This research aims to investigate how Icelandic companies define brand success and measure their progress towards achieving it. The research explores the potential influence of Iceland’s unique economic, cultural, and social factors on Icelandic businesses’ branding strategies and practices. By examining Icelandic companies’ branding strategies and success evaluation methodologies, this research seeks to uncover broader implications for brand management and strategy. The research adopts a qualitative research approach, utilizing interviews with managers working in five Icelandic companies as the primary data collection method. These managers were interviewed to gain insights into their perspectives on brand success and progress measurement. The data obtained from the interviews was analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software MAXQDA. The findings of this research provide valuable insights into how Icelandic companies conceptualize and define brand success and the factors they consider in this definition. Additionally, the research explores how companies measure customer satisfaction and the role of satisfaction in assessing brand success. It also investigates how Icelandic companies differentiate themselves from competitors and the methods used to measure this differentiation. Findings from the research reveal diverse company characteristics, industry-specific dynamics, and success factors. Brand success is defined by brands that have effective marketing strategies, high quality, reliable, and trustworthy products, good brand perception and customer feedback, are trustworthy and provide unique selling propositions. Companies use various metrics and key performance indicators to measure brand success, including measuring brand awareness, reputation, customer loyalty, satisfaction, revenue growth, market share, and brand equity. They also employ methods such as NPS surveys (Net Promoter Score), loyalty programs, customer satisfaction services, and feedback collection to measure customer satisfaction and evaluate brand success. Brands achieved differentiation from competitors through brand perception, reputation, customer relationships, safety measures, compliance, social and environmental practices, pricing models, service quality, industry expertise, certifications, awards, and client feedback to differentiate themselves. By focusing on Icelandic companies, this research contributes to the understanding of branding strategies and success evaluation methodologies within a unique business context.

This study reports on the use of Learning and Teaching Support Materials for foundation phase classroom teaching. Learning and Teaching Support Materials is regarded as one of the core components for effective curriculum delivery in the classroom. This study was encouraged by the need to investigate how teachers facilitate learning and teaching support materials for teaching and learning, since it is well known that schools have been adequately resourced with financial means to provide learning and teaching support materials in line with the call of one textbook per learner per subject made by the Minister of Basic education. This was a qualitative study which was conducted in two foundation phase schools in the area of Lehlabile in Brits township. The data collection methods used were lesson observations and interviews. Teachers were not able to use the learning and teaching Support materials at the intellectual level of the learners, or to help the Grade 3 learners reach the intellectual level which is expected of them. Learners’ poor language skills and/or teachers’ inability to use learning and teaching support materials for teaching and learning are both contributing factors. This study presents its findings at a time when learner attainment is seen to be low, as indicated in the Annual National Assessment results recently presented by the Minister of Education. Hopefully this research study will contribute towards a realisation by the Department of Basic Education that there is a need to capacitate teachers in the use of learning and teaching support materials for teaching and learning. The article thus recommends that appropriate learning and teaching support materials should be made available in order to ensure efficient and effective implementation of curriculum implementation. It also recommends that a teacher: learner ratio of 1:30 should be practiced ensuring that teachers give special attention to each learner.

Quality and quantity testing of flavour products through gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) of two types of grapes, Chardonnay and Sauvignon blanc is performed in the presence of proteolytic enzymes beloning to the class of pectinases, which contains beta-glocosidase based activity grained pectinase. The technique employed is skin maceration by adding direct preparations on grapes at a temperature of 15 °C, for 8 hours. Flavour composites are successively extracted with dichloromethane, they get dry, concentrate and injected into GC-MS. The selected type has led to the conclusion that irrespective of producers, the features of those enzymes boost the value of the flavour substances but also lessen the components that may damage the olfactory and sensorial qualities of the unfermented wine. Maceration enzymes improve the extraction degree of flavours.

Analyses into the operation of the majority of technological processes in chemical industries have shown that considerable loss of energy occurs during the discharge of surplus heat from these processes into the environment, as well as raw materials and other materials associated with the discharge of useful substances into the environment due to their low utilization in the processes. During recent years the authors have investigated the application of a high temperature heat pump in the industrial waste heat recovery. This paper shows the results of waste heat recovery from the soda-ash production process named \"DS-solution\". The DS-solution is produced in the quantity of 8-11 m3/t of soda ash, with the temperature between 90-110C. Waste heat recovery from this industrial flow can be achieved in two stages: the exchange of heat in a heat exchanger by cooling the DS-solution from 95C to 68.5C, and then additional waste heat recovery also using adiabatic evaporation of the DS-solution by decreasing the temperature from 68.5°C to 41.4°C by means of a high temperature heat pump which uses heated water from the previous two stages as a low temperature heat source. In this way the heat potential of water is raised to the level which enables its utilization in the system of high temperature district heating of residential buildings and other facilities. Both stages are component parts of the unique process of DS-solution heat recovery as a waste flow produced in the soda ash process.

The paper is a description of an e-commerce intelligent agent. Intelligent agents entail new varieties of software with substantial prospect for numerous Web-based applications. These applications have been successfully implemented in management of emails, decision-support systems, and personal assistants. Business performance has been greatly changed by agents applying e-commerce, resulting in an innovative change. This has been manifested in the form of business-to-business (B2B), business-to-customer (B2C),and customer-to-customer (C2C) relations.

Removal of Acid red 37 from aqueous solutions has been studied using red mud waste material after its modification with laccase from Russulaceae (Lactarius volemus). Laccase was purified by using saturated precipitate (NH4)2SO4, DEAE-cellulose and immobilized on red mud. The removal of Acid red 37 by the laccase-modified red mud has been demonstrated in order to explore its potential use as low-cost adsorbent.The adsorption kinetics of Acid red 37 dye on the laccase-modified red mud with respect to pH, contact time, temperature and adsorbent dose were investigated. The optimum results were obtained at pH 4, contact time of 60 min and temperature of 30 ºC. The Freundlich equation was found to have the highest value of R2 compared with the Langmuir model. Thermodynamic parameters including the Gibbs free energy, enthalpy and entropy changes indicated that the adsorption of Acid red 37 onto laccase-modified red mud was feasible, spontaneous and endothermic.

Objective: Malnutrition is one of the important health problems throughout the world particularly in developing countries, which has undesirable effects on mental and physical health of children. It is an underlying factor of infection and an important cause of child mortality in these countries. The aim of this study was to find out the prevalence of primary malnutrition and related factors among 1-59 months old hospitalized children due to acute infectious disease at Imam Reza Hospital in Kermanshah 2011\nMethods: This cross-sectional and descriptive analytical study was done on 346 hospitalized children due to acute infectious disease at Imam Reza Hospital from May to November 2011.Data collection was done through measuring of weight, height and structural questionnaire as face to face interviews with mothers. According to WHO criteria, the SD score with a cut of less than -2 for three indices (Weight/Height, Height/Age, Weight/Age) should be used to define malnutrition. The obtained data was analyzed by SPSS software and tests of chi-square and t-test.\nFindings: The prevalence of malnutrition based on three criteria including “Weight for Height”, ”Height for Age” and “Weight for Age” were 16/8%,16/2% and 11/3%, respectively. No statistically significant correlation was found between wasting (Weight/Height) and variables (P>0.05). Stunting (Height/Age) had a significant relationship to age, duration of breast feeding and birth weight (P<0.05).Finally the index of underweight had a significant relationship to age, birth weight, hospitalization history and starting age of complementary nutrition.\nConclusion: With regard to results of this study, the following measures to reduce malnutrition are recommended: great attention to nutrition in the first year of life, improving pregnancy care, constancy of breast feeding and timely complementary nutrition.

In this work, synthesis and swelling behavior of a composite hydrogel based on alginate and control drug delivery by this composite hydrogel in pHs 1.2 and 7.4 were investigated. The physical mixture of alginate and PAN was hydrolyzed by NaOH solution to yield hydrogel in presence MMT- Na+ clay. Then, ibuprofen drug loaded in composite hydrogel and the amount of release drug was investigated simulated cancer cells (pH acidic) and in vitro test simulated blood environment (pH 7.4) with uv/visible spectroscopy. Finally,the structure of composite hydrogel was confirmed by FT-IR, SEM and XRD spectroscopies.

According to the increasing advancement in different industries, various companies and industries try to update themselves with these changes. For this purpose, noticing the internal processes to stay in the competition scene becomes more evident than ever. For this reason, some companies have simplified and altered their internal processes and they call it \"reengineering\". Researches have shown that at the global level, these evolutions have failed up from 50 to 70%. In this research, we have chosen the Farineh Company as the sample and have examined the successfulness of applying reengineering in terms of four measures including time, cost, user\'s learning and the satisfaction of the internal customers. Findings of the research indicate that no changes are observed in the cost and the time but the level of the internal customers\' satisfaction and also the user\'s learning have increased. Finally, according to the findings of the research, suggestions are presented about how to make the application of the reengineering projects more successful.