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The attitude or behavior, which is not based on logical actions- and cause and effect relations, has irrational origins;  it happens due to a person's fear, threat, habits, and the unknown factors which he she believes to prevent the unbecoming events, called “superstition”. An increase in the literacy level and the popular culture in the society leads to a decrease in superstitious beliefs. It must be acknowledged that even modern people cannot reject superstitions, or get rid of them actually. This study has examined the causes of these prevalent beliefs and the way people apply them, via content analysis. Although the prevalence of superstition origins is established on irrational bases, people have applied them to gain benefit by impelling and propagating the folklore, preventing harm by inhibition, alleviation, turning the evil (scapegoat), and empathy.

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  Morphological and morphometric characters of two species of superfamily Sphaerularioidea, recovered in southwestern Iran namely Deladenus durus and Prothallonema obtusum are given. The recovered specimens of D. durus are characterized by having a valvular chamber in metacorpus and excretory pore posterior to the hemizonid.The Iranian population of P. obtusum is characterized by having four lines in the lateral field, excretory pore anterior to the end of pharynx, not bulgy vulva region and short subcylindrical tail.

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Since his creation, the human has been concerned with the protection of his life and properties by any means possible such as exploring the surrounding environment, fighting against the threats facing him, and using a variety of tools and instruments. Among these tools was scorching. Scorching has been ever used for two main purposes by the human: marking and treatment. However, one cannot claim with certainty which application was the dominant one. In this study, the author has first dealt with the marking aspect and then with the treatment function. In its former function, scorching was practiced on the body organs of the slaves, enemies, and animals in order to distinguish and take ownership of them, and with criminals as a sign of guilt. In the latter function, it was used, according to some reports, as the last treatment possible for curing different diseases in both humans and animals. The most important therapeutic application of scorching was on wounds to stop bleeding and prevent infection. In the present research, both functions have been examined and classified with reference to the Persian literature, history, and folk culture.

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A parallel hybrid system of HMM and GMM modeling techniques was implemented and used in a telephony speaker verification and identification system. Spectral subtraction and Weighted Projection Measure were used to render this system more robust against additional noise. Cepstral Mean Subtraction method was also applied for the compensation of convolution noise due to transmission channel degradation and differences in the frequency response of telephone handsets. For a population of 100 speakers of FARSDIGITS1 database with a SNR of 8.8 dB, a speaker identification performance of 95.51% and a speaker verification error rate of 0.37% were obtained. Several score normalization methods in utterance and frame level and weighting of model scores were also implemented, and then compared and evaluated. It was shown that these methods improve discrimination between speakers and yield a reduction of speaker verification and identification error rates.

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Culture filtrates (CF) of two species of the nematophagous fungi, Arthrobotrys oligospora and Arthrobotrys conoidesat three concentrations (25%, 50% and 100%) of stock, were tested on the mortality of second stage juveniles (J2) and egg hatching rate of Meloidogyne incognita and Meloidogyne javanica. Results showed that the percent juvenile mortality was directly proportional to concentration of the filtrates. Egg hatching rate of these nematodes was inversely affected by increasing concentrations. Also CFs had various impacts on the mortality of J2 and egg hatching rate. In case of M. incognita maximum J2 mortality (28.98%) occurred after 24 hours of exposure to A. conoides filtrate at concentration of 100%. The minimum toxicity (12.5% J2 mortality) was recorded for A. oligospora at 25% filtrate concentration. At the same time, the highest rate of J2 mortality of M. javanica (19.18%) belonged to the 100% concentration of A. conoides, while minimum toxicity belonged to 25% concentration of A. oligospora causing 9.09% mortality. Maximum egg hatching rate for M. incognita (30.75%) belonged to control and minimum hatching rate (1.25%) belonged to 100% concentration of A. conoides. The highest hatching rate of M. javanica (36.25%)belonged to control and minimum hatching rate (1.25%) occurred at 100% concentration of A. conoides.

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Background and purpose:
As protective elements are related to human life, the elements of Amulet are important in all cultures. In any society, people determine some elements for self-preservation and also to preserve their family and properties_ elements that are mostly supernal. One of these solutions is the use of Amulets. Mysterious aspects of Amulets puts them in the center of mythological and semantic connotation so that the elements are sometimes considered as a taboo or as a holy object and totem. Signs of this duality are seen among nations which is the reason of sacredness and mysteriousness of this elements. The Amulet has a great importance in the universal system of beliefs where  Iranian people’s culture is not the case of exception . The most important function of Amulets is still related to their protective role. Elements that are used to fight demons away, to enslave or kill evil forces and attract the positive and beneficial forces. Believers use various elements of Amulet depending on the kind of problems and injuries; so sometimes even profane and impure elements are used to ward off evil forces and beings. Several studies about the Amulet are adopted from foreign travelogues. Some of these investigators who have noted sporadically to Amulets and other magical elements include: Wishard in "Twenty years in Iran", Wales in "Iran a century ago", Layard in "Layard’s travelogue", Rice in "Iranian women and their way of life", Olivie in "Olivie’s travelogue", Willem Floor in "Social history of Iran during the Qajar era", Pollock in "Pollock’s travelogue", Henry Patnchr in "Traveling in Sindh and Balochistan." In addition to the above-mentioned researchers in the field of 
Amulets, some studies have been conducted amongst them it can refer to: "Magic, Amulet and Amulet and Women's World in Qajar era" by Dariush Rahmaniyan and Zahra Hatami, “Amulet in Khaghani’s poetry" by Abbas Mahyar, and "Bātel-o-ssehr" encyclopedic entry by Ali Bolukbashi.
 
Materials and methods:
Using documents and observations of the authors, in this study, the authors have tried to explore the beliefs of the people in Kerman and identify elements of Amulet and determine their functions as influential elements in people’s life, and in the end, they have showed their supernatural position.
Findings:
In this study, all kinds of Amulet, their classification and mechanisms of Amulets influence in the belief system of the research community are studied. The studied community accepts Amulets to ward off evil and as one of the most important mediators to benefit attraction, so that they are an integral aspect of their lives. Most of the Amulets used, are sacred and play a role as an absorber or mediator to absorb disasters and attract benefits, so they are victims to ward off disaster from the injured person. In general, we can express the mechanisms of effect of the Amulets in the studied community as follows: The Amulets, because of their sacredness, attract benefits and goodness and transfer them to the person utilizing them and ,on the other hand, because of their special power, they ward off the disasters and evil and  prevent them from passing to and hurt the utilizer. Contempt of a Amulet, reverses the mechanism of its effects: Benefits are prevented and the evil is attracted. Benefiting and harming mechanisms of Amulets act according to distance, i. e., Amulets benefit or harm the closest person.
 
Discussion and conclusion:
This study showed that Amulet elements can have an important role in creating a sense of physical and psychological security for mankind. According to authors, the function of the Amulet, is not only an attempt to survive but also a concept beyond that including the worldly and otherworldly life of the believers.

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To move from one stage to another in all societies, there would have always been many social norms. One of the most important norms along the history has been reproduction, which, depending on the region, has certain beliefs and different strategies of achievement. Thus, the present study seeks to address the issue of fertility and its attitudes, methods effective in Iranian culture for the diagnosis of pregnancy and sex determination of children, as well as for the prevention of pregnancy and abortion. On this basis, the present study was conducted with a descriptive-analytical approach with the analysis of literary, religious and historical texts reflected in Iranian popular culture. Fertility and the entry of the new member of the Iranian family were considered as a kind of honor. Therefore, there are scientific and sometimes unscientific methods of identifying the fertility or sterility of women that have been effective for women's fertility and for the prevention of abortion and infertility. Given the importance of gender and neonatal physiology, in order to determine sex and even the health and beauty of children, the predicted urine test and the apparent signs of the body have been predicted and attempted to provide changes in this regard by feeding medicinal plants as well as fruits and vegetables.
 

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Three known species of the family Criconematidae namely Criconema crotaloides, C. princeps and Ogma zernovi were recovered from natural forests in Golestan province, and were characterized based upon their morphological and morphometric characters. The Iranian population of C. crotaloides was recovered from the rhizosphere of Fraxinus excelsior and is characterized by females 517-594 μm long, having 64-70 not retrorse body annuli with smooth margin without lateral differentiation and RV = 11-14. The second species, C. princeps, was associated with Carpinus betulus and is characterized by females 421-506 μm long, having 63-69 rounded to retrorse body annuli with smooth margin, marked by distinct lateral triangular arches and RV = 11-12. The main characteristics of this species and the status of some other previously reported populations as C. princeps were discussed. The last species, Ogma zernovi, was recovered from the rhizosphere of Quercus sp., and is characterized by females 350-653 μm long, having 58-64 retrorse body annuli, each annulus with nine rows of short smooth scales in the middle of the body, the scales uni- or bi-lobulated, RV = 9-11, tail conoid and the last three annuli without projections. New observations on its morphology were added, comparisons were made with the type populations of the species and characteristics of the species were updated with including data of males and juveniles. Compared to the type populations, no remarkable differences were observed for the three studied species. All the three species represent new records for Iran.
  

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Three populations of criconematids belonging to the subfamily Macroposthoniinae, representing three species Mesocriconema kirjanovae, M. surinamense and Criconemoides amorphous were recovered from two different geographical localities in East Azarbaijan province, northwest Iran. The recovered populations were characterized morphologically. Iranian population of M. kirjanovae is characterized by 437-542 μm long females, having 86-97 retrorse body annuli with smooth to finely crenated margin, cephalic region with two, non-retrorse annuli, 56-62 μm long stylet, the anterior lip of the vulva with two projections and conical tail with acute tip. The recovered population of M. surinamense is characterized by 495-640 μm long females, having 87-94 retrorse body annuli with smooth margin, four very large and flattened submedian lobes, 74-82 μm long stylet, open vulva, its anterior lip with two small lobes, vagina straight and tail rounded with one or two terminal lobes. The Iranian population of C. amorphous is characterized by 502-697 μm long females, having 66-73 retrorse body annuli with smooth to rough margin, four pseudo-submedian lobs, labial disc elevated, 72-80 μm long stylet, vulva closed, tail bluntly conoid and its tip uni- to multi- lobed. The characteristics of the three studied species were in agreement with those of the original; and the data of other populations. The two species M. kirjanovae and M. surinamense are new to nematode fauna of Iran; and the morphological and morphometric data of the Iranian population of C. amorphous are presented for the first time.

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Mongolian tribes, following their cultural traditions, have a diverse array of names for people. This was particularly evident during and after the Mongol rule in Iran, where Persian texts from that era often reflect these Mongolian names. Iranian writers and historians sometimes provided insights into the meanings and reasons behind these names, along with related stories and narratives. Despite the significance of Mongol nomenclature in literary and historical texts, comprehensive research on this topic remains scarce, underscoring the need for this study. In these texts, naming patterns varied according to nature, physical conditions, events, and manners. Sometimes, names were altered for various reasons.

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Mechanical behavior of live cells and tissues is non-linear and their deformations are large. Using a suitable mechanical model that could predicts this behavior, is an important step in the prevention and treatment of various diseases and the production of artificial tissues. In this paper, using the non-linear elasticity theory and non-linear Mooney-Rivlin model, mechanical analysis of human arteries has been studied under internal pressure and axial tension. In the first By using the experimental study was conducted of biaxial test, the elastic constants of the arteries are calculated. For modeling, the arteries are considered as long homogeneous and isotropic cylinders. Radial and circumferential stress distribution on the minimum and maximum blood pressure is calculated. Variation of artery radius due to internal pressure is calculated and compared with the reported experimental data, and a good agreement is seen. The stress distribution curves versus radius are plotted which show that the inner layers of the arteries have much greater role in stress distribution than the outer layers. The elastic constants which are calculated for different ages show that the arteries of older people become stiffer and their flexibility decrease.

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Reactant gases should be humidified before entering a polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cell stack. Humidification of the gases can be performed by a membrane humidifier. In the present study, an analytical model has been proposed to investigate the performance of a water-gas membrane humidifier which is used in the fuel cell systems. At first, a set of nonlinear equations was obtained by applying the mass and energy conservation laws on the gas side of the humidifier. The temperature and the humidity ratio of the outlet gases from the humidifier are the unknowns of these nonlinear equations. The proposed model can evaluate the performance of the humidifier based on the temperature and relative humidity of the outlet gases from the humidifier. The effects of different parameters like: gas flow rate, channel's length and depth, temperature and pressure of the inlet gases on the performance of the humidifier were studied by the developed model. The results show that the channel depth does not have an effect on the temperature and humidity of the humidified outlet gases. In addition, increasing the channel length causes an increase on the dew point of the outlet gases but the relative humidity of the dry inlet gas does not have a noticeable effect on the dew point of the outlet gases. Increasing the temperature of the inlet gases cannot improve the humidifier performance, considerably. The results of the model show that increasing the inlet pressure and using less air flow improve the humidifier performance.

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Investigation of fluid-solid interaction has been studied as an introduction to simulate a wide range of engineering problems such as fluidized beds, sediment transportation and catalyst inks in fuel cells. An efficient method for performing such simulations is a combination of Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and Smoothed Profile Method (SPM). In addition, the operations in the SPM are local; it can be easily programmed for parallel processing. In this approach, the flow is computed on fixed Eulerian grids which are also used for the particles. Owing to the use of the same grids for simulation of fluid flow and particles, this method is highly efficient for purpose of parallel processing by means of GPU. In this study, a combination of Lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) and Smoothed Profile method has been implemented in parallel processing on GPU. For validation purpose, the fluid flow within a channel was investigated. Results suggest that computational time can be reduced up to 80 times by means of GPU.Then, drag force exerted on a sphere in fluid flow and the sedimentation of one sphere in a quiescent fluid were studied. Results show that performance of GPU can be increased up to 6.5 million fluid nods per second by using this method.

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Solar humidification-dehumidification desalination is one of the most practical methods for water desalination in small scale for regions far from cities and low population. The aim of this study is manufacturing and simulation of a solar humidification-dehumidification desalination system with capacity of 20 lit/day. This system consists of humidification and dehumidification units, solar air and water heaters. To this end, at first this system is explained and modeled. Then, manufacturing process of solar air heaters, and different parts of desalination system is investigated. After the manufacturing process of the desalination system, this system is experimentally tested and the effect of pertinent parameters, such as the temperature of inlet water and air to humidifier; inlet water temperature and flow rate to dehumidifier on the performance of the system and distillate product is investigated. The results show that the effect of water temperature on the fresh water produced in more than air temperature. Moreover, using the chilled water, which its temperature in the range of well temperature, in the dehumidifier inlet leads to an increase of 31 % in the fresh water produced. Also, the best water flow rate to the dehumidifier inlet is 0.12 kg/s. Finally, experimental and simulation results are compared with each other and good consistency is seen.

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In this paper, minimum-time low-thrust planar orbit transfer problem is solved by fuzzy optimal control. Trajectory dynamic restricting assumptions and using analytical averaging method, the governing equations of orbit transfer problem in its desired form with constant acceleration magnitude is achieved. Then, using Euler discretization method, the whole differential dynamic equations, performance function and transversality conditions are represented in a discrete form. Calling membership function concept of fuzzy environment, this algorithm transfers classical optimal control including performance index and trajectory transversality conditions associated with uncertanities to fuzzy environment. Thereafter, introducing slack variables all the inequalities change to equality conditions. Applying Bellman-Zadeh approach, optimal control problem turns to parameter optimization problem which then is solved by Lagrange multipliers technique. Finally, solving the set of nonlinear algebraic equations made by optimality necessary conditions simultaneously is achieved by nonlinear programming method. Numerical fuzzy optimal control results are validated with available analytical results which show the priorities of this method in orbit transfer trajectory optimization in presence of uncertainities. FOC approach is categorized into direct methods for solving optimal control problems, while it is far from their defects e.g. curse of dimensionality and burdensome computational load so that it applies fuzzy approach and expert knowledge to simply solve the problems.

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In the present study, combustion phenomenon and heat transfer in a 3-D rectangular porous radiant burner (PRB) are numerically studied. Methane- air mixture with detailed chemical kinetics is considered to model the combustion process inside the porous matrix. Assuming the non-local thermal equilibrium between solid and gas phases, separate energy equations are considered for two phases. Porous medium is assumed as a gray medium that can absorb, scatter, and emit thermal radiation, where the gas phase is considered to be transparent. The governing equations including gas and porous energy equations, the chemical species transport equation and the radiative transfer equation are simultaneously and numerically solved. Discrete ordinates method is used to solve the radiative transfer equation in order to calculate the radiative term in the solid energy equation. The simulation results include temperature fields for the gas and solid phase, species mass fraction distributions, and radiative heat flux profiles along the burner. Finally, the effect of different parameters such as optical thickness, scattering albedo, excess air ratio (EAR) and porosity on the performance of burner are explored.

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In this research work, using the recently introduced entropic constant speed kinetic model and employing the Pseudo-Potential model of Shan and Chen (SC), two phase flow of incompressible and immiscible fluids through porous media is studied. Applications of the entropic kinetic models in simulating multi-phase and multi-component flows have been thoroughly investigated, during the past decade. Lack of an entropy function, in a kinetics based model, implies that the existence of a unique equilibrium state, under all flow conditions and for all positions and times, cannot be guaranteed by the model. Hence, simulation of two multi-phase flows with high density ratios, using the conventional kinetic models (which do not satisfy the second law of thermodynamics) may not yield proper results, due to numerical instabilities. In this research, performing numerical simulations, the accuracy and stability of the recently introduced constant speed kinetic model and the conventional lattice Boltzmann models have been compared with each other. The present simulations include the verification of the Laplace Law and the contact angles and two phase flow through simple channels. In addition to the above, two phase flow in porous media has been simulated and the relative permeability vs wettability has been reported. The obtained results are in excellent agreement with previous results reported by others researchers.