Archives-December 2011

The level of natural radioactivity in soils of some selected towns around Lake Bosumtwi of Ashanti region of Ghana have been determined. Thirteen Samples from different locations close to the catchment area of the lake were collected for determination of NORM activity concentrations using high-purity germanium (HPGe) gamma spectrometer. Activity concentration of 226Ra, 232Th, and 40K ranged from 2.9 ± 0.14 Bq/kg to 168.2 ± 0.6 Bq/kg with an average of 31.2±0.3 Bq/kg, 0.4 ± 0.1 Bq/kg to 108.4 ± 9 Bq/kg with an average of 11.9 Bq/kg and 20.4 ± 3 Bq/kg to 340.8 ± 12 Bq/kg with an average of 134.8± Bq/kg, respectively. The results obtained were also in good agreement with studies from other countries in the region and therefore can be used to enhance present radioactivity database. The calculated external hazard values ranged from 0.02 Bq/kg to 0.56 Bq/kg with the mean of 0.15 (less than unity) showed no risk of external hazard to the inhabitants and Tourist visiting the catchment.

Most of the brain disorders are diagnosed by analyzing the EEG signals. In this paper an efficient approach for detecting the presence of epileptic seizures in EEG signals using fuzzy KNN classifier is presented. Epilepsy is a disease due to temporary alternation in brain functions due to abnormal electrical activity of a group of brain cells and is termed as seizure. The analysis is performed in three stages. In the first step the biorthogonal Discrete wavelet transform is used for decompose the EEG signal into delta, theta, alpha, beta and gamma subbands. In the second step the statistical features are extracted from each subband and finally classification of the EEG signal that is epileptic seizure exists or not has been done using fuzzy KNN clasifier. This method is applied for two different groups of EEG signals: 1) healthy (Normal) EEG dataset; 2) epileptic dataset during a seizure interval .The experimental results show that the proposed method efficiently detects the presence of epileptic seizure in EEG signals and also showed a reasonable accuracy in detection.

In this paper we propose a new approach of processing speech signal which is degraded by the reverberant components. This method is based on the analysis of short [2ms] segment of data to enhance the region of the speech signal and analyzing the speech components without degradation due to reverberation, using various methods [FFT, DCT& DWT] and comparison of their results.

Different varieties of groundnut, soybean, sesame, safflower and sunflower were collected from different parts of store houses and market places of Marathwada region of Maharashtra state. By using different agar media mycoflora associated with these oilseed varieties was isolated. It was found that, Ghungru variety of groundnut, KSL-441 variety of soybean, Se1B variety of sesame, Bhima variety of safflower and Kargil variety of sunflower showed maximum incidence of fungi. Rhizopus stolonifer, Fusarium oxysporum and Macrophomina phaseolina showed minimum growth in presence of Trichoderma harzianum. Growth of Rhizopus stolonifer, Penicillium chrysogenum and Curvularia lunata was retarded due to Trichoderma viride.

With the rapidly growing interest in smart grid technology, plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) are expected to become more popular as low emission replacement for the petroleum based vehicles. Significant PEVs charging activities will mostly take place in customer’s premises, public or corporate car parks and electric charging stations. Therefore, utilities are concern about the possible detrimental impacts of these sizeable and unpredictable loads on the performance of distribution grids. Based on a recently proposed real-time smart load management (RT-SLM) control strategy, this paper focuses on the impact of uncoordinated and coordinated PEVs charging on substation transformer loading, system losses and voltage profile. Detailed simulations are performed on a 449 node smart grid system consisting of the modified IEEE 23 kV distribution system serving 4 charging stations and 22 low voltage residential networks populated with PEVs.

Hopfield Network is able to convert noisy data provided to the network because it can act as content addressable memory. Hopfield Network can convert images of noisy fingerprint to the noiseless images or the images with the minimum noise by training through receivable models set. In this research, fingerprint recognition process has been performed through Hamming Distance and effect of use of Hopfield network on fingerprint recognition process has been mentioned. In case those Hamming Distance operations are performed after Hopfield Networks processing, error of fingerprint recognition will be reduced.

Diabetes mellitus is the most prevalent endocrine disease result in blood glucose increment, carbohydrate, lipids and protein metabolism disorders. Primary and effective cure for diabetes is insulin and hypoglycemic drugs usage, but these compositions have some undesirable side effects. Herbal medicine is the oldest kind of diseases cure has recognized. However, rational prescription of effective medicinal plants for diabetes cure requires precise information of action mechanism of these plants. In present study, diabetes induced in rats, and then hypoglycemic effect of walnut husk hydroalcoholic extract and blood lipoproteins (LDL, HDL, VLDL), triglyceride and total cholesterol changes were evaluated by enzymatic kits. The results showed significant reduction of glucose, triglyceride, VLDL and LDL levels in extract group in comparison with diabetic control(P=0.001). Glucose and LDL reduction by walnut shell are similar to glibenclamide effect. And TG, VLDL reduction by walnut are more than glibenclamide effect. Walnut also could increase HDL levels significantly in comparison with diabetic control (P=0.001) that this effect is similar to glibenclamide effect on HDL. In summary, the positive effects of walnut green husk suggest a possible role of this plant in improving glucose and lipid metabolism in diabetics.

The rapidly growing and changing food demands by urban dwellers has resulted in the need for cheaper and convenience foods. Street vended foods have shown epidemiological links with illness. Concerns have also been raised about these foods with respect to their potential for food poisoning outbreaks. The study sought to assess aspects of hygiene practices such as food preparation area, environment of food vendors, personal hygiene, handling and storage of food. A standardized questionnaire was used to collect data on the current status of food hygiene and sanitation practiced by street food vendors in Accra. Results indicated that out of the 50 respondents, 66% were in the age range of 26 to 30 years, of which 76% were females. Most of the vendors (54%) were senior high school graduates. Majority (76%) of the respondents were stationary vendors. Of the total respondents interviewed, 36% have not had any form of formal training in catering, 64% of the vendors prepare food at home and send to the premises to be sold, and 80% of the surroundings were clean. Fifty-eight percent (58%) dispose of refuse twice daily. Most of the respondents (86%) had short and clean nails. Forty percent (40%) of the vendors serve the food in polyethylene bags. Unsold food is stored by 56% of the respondents for sale the next day. Reheating (50%) and refrigeration (44%) are methods used by respondents to preserve unsold food. A large number (70%) of the vendors use sachet water to serve their customers as a source of drinking water. This study indicates that majority of food vendors in Accra exhibited good food hygiene practices. However there is a need for the vendors to be given regular education on hygienic practices to avoid food contamination and food poisoning.

The study identifies the impact of inflation and foreign exchange rate on foreign direct investment in Pakistan. Inflation and exchange rates are used as independent variables and foreign direct investment is taken as dependent variable. Discreet time series data has been used from the period of 1999 to 2009. The results of regression analysis reveal that high inflation has negative impact on foreign direct investment and higher exchange rates has positive impact on foreign direct investment in Pakistan. The inflation and foreign exchange rates both are insignificant in the analysis.

A neighborhood set of an M-strong fuzzy graph is said to be independent neighborhood set if S is independent. is said to be perfect neighborhood set if all , the full fuzzy sub graphs and are edge disjoint. Also is said to be connected neighborhood set if full fuzzy sub graph is connected. The minimum scalar cardinality taken over all independent neighborhood set (perfect neighborhood set and connected neighborhood set) is called independent neighborhood number (perfect neighborhood number and connected neighborhood number). In this paper, these numbers are determined for various known fuzzy graphs and its relationship with some other known parameters of G is investigated.