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In the past three decades, remote sensing-based models for estimating crop yield have addressed critical problems of general food security, as the unavailability of grains such as rice creates serious worldwide food insecurity problems. The main purpose of this study was to compare the potential of time-series Landsat-8 and Sentinel-2 data to predict rice yield several weeks before harvest on a regional scale.

To this end, the sum of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI)-based models created the best agreement with actual yield data at the golden time window of six weeks before harvest when rice grains were in milky and mature growth stages. The application of nine other vegetation indicators was also investigated in the golden time window in comparison to NDVI.

The findings of this study demonstrate the viability of identifying locations with poor and superior performance in terms of production management approaches through a rapid and economical solution for early rice grain yield assessment. Results indicated that while some of those, such as enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and optimized soil adjusted vegetation index, were able to estimate rice yield with high accuracy, NDVI is still the best indicator to predict rice yield before harvest. However, experiments can be conducted in different regions in future studies to evaluate the generalizability of the approach.

To achieve this objective, the authors considered the following purposes: using Sentinel-2 time-series data, determining the appropriate growth stage for estimating rice yield and evaluating different vegetation indices for estimating rice yield.

This paper aims to identify and introduce areas in Kerman with a very high potential for produce energy from renewable energy. In this paper, with studying renewable energy resources of the world and Iran, and with the introduction of renewable energy resources in Kerman Province and its counties as a proper supplier of energy in Iran and regions. At the end of this discussion, it is seen that the positive impact of clean energies on the economy, the environment and the health of the region and the country and the potential of the Kerman Province in this rare energy place are considered well.

To study the energy consumption in Iran and based on universal reports, this area is the largest renewable energy production region in Iran.

Currently, electricity used in Kerman is nearly 2,000 MW, while the capacity of production is 1,500 MW which is almost the share of renewable energy in electricity production rate is zero. With regard to industrial development plans in Kerman Province, 5,000 MW of electricity will be needed in the near future, so the province will face an energy crisis. Iran is also a developing country and economy; agriculture and the production of this country is extremely dependent on energy and electricity, and it seems that using renewable energy sources is a way to prevent an energy crisis in the country.

This paper introduces the Kerman Province and examines the potential of this province as a massive source of energy in Iran and the world. Specific qualifications of this region include the climate variability, existing water dams, suitable areas for utilization of biomass and the high potential that this area has for the development of geothermal energy. These qualifications all contribute to make this region a hub for great production of energy from renewable energy sources in Iran.

Regarding the renewable energies, the cost of producing electricity and the remaining reserves from fossil fuels in Iran is compared with the same in other countries. Several advantages of renewable energies are studied in the present research with emphasis on solar energy; the Lut desert in Iran is introduced as a high potential for supplying the country’s energy. Various effects of such generation of energy on economy, environment, and public health are also studied.

The aim of this study is to evaluate the quality of services provided by the Regional Information Center for Science and Technology (RICeST) employing the Six Sigma methodology.

The studied population in this research consists of the users of RICeST. To start with, 120 users of RICeST have been chosen as the samples in a simple random way. Next, in order to collect the data, the LibQUAL+ Questionnaire has been used. Having applied this questionnaire, the gap between the customers' expectations and perceptions has been identified and analyzed. Moreover, the given data are analyzed and their mean and standard deviations are calculated by “SPSS”. Then, in each of the evaluated cases, the calculated standard deviation is compared with the sigma level in the output table in order to specify the qualitative efficiency of services. Accordingly, the error rate in each of the provided services has been determined.

Findings revealed that staff at RICeST could meet the users' minimum expectations of this center in all cases except for the option “the courteous staff”; therefore, they have allocated the efficiency of 50 percent which is equal to 500,000 errors per million. In other words, the average rate seems to be true in all options about the staff in this center. The efficiency of 69.20 percent obtained from the users' view about the quality of existing resources of this center, represents their relative satisfaction with the information resources in RICeST. But it is just in the option “the presence of a web site in the center” that the level of users' expectations is equal to the actual level and the achieved efficiency of 99.97 percent. Finally, it has been found that the quality of library space at the actual level was lower than the maximum level of users' expectation, but higher than the level of users' minimum expectations. The efficiency of 69.20 percent about the physical space of RICeSt indicates 308,000 errors per million. Consequently, it is far from achieving the desired level or the maximum users' expectations.

The increasing expectations of users in libraries and information centers have caused that these types of centers need modern strategies and management techniques in order to comply with these increasing changes and requirements. Evaluating the service quality in the library means to assess the effectiveness of services provided. The effect of evaluating the service quality is not limited to this fact, in which the services are provided only for users, but it is also focusing on the users' application level and compliance with their information needs and satisfaction of the quantity and quality of services.