Archives-January 2016

The main goal of this research is to study the relationship between Business Intelligence and productivity in the companies, manufacturer of pressure vessels, located in Amol – Mazandaran. The other goal of this research is to prioritize the factors of Business Intelligence using AHP approach. The population of the research consists of top, middle, and operating managers, that out of a group of 90 people, 76 of them have been selected, based on the Morgan Sample Capacity Estimating Table, as the sample of the study. For collecting data, two questionnaires of Business Intelligence and productivity have been used. At first, to analyze the research data, the efficiency of each unit has been measured by the help of DEA technique. Then by the help of descriptive and inferential statistics, the hypothesis of the research have been studied and finally the factors of Business Intelligence have been prioritized by the AHP approach. According to the results of DEA technique, units that have more resources will act in a weaker level in terms of efficiency. The result of testing the hypothesis showed that there was a positive and meaningful relationship between Individual (P=0.006), system quality (P=0.009), individual learning (P=0.043), competitive performance(P=0.01), and productivity. There is also a positive and meaningful relationship between Business Intelligence and productivity (P=0.02). Among the factors of Business Intelligence, the competitive performance is the most important factor in enhancing productivity, and the Mental Model Maintenance is the least one.

A Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme offers high spectral efficiency and better resistance to fading environments. In OFDM the data is modulated using multiple number of sub-carriers that are orthogonal to each other because of which the problems associated with other modulation schemes such as Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) are reduced. This paper deals with the analysis of OFDM System utilising different modulation techniques (QAM and BPSK) over Rayleigh, Rician and Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) fading environments with the use of pilot aided arrangement and finally the results are conveyed.

The purpose of writing the current paper is to survey the effect of intellectual capital on competitive advantage in Abyek cement Company. Two separated questionnaires about intellectual capital (contains human, organizational and relational capitals) were designed and after proving their validity and reliability distributed among 277 employees in Abyek Company. The results of applying Pearson and Regression test explained that intellectual capital and its indices have positive and meaningful influence on competitive advantage in which the effect of human and relational capital was more than organizational capital. The result of applying Entropy technique proved the mentioned results. Finally it was found that all variables apart from human capital were placed in high levels.

Entrepreneurship development is increasingly becoming important in economic growth in many countries. The majority of workers in the developing World cluster in small and micro enterprises in the private sectors. They may be on account workers in services or employees in small and medium-sized firms in manufacturing. Entrepreneurship and investment influences the rate and linkages, which develop in an economy, the labor demanded and the human capital investment required meeting these labor demands. Rapid growth can contribute to poverty reduction. Although there are variations across countries, social norms strongly influence men’s and women’s work and working environments. Some tasks and jobs are considered more appropriate for men or women and covert screening filters out applicants who defy these norms. These gender norms frequently underpin sex-segmented labor markets typically confine women workers to low-wage, low productivity employment and can limit the responsiveness of labor to new demands for high skilled workers. Sluggish labor markets can impede adjustment, distort human capital investment and inhibit a firm’s ability to switch to new activities and compete in a dynamics and globalizing market. Development occurs within an institutional and economics environment that is similarly shaped by customers, social norms, implicit and explicit codes and conduct. The study sought to establish the impact of gender on micro-enterprises performance. The main objective was to establish the differences in the constraint facing female and male owned micro-enterprises respectively in Nandi County in Kenya. Data from a survey of 180 micro-enterprises were used in the modified ordinary least square (OLS).

In a mobile ad hoc network, the mobility and resource constraints of mobile nodes may lead to network partitioning or performance degradation. Several data replication techniques have been proposed to minimize performance degradation. Most of them assume that all mobile nodes collaborate fully in terms of sharing their memory space. In reality, however, some nodes may selfishly decide only to cooperate partially, or not at all, with other nodes. These selfish nodes could then reduce the overall data accessibility in the network. In this paper, the impact of selfish nodes in a mobile ad hoc network from the perspective of replica allocation is examined. A selfish node detection algorithm was developed that considers partial selfishness and novel replica allocation techniques to properly cope with selfish replica allocation. The conducted simulations demonstrate the proposed approach outperforms traditional cooperative replica allocation techniques in terms of data accessibility, communication cost and average query delay.

The use of tractors for agricultural works showed an important role to mechanized agricultural sector. A repairable mechanical system (as agricultural tractor) is subject to deterioration or repeated failure. In this study, the regression model was used to predict the failure rate of MF399 tractor. The machine failure pattern was carefully studied and key factors affecting the failure rate were identified in five regions of Khouzestan province. Results showed that different annual use hours (AUH) and maintenance policies affected failure rate. According to the data, the MF399 tractors included in 300-1000 AUH were commonly in a randomized breakdown period during their useful life but these tractors tend to enter the wear out period in the 1200-2000 AUH.

Various companies have and are planning to market their products into the rural areas. This paper basically talks about all those problems that the Co(s) may or have faced in promoting their products in the rural markets. Different challenges exist for the managers in how to best market their brands and establish themselves amongst rural people. In addition to the challenges & hindrances, the report also focuses on many opportunities that basically attract the marketers to come and promote their products. A vast potential exists in the rural areas that has been left unexercised for a long time. Now due to the saturation point that has or is about to be reached in the Urban & Semi-urban markets, the Co(s) are focussing now onto the rural areas and trying to capitalise on the great potential that the rural areas have in store. Thus the research paper covers all these aspects quite extensively to present the deep insights that prevail in the rural market scenario.

This paper attempts to look at how information and communication technology continually influence the people, their lives and practices in general in developing countries, and examine whether it is for better or for worse. Dependency of low-income groups on information technology is not a mere phenomenon, but a solid hard-ground fact, and has a number of benefits as well as costs. However, at the end it is suggested that in addition to ICT being more advantageous than disadvantageous for third world countries, more effort needs to be put in educating the users of such technology, so that the costs associated with their use can be minimized, and the benefits maximized.

The present study was designed to investigate the school teachers’ awareness towards Individual differences at primary level, study also intends to compare the awareness of individual differences among government and private teachers at primary level. Due to limited time available for study, only 24 primary schools were randomly selected for the purpose of collecting data. 120 teachers from these schools were randomly selected a sample for study. A questionnaire was constructed for teachers which included 30 items, data was collected through personal visits of the schools. Data was analyzed in the light of objectives through two-way chi-square. Private school teachers are aware of the concept of individual differences as compared to government school teachers. In private sector school teachers respect individual differences in their classes as compared to government sector school teachers.

Urinary tract infection (UTI) is a term applied to a variety of clinical conditions ranging from asymptomatic presence of bacteria in the urine to severe infection of the kidney with resultant sepsis. UTI is defined also as the growth of a known bacterial pathogen more than 10000 cfu/ml in association with a positive dipstick or urinalysis. Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a serious health problem affecting millions of people each year. Infections of the urinary tract are the second most common type of infection in the body. These are one of the most common bacterial infections affecting humans throughout their life span. Most of urinary tract infections are caused by gram-negative bacteria like Escherichia coli, Klebsiella sp., Proteus mirabilis, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Acinetobacter and Serratia. 90% of UTI cases are caused by gram-negative bacteria while only 10% of the cases are caused by gram-positive bacteria. Bacterial pathogens have evolved numerous defense mechanisms against antimicrobial agents; hence resistance to old and newly produced drugs is on the rise. The phenomenon of antibiotic resistance exhibited by the pathogenic microorganisms has led to the need for screening of several medicinal plants for their potential antimicrobial activity. The present study was conducted to identify the uropathogens based on morphological and biochemical characteristics and to study the antimicrobial effect of drugs, medicinal plant extracts and essential oils against uropathogens.