The contribution of rose and rosewater tourism and festival to the destination image

This study seeks to explore rose and rosewater tourism and festival to understand how tourist attitudes to the festivals contribute to their image of the destination. To achieve this survey of domestic tourists was undertaken in the Kashan region of Iran. The results provide some original insights into the selection of destinations which are of value to academics, industry practitioners, tourism planners and policymakers. It confirms that events and festivals cannot develop or grow without the support of the hospitality and tourism industries. Some of the cultural limitations of undertaking the research, together with suggestions for future research are also discussed

Foundation Sign Correction in Stochastic Analysis Procedures

There are “ABS, SRSS, CQC, MSRSS…” methods in stochastic analysis of structures, that are based on the mean of the response squares. One of the most accurate stochastic methods is MSRSS, that is defined as equation (1). E[y2]=∑j=1N Rj2 + 2 ∑k=j+1NRjk The maximum modal responses are positive or singles, and therefore direction of the forces act on the foundation are alike. In these cases foundation analysis is not valid and the force sign correction must be used. In this paper, besides considering the stochastic methods shortly, a method for sign correction based on the time history analysis will be presented

CCSA: Conscious Neighborhood-based Crow Search Algorithm for Solving Global Optimization Problems

© 2019 Elsevier B.V. In this paper, a conscious neighborhood-based crow search algorithm (CCSA) is proposed for solving global optimization and engineering design problems. It is a successful improvement to tackle the imbalance search strategy and premature convergence problems of the crow search algorithm. CCSA introduces three new search strategies called neighborhood-based local search (NLS), non-neighborhood based global search (NGS) and wandering around based search (WAS) in order to improve the movement of crows in different search spaces. Moreover, a neighborhood concept is defined to select the movement strategy between NLS and NGS consciously, which enhances the balance between local and global search. The proposed CCSA is evaluated on several benchmark functions and four applied problems of engineering design. In all experiments, CCSA is compared by other state-of-the-art swarm intelligence algorithms: CSA, BA, CLPSO, GWO, EEGWO, WOA, KH, ABC, GABC, and Best-so-far ABC. The experimental and statistical results show that CCSA is very competitive especially for large-scale optimization problems, and it is significantly superior to the compared algorithms. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm also finds the best optimal solution for the applied problems of engineering design

The study of factors associated with pregnancy outcomes in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

Objectives: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disease that can lead to unfavorable pregnancy complications in women. This study aimed to evaluate the factors associated with pregnancy outcomes in patients with SLE. Results: Fifty-nine pregnant women with SLE (121 pregnancies) participated in this retrospective cohort study. The mean age of the patients was 33.74 ± 3.80 years (range 21 to 48 years). Fetal loss occurred in 43.8 of pregnancies. The most common laboratory findings in SLE patients were antinuclear antibody (81.4) and anti-ds DNA positivity (54.2). High levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) during pregnancy, renal involvement, anti-double-stranded DNA positivity, anti-phospholipid antibody (APA) positivity and younger age at disease onset were significantly correlated with unfavourable pregnancy outcomes. A significant difference was observed between duration of SLE and low birth weight (P = 0.003), pre-eclampsia (P = 0.012) and still birth (P = 0.036). High CRP, APA positivity, anti-dsDNA positivity and kidney involvement were predictors of adverse pregnancy outcomes in SLE patients. Renal involvement increased risk of pregnancy with complication 8.5 times (OR = 8.5, 95 CI 1.396-63.373, P = 0.017). Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) also was associated with an odds ratio of 5.18 (95 CI 1.681-13.647, P = 0.001). © 2020 The Author(s)