Archives-May 2012

An efficient approach for producing electricity from the abundant energy of the sun is discussed. The Nantenna Electromagnetic Collectors (NEC) [1] devices target mid-infrared wavelengths, where conventional photovoltaic (PV) solar cells are inefficient and where there is an abundance of solar energy. The initial concept of designing NEC was based on scaling of radio frequency antenna theory. This NEC is basically a Nano antenna which collects the sun radiation and thermal radiation and converts it into electrical signal. The aim is to realize a low-cost device that will collect and convert this radiation into electricity, which will lead to a wide spectrum, high conversion efficiency, and low-cost solution to complement conventional photovoltaic (PV) solar cells.

Weight loss, thermometric and potentiometric methods have been used to study the corrosion inhibition of aluminum in HCl solution by four newly synthesised Mannich bases viz 3-oxo, 3-phenyl, N,N-dimethyl propanamine hydrochloride (MB₁), 3,5-dioxo,5-phenyl N,N-dimethyl pentanamine hydrochloride(MB₂), 2,2-dimethyl,3-oxo N,N dimethyl butanamine hydrochloride (MB₃) and 3-oxo N,N-dimethyl butanamine hydrochloride((MB₄).Results of inhibition efficacies obtained from said methods are in good agreement with each other. Efficacy of inhibitor increases with increasing concentration of inhibitor as well as that of HCl solution.

Locus of control in social psychology refers to the extent to which individuals believe that they can control events that affect them. The purpose of the study was to determine the relationships between locus of control (LOC) orientation and high school student`s language achievement. The dichotomous categorization of Internals and Externals was taken into account. The participants of this study were 121 high school students in the second, third and pre university grades in a two high school of Iran. The instrument used in the study was the revised version of Julian Rotters` locus of control (2003) which identified internal and external orientations. The participants’ English scores were regarded as the measure of their achievement. A questionnaire consisting of 29 items was administered to all 121 students. Responses were analyzed through one way and two way ANOVA, the regression analysis, the independent t-test and chi-square and linear regression analysis to determine the means on two sets of scores. The findings of this study showed a significant relationship between locus control and achievement of high school students in Iran. The findings can be used by English as a Foreign Language, students, teachers, curriculum developers, syllabus designers and testing specialists.

This study was designed at investigating the relationship between the color of the sheet on which the act of translating is done and translation quality. To achieve this purpose, at first 180 B. A. students majoring in Translation selected randomly from Islamic Azad University, Shiraz, Iran and Zand Institute of Higher Education. For the purpose of homogenizing the students’ knowledge of translation in the posttest, a pre-test was given to the students and after that 50 of these students whose scores were in the same range were selected and divided into experimental and control groups. The experimental group involved the students who translated the text on blue paper and the control group consisted of those who translated on white paper. Next the translations were assessed by three evaluators and the mean scores of the experimental and the control groups were then calculated individually by the researchers. To analyze the data, an independent sample t-test was used to see the mean difference of two groups. The results of the study indicated that the mean score of the students who translated on blue paper was higher than the mean score of those who translated on white paper but the difference was not significant (Sig. = 0.690). It means that according to the statistical analysis, the color of the sheet on which the act of translating was done had no significant effect on translation quality.

This study aims to analyze relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate financial performance (CFP) using content analysis from 1972 to 2012. In this study, strategy of Margolis and Walsh (2001), Orlitzky et al. (2003), and Dam (2008) is implemented and financial measures such as stock market returns, Tobin’s Q, and accounting profits ratios e.g. return on assets (ROA), return on equity (ROE), and return on sales (ROS) are targeted. Study concludes that strong positive relationship exists between CSR and CFP using Tobin’s Q as financial performance measure, mostly studies found positive relationship between CSR and CFP using ROA, ROE, & ROS as financial performance measure, and mostly studies found negative relationship between CSR and CFP using stock market returns as financial performance measures. This study will provide literature evidences as record about CSR and CFP to empirical as well as theoretical prospective researcher and limitations are discussed also.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interrelationships between morale and job performance of secondary school teachers. This is a questionnaire survey involving secondary school teachers from four schools in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan. The information gathered was used to develop a statistical model to explain how teachers’ morale affects their job performance. A total number of 92 respondents were involved in this study. The findings showed that there was a significant difference in the morale status between the male and female teachers; the male teachers registered a moderately higher score as compared to the females. It was also found that there is no significant difference in the job performance between male and female teachers. Apart from that, this study also revealed that all the five factors: leadership, belongingness, environment, personal development and collegiality contributed significantly to teachers’ morale. The working environment was rated as the most important factor among the five. A structural equation model was developed to determine the relationships between the various morale determinants, morale status, and job performance of the teachers. The results indicate that the ‘environment’, ‘personal development’ and ‘collegiality’ factors affect the feeling of ‘personal reward’ of the teachers while ‘leadership’, ‘belongingness’, ‘environment’ and ‘personal development’ influenced their ‘cohesive pride’. It was also found that only the ‘leadership’ factor had a direct impact on ‘job performance’. The other morale determinants affect the ‘job performance’ of the teachers indirectly either by affecting ‘personal reward’ or ‘cohesive pride’.

An electronic device based on capacitive sensor was developed to predict the volume of banana fruit. This system, which is used for volume measurement has four components: a rectangular parallel plate capacitor, electronic circuitry, microcontroller, and display unit. After calibrating the electronic system, the results were verified with calibrated curve by means of linear regression and paired t-test. The coefficient of determination (R2) for 1, 10, 100, and 450 kHz frequencies were obtained as 0.934, 0.88, 0.932, and 0.935, respectively. The acquired P-values for 1, 10, 100, and 450 kHz frequencies were 0.541, 0.448, 0.132, and 0.064. The results indicated that banana fruits size has no effect on the accuracy of the computed volume. The results for banana fruits showed that the predicted volume and actual volume are highly correlated and this method is ideal for determining the volume of fruits and it can be developed for other fruits, too.

A thorough understanding of adolescence in today’s society depends on information from various perspectives, most importantly from the areas of psychology, biology, history, sociology, education and anthropology. Within all of these perspectives, it is safe to say that adolescence is viewed as a transitional period whose chief purpose is the preparation of children for adult roles. During this transition period, adolescence people are facing many challenges due to the incredible changes in physically, mentally, emotionally, intellectually and psychologically. Due to the gender, adolescent girls’ challenges in the above aspects are higher only. The present study investigates almost all the relevant factors that are acting as the challenges faced by adolescent girls in the present social and educational scenario. A cognitive map shows a representation of how humans think about a particular issue, by analyzing, arranging the problems and graphically mapping concepts that all interconnected. In addition, it identifies causes and effects and explains causal links with exact degree [1]. As the problems of adolescents’ belong to an unsupervised data, the most suitable tool is Fuzzy Cognitive Map (FCM) which is the cognitive map with fuzzy degree. Hence analyzing the problems of adolescent girls by giving structured and organized outline of the appropriate factors and revealing the most important and other impactful factors is the objective of this study. In this manner, this study guarantees that its results are much more useful for psychologists, physiologists, educationists, adolescent girls and their parents to understand the problems that adolescent girls really facing in the present scenario.

In this present study groundwater quality analysis, of nine fluoride affected villages in and around Mundaragi taluka of Gadag district in Karnataka, has been carried out in pre-monsoon season. The samples were collected in the month of February 2012, all the reagents used were of AR grade and standard methods were followed. The study revealed that all the nine villages have fluoride ion concentration above permissible limits. Higher fluoride concentration of 6.9 mg/L was observed in Mevundi village and lower concentration of 2.3 mg/L was observed in Hirewaddatti village.

In this paper, we introduce generalized semi generalized closed sets (gsg-closed sets) in bitopological spaces and basic properties of these sets are analyzed. As an application this closed set we investigate the notion of (i,j) -Tgsg space. Further we define and study (i,j)-gsg continuous mappings in bitopological spaces and some of their properties have been investigated. ?