Archives-December 2014

Wastewater irrigation can pose a variety of potential health risks and also excessive and often imbalanced addition of nutrients to the soil to affect crop production. Thus, its use in agriculture without adequate safeguards has been noted to have serious drawbacks for human health and the environment. This study assessed micro nutrient concentration in wastewater used for peri-urban vegetable crop production in the Tamale Metropolis of Ghana. Aside Fe which was insignificant in both seasons all the others recorded a significant difference in the two seasons. Al, Fe, Mn and Zn on the average recorded higher concentration values in the wet season than the dry season whilst Cu recorded a higher concentration in the dry season than the wet season. Concentrations of most of the micro nutrients were lower than the WHO (2006) recommended standards except Mn which had concentration levels exceeding the recommended standard in the wet season only.

In the present study, the defatted successive ethyl acetate and methanol extracts from Artocarpus heterophyllus leaf were evaluated for their protective effects on paracetamol-induced liver damage in Wistar albino rats. Serum biochemical parameters viz. serum glutamate oxaloacetate transaminase (SGOT), serum glutamate pyruvate transaminase (SGPT), serum alkaline phosphatase (SALP), total protein, bilirubin, cholesterol, triglycerides were evaluated. All biochemical findings indicated that both the test extracts exerted significant hepatoprotective efficacy against paracetamol-induced hepatic damage in rats. The methanol extract was found to be more effective than the ethyl acetate extract. Therefore, from the present study it can be concluded that A. heterophyllus leaf had remarkable hepatoprotective activity in rats.

The Navier–Stokes equations, named after Claude-Louis Navier and George Gabriel Stokes, describe the motion of fluid substances. These equations arise from applying Newton's second law to fluid motion, together with the assumption that the stress in the fluid is the sum of a diffusing viscous term (proportional to the gradient of velocity) and a pressure term. For solving a free surface flow problem, the basic governing equations are Navier Stokes equations (N-S equations). Hence the study of methods, used for solving N-S equations is important. There are various methods to solve the N-S equations. The equations are useful as they describe the physics of many things of scientific and engineering interest. The Navier–Stokes equations are also of great interest in a purely mathematical sense.

This study aims at assessing the compatibility of critical success factors in new products developments with structural variables of various sports manufacturing industries in Tehran. Use of a descriptive correlational study, 80 employees and managers of various sports manufacturing companies in Tehran were totally examined, 70 of which delivered the completely filled-in questionnaires. After the approval of validity and reliability of researcher-made questionnaire, data were collected. The results revealed that indices of NPD's critical factors are able to predict structural variables, and critical success factors of new products have positive and significant relationships with structural variables. Finally, it can be said that the research model consists of optimal independent variables (critical factors in new product development) and dependent variables (structural variables), and the set of independent variables are able to explain changes in structural variables. The sport industry was ranked twenty-third with an income equivalent to 50.2 billion dollars in 1987, and after ten years in 1997 it attained the rank of eleventh with an income equivalent to 152 billion dollars. In 1999, it reached 213 billion dollars and the sports.

This study examines the relationship between the organizational climate and organizational trust with the participation level in the decision-making of the managers of the Youth and Sports offices in Ardabil Province. The research methods descriptive-correlative and the research objectives are applied ones. The statistical population of the study included all the managers of the offices of youth and sports of the organization of physical education in Ardebil province, which consisted of 70 individuals. In order to collect then formation about organizational climate, standardized Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire (OCDQ) by HalpinandCroft(1963), to assess the level of organizational trust, Organizational Trust Questionnaire by Allal(2008) and to evaluate the participation in decision-making, researcher made questionnaire were used. Results of this study indicate that there is a significant and positive relationship between the dimensions of organizational trust (lateral trust, vertical trust, institutional trust) and the employee participation in decision making, that is, as the institutional trust increases, the employee involvement in decision making increases significantly. These results help the managers to decrease or increase the employees’ participation in organizational decision-makings, and so doing, enhance organizational climate and organizational trust toward the organization and its management.

The study was carried out to investigate the influence of leadership styles and perceived organisational politics on work engagement. The sample for the study consisted of 120 participants with a mean age of 36.59 years. Fifty-Eight (58) of the research participants were males while 62 were females. Participants were randomly selected from the population of civil servants at the Governor’s office in Ado Ekiti, Nigeria; using the multi-level random sampling technique. Six hypotheses were tested. Results revealed that perceived organizational politics has no significant influence on work engagement. However, perceived organizational politics influenced the dedication and vigour dimensions of work engagement. Both autocratic and democratic styles of leadership independently and jointly influenced work engagement; and there was no significant interaction effect of leadership styles and perceived organizational politics on work engagement. There was no significant main and interaction effect of sex, rank, and age of employees on work engagement. There was a significant effect of sex of leaders on the use of autocratic style of leadership while sex of leaders did not influence democratic style and perceived organizational politics. Results of present study also revealed that there was a positive relationship between leadership styles and work engagement together with its subscales. Finally, there was a significant relationship between perceived organizational politics and autocratic leadership style but not on democratic style. Findings were discussed in line with previous research findings and it was recommended that organisations should not encourage or foster political behaviours that may hamper work engagement of employees; such as preferentially treating the employees. It was also recommended that the contingency approach to leadership should be encouraged in organizations, where the situation at hand will determine the type of leadership style to use and not just get fixed to a particular leadership style.

In this research modeling of moisture content of three different varieties of bean (Talash, Sadri and MahaliKhomein) was studied during soaking by applying Khazaei mathematical model and artificial neural networks (ANNs). The procedures were carried out in three experimental temperatures (5, 25 and 45?C) in distilled water. Water abortion characteristics of samples were considered by measuring the increase in the mass of seeds with respect to time. Amulti layer perceptron (MPL) and radial basis function (RBF) approach were used with three layers of neurons, in designing ANNs. The soaking temperature and time were used as input parameters and the moisture content was used as output parameter of ANNs. To evaluate the prediction of mathematical and ANNs model, coefficient of determination (R2),root mean square error (RMSE) and distribution of residual errors plot were used. The results indicated that the MLP approach using back propagation training structure, Broyden- Fletcher- Goldfarb- Shanno(BFGS) algorithm and 2-6-1 topology of the network achieves the best results for moisture content estimating in three studied varieties of bean. Besides that, the instant moisture content curves based on temperature and time independent variables using MLP method expressed with increasing the time and temperature of seed immersion, water absorption is increasing.

Electropolishing of copper in phosphoric acid is considered as corrosion rate of copper and due to the economic importance of copper there are several researches deals with acceleration and inhibition of this process. From the previous studies this process may be controlled by the presence of some materials which may cause acceleration or inhibition of this process. In this paper the electropolishing process inhibited with different ratio by addition of some organic phenols derivatives by addition with concentration ( 10-5 - 10-2 mol. l -1 ).The results reveal that organic phenols have strongest inhibitive effect ranging from 4.92 to 40.98 % and the thermodynamic parameters and as well as adsorption isotherm were given.

The concept of customer loyalty has received much consideration and attention from both academics and practitioners in different industries. In increasingly competitive markets, being able to build consumer loyalty is seen as the key factor in winning market share and developing a sustainable competitive advantage. Banking industry is no exception as it has high interaction with the customers, so managers must understand the factors which influence the loyalty of the customers towards their respective banks. The purpose of this research is twofold: 1.examine the impact of competency, ability to establish communication, commitment, ability to solve customers’ problems, trust and quality of relationship on customer loyalty. 2. Presenting an integrated model for bank customers. Data obtained from 178 survey questionnaire were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM). The results revealed that competency has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Ability to establish communication has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Commitment has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Ability to solve customers’ problems has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Trust has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty and quality of relationship has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. In addition results show that Ability to solve customers’ problems was the best predictor of their loyalty.

Workforce diversity is the simplest way that gives three types of outcomes any organization which is quality, quantity and social integration. As the theories shows, by different experts like Sociotechnical theory (Kolodny & Kiggundu, 1980; Trist & Bamforth, 1951), group process and productivity theory (Steiner, 1972), input–process–output models (Gladstein, 1984; Hackman & Morris, 1975; McGrath, 1984). Work force diversity includes different demographic factors like age, gender, experience and educational background. Different theories are given by different experts on these factors. In diversity difference of gender leads to high conflicts in group works. High level management teams with greater age diversity were less likely to engage in agreement-seeking behaviors that could result in reaching strategic consensus. Educational background is main factor in diversity. Employees are come from different regions only the education is the main thing that leads him in a proper way to work as an employee in an organization. And at the end leadership is only the way to handle the diversity in the organization. Only an expert leader can lead his work force through motivation and other ways like training and development of employees to work as a member of the organization. So a leader should have the both styles transactional and transformer. In simple words we can say workforce diversity and good leadership can work better for the enhancement of the organization.