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In Iran, bakers use baking soda and sodium dithionate to lower baking costs, save time, and hide their product's imperfections. Because of the harmful effects of these additives on human's health, the Ministry of Health of Iran has banned their use for baking bread. The residuals of baking soda and sodium dithionate in bread, the relationship between these substances and bread type, baking time, and sanitary status of bakeries in military bases of one of Iran's military forces were examined. Out of 21 organizational dormitories, 15 were randomly selected, and 30 Iranian bread samples (Sangak, Lavash, Taftoon, and Barbari) were purchased. Baking soda and sodium dithionate content was investigated following the national standard methods. The sanitary status of bakeries was assessed by a checklist developed by the Ministry of Health. Based on the pH standard cut off point, 60% of the samples were considered positive in terms of using baking soda. Taftoon with 75% and Lavash with 66% had the highest frequencies of using baking soda. There was a statistically significant relationship between the type of bread and pH at the error level of 0.05 (p=0.05). All the samples were negative for using sodium dithionate. The sanitary status of bakeries was satisfactory; however, personal hygiene needed improvement. There is a need for constant monitoring to prevent bakeries from using the additives. Strict rules along with resolving deficiencies and educating sanitation guidelines will help to improve the sanitary status of bakeries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decarbonizing energy systems through the integration of decentralized renewable energy generators creates opportunities for community-scale actors to participate in energy system decision-making. However, typical modelling approaches exclude community stakeholders, causing a loss of local knowledge. This exclusion is problematic for Indigenous peoples in so-called Canada where the natural resource industry harms their land and communities. The Exploring Grassroots Renewable Energy Transitions (EGRET) platform introduced in this work presents an alternative to typical energy system modelling because it facilitates community participation throughout the model development and application process. This platform was developed in partnership with a local First Nation's energy specialist to assess whether solar panels could increase community energy sovereignty. The platform's user interface, visualization suite, and high-speed machine learning models make energy system modelling accessible to community members through interactive workshops. In the future, the EGRET approach could be generalized for stakeholder-led renewable energy exploration in other community settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy hub concept has been emerged as a suitable tool to analyze multi-carrier energy systems. Deregulation and increasing competition in the energy industry have provided a suitable platform for developing the multi-agent energy systems. Planning of energy hubs considering the competition between the hubs has not been sufficiently addressed, yet. A model has been proposed in this study for planning of a multi-hub energy system considering the competition between the hubs. The hubs are interconnected via an electric transmission system. A linear model has been developed to determine the optimal planning/operation strategy for energy hubs in a multi-period planning horizon to meet the heat and electricity demand for the defined load zone. The problem has been formulated and solved using Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. The proposed model has been applied to 3-Hub and 5-Hub energy systems. The effect of renewable generation and storage system has also been evaluatedIt has also been observed that inclusion of renewable generation or storage technologies can reduce the conventional electricity generation capacity by 63 percent in HUB2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aimed at investigating the impacts of some cultural, social and economic factors of the students' families on the students' education and attitude toward mathematics. This study has been carried out through the use of data envelopment analysis. Data envelopment analysis is a linear programming method that its main purpose is to compare and evaluate the efficiency of a number of similar decision-making units, and to compare and analyze them, which have different values of consumed inputs and produced outputs. In this study, the inputs are the various aspects of cultural, social and economic conditions (such as family income, physical and mental health condition of the family members, and parents' occupation) of the families of 300 sixth-grade elementary school students in district 4 of Tehran, and the outputs are the extent of achievement in the mathematics test and the interest of the students of the mentioned schools to the activities related to the mathematics course and moral discipline. After the completion of the investigations, the effective and ineffective units were identified and the results were completely interpreted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]