Archives-December 2015

Frequent occurrence of recent earthquakes in South Asian region has inspired the civil engineers to become more concern about earthquake resistant building design. In order to construct a building in a high seismic zone, the flexural members like beams, must have adequate ductility along with enough strength. Ductility is a solid material's ability to deform under tensile stress. To evaluate the flexural ductility, it is necessary to conduct non-linear moment-curvature experiment or numerical analysis. Moment curvature is a method to determine the load-deflection behavior of a concrete section using nonlinear material stress-strain relationship. As experimental analysis is time consuming and costly, a quicker and cheaper approach numerical analysis can be performed. In this paper, results of a numerical program conducted on sectional ductility behavior of a rectangular concrete beam are presented. Eighteen cross sections, with three different reinforcement ratio (0.007, 0.010 and 0.013), two different yield strength of reinforcement (400MPa-nominal strength steel and 500MPa-high strength steel) and three different concrete compressive strengths (25MPa, 30MPa and 35MPa) have been built and analyzed. An effort is made to order the performance of the samples according to moment capacity and ductility. From the program it has been observed that, moment capacity is higher in highly reinforced section. But more ductility is obtained from a lower reinforced high strength steel beam. The use of higher strength steel helps to maintain minimum level of flexural ductility along with higher flexural strength. It also leads to reduce construction cost by reducing dimension of a concrete section and by reducing steel requirement.

Commuters in Accra, Tema and major cities of Ghana continue to suffer heavy vehicular traffic jams each working day, particularly during the peak hours, when most people travel to their work places or to school and back. Formal sector employees, including those from Scancom Ghana, are spared of the negative effects of this phenomenon which include loss of working time, lateness, commuting stress and fatigue among others. However, in order to avoid these negative effects of traffic jams mentioned earlier, some workers cut down on their sleep and get up very early to be able avoid the enormous traffic congestions. This also comes with loss of sleep and associated stress and fatigue. Similarly, some workers leave the office earlier than required to be able to “beat” the huge traffic congestion and reach home early. Through a survey, this study sought to find out how the traffic congestion in Accra and Tema affect employee productivity, particularly among workers who use the major streets to the Central Business Districts and Tema. Using employees of SCANCOM Ghana Ltd, the study also sought to evaluate workers’ views on the extent to which traffic congestions affect employee productivity. The study findings revealed that while majority of the respondents agreed that vehicular traffic congestions moderately or seriously affected employee productivity, they were still able to meet their daily work targets, their productivity was not affected by the traffic jams they encountered.

It is important for one to understand that every employee comes into the organization with a set of unique and distinct personality traits or characteristics. The study tries to investigate the relationship between the personality traits of 60 employee in Barry Callebaut Ghana Limited and their performance on the job. Personality trait was measured using the Eysenck Personality Inventory. Work performance on the other hand was measured using a structured appraisal questionnaire. The personality traits of the employees were then analyzed by mapping the links between the two major traits; Extraversion and Neuroticism. The study showed a weak inverse correlation between the two personality traits and performance. The correlation between Extraversion, Neuroticism and Performance is r =0.1 and r =0.2 respectively. This showed that Extraversion and Neuroticism have a weak negative relationship with performance but Extraversion has a good negative relationship with performance compared to Neuroticism or Neuroticism exhibited a stronger inverse relationship with performance compared to Extraversion. It is therefore recommended from this study to management of Barry Callebaut that they should employ more of extroverts than neurotics. Employers must factor personality assessment into their recruitment and selection criterion so as to examine how well potential employees will fit into a particular job vacancy.

This research is about student’s perception and job search skills and achievement in the 21st century career at Science School of Batu Pahat in sport’s courses. The design is quantitative with 150 student to answer the questionnaire. The skills that they are acquired to express is in marathon and soccer. 4 criterion plan "21st century classroom are core subjects and themes, learning skills and innovation, and information technology skills and career and life skills (Smith, 2008). ). Later, the participants held a quasi experimental before "21st century classroom" held (pretest) and joint 21st century classroom (post-test) were measured using both questionnaires is done online ie before and after the learning and teaching take place on skill attainment search work and career.

: Now days Culture has become one of the factors that create effects on the performance of the students through four skills and discussing its relationship with one of these skills is a controversial issue. The aim of the present study is to investigate whether there is any significant relationship between intercultural intelligence (known as CQ) awareness and reading proficiency (RP). The participants were 250 Azad University students of English translation with the same level of proficiency but different genders. To this end, the participants first were provided with CQ questionnaire by (Ang et al., 2007) and vocabulary tests which was developed by Paul Nation taken from his website as well as a reading proficiency test developed by Sadeghi and Everatt (submitted). The results of the present paper indicates that there is no significant relationships between cultural intelligence band score and reading proficiency, however a significant relationship among metacognitive factors as one of the four important sub-categories of cultural intelligence was evident. When looking into vocabulary, while a positive significant correlation with CQ band score was found, again similar to the reading proficiency skills a significant relationship between vocabulary knowledge and metacognitive factors was evident. The fact that the results show no correlation between either reading proficiency skills or vocabulary knowledge with cognitive factor represented in the questionnaire needs further research. Key terms: cultural intelligence, culture, reading, proficiency, vocabulary

Abstract Most academic views of teaching theory have speculated that, it would be better to allow learners to state themselves when they are learning a second language it is usual to occasionally flash back into their first language which it can be helpful for them to learn better. According to this, mother tongue might be affect on the process of learning reading comprehension (decoding and interpreting) via translation into the first language. This paper aims to teach reading comprehension toward the use of mother tongue. Having expressed the problems of the topic and the limitations in chapter one, I reviewed the literature of the topic in chapter two. This study will be examined reading comprehension by using L1. After homogenizing via pre-test, forty Iranian girls with treatment and twenty without it who will between the ages of 20 to 30 will be carried out with the Nelson Proficiency Test. The result of the study will be obtained via analysis variance (ANOVA). Key words:Mother tongue,Reading Comprehension,EFL,Vocabulary

Synthesized a series of new Ni complexes by using Enrofloxacin and dicoumarol derivatives. Physico-chemical, spectroscopic and thermal properties of the complexes have been studied on the basis of infrared spectra, mass spectra, NMR spectra, electronic spectra, elemental analyses. All the compounds were screened for their antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, Bacillus subtilis and antifungal activity against Candida albicans, Aspergillus clavatus and Aspergillus niger. Ferric-reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) of all complexes were measured. Also the compounds against Mycobacterium tuberculosis shows clear enhancement in the antitubercular activity upon Nickel complex.

A properly formed strategy in an organization helps determine the appropriate courses of action for achieving organizational objectives and purpose by performing a series of steps in sequential order (Thompson, Gamble, and Strickland, 2006). Despite this, various organizations are meeting challenges in their environments of operation leading them to restrategise their business operations. Compton (2004) points out challenges that are not limited to increased business complexity, changing customer’s preferences, technological changes and CSR expectation of the customers. As a result of this, it becomes a challenge for businesses, including the Sugar Manufacturing Firms (SMFs) to attain productivity and at the same time maintain performance levels that are suitable.

Concept of Concrete-filled steel tube is of recent origin where in the steel pipe is utilized to constraint its core concrete and make the core concrete under complex stress state so that concrete strength can be improved for its ductility and toughness . This structure possesses high bearing load capacity, good ductility, good anti-seismic performance, fire resistance property and low cost. It has been widely used in the civil engineering, such as bridge structures, high-rise buildings, and industrial plants and so on. Now a days , the concrete-filled steel tube has been studied a lot and have made great progress, However, for its Monotonic Loading, the concrete fill results in good bearing capacity, and compression loading is very difficult to realize. The concrete columns under compression is common form of engineering structures. Hence, it is necessary to study the failure and damage process of concrete-filled steel tube (CFST) column with M20,M25,M30,M40 grade of concrete under compression load. Experimental Results of Concrete filled steel tubes (CFST) column with M20,M25,M30, and M40MPa grade of concrete obtained by Previous Research (From VTU R& D project conducted at R & D Centre, Civil Engineering Department, Ghousia College of Engineering, Ramnagaram) will be modeled for Fracture Analysis and compared with actual fracture of Concrete filled steel tubes (CFST) columns using the ABAQUS /CAE 6.10-1. Proper Analytical modeling will be carried out taking in to account all fracture parameters and justified with ABAQUS. Ultimate load for all the above four infill’s, after crack will be determined.

A significant increase of the electrical equipment in modern aircrafts is leading to an increase in the demand for electrical power. The usual electrical power distribution in aircraft applications is done via a three-phase 415 Vac grid. A new trend of DC distribution is emerging employing a 270 Vdc grid. With the advancement in the power semiconductor devices and power transformers, DC-DC converters are designed with frequency ranging up to MHZ range. Increase in the switching frequency along with the sudden change in the current di/dt or voltage dv/dt generates higher order harmonics which leads to Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI). EMI noise creates malfunctioning of the circuit and also leads to miscommunication within the system and sometimes leads to device failure. Which is an undesirable condition as far as airline is considered. Hence the reduction of EMI noise is of uttermost important. This paper focus on the reduction of EMI using passive filter along with modified PWM carrier modulation technique. A circuit model for the prediction of conducted emissions due to DC/DC converters in an aircraft black box system is proposed and corresponding attenuation method is been analyzed.