Archives-July 2017

The possibility for biomass valorization, using biotechnological processes, is an ideal solution for the use of agricultural products with low commercial value. Cashew apple is an agricultural resource available in many African countries. Unfortunately, this agricultural resource is abandoned in the fields by the producers and decayed each year in large quantities, because of the astringency of the juice, and the consumption of cashew apples with milk, would be considered incompatible in several African countries. However, there are a lot of ways to upgrade the value of this resource as a raw material in food industry or in the production of renewable bioenergy. Technical methods used involve biotechnological processes using enzymatic biocatalysis, alcoholic fermentation and fractional distillation.

The paper sought to establish the effect of involvement culture on performance of selected 5-star Chain affiliated hotels in Kenya. The study employed descriptive research design. The study was undertaken in Nairobi Central Business District (CBD). The target population of this study comprised of employees and managers of four 5-star chain hotels. The researcher employed purposive sampling, stratified sampling and simple random sampling techniques. Questionnaires and interview schedule was used in data collection. Data was analyzed using descriptive statistics; frequencies and percentages while correlation analysis was used to assess the effect of involvement culture on performance. Involvement culture was found to have a positive but weak relationship with performance. The study indicated that, the organization should ensure that the employees have shared belief, values and expectation to ensure realization of performance. The researcher therefore recommends that, for organizations to achieve the desired performance all the employees in the organization should be involved to drive the performance agenda.

The paper sought to assess the effects of multimedia advertisement features on customer satisfaction in 5-star hotels in Kenya. The study was conducted in Nairobi which is the capital city of Kenya between the month of July and September, 2015. The city is endowed with top rated high class hotels ranging from (1) to (5) star luxury hotels which are competing against each other. Classified hotels are trend setters in the tourism and hospitality industry. High classified hotels distinguish themselves by offering superior products and customised services. The mentioned reasons provided a good setup to conduct this research study. The research design for the study was explanatory research design. The target population comprised of the customers of the hotels listed. The total number of hotel rooms from which the sample was derived was 2500 rooms drawn from 15 five-star hotels. Purposive sampling was undertaken in order to distribute the sample size proportionately in accordance to the hotel room capacity. The customers were stratified and then systematic random sampling was used to select the samples who gave responses to the research instruments. The study established that multimedia online advertisement has significant effect on customer satisfaction by improving the interactivity and customer involvement with the brand it also enhances the presentation of the contents.

Distal tibia fractures are complex injuries with a high complication rate. In this retrospective, study, we attempted to detail complications and outcomes of this type of injury in order to determine predictive factors of poor results. Between 2015 and 2017 10patients were admitted for distal tibia fractures. Internal fixation, external fixation, limited internal fixation (K-wires or screws), intramedullary nailing and conservative treatment were the different mode of treatment..The complications occurred in 3 patients. Predictive factors of poor results were fracture severity, complications, malunion severe skin and soft tissue injury. We believe that external fixation must be reserved for trauma with severe skin and soft tissue injury, as a temporary solution in a one/two-staged protocol. For other cases, we recommend ORIF with early mobilization.

This study was conducted to evaluation of allopathic effects of Hoary Cress tissues aqueous extract on growth of barley seedlings in split plot experiment in CRD design with 3 replications. Main plot included root, stem, leaf and flower extract and sub plot included extract concentration (0, 2, 4 and 8%) of Hoary Cress. After one week, some properties evaluated such as radicle and plumule length, radicle and plumule fresh weight, radicle and plumule dry weight.Data analysis was done using SAS software and mean comparison was done by Duncan test at the 5% level. Studied traits reduced by the increase of extract concentration, flower extract specially. So, application of 8% aqueous extract had highest significant effects on growth traits of barley seedling.

This study was performed to evaluation of yield components of 20 wheat genotypes under water deficit. Experiment was conducted with a split plot design. The main factor included normal and deficit irrigation (drought: 40% of field capacity) and sub-plots included 10 wheat genotypes Chamran, Marvdasht (Iran’s cultivars), N14 and N49 (Iran Landrace related to the eastern regions of Central and South Western), C15 and 168 (Babax), 169 (Seri), C4, C6 and C14 (lines of Babax /seri) also booting stage was applied for drought stress. Some of traits were investigated that included: Biological yield, Seed yield, Harvest index, seed number, 1000seed weight. According to analysis of variance, it was founded that all studied traits affected by drought stress, also there were significant differences between cultivars in responses to stress. Means comparisons showed that highest seed yield was obtained by 169, 168, C6, C15, Chamran, Marvdasht and C16 at normal condition and in drought condition Marvdasht cultivars had lowest seed yield. Highest and lowest yield reductions were obtained by 169 and N49, respectively. In relation to biological yield and at normal condition, 169 and 168 showed highest means and at stress condition highest value observed by 168. The highest harvest index under normal irrigation belonged to C14, C6, Marvdasht, 169, 168 and C15. N49 harvest index was higher in drought conditions in compare to normal condition. Under drought deficit, most grain number was obtained by Chamran, 168, N14, C6 and C15 genotypes. Also, the highest 1000 seed weight were observed by C4, C14 and C6 under normal irrigation, however all genotypes showed significant reduction and N49, 169, C14, C4 and Marvdasht had the highest 1000seed weight under drought stress.

Remote sensing is a major source of data to prepare land cover map. The present study has been conducted to investigate the ability of Landsat ETM satellite in order to prepare land cover map. The images were taken on July 10, 2014 and has been georeferenced by using digital coordinate map with scale of 1: 25000.The amount of RMSE that obtained from geo-referenced images was o.348. In order to prepare for processing digital data, such as contrast enhancement, optimum index factor(OIF), principal component analysis(PCA), producing false color composite and vegetation indices improving operations and enhancing images were carried out on the data. Based on studies and field visits with help of control points and global positioning system, ground real map was prepared. To classify data Supervised classification methods were used. After classification, land cover maps with different classes were prepared. Overall accuracy and Kappa coefficient to classify maximum likelihood are 86.31% and 83.93% respectively. For a minimum distance 70.83% and 68.49%, for Minimum Mahalanobis Distance 85.95% and 81.53% and parallelepiped are 82.31% and 79.84% were obtained.

The Land Use Charge Law (LUCL) of Lagos state is a form of public intervention in urban land market to generate the needed revenue for government expenditures, and for wealth redistribution. As a property tax, it was meant to correct the perceived distortion in Lagos land market – a situation whereby less than one percent of the population controls more than ninety percent of its land value. Although, the tax policy is laudable, the society is not always aware of the impacts such policies have on real estate market, yet they are not without implications either positive or negative. This paper therefore examined the perspectives of landlords and the Estate Surveyors and Valuers in Lagos, Nigeria on the impact of Land Use Charge (LUC) on volume of property lettings, rent and other letting fees in the study area. Structured questionnaire was randomly administered on 135 Estate surveyors and Valuers and purposively on 135 landlords. The data collected were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Findings reveal that the LUC had no effect on volume of property letting, and larger percent of the Valuers (70.8%) and landlords (88.8%) affirmed that rent has increased in Lagos due to LUC. The paper concludes that though LUC has had no noticeable impact on volume of letting transactions probably due to limited land size and high population of Lagos, it has however led to increase rent and other letting fees in the state with its attendant consequences on urban renters

The molten salt electrolytes from which the polyvalent active metals are extracted are strongly structured at unusually long distances that increase the energy consumption of the electrowinning cell. Under influence of strong electrical pulses they are transferred to a non-equilibrium state with modification of the structure and intensification of electrochemical properties. The observed regularities in the electrolytes activation are due to stimulated dissociation of complex ions on the simpler and more mobile complex and elementary ions. This is confirmed by the disappearance of characteristic Raman peaks when the melts are activated. During the relaxation process in the non-equilibrium melts their electrochemical parameters and Raman peaks are seeking to recover their equilibrium values and pattern. All the observed regularities of the duration and the dynamics of the relaxation in non-equilibrium melts show that we definitely have deal with the structural relaxation in ionic.

The geometries of various tautomers of different ring size lactams have been studied by ab initio Hatree–Fock and Density Functional Theory calculations at B3LYP level with different basis sets in the gas phase. Optimized geometries and total energies for 12 possible tautomers of studied lactams were determined. Thermodynamic properties and tautomeric equilibria between different tautomers were calculated using the frequency calculations. The results of calculations are applied to the bond lengths of ?- lactam which showed a good agreement with experimentally determined data. In the gas phase, the amino tautomers are computed to be more stable than the lactim tautomers. Equilibrium constant results suggested that the lactam form is a more dominant tautomer for all cases and the lactim forms are not present in detectable amounts.