Designing a community-supported agriculture model for increasing food security.

The institutionalization of participation is a topic that has been discussed in different ways over the last few decades. There are many diverse aspects of the agricultural sector and rural communities that can be identified and used to bring about a major change in agriculture. Community supported agriculture (CSA) is one of the participatory and sustainable approaches that can be used in this regard. CSA is a relatively new socioeconomic model for producing food materials, increasing food security, improving the quality of food materials and conserving agricultural land, plants and animals. This research aimed to design a CSA model that was operationalized in Markazi province, Iran, with the aim of increasing food security. It was a survey study applied through a questionnaire. The statistical population (N=110) consisted of all active farmers in Ghazel Dareh village who were selected through the census method. The necessary information was collected through a questionnaire (84 of which were completed and returned) and analyzed using SPSS v. 25 and LISREL. The results showed that economic, socio-institutional, policy-making, educational and infrastructural factors significantly influenced the development of CSA. Infrastructural and socio-institutional factors with impact factors of 0.88 and 0.54 had the largest and smallest effect on CSA, respectively. Finally, since all impact factors were positive, we can say that improving each of these factors could improve the development of CSA in the study area.

Structural analysis modeling of participatory stakeholder management for green space improvement: evidence from Tehran Metropolis.

Encouraging stakeholder participation is now considered an appropriate approach to green space improvement. The main question is how to have people participate in the improvement process. This study aims to propose a participatory stakeholder management model of green space improvement in Tehran Metropolis. Therefore, 190 of Tehran Municipality's green space experts were selected as the statistical population for in-person and field interviews. The dependent research variable was defined as the green space improvement measured in four dimensions (i.e., green space planning, green space designing, green space implementation, and green space maintenance). However, the independent variable included the aspects of participatory management (i.e., participation in goal-setting, participation in decision-making, participation in organizational change, participation in problem-solving, and organizational culture). The results indicated that only organizational culture and participation in organizational change explained nearly 96% of participatory management variations and improved 67% of the green space.

Approaches to Muslim Biomedical Ethics: A Classification and Critique.

This paper provides a perspective on where contemporary Muslim responses to biomedical-ethical issues stand to date. There are several ways in which Muslim responses to biomedical ethics can and have been studied in academia. The responses are commonly divided along denominational lines or under the schools of jurisprudence. All such efforts classify the responses along the lines of communities of interpretation rather than the methods of interpretation. This research is interested in the latter. Thus, our criterion for classification is the underlying methodology behind the responses. The proposed classification divides Muslim biomedical-ethical reasoning into three methodological categories: 1) textual, 2) contextual, and 3) para-textual.

Illustration of effective parameters on growth of ZnO micro/nano rods, on the borosilicate glass via hydrothermal process.

Hexagonal micro/nanorods of ZnO were synthesized via mild hydrothermal growth method under different conditions. The growth of the rods was accomplished in two manners: firstly, on bare borosilicate glass, and secondly, on ZnO seed layer prepared by sol-gel spin coating process. All the obtained surfaces were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The studies demonstrate that, although with the decrease of concentration of precursor solution on bare borosilicate glass, the diameter of the rods decreases, but the orientation will deteriorate and the density of the rods will decrease. On the other hand, hydrothermal growth on the seed layer causes the decrease in the diameter of the rods, while maintaining the orientation along the c-axis; therefore, the presence of seed layer plays an important role in decreasing the diameter of the rods; so that at a constant concentration, compared with the case without seed layer, the diameter of rods decreased 10 times from approximately 500 nm to approximately 50 nm.

Some studies of alpha-amylase production using Aspergillus oryzae.

The extracellular alpha-amylase production by Aspergillus oryzae was studied in submerged fermentation using an Adlof-Kuhner orbital shaker. The effect of initial pH values in the range of 4 to 7.5 on enzyme production was investigated and initial pH medium of 6.2 +/- 0.1 resulted in enhanced alpha-amylase production. The effect of carbon and nitrogen source and composition was examined and it has been observed that corn starch concentration of 15 g L(-1) has sound effect on enzyme production. The medium containing corn starch, sodium nitrate resulted in considerable higher enzyme production. Further, the yeast extract of 2.5 g L(-1) in the medium produced higher enzyme in view to other organic nitrogen sources. The effect of temperature on alpha-amylase production from 20 to 40 degrees C has been studied and at 35 +/- 1 degrees C higher alpha-amylase has been obtained. The effect of shaker's speed on alpha-amylase production from 50 to 200 rpm was investigated. And at about 180 rpm higher enzyme production has been observed. In the present study, it has been found that glucose has repressing effect on a-amylase production using A. oryzae PTCC5164.