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Mismanagement of supply chain operations may lead to waste of products and incur substantial monetary losses. This is particularly true for products with attributes that hasten deterioration, e.g. time, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure. Attribute-sensitive products must be carefully monitored throughout all supply chain processes to ensure acceptable quality to the end customers. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the scientific literature on attribute sensitive products and on attribute sensitive supply chains. The collected studies were reviewed using the content analysis method, focusing on the following aspects of attribute sensitive products: (1) industries; (2) product categories; (3) decisions involved; (4) processes; (5) current issues; (6) sustainability concerns; (7) research methods used; (8) objectives of decision makers; (9) solution approaches used; (10) incentives driving management and (11) future research issues. Based on the analysis of findings, gaps are identified, and future research directions are proposed.

Literature review and content analysis.

The authors discovered that, while the importance of product attributes vary from one industry to the other, overall the time attribute was critical in all of the industries considered in this literature review. Coordination, customer satisfaction, reliability and safety were key issues in attribute sensitive product supply chains (asp-SCs). Similar to the typical supply chains, asp-SCs face economic, social and environmental sustainability issues. However, the majority of the studies in our analysis emphasized importance of the social sustainability. The majority of the papers were reviewed and analyzed and adopted the modeling approach as a research method. Furthermore, it was found that asp-SCs were mostly driven with customer demands and social pressure.

Based on the literature review and content analysis, there are a number of directions for the work conducted in this study to be extended in several directions. First, the literature search could be expanded by relaxing some of the restrictions (e.g. include the conference papers and articles from on-line business journals). Second, additional scientific publishers can be considered (e.g. Emerald Insight–www.emeraldinsight.com; Inderscience–www.inderscience.com). The latter two extensions would allow a more precise assessment of published to date work on asp-SC operations. Third, our findings could be validated based on interviews with professionals and executives from companies dealing with asp-SCs. Such validation will allow identification of the differences between the state of the art and the state of practice.

Supply chains that handle attribute sensitive products (asps) must consider the complexity of products that significantly change their properties due to factors such as time, temperature, barometric pressure, humidity. Mismanagement of operations within such supply chains may lead to significant product waste, as well as substantial monetary losses.

This study presented a comprehensive literature review and content analysis of studies dealing with asps in the following industries: fashion, food, healthcare, humanitarian and pharmaceutical industries

Extant literature provides insights about consumers’ purchase intentions (PI) and willingness to pay for reconstructed products but does not capture cross-cultural differences. The purpose of this paper is to understand consumers’ PI for reconstructed products in a cross-cultural setting for the development of circular economy.

The sample includes consumers from two diverse societies (India and the USA). The authors conduct two sets of analyses in this paper. The first analysis attempts to identify the difference between the Indian and US consumers’ PI for reconstructed products, who are residing permanently in their home countries. In the second analysis, the authors investigate the impact of socio-cultural norms on PI, for reconstructed products, of the Indian (USA) consumers relocated to the USA (India). In-depth interviews are conducted for data collection. Subsequently, data analysis was carried out using thematic analysis approach.

The results indicate that US consumers: possess altruistic buying behavior; are eco-centric toward waste disposal; strictly follow the regulations and socio-cultural norms; and have harmony orientation toward nature. In contrast, Indian consumers: possess utilitarian buying behavior; demonstrate anthropocentric attitude toward waste disposal; do not necessarily follow the regulations; and have mastery orientation toward nature.

At policy level, government in emerging economies should formulate regulations that promote the use of reconstructed products. At firm level, firms should exploit promotional and advertisement efforts to enhance awareness about reconstructed products.

The study is an early attempt in the literature to capture cross-cultural differences for reconstructed products.

The purpose of this study is to understand whether being relocated to a society where remanufactured products are promoted can change consumers’ perception towards them. Also, the authors wish to identify major underlying factors for remanufactured product purchase intentions. There is strong evidence in the literature that factors such as societal norms, price, age, income, education level, and availability can have significant influence on the behavioral intentions of consumers.

The nature of the study is to draw an embedded theory from data itself. To explore the research questions in this study, a grounded theory was used. The authors use a theoretical sampling technique and interviewed 45 India-born consumers residing in the USA for at least a period of more than six months.

The results indicate that the level of environmental consciousness, individual values, post-use perceptions, nature of purchase and socio-cultural norms are the major drivers of consumer purchase intentions. Sub-categories of these five drivers are personal and contextual factors. Personal factors include personal attitudes and beliefs, individual personality and environmental consciousness. Contextual factors are societal norms, price, promotion/advertisement, service quality and brand image.

Use of remanufactured products is one of the ways to achieve sustainability. It is not only an environmentally friendly but also cost-effective approach. Given the major drivers identified through this study, firms can focus some on these drivers to improve their carbon footprint and bottom line.

This study is first to consider the decision-making process of consumer purchase of remanufactured products. In this regard, our study offers some understanding of the entire process through an action diagram.

Global investors demand, regulators require, and companies disclose their sustainability performance information, and scholars have started to conduct research on sustainability performance, reporting and assurance. The goal of firm value creation can be achieved when management considers the interests of all stakeholders and integrates all five economic, governance, social, ethical, and environmental (EGSEE) dimensions of sustainability performance into managerial strategies, actions and reporting. This paper provides a synthesis of research on sustainability and presents a theoretical framework consisting of theories and standards relevant to all five EGSEE dimensions of sustainability performance and risks and their integration into corporate culture, business models and reporting in creating stakeholder value.

Post-partum depression (PPD) is a mood disorder that affects 20-40 per cent of women in their post-delivery period worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to compare dietary intakes of energy, macronutrients, cholesterol, saturated fatty acids (SFAs), mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), poly-unsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), some micronutrients and antioxidants in PPD patients with healthy controls.

This case-control study was conducted on 163 women in postpartum period (81 PPD and 82 non-PPD) using Edinburgh questionnaire for the diagnosis of PPD. Dietary nutrients intake was assessed using 147-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). Portion sizes of food items were converted to grams per day. Logistic regression models were used to estimate the association between tertiles of dietary intakes with the odds ratio (OR) of PPD.

According to the fully adjusted model, highest tertile compared to lowest tertile dietary intake of SFAs [OR = 0.01; 95 per cent confidence interval (CI) = 0.00, 0.01, p = 0.001], MUFAs (OR = 0.01; 95 per cent CI = 0.00, 0.02, p < 0.001), total fats (OR = 0.01; 95 per cent CI =0.00, 0.01, p < 0.001) and cholesterol (OR = 0.06 ; 95 per cent CI = 0.01, 0.08, p < 0.001), thiamine (OR = 0.01; 95 per cent CI = 0.00, 0.01, p < 0.001), riboflavin (OR = 0.10; 95 per cent CI = 0.02, 0.39, p < 0.001), pyridoxine (OR = 0.03; 95 per cent CI =0.01, 0.32, p < 0.001), folate (OR = 0.01; 95 per cent CI = 0.00, 0.01, p < 0.001), cobalamine (OR = 0.01; 95 per cent CI = 0.00, 0.01, p < 0.001) , selenium (OR = 0.79 ; 95 per cent CI =1.36, 3.32, p < 0.001), iron (OR =0.68; 95 per cent CI = 0.24, 0.94, p < 0.001) and iodine (OR = 0.36; 95 per cent CI =1.10, 1.38, p < 0.001) had a protective effect on the incidence of PPD. Furthermore, higher intake of vitamin A and beta-cryptoxanthin can increase the incidence of PPD (OR =114.29; 95 per cent CI =17.85, 118.12, p < 0.001) and (OR = 4.85; 95 per cent CI = 1.49, 15.69, p = 0.015), respectively.

PPD may have destructive effects on the relationship between mother and infant. Results of previous studies demonstrated nutrients are required for the synthesis of neurotransmitters and have biochemical role in the nervous system.

The production of long-lasting fragrant semi-worsted fabrics using dendritic compounds as one of the nano size materials is concerned. Also quantitative assessments of the odour intensity of the fragrant fabrics using an electronic-nose (E-nose) are made. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The semi-worsted fabrics were perfumed using the second generation of polypropylene-imine (PPI) dendrimer as a host molecules. The ginseng and rosewater fragrances as guest molecules were applied into the PPI dendrimer to produce long-lasting fragrant fabrics. The odour intensity as well as long-lasting properties of the fragrant fabrics perfumed recently and the other sample perfumed one year ago were evaluated via E-nose fabricated in our laboratory. Physical properties of the fragrant fabrics were compared to the non-fragrant ones.

The interaction between ginseng and rosewater fragrances with the second generation of PPI dendrimer into the semi-worsted fabrics made a long-lasting fragrant fabrics without considerable impacts on bending length, air permeability and wrinkle recovery angles based on statistical analysis. However, the effects of making fragrant fabrics on the increasing weight are significant. In addition, the E-nose was successfully used to monitor the release of ginseng and rosewater fragrance from the fabrics by the response patterns of a temperature-modulated chemo-resistive gas sensor. E-nose analysis showed that the aroma intensity released from the old fragrant semi-worsted fabrics has no obvious diversity from that of new fragrant fabrics.

The findings suggest that the semi-worsted fabrics perfumed with dendritic materials revealed excellent sustained release property.

In this paper, a novel hybrid approach aimed at solving the problem of cross-selectivity of gases in electronic nose (E-nose) using the combination classifiers of support vector machine (SVM) and k-nearest neighbors (KNN) methods was proposed.

First, three WO₃ sensors E-nose system was used for data acquisition to detect three gases, namely, ozone, ethanol and acetone. Then, two transient parameters, derivate and integral, were extracted for each gas response. Next, the principal component analysis (PCA) was been applied to extract the most relevant sensor data and dimensionality reduction. The new coordinates calculated by PCA were used as inputs for classification by the SVM method. Finally, the classification achieved by the KNN method was carried out to calculate only the support vectors (SVs), not all the data.

This work has proved that the proposed fusion method led to the highest classification rate (100 per cent) compared to the accuracy of the individual classifiers: KNN, SVM-linear, SVM-RBF, SVM-polynomial that present, respectively, 89, 75.2, 80 and 79.9 per cent as classification rate.

The authors propose a fusion classifier approach to improve the classification rate. In this method, the extracted features are projected into the PCA subspace to reduce the dimensionality. Then, the obtained principal components are introduced to the SVM classifier and calculated SVs which will be used in the KNN method.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new ontology for knowledge management (KM) technologies, determining the relationships between these technologies and classification of them.

The study applies NOY methodology – named after Natalya F. Noy who initiated this methodology. Protégé software and ontology web language are used for building the ontology. The presented ontology is evaluated with abbreviation and consistency criteria and knowledge retrieval of KM technologies by experts.

All the main concepts in the scope of KM technologies are extracted from existing literature. There are 241 words, 49 out of them are domain concepts, eight terms are about taxonomic and non-taxonomic relations, one term relates to data property and 183 terms are instances. These terms are used to develop KM technologies’ ontology based on three factors: facilitating KM processes, supporting KM strategies and the position of technology in the KM technology stage model. The presented ontology is created a common understanding in the field of KM technologies.

Lack of specific documentary about logic behind decision making and prioritizing criteria in choosing KM technologies.

Uploading the presented ontology in the web environment provides a platform for knowledge sharing between experts from around the world. In addition, it helps to decide on the choice of KM technologies based on KM processes and KM strategy.

Among the many categories of KM technologies in literature, there is no classifying according to several criteria simultaneously. This paper contributes to filling this gap and considers KM processes, KM strategy and stages of growth for KM technologies simultaneously to choice the KM technologies and also there exists no formal ontology regarding KM technologies. This study has tried to propose a formal KM technologies’ ontology.

In this study, a solar water heating system along with a seasonal thermal energy storage and a heat pump is designed for a villa with an area of 192 m² in Tehran, the capital of Iran.

According to the material and the area of the residential space, the required heating of the building was calculated manually and then the thermodynamic analysis of the system and simulation was done in MATLAB software. Finally, regarding the waste of system, an efficient solar heating system, providing all the required energy to heat the building, was obtained.

The surface area of the solar collector is equal to 46 m², the capacity of the tank is about 2,850 m³, insulation thickness stands at 55 cm and the coefficient of performance in required heat pump is accounted to about 9.02. Also, according to the assessments, the maximum level of received energy by the collector in this system occurs at a maximum temperature of 68ºC.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, in the present work, for the first time, using mathematical modeling and analyzing of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, as well as using of computational code in MATLAB software environment, the solar-assisted ground source heat pump system is simulated in a residential unit located in Tehran.

Rural areas are one of the effective regions in economy and self-sufficiency field especially in agricultural and livestock section. Planning in the rural section and the effort in solving the problems of farmers lead to increase their interest in farming and manufacturing in the villages and decrease their migration to the cities and metropolitans. Therefore, the present study aimed at feasibility of electricity to a rural household in Iran using off-grid solar-based hybrid system.

In renewable energy projects, a successful evaluation requires suitable criteria so that one can properly analyze the operational behavior of all feasible scenarios. In the present paper, HOMER software has been used for this purpose for a village with no access to electricity grid (Bar Aftab-e Jalaleh, Iran). Due to drastic fluctuation of fossil fuel prices and varied solar radiations in various years because of climate change, sensitivity analysis has been performed using HOMER.

In the optimum status economically, 70% of needed energy is provided by solar cells at the price 0.792 $/kWh. The comparison between the optimum condition economically and the condition that only use fossil fuels revealed that the return on investment will occur after less than 2 years and have remained profitable over 23 years.

The authors hope that the results of this study can be used in planning of the authorities to realize the interests of people in this village.

According to the surveys, despite Iran being the first country in terms of providing solar power to the villages, so far no socio-economic-environmental assessment has been done for a solar cell-based micro-grid in an off-grid mode for a remote village that is deprived of electricity from a national electricity grid. In addition, for the first time in Iran, the effect of the fuel price and solar radiation parameters variability on the performance of system have been investigated.