ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to evaluate the status of information on forest and data transfer and to identify the gaps in information and data flow in forestry sector in Iran. The study evaluated the data and information flow in three levels (control offices level, provincial offices level and organizational offices level) using the document analysis and questioning (interviews and ques...

This research demonstrates the feasibility of a roof insulation method for prefabricated offices that uses vinyl packed timber chips to reduce air conditioning loads (hereinafter referred to as AC loads) and which also improves indoor thermal comfort. The advantages of the new roof insulation method were revealed through comparing the impacts of four roof types on prefabricated offices. The AC ...

Nanotechnology patent applications published during 1991-2008 have been examined using the "title-abstract" keyword search on esp@cenet "worldwide" database. The longitudinal evolution of the number of patent applications, their topics, and their respective patent families have been evaluated for 15 national patent offices covering 98% of the total global activity. The patent offices of the Uni...

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to evaluate possible differences between local social insurance offices with regard to their selection of clients for vocational rehabilitation. A further aim was to determine whether social insurance officers from different local insurance offices have uniform attitudes regarding professional practice in their application of the insurance system. METHODS A...

Most physicians believe that to provide the best possible care to their patients, they must commit to continuous learning. For the most part, it appears the learning activities currently available to physicians do not provide opportunities for meaningful continuous learning. At the same time there have been increasing concerns about the quality of health care, and a variety of groups within org...

Physicians, health plans, and health systems are increasingly evaluated and rewarded based on Health Plan Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) and HEDIS-like performance measures. Concurrently, employers and health plans continue to try to control expenditures by increasing out-of-pocket costs for patients. The authors use fixed-effect logit models to assess how rising copayment rates...