An ecofriendly methods for the synthesis of medicinally important class of heterocyclic scaffold, pyrazole 4-carbonitrile derivatives by one pot three component reaction of malononitrile, phenyl hydrazine and aromatic aldehyde has been achieved at room temperature. Greener protocols of reaction are followed by using sodium chloride to accelerate the reaction in aqueous media. Present methodology is a condition based divergence on synthesis of pyrazole by using simple salts, which offers several advantages like use of aqueous media and high yield of product along with short reaction time, simple work up procedure, no waste or by products, avoid the use of heavy metals or nanoparticles are the fascinating characteristics of reaction.

The purpose of this study is to determine the critical success factors (CSF) of IT projects in Pa-kistan. The identified factors cannot only be functional to exact type IT projects but also to all types of IT projects, their success directly affects the achievement of whole organization. The proposed study of this paper has determined 15 factors influencing the most on the success of IT projects through multiple regression analysis. The survey has disclosed that many CSFs were found related to IT projects but these 15 factors are also the backbone of IT projects. The re-search results obtained clearly indicated that the Leadership Qualities played a significant role in obtaining Top Management support in order to access to resources however, the Leadership Qualities did not play any role on the trained and capable Project Team Members. Besides, it is undoubtedly defined effective communication of the project was established to be influential on the conclusion and contributing factor towards the Success of IT projects in Pakistan. Top Man-agement Support as a whole was not found to play a key role in the IT Project Success.

In this paper, a new hybrid AHP and Dempster-Shafer Theory of Evidence is presented for solving the problem of choosing the best project among a list of available alternatives while uncertain risk factors are taken into account. The aim is to minimize overall risks. For this purpose, four groups of risk factors, including Properties, Operational and Technological, Financial, Strategic risk factors, are considered. Then using an L24 Taguchi method, several experiments with various dimensions have been designed and solved by the proposed algorithm. The outcomes are then analyzed using the Validating Index (VI), Reduced Risk Indicator (R.R.I%), and Solving time. The findings indicated that, compared to the classic AHP, the results of the proposed hybrid method were different in most cases due to uncertainty of risk factors. It was observed that the method could be safely used for selecting project problems in real industries.

The present study has been conducted in order to investigate the documentation of the organiza-tional knowledge condition from the managers’ perspective of libraries, museums, and Docu-ments Center of Astan Quds Razavi based on Dalkir model [Dalkir, K. (2005). Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Elsevier. Butterworth-Heinemann.]. The survey popula-tion consisted of all managers of Astan Quds libraries. The relevant information was gathered using a researcher-created the questionnaire based on Dalkir model of knowledge management cycle. Findings revealed that in all six dimensions of knowledge documentation, obtained means were less than intermediate level (3) and documentation status in all studied dimensions of Dal-kir’s model was not suitable.

Customer Equity is true representative of relationship marketing. There are two major approach-es to measure Customer Equity: Transaction/sales based approach and Attitudinal Approach. This research is an effort to check customer equity of fast food restaurants of Pakistan by using attitudinal approach. Transactional customer equity is treated as criterion for attitudinal customer equity. Three drivers of Customer Equity are Value Equity, Brand equity and Relationship equity are taken as independent variables in this research. Convenient sampling technique was used and sample size was 393 respondents. The results show that attitudinal customer equity had strong association with transactional equity. Brand equity, value equity and relationship equity show positive associations with attitudinal customer equity.

In-plane strength and constitutive properties of composite materials is known as crucial problems. Although, several studies have been made for obtaining the in-plane mode II properties, the common test fixtures are blind in confrontation of shear zone. Furthermore, toughening mechanisms and consequently mode II fracture toughness cannot be evaluated, precisely. Also, proposing the convenient configuration of shear test fixture increase the accuracy of evaluation for the shear-zone energy dissipation, especially in orthotropic materials. Hence in the present research, a novel shear fixture configuration is proposed based on Iosipesque structural modification. Hereof, some arbitrary composite materials (e.g. graphite/epoxy and wood) were studies on the basis of DOE and E-691 ASTM. Furthermore, as the numerical method for indicating the comparison of the uniform and non-uniform shear stress distribution in the modified and common shear test fixture, a statistical procedure is used based on ASTM standard in addition to FEM analysis. The obtained results reveal that applying major amendments through the new scheme of the shear test fixture, would provide a remarkable precision and a reasonable estimation of the shear strength in comparison with the previous Iosipesque experiments.

This paper is concerned with an overview of the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP) and the conventional meta-heuristic solution techniques that have attracted the attention of many researchers in the field. Therefore, researchers have developed algorithms and methods to solve the problem. This paper addresses the single-mode RCPSP where the objective is to optimize and minimize the project duration while the quantities of resources are constrained during the project execution. In this problem, resource constraints and precedence relationships between activities are known to be the most important constraints for project scheduling. In this context, the standard RCPSP is presented. Then, the classifications of the collected papers according to the year of publication and the different meta-heuristic approaches applied are presented. Five weighted articles and their meta-heuristic techniques developed for RCPSP are described in detail and their results are summarized in the corresponding tables. In addition, researchers have developed various conventional meta-heuristic algorithms such as genetic algorithms, particle swarm optimization, ant colony optimization, bee colony optimization, simulated annealing, evolutionary algorithms, and so on. It is stated that genetic algorithms are more popular among researchers than other meta-heuristics. For this reason, the various conventional meta-heuristics and their corresponding articles are also presented to give an overview of the conventional meta-heuristic optimizing techniques. Finally, the challenges of the conventional meta-heuristics are explored, which may be helpful for future studies to apply new suitable techniques to solve the Resource-Constrained Project Scheduling Problem (RCPSP).

Performance of mines can be affected by different factors such as safety and economic factors. This study aims to analyze the influence of safety and economic factors on mines’ performance. To this purpose, a framework is proposed based on a Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), Ro-bust Data Envelopment Analysis (RDEA) and common weight Robust Data Envelopment Anal-ysis (CWRDEA) to determine the factors affecting on performance of mines. In this study, for the first time, integrated economic and safety factors are considered for evaluation of mines per-formance. To analyze safety and economic factors, this research gathers real data from a mine with 56 sites in south of Iran. Based on different DEA models, different sites become the best site among other sites, but RDEA is much closer to real situation than basic DEA and CWRDEA is the most efficient approach in real situation.

In this study, an ensemble algorithm has been proposed, called Quasi-Oppositional Symbiosis Organisms Search (QOSOS) algorithms, by incorporating the quasi-oppositional based learning (QOBL) strategy into the newly proposed Symbiosis Organisms Search (SOS) algorithm for solving unconstrained global optimization problems. The QOBL is incorporated into the basic SOS algorithm due to the balance of the exploration capability of QOBL and the exploitation potential of SOS algorithm. To validate the efficiency and robustness of the proposed Quasi-Oppositional Symbiosis Organisms Search (QOSOS) algorithms, it is applied to solve unconstrained global optimization problems. Also, the proposed QOSOS algorithm is applied to solve two real world global optimization problems. One is gas transmission compressor design optimization problem and another is optimal capacity of the gas production facilities optimization problem. The performance of the QOSOS algorithm is extensively evaluated and compares favorably with many progressive algorithms.

In this study, the effects of alkaline accelerating admixture and its dosage on cementitious material’s behavior at early ages were evaluated through a series of ultrasound Pulse echo measurements. Thus, those measurements consist on following the evolution of frequency dependent attenuation coefficient during cementitious material age. Four stages can be identified on the attenuation coefficient vs. mortar age graphs, indicating that the development of the attenuation parameter is closely related to the setting and the hardening phenomena. Also, the ultrasound histograms, representing the evolution of the different echoes backscattered by the media of the container, filled with cementitious material’s samples, were characterized in order to assess the attenuative effect of alkaline accelerator and its dosage during the setting and the hardening period. Thus, the combined use of ultrasound P-wave measured density and young modulus parameters results in a comprehensive ultrasound method that gives a more effective picture of the void volume and resistivity of the accelerated cementitious materials. Ultrasound P-waves were generated using a 1 MHz central frequency immersion transducer and mortar samples were prepared with Portland composite cement CPJ 45.