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Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) count for over 80% of premature death worldwide. More than 76% of the total burden of diseases in Iran is devoted to NCDs. In line with the World Health Organization action plan, Iran has developed its national action plan that led to establishment of the National Committee for Prevention and Control of NCDs (INCDC), whose aim is 30% mortality reduction attributed to NCDs by 2030. The stewardship of health system is the cornerstone of performing and sustaining meaningful actions toward prevention and control of NCDs. The literature is tiny on how to materialize the stewardship and governance of health system. The purpose of this article is to report the findings of a national study that aimed to identity functions and subfunctions of stewardship of NCDs and its related risk factors in Iran.

This is a qualitative study. The authors conducted interviews with 18 purposefully selected interviewees until the authors reached saturation. Thematic content analysis was used for analysis and MAXQDA 10 was employed for data management. The difficulty of coordinating with interviewers and health policymakers in the field slowed the process of research progress.

The authors identified seven themes and categorized them as main functions for appropriate stewardship of NCDs in Iran, including intelligence generation; strategic framework; evidence-based policies/decisions; system design; resource allocation/development; capacity-building and enforcement/alignment; and categorized them as important.

The seven themes presented as stewardship functions include concepts and practical examples of the experiences and performance of leading countries in the field of NCDs control that can help policymakers and health managers for better descion-making.

Iran adopted its national action plan in 2015 and WHO selected Iran as a fast-track country in 2017. The study confirmed that to achieve the global targets, appropriate and contextual stewardship for any specific setting is fundamental. Iran needs to improve its stewardship for prevention and control of NCDs and implement its national action plan. Therefore, the functions and policies outlined in this article for the proper performance of NCDs can improve more meaningful practices in this area in Iran and many other countries.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the compliance status of prerequisite programs (PRPs) and to determine the feasibility of hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP) program in restaurants in different cities of Iran.

In total, 58 great chain restaurants were assessed randomly by observation, interview and questionnaires. The main prerequisites for HACCP implementation in questionnaires were as follows: personal hygiene of employees, rinsing, disinfection and cleaning programs, area and location of the restaurant, design and layout of the tools, building facilities, interior environment of the building, environmental hygiene, storerooms, cold storage, refrigerators and documentation.

Only 17 percent (10) of restaurants were generally assessed in a proper level of compliance and 95 percent (55) of them had not any documentation about hygienic practices. Also, the status of storerooms, cold storage and refrigerators was improper. Although, according to the area and location, the feasibility of HACCP program in the evaluated restaurants was in the highest level.

All of evaluated chain restaurants provided large amounts of food for customers each day and they had relatively more facilities and money resources for the implementation of PRPs. Hence, the findings of this research can be applicable for small and independent restaurants and other food service establishments.

This study aims to propose a fuzzy linear regression (FLR) model to deal with the vagueness or fuzziness of the underlying relationship between silk cocoon and yarn quality.

Shell ratio percentage, defective cocoon percentage and cocoon volume are considered as significant independent variables to predict the quality of silk cocoons. Input and output parameters of the FLR model are considered as non-fuzzy, but the underlying relationship between the variables is assumed to be fuzzy.

The fuzzy regression model shows its superiority against conventional multiple linear regression model for estimation of silk cocoon characteristics. It is inferred that the fuzziness in underlying relationship between the parameters can be handled efficiently by FLR model.

A rigorous experimental work has been carried out on 40 lots of mulberry silk cocoons to generate real-world data set to characterize silk cocoons’ quality in a fuzzy environment.

Finding blue colorants from natural sources is extremely difficult and, usually, the anthocyanin compounds are used for producing the blue color. This study aims to apply the Red Cabbage as a natural colorant to obtain different colors on wool yarn, as well as specify the optimum dyeing condition by response surface methodology for obtaining a blue color.

The effect of dyeing process parameters such as mordant concentration, dyeing time, pH of dyeing bath and dyeing temperature examined in the color characteristics of the dyed wool samples.

The obtained results indicated that the diverse colors achieve by varying the dyeing process parameters, which is in the range of 26° up to 271°. The non-mordanted dyed wool samples showed a red and red brownish color (Hue angle = 26° up to 70°), and the mordanted dyed wool samples showed a blue and blue-greenish color (Hue angle = 230° up to 271°). The obtained blue color with the optimized dyeing condition presented a considerable good wash and lightfastness.

This study provides a promising application of Red Cabbage as a natural colorant for obtaining different colors by varying the dyeing process parameters such as pH and stannous ion concentrations. The stannous ions yielded a co-pigmentation and presented a blue color on wool fibers, which is extremely difficult to obtain with natural colorant.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a novel weighting algorithm for fuzzy information axiom (IA) and to apply it to the evaluation process of 3D printers.

As a decision-making tool, IA method is presented to evaluate the performance of any design. Then, weighted IA methods are investigated and a new weighting procedure is introduced to the literature. Then, the existing axiomatic design methods and the proposed new method are classified into two groups: weighting based on information content and weighting based on design ranges. The weighting based on information content approach consists of four methods including pessimistic and optimistic approaches. The philosophy of the weighting based on design ranges is to narrow design ranges in order to decrease fuzziness in the model. To prove the robustness and the performance of the proposed weighting method, the results are compared with the existing methods in the literature. Then, the new approach is applied to evaluate 3D printers.

The results of the proposed study show that the proposed weighting algorithm has better performance than the old ones for IA. Therefore, the proposed weighting algorithm should be used for the weighting tool of IA thereafter.

An effective weighting method compatible with the philosophy of IA method has been proposed. Furthermore, the performances of 3D printers are compared by using the proposed method.