Background The critical role that the board plays in governance of universities clarifies the necessity of evaluating its performance. This study was aimed to evaluate the performance of the boards of medical universities and provide solutions to enhance its performance.   Methods The first phase of present study was a qualitative research in which data were collected through face-to-face semi-...

Received: March 18, 2015; Accepted: March 20, 2015; Published: March 22, 2015 If you read these pages, you certainly know the seminal book by Benoit B. Mandelbrot, The Fractal Geometry of Nature (1982). In his Masterpiece, Benoit provides both a mathematical model and a description for many of the seemingly complex forms and patterns in nature, showing that fractal patterns are extremely famili...

Patterns in nature result from dynamic relationships of forces and constraints. What is analogous for patterns in art? Art is created by human hands motivated by inspiration and thought. It is the product of creativity and skill. Creativity is constrained by cognitive processes and skill by the limits of technology. Based upon the author’s studies of Oriental carpets, this paper suggests that p...

A novel method is proposed to retrieve image sequences with the goal of forecasting complex and timevarying natural patterns. To that end, we introduce a framework called Memory-Based Forecasting; it provides forecast information based on the temporal development of past retrieved sequences. This paper targets the radar echo patterns in weather radar images, and aims to realize an image retriev...

Motivations for drawing hierarchical structures are probably as diverse as datasets to visualize. This ubiquity of tree structures has lead to a manifold of tree layout algorithms and tree visualization systems. While many tree layouts exist, increasingly massive data sets, expanding computational power, and still relatively limited display space make tree layout algorithms a topic of ongoing i...

A novel method and a framework called Memory-Based Forecasting are proposed to forecast complex and timevarying natural patterns with the goal of supporting experts’ decision making. This paper targets the local precipitation phenomena captured as echo patterns in weather radar images, and aims to realize a tool that supports weather forecasters. In our framework, past image patterns similar to...