Archives-July 2012

The monitoring of toxic heavy metals in fish is essential for protecting public health against the hazards of metal toxicity. The concentrations of metals (Hg, Pb and Cd), in different fish species were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopic (AAS) procedures. The objective of this study was to look at the distribution of heavy metals in different species of fish on Ghanaian markets. Levels of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS). Mercury (Hg) content was analysed by the cold vapour atomic absorption spectroscopic technique after Hg ions reduction with SnCl₂ (CV-AAS). Amongst the metals analysed, Lead (Pb; 0.1-0.49, average 0.24 mg/kg) showed the highest concentration, followed Mercury (Hg; 0.01-0.37, average 0.073mg/kg) and Cadmium (Cd; 0.06-0.11, average 0.084 mg/kg).  Amongst the species analysed, tuna had high lead concentrations with lobsters having the lowest concentration of lead. With respect to Hg contamination, shark specimen had the highest with cephalopods and octopus having the least Hg concentrations. Levels of cadmium in the examined species averaged from 0.06 mg/kg for octopus to 0.11 mg/kg for tuna. The study revealed that the studied metals concentrations were generally low in species of fish in the two study areas. Although the levels of these heavy metals are not high, a potential danger may emerge in the future depending on pollution sources and frequency of exposure.

Students’ satisfaction has become an essence of success in today’s highly competitive world. In service industry specifically the education industry, communication is vital to determine students’ satisfaction. Past researches indicated that, most meaning of conversational messages comes from non-verbal communication. Evaluation on students’ perception on lecturers’ kinesics that would lead to their satisfaction to the services provided was examined. The results of the study illustrate that kinesics that is also known as body movements was shown to have the most impact on students’ satisfaction. Therefore, from this study, it can be inferred that students’ in Malaysian universities are mostly observant on the body movements used, facial expression and postures and gestures of the body of their lecturers when lectures are delivered to them. The present study caters for a wide spectrum of students and development professionals, especially those who are interested in non-verbal communication specifically kinesics-related issues. It is highly hoped that the information gleaned from the present study may assist all service employees specifically in understanding better, the importance of kinesics and its effects on students’ satisfaction.

In higher education, no in-depth studies have been identified that investigate the vocabulary of Undergraduate Engineering students. This study investigated undergraduate students’ English vocabulary with special reference to certain sociological factors in an Engineering college located in Tamilnadu, India. The research findings show that the students’ vocabulary strength differs based on gender, locality of living, medium of instruction, general reading habit. Based on above mentioned factor hypotheses were formulated and tested in this research study and the findings have been given as the outcome of the study. The research results indicate that students are having only limited vocabulary and much focus to be given to vocabulary else students cannot develop their language proficiency.

Drought is one of the natural disasters which annually cause to millions of dollars damage to agricultural communities around the world. In recent decades among the natural disasters, frequency of drought in terms of drought intensity, duration, total affected area, life and economic losses and social impacts on community, had more effect on human populations than other natural disasters. The most important effect and consequences of drought is water shortages for various purposes like agriculture. Qanats (aqueducts) construction and use of them is an ancient method for supplying water in Iran. In this way, without spending energy and only through the force of gravity, a part of required water of agriculture, drinking water and residential area has been supplied since long time ago. Using this method of water supply after development of equipments for drilling of semi-deep and deep wells is reduced, and in some parts of the country construction of new Qanats has stopped. Uncontrolled withdrawal of groundwater by excessive exploitation of wells with increasing of wells number and lack of natural recharge, for various reasons like changing of land use and climate changes, cause to decreasing of Qanats water yield or even dried them. So, the purpose of this study is analyzing the effects of watershed management operations like artificial recharge to increase the discharge of Qanats using flood control. In this study, the quantitative and qualitative data of Qanats water evaluated where artificial recharge of aquifers has done using trend analysis of hydrological behavior changes in selected Qanats and results of changes in water yield of Gambleh and Noh Abad Qanats, before and after of artificial recharge, including construction of recharge pools and flood spreading, during 1995 to 2010 showed that discharge of Qanats from 5.6 and 5.8 liters per second in 1995 (before artificial recharge), increased to 12.5 and 8.3 liters per second in 2010 respectively which had an effective role in reducing of drought effects in study area.

Rotenoids are group of natural insecticidal compounds. Six rotenoids (deguelin, dehydrodeguelin, rotenol, rotenone, tephrosin and sumatrol) were isolated and identified from callus cultures of Lablab purpureus L using chromatographic and spectroscopic techniques. Growth Index (GI) of in vitro grown cultures showed a sigmoid pattern of growth curve with maximum GI at 4 weeks and minimum at 2 weeks old culture after fresh subculturings. Gradual decrease in rotenoid content with age and passage of subculturings of the tissues was observed on maintaining the callus for a period of 12 months. Use of various treatment doses of amino acid precursors (phenylalanine and methionine) and immobilization of cell cultures significantly increased the rotenoid content in callus culture. Immobilization of in vitro grown cells released the rotenoids in the medium, which was ideally found useful in maintaining the cell culture and harvesting the insecticides from the nutrient medium.

This paper presents comparative study of Hybrid Multilevel Inverter in continuation to previous paper. Different distinct topologies of multilevel inverters for power circuits used in Hybrid Multilevel Inverter are discussed. The comparison is done with respect to different performance index like switching devices, power applications and modulation techniques used. Different topologies are discussed and reviewed in brief.

Many ciliates species are the common parasites found in Indian earthworm Pheretima posthuma. During the period of two years (Jan. 2007 to Dec. 2008) total 2609 number of earthworm animals were examined. In the first year (Jan. 2007 to Dec. 2007) 1146 P. posthuma were examined, 693 of these were positive for ciliate infection. The percentage of prevalence being (60.47%), in second year (Jan. 2008 to Dec. 2008) total 963 animals were examined, 560 of these were positive with ciliates. The percentage of prevalence was 58.15%. A month wise analysis of the percentage of prevalence of ciliates during the first year (Jan. 2007 to Dec. 2007) was maximum in June to August (83.33%, 81.88%, 84.32%), minimum in April and May (36.19%, 36.67%) and moderate in remaining months. While In second year (Jan. 2008 to Dec. 2008) the maximum percentage of prevalence showed during August and September (84.72%, 81.33%), minimum in February to May (49.43%, 45.45%, 50.67%, 50.98%) and moderate in remaining months. While the observation of gut of the host P. posthuma it is seen that the four species of genus Anoplophrya were investigated. Out of that the two species are new to the sciences which are A. chakravartii, A. krishnamurthii, A. nikamai n. sp. and A. infundibulii n. sp. The parasite ciliates were first observed in 0.6% saline solution fixed in Schauddin’s fixative and then stained with phaspho-tungastic acid hematoxyline stain.

Phyllanthus niruri L belongs to family Euphorbiaceae is a field weed. In the present investigation sequential solvent extracts of various plant parts and tissue isolates of P. niruri were analyzed for their non enzymatic antioxidant activity using various standard protocols such as DPPH free radical scavenging method and Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP). Results were expressed as antiradical efficiency (AE), which is 1000/ IC50.

The Pressure-Volume-temperature(P-V-T) relation using non inverted equation of state (EOS) viz. Murnaghan EOS, Usual-Tait EOS, Vinet EOS, Born-Mayer EOS, Birch EOS, Kumar EOS, Shanker EOS, Brennan Stacey EOS, Poirier- Tarantola EOS, Universal EOS and Freund & Ingalls EOS for NaCl-CsCl type crystals has been studied. It is found that except Murnaghan EOS, Brennan-Stacey EOS and Poirier Tarantola EOS all other EOS gives close agreement with each other even at high compression ranges. Also another remarkable characteristic observed when the value of compression decreases from 0.5 the variation in value of pressure as calculated by different EOS increases.

We are very happy to announce that from 17th July 2012, Mrs. Najmeh Samadi has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Soil Science. Mrs. Najmeh Samadi is currently associated with Soil Surveying and Mapping Laboratory, Faculty of Agriculture, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan. The appointment of Mrs. Najmeh Samadi as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to chiefeditor@elixirjournal.org. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief