Structural irregularity is a crucial issue in assessing seismic vulnerability of both new and existing buildings. European technical codes provide simple criteria to define irregularities in plan and in elevation, amplifying the seismic actions and/or introducing torsional effects. Nevertheless, this approach only considers geometrical irregularity. For existing buildings, another source of irregularity comes from the non-uniform distribution of the material strength. In particular, for existing reinforced concrete (r.c.) structures, it is possible to detect significant spread of the concrete compressive strength not only from different structural elements but also from different parts of the same member. In this work, non-linear static analysis is performed on two case-studies of r.c. buildings characterized by geometrical and mechanical irregularity. The resistance of each column is determined with an extensive experimental campaign with in situ and laboratory test (about 600 in situ tests). The results are analyzed considering both local and global effects in terms of resistance of the single elements and of the entire buildings. In this sense, shear and bending failure mechanism are taken into account. The effect of story flexibility is also considered in the models. Fragility curves are calculated for the buildings with random distribution of the compressive strength of the columns. The results are then compared with the approaches proposed by the Eurocodes evaluating in the standard approach proposed by technical codes is conservative or not.

Increasing attention to environmental problems and social responsibility lead to appear reverse logistic (RL) issues in designing supply chain which, in most recently, has received considerable attention from both academicians and practitioners. In this paper, a multi-product reverse logistic network design model is developed; then a hybrid method including Chance-constrained programming, Genetic algorithm and Monte Carlo simulation, are proposed to solve the developed model. The proposed model is solved for risk-averse and risk-seeking decision makers by conditional value at risk, sum of the excepted value and standard deviation, respectively. Comparisons of the results show that minimizing the costs had no direct relation with the kind of decision makers; however, in the most cases, risk-seeking decision maker gained more return products than risk-averse ones. It is clear that by increasing returned products to the chain, production costs of new products and material will be reduced and also by this act, environmental benefits will be created.

The current study aims at examining the differences between umbrella branding and house of brands on organizational market share. Various variables are adopted including reach, efficiency, image and ambiguity. A sample of 98 marketing managers or their representatives within the chemical industry sector in Jordan, SPSS is employed to screen and analyze gathered data. Results of study indicate that umbrella branding has a bigger and much deeper influence on market share compared to house of brands which is attributed to many factors including that umbrella branding has a wider reach, it is more efficient and more able to shed the light and increase the focus on organization's image, meaning that in umbrella marketing the focus is more on the marketing organization more than manufacturing organization which increases its reputation and market share. The study recommends the necessity for each brand to have a specific purpose to avoid overlapping or disintegration of brands.

This paper presents a model to solve the multi-objective location-routing problem with capacitated vehicles. The main purposes of the model are to find the optimal number and location of depots, the optimal number of vehicles, and the best allocation of customers to distribution centers and to the vehicles. In addition, the model seeks to optimize vehicle routes and sequence to serve the customers. The proposed model considers vehicles’ traveled distances, service time and waiting time while guaranteeing that the sum of these parameters is lower than a predetermined value. Two objective functions are investigated. First objective function minimizes the total cost of the system and the second one minimizes the gap between the vehicles’ traveled distances. To solve the problem, a Multi-Objective Imperialist Competitive Algorithm (MOICA) is developed. The efficiency of the MOICA is demonstrated via comparing with a famous meta-heuristics, named Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm-II (NSGA-II). Based on response surface methodology, for each algorithm, several crossover and mutation strategies are adjusted. The results, in terms of two well-known comparison metrics, indicate that the proposed MOICA outperforms NSGA-II especially in large sized problems.

A new method of amidation of Carboxy Multi Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNT-COOH) with diamine monomer such as ethylene diamine (EDA) and O-Phenylenediamine (OPDA) was applied by using a solution blending technique. The structure and properties of these composites have been investigated by FTIR, SEM, TEM, XRD, UV, DSC and TGA. The formation of Poly [MWCNT/ Amide] composites was confirmed and the DC electrical conductivity of poly-composites was in the range 4.5×10^-6-5.3×10^-6 S/cm due to the interaction between the nanotubes.

A simple yet powerful optimization algorithm is proposed in this paper for solving the constrained and unconstrained optimization problems. This algorithm is based on the concept that the solution obtained for a given problem should move towards the best solution and should avoid the worst solution. This algorithm requires only the common control parameters and does not require any algorithm-specific control parameters. The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated by implementing it on 24 constrained benchmark functions having different characteristics given in Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2006) and the performance is compared with that of other well-known optimization algorithms. The results have proved the better effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. Furthermore, the statistical analysis of the experimental work has been carried out by conducting the Friedman’s rank test and Holm-Sidak test. The proposed algorithm is found to secure first rank for the ‘best’ and ‘mean’ solutions in the Friedman’s rank test for all the 24 constrained benchmark problems. In addition to solving the constrained benchmark problems, the algorithm is also investigated on 30 unconstrained benchmark problems taken from the literature and the performance of the algorithm is found better.

This study assessed the critical success factors (CSFs) of public-sector road construction projects execution from the perspective of definitive stakeholders associated with such projects by drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews (16) and surveys (372) in Ghana, thirty-four (34) CSFs were identified. Using Relative Importance Index (RII), Spearman Rank Correlation Coefficients, and Kendall’s Coefficient of Concordance and the Chi-square test of significance statistics, the top ten most important factors in descending order are: the absence of political interference, project continuity by successive governments, adequate project funding, support from financial institutions and donor agencies and countries, government commitment to the project, absence of clientelism, absence of nepotism, no political corruption, payments of contractors on time and absence of court injunction or legal suit and land litigations. This study contributes to road construction CSFs in the context of public sector road construction in developing economies.

The purpose of this study is to identify the key macroeconomic variables that affected stock price fluctuations in Amman Stock Exchange during the period 1980-2018. Using Augmented Dickey-fuller (ADF) test, it was found that the variables did not have the same degree of integration. According to Breusch-Pagan-Godfrey test, the residuals violated the constant variance assumption under Ordinary Least Square (OLS) model. Therefore, the study employed Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity (GARCH) methodology to analyze the model after taking the first difference of natural logarithm for all variables to be stationary at the same level and to show the fluctuation in the variables. It was found that fluctuations in portfolio investment and in industrial production index are statically significant to lead fluctuations in the stock price index in Amman Stock Exchange and they follow the same direction, whereas fluctuations in real effective exchange rate, real interest rate, and Brent crude oil prices were statically significant to lead fluctuations in the stock price index but in the opposite direction.

Engaging customer is the burning issue for companies especially the service sector, either online or offline. Minimizing the customer disengagement is the same like reducing dissatisfaction or churn. Customer disengagement may be caused by many factors, ad skepticism is one of them; ad skepticism has two main antecedents personality variable and consumption/influencing varia-bles. This research explores the relationship of ad skepticism with customer disengagement through personality variables which are cynicism, reactance and self-esteem. The unit of analysis is the telecom and banking industry of Pakistan which is foreseeing an era of virtual currency and both are customer oriented industries. Only offline disengagement is researched and data is collected from the Business centers of telecom and banking branches dealing with virtual curren-cy in Pakistan. Hypothetical model is given after digging the relevant literature; model is tested through confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling. Eight hypotheses were purposed from the connections of model, all hypotheses are accepted except the cynicism posi-tive effect on social ad skepticism. This can be due to commonality of social and charity in Paki-stani society, Muslims consider charity as a pious act and they do not think for cynic behavior in charity or social related works. The results manifest that customers in telecom industry are hav-ing ad skepticism and that is becoming the cause of their disengagement. Further, social ad skep-ticism has more impact on the customer disengagement than the general ad skepticism. While the reactance has more effect on general ad skepticism than other antecedents and cynicism has the lowest impact on social ad skepticism than other antecedents.

The study examines the technological factors influencing the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In addition, this study examines the mediating role of accounting automation on AI adoption in a small and medium-sized enterprise (SMEs) context. The owners and managers of SMEs were surveyed online using a convenience sampling technique. The proposed model was tested using SEM. The findings confirmed the relationships between the predictive variables and AI adoption. The results showed that accounting automation partially mediated the relationship between predictive variables and the adoption of AI. The results contribute to the TOE model by incorporating accounting automation into the TOE framework as a mediating variable. The study also contributed to the literature by including new variables in the model, such as saving time and efficiency-improving.