data envelopment analysis (dea) is a powerful tool for measuring relative efficiency of organizational units referred to as decision making units (dmus). in most cases dmus have network structures with internal linking activities. traditional dea models, however, consider dmus as black boxes with no regard to their linking activities and therefore do not provide decision makers with the reasons...

this study investigates the strategies native english and persian speakers employ for expressing gratitude in different situations. the strategies of persian efl learners are also compared with english strategies in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages. social status and size of imposition of the favor are social variables which are investigated in detail for...

insurers have in the past few decades faced longevity risks - the risk that annuitants survive more than expected - and therefore need a new approach to manage this new risk. in this dissertation we survey methods that hedge longevity risks. these methods use securitization to manage risk, so using modern financial and insurance pricing models, especially wang transform and actuarial concepts, ...

this study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences the results of the community model of teaching creative writing; i.e., group dynamics and group outcome (the quality of performance). the study adopted an experimental comparison group and microgenetic research design to observe the change process over a relatively short period of time. ...

abstract pragmatics is the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context. communicative action includes not only using speech acts (such as apologizing, complaining, complimenting, and requesting), but also engaging in different types of discourse and participating in speech events of varying length and complexity. the present study aimed to investigate the assessment of pragm...

reinsurance is widely recognized as an important instrument in the capital management of an insurance company as well as its risk management tool. this thesis is intended to determine premium rates for different types of reinsurance policies. also, given the fact that the reinsurance coverage of every company depends upon its reserves, so different types of reserves and the method of their calc...

abstract biometric access control is an automatic system that intelligently provides the access of special actions to predefined individuals. it may use one or more unique features of humans, like fingerprint, iris, gesture, 2d and 3d face images. 2d face image is one of the important features with useful and reliable information for recognition of individuals and systems based on this ...

the purpose of this study was to examine the english language needs of medical students at tehran university of medical sciences . analysis of the needs took place for three groups: 320 undergraduate students, 30 postgraduate students and 20 university instructors. a triangulation approach to collect data was used in which a combination of the quantitative (using the questionnaires) and qualita...

abstract birbery and corruption and other criminal and as such is one of social phenomena , and i can firmly say that society is protected and safe from harm , this is criminal . eache community is familiar with these crimes and the crime associated ( direct or indirect ) with the political economic , social , and cultural beliefs and religious issues , especially with the community . admitted...

abstract the first purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of consciousness-raising (c-r) activities on learning grammatical structures (simple present tense in this case) by iranian guidance school efl learners. the second one was to investigate the effect of gender on learning the simple present tense through c-r activities and tasks. finally, this study aimed to investigate the ...