analysis of Book One. Rumi has divided each book up into sections of varying lengths, and at the beginning of each section he has given a title. The examination consists of analysing each section to establish its thematic and narrative contents. It then becomes apparent which sections should be taken together to form the larger wholes, which could be called discourses, maqalat, or, since in Book One the narrative element is strong, stories. There are twelve such stories or discourses in Book One. Having established these larger wholes, the analysis then examines the relationships of the sections and their themes to one another within each discourse or story. This yields the major discovery of this thesis: the sections within each story are organised not sequentially, although, of course, one follows another, but synoptically using the two compositional principles of parallelism and chiasmus. This is entirely unexpected. It accounts for the seeming randomness of the sequential reading, while at the same time yielding beautiful structures and organisation when read synoptically. But the synoptic organisation is not simply aesthetically satisfying, it provides equally importantly the patterns of significance and the distribution of emphasis. Not only are the sections of each story organised by parallelism and chiasmus, so, it is argued, is Book One as a whole, so that the stories stand to one another in a similar pattern. Seeing Book One synoptically reveals that the pattern of significance which organises the stories sequentially is the progressive development of the nafs, or self-hood, on the spiritual path. It is further suggested that Book One stands chiasmically in parallel to Book Six. The Mathnawi then is far richer than has hitherto be recognised. In combining the outer randomness of the sequential order with the sophisticated inner organisation of significance and purpose permitted by the use of parallelism and chiasmus, Rumi has reflected in the structuring of his great work his constant message that beneath the empirical world of our senses there lies an inner spiritual world of unity and great beauty. Far from lacking architecture, the Mathnawi, it is argued, is closely planned, integrating the double structuring, the sequential and the synoptic, with the overall message of the work

Histopathologic Findings of Olfactory Mucosa in COVID-19 Patients

Background: Olfactory manifestations are common findings during the course of COVID-19, while exact physiopathology is not known Aim: We review histological changes of the nasal olfactory mucosa in COVID-19 non-survivors who died in the ICU. Methods: Sampling was done within 1 hour of death under direct vision. Specimens were taken medial to the middle turbinate in the cribriform area and embedded in paraffin blocks and stained by haematoxylin and eosin. Results: The most frequent histologic finding was the infiltration of inflammatory cells mostly comprised of lymphocytes. Inflammatory infiltration of mucosa was seen in all 11 patients with ulceration in 9 cases and neuritis in 3 cases.  Conclusion: Inflammatory infiltration of olfactory mucosa may be associated with smell manifestations. Further histological studies will clarify the role of the nasal mucosa in the physiopathology of COVID-19 especially olfactory involvement