Archives-July 2012

For decades the issue of pregnancy has been thought of as a woman's domain. For this reason, some expectant men not only show little concern but engage in illicit sexual activities or affairs. The study aimed at investigating the sexual behaviors among expectant fathers in urban areas and it focused on the sex seeking behaviors among the same group; the factors influencing the expectant fathers’ engaging in affairs during their wives’ pregnancies as well as the consequences of the said sexual behaviors. A total of 136 expectant fathers or men participated in the study. The study adopted the descriptive and exploratory research design. Data was collected using a questionnaire and was analyzed using the chi-square statistic and presented using frequencies and percentages. The study found out that age, religion and employment status of the respondents had no effect on the respondent’s participation in sexual activities when their wives were expecting.

Lightweight foam concrete has been an effective building material product for many years due to its lightness and cost saving characteristics. The present study covers the use of steel fibres to produce Lightweight Foam Concrete (LFC) for use in the construction of non-load bearing elements. The LFC with a density of 1000 kg/m3 was cast and tested. Compressive, flexural, tensile split, drying shrinkage and water absorption tests were carried out to evaluate the mechanical properties and durability over 28 days. The cement, sand and water used were in the ratio of 1:1.5:0.45. Two percentages of fibre inclusion, 0.25% and 0.4% by total volume fraction, and 30% replacement of cement by fly ash were implemented. The addition of steel fibres in LFC showed a very good contribution in the compressive strength, flexural strength and tensile split strength test results.

The French Enlightenment of 18th century was the spiritual successor of Descartes’ rationalism and English empiricism. It gave the main inspiration to the radical political and cultural changes in whole Europe. Descartes himself escaped to draw possible logical consequences from his philosophical method in the field of moral and politics. But subsequent development of suggested method of critical inquiry soon raised suspicion not only to the existing scientific knowledge, but also to all forms of social beliefs and institutions. Very soon the critical reasoning spread over the European continent influencing all people who considered themselves progressive and modern. Different kind of followers united the idea of Reason and the power of new knowledge.

A new branch of management called knowledge management is created for improved application of knowledge capital in organizations. Applying such process improves knowledge processes and enhances organizational knowledge by linking knowledge management with organizational strategies. Also, it provides proper guidelines to compensate current deficiencies and helps organization to keep its competitive advantage. In present study and after brief study of knowledge management concepts by identifying and considering affecting factors on management success and knowledge management enablers, research hypotheses were revealed to evaluate organizational readiness to execute knowledge management in both individual and organizational sections. Then, these factors were studied by connoisseurs to evaluate the readiness of Bushehr Gas Company. Finally, the readiness of Bushehr Gas Company to execute knowledge management was assessed and confirmed by a questionnaire and the relevant scores were computed. Then, the weak points were identified according to the readiness of the Company and proper guidelines were provided to remove deficiencies.

The novel ligand complexes of Cu(II),Fe(II),Co(II) and Bi(V) with biological active streptomycin and oxime were prepared and characterized by spectral techniques. The cell parameters was determined by X-ray powder pattern and the molecular models represents a better understanding of the arrangement of the atoms in the molecules in three dimensions.

A study was conducted to assess the impact of the distance education courses on dairy and goat farming on knowledge gained, skills obtained and economic benefits attained by the learners, based on the data collected from 100 respondents randomly selected. A majority of the respondents gained knowledge in credit / insurance (96.50%), housing systems (95.33%), farm economics (83.67%), clean milk production (82.67%), calf rearing (81.67%) and feed and feeding methods (80.33%). The respondents with small herd size (<6.07 cattle units) increased their cattle units by 2.06, while medium farmers (6.07 to 9.10 cattle units) increased farm size by 3.38 cattle and large farmers (>9.10 cattle units) by 5.66 cattle. Further, the small farmer respondents gained a daily average milk yield of 1.64 litres, while medium farmers gained a milk yield of 1.69 litres and large farmers 1.47 litres, with the percentage gain ranging between 48.34 and 66.17. The respondents in small farmer category gained an additional income of Rs.24,637.50 per annum through sale of milk, while medium and large farmers gained Rs.28,554.23 and Rs.53,029.29 per annum, respectively. The per cent gain ranged from 73.38 (medium farmer) to 122.26 (small farmer). There was a highly significant gain in production and income in all categories of farmers with respect to farm size, milk yield, sale of milk, dung and animals and net change in the value of stock.

The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between stress management and workforce productivity of Amol Industrial Park located in Mazandaran Provine. The total number of universe of the research was 250 top managers, middle managers and supervisors shouldering a responsibility in the before-mentioned Industrial Park and the number of the sample population was determined through Morgan sample population volume table (n=150). For data collection, Background Information questionnaire, Stress Management and Workforce Productivity questionnaires were used. As for analyzing the data gained after collecting the questionnaires; Descriptive and inferential statistics were used. Pearson Correlation Test, One Sample t Test, Independent Samples Test and Regression Tests were used for hypothesis testing. The results from analyzing the Sub Hypotheses of the research demonstrated that there was a positive and significant correlation between Respectful and responsible manager (P=0.005), Managing and communicating existing and future work (P=0.002), Managing the individual within the team (P=0.01), Reasoning/managing difficult situations, (P=0.004) and workforce productivity in the universe of the research in hand. As for analyzing the Main Hypotheses of the research; the results demonstrated that there was a positive and significant correlation between stress management and workforce productivity in the universe of the research in hand (P=0.001). The results also demonstrated that there was no significant difference between the opinions of male and female managers about the level of workforce productivity and stress management being put in practice in the before-mentioned Industrial Park. And finally the results indicate that the level of workforce productivity and stress management being put in practice in the before-mentioned Industrial Park is not under the influence of any of Individual characteristics of managers (e.g. Age, Education Level, Job Title, Employment Background and Employment Status).

We investigate the simultaneous effects of soret and ohmic heating on MHD free convective heat and mass transfer flow for a micro polar fluid bounded by a vertical infinite surface. Approximate solutions have been derived for the velocity, angular velocity, temperature field, concentration profiles, skin friction and rate of heat transfer using multi-parameter perturbation method. The effects of various pertinent parameters on flow, heat and mass transfer properties are discussed numerically and explained graphically. Also the velocity profiles of micropolar fluid is compared with the corresponding flow problem for a Newtonian fluid and found that the polar fluid velocity is decreasing

Ozone(O3) is a beneficial gas which is used for elimination of microorganisms. This gas provided from O2 and it is very unstable and reactive. The Ozone can be used as a disinfectant, decolorizer, detoxifier, precipitant, coagulant and also for removing taste. In this paper, the ozone used to control root-knot nematode in potato greenhouse. Ozone generator that designed for this purpose, produced 36 mgO3/m3. Ozone is injected to water with venture and greenhouse irrigated with ozonated water. After 20 days it is shown that disease have been controlled and stoped, crop increased between 30% and 40%, weeds decreased and plant’s daily growth enhanced.

Set partitioning problems are known to be NP-hard, thus it requires massive amounts of times and efforts to solve them using linear programming and traditional algorithms. This study proposes to use a tabu algorithm for such problems. The proposed algorithm is applied to the distributing network design problem of a wholesale company. The orders of 420 customers from 24 cities in the region are currently satisfied from a central warehouse of the company. The proposed algorithm in this study aims to set up groups of customers based on their geographic locations with the goal of minimizing the total amount of traveling, thus cost and time throughout the network. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm reduces the total traveling by a considerable amount of 10%. The possible scenarios for alignment of the customers are suggested at the end of the study as a way of implementing the findings of this research.