The present paper summarizes the results from uniaxial-tension stress-controlled fatigue tests performed at different temperatures up to 650°C on Cu-Be specimens. Two geometries are considered: hourglass shaped and plates weakened by a central hole (Cu-Be alloy). The motivation of the present work is that, at the best of authors’ knowledge, only a limited number of papers on these alloys under high-temperature fatigue are available in the literature and no results deal with notched components. The Cu-Be specimens fatigue data are re-analyzed in terms of the mean value of the Strain Energy Density (SED) averaged over a control volume. Thanks to the SED approach it is possible to summarize in a single scatter-band all the fatigue data, independently of the specimen geometry.

In recent years, there have been significant changes on governmental agencies than any other organizations. There is also an agreement that any improvement on economy requires an efficient government. Governments must be responsive against their people and society but there are evidences that many governmental agencies are not able to meet people’s needs despite access to financial resources because of lack of entrepreneurial approach. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the role of entrepreneurship governmental groups on macro-economic strategies. The study uses structural equation modeling, by designing a questionnaire in Likert scale, and distributes it among 384 randomly selected university professors in city of Tehran, Iran. The results confirm that technology-based economy, creative human resources and training, competition in the economic environment, knowledge creation, dissemination and application and promoting a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship influence positively on entrepreneurship governmental groups. In addition, the positive effects of entrepreneurship governmental groups on national commitment and management are confirmed.

In this work, acidity constants protonated form of 4.4 & apos; -bis astilbene-2,2 & apos; -disulfonic-disodium salts (TRIAZ) have been determined spectrophotometrically and spectrofluorimetrically at 25?C and ionic strength of 0.1M KNO3. A program based on MCR-ALS applied for determination of acidity constants. The results show that the peak values of dye are influenced by the presence of anionic, cationic, and nonionic surfactants. The effects of sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), Triton X-100 (TX-100) and cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as a surface-active agent on the acidic and basic forms, and the spectral properties of dye were studied. Also, we determined the critical micelle concentration (CMC) for these surfactants by spectrophotometric and spectrofluorimetric triazine dye probes. In addition, by using of evolving factor analysis (EFA) and multivariate curve resolution alternative least squares (MCR-ALS) methods, acidity constants were acquired.

This paper deals with the development of an inventory model for Weibull deteriorating items with constant demand when delay in payments is allowed to the retailer to settle the account against the purchases made. Shortages are not allowed and the salvage value is associated with the deteriorated units. In this paper, we consider two cases; those are for the case payment within the permissible time and for payment after the expiry of permissible time with interest. Numerical examples are provided to illustrate our results. Sensitivity analysis are carried out to analyze the effect of changes in the optimal solution with respect to change in one parameter at a time.

This paper derives a semi-analytical solution to determine displacements and stresses in a thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness under uniform pressure based on disk form multilayers. The proposed study partitions the thick cylinder into disk-layer parts based on their thickness of the cylinder. According to the existence of shear stress in the thick cylindrical shell with variable thickness, the equations governing disk layers are acquired based on first shear deformation theory (FSDT), which are in the form of a set of general differential equations. In this study, the cylinder is partitioned into n different disks and n sets of differential equations are derived. The solution of these equations provides displacements and stresses based on the boundary conditions and continuity conditions between the layers. The results are compared with those obtained through the analytical solution and the numerical solution. For the purpose of the analytical solution, matched asymptotic method (MAM) and for the analytical solution, the finite element method (FEM are implemented.

Consumer perception plays essential role for market development. Consumer perception can be defined as a marketing concept, which includes a customer & apos; s impression, awareness and/or consciousness about a firm or its offerings. This paper investigates the effect of customer relationship management factors on consumer perception in Iranian banking industry. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale and distributes it among 300 randomly selected managers who worked for Bank Saderat Iran. Cronbach alpha has been calculated as 0.788, which is well above the minimum acceptable level. Using principal component analysis, the study has determined that six factors influences the most on consumer perception; namely: Customer oriented, Organizational strategy, Organizational resources, Organizational structure and Organizational culture.

Flexibility has been cited as a key factor to enhance the performance of flexible manufacturing sys-tem (FMS). The main aim of this paper is to rank the flexibility of FMS. The ranking decisions are complex in the manufacturing field to analyze a number of alternatives based on a set of some attributes. In this research, two MADM methods i.e. MOORA (i.e. multi-objective optimization on the basis of ratio analysis) and weighted Euclidean distance based approach (WEDBA) are used for ranking of flexibility in FMS for new part development. MOORA approach can give de-cision with or without considering relative importance of attributes i.e. attribute weights. While in WEDBA, integrated attribute weights are used for evaluation which included the subjective and objective weights of attributes. Objective weights are calculated by entropy method and subjective weights are calculated by analytic hierarchy process. MOORA is applied in two ways i.e. ratio based and reference point analysis. Ranking of fifteen flexibility of FMS done on the basis fifteen variables which effect flexibility of FMS. The results of MOORA and WEDBA approach shows that product flexibility has the top most flexibility in fifteen flexibilities and programme flexibility has the least impact in fifteen flexibilities.

This paper investigates the impact of corporate governance on firm value measured by Tobin’s Q. Different corporate governance proxies i.e. board size, board independence, audit committee and CEO duality are interacted with firm value. A sample of 91 nonfinancial firms listed on KSE was selected over the period 2010-2014. The findings of the study show that board size and CEO duality had negative impacts on firm value. Moreover, board size, non-executive directors and audit committee had positive and significant impacts on firm value.

Risk management plays an important role on the success of the any project. There are several techniques, which are available to help different phases of risk management process. This paper presents a survey to identify the necessary tools, which are mostly implemented and related to the success of any project management, and more specifically with effective project risk management. The survey is based on a questionnaire designed to a sample of project managers from the construction industries. The response data was studied to determine which tools are more used in the organizations, which could yield a better project management performance.

A value chain is a chain of necessary activities that a company operating in a specific industry executes in order to deliver a valuable product or service for the market. Value chain plays essential role for development of a successful business unit. This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of value chain on capabilities of knowledge production, implementation and distribution. The impact is also studied for effective knowledge implementation for economic development. Using historical economic data of World Bank database gathered from member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the study has detected positive and meaningful effects of Value Chain Presence on Knowledge Economy Index and Knowledge Index.