Archives-October 2013

This paper focuses on the extent to which the market regulatory environment in the mobile telecommunication industry in Kenya has posed great challenges to new entrants and small operators and frustrated their efforts to counter the continued market leadership and dominance by Safaricom. Debates on ICT regulation in Sub Saharan Africa and the rest of the developing countries were confined to technology and tele-density issues without looking at the social, political, institutional, legal and economic factors that shape industry specific issues. Globally, the telecommunications industry has been viewed as a public utility and public ownership or strong government controls went with that. The argument this paper is premised on is that post liberalization of the telecommunications sector in Kenya, state monopoly of the Kenya Posts and Telecommunication Corporation shifted from government to the private sector oligopoly ( Kerretts, 2005:50, Mureithi, 2008, Manica and Vescovi: 2011:23). There was a shift from structuralism (active role of the state in driving economic development) to neo-liberalism (freeing market forces from government control, reducing taxes, divesting state-owned enterprises, deregulation of telecommunication, weakening of the state’s redistributive functions) (Nwankwo, 2000:147). Despite privatization and introduction of competition, most incumbents are still able to continue dominating the markets and enjoying significant advantages. The market share amongst the four operators in the telecommunications industry in Kenya is skewed in favour of one operator. The paper present an argument on macro-economic, political, legal, social, cultural, economic, institutional and policy issues (Isik, Arditi, Dilem and Birgonul, 2010:119) at the end of the seven year old oligopoly, market liberalisation, market distortions and competitive environment that favour established market players compared to new entrants. The paper is also highlighting the relevance of a classical theory such as Porter’s Five Forces competitive theory and macro environmental forces in explaining regulatory challenges faced by new market entrants in the telecommunications industry in Kenya and other emerging markets.

This paper entitled A Study of Placelessness in V. S. Naipaul’s Life and Works focuses and analyzes with great sovereignty how the fire of getting a place fulgurates repeatedly in V. S. Naipaul’s own life and his works. This theme, directly or indirectly, has been smeared by him in some of his fiction and non-fiction works. The paper analyzes uselessness, rootlessness, placelessness, selflessness and unsuccessfulness of his characters. Place becomes burning issue in his own life also. In Naipaul’s works, his characters deliberately get staunch support by him as they personally feel a lack of a suitable place to affirm and confirm their presence in the mundane world. This paper is an attempt to give answer why is called Naipaul rootless despite of having his good roots not only in Trinidad but also in the other countries of the world and why his characters feel suffocation and seem taciturn. Naipaul gave vent to his accumulated anguish or grief through his characters in his works. Naipaul, a noted raconteur, to what extent remains successful in his endeavors with regard of the concept of place, is the key concept of this paper.

This study investigated the effect of math multimedia teaching on mathematics self-regulation and learning at the junior high school girls students in Iran in the 2012-2013 academic year; and has been performed with quasi-experimental methods (quasi experimental). For this purpose, we selected two classes of first grade school in velayat educational complex in Harsin city (Iran) that have random arrangement and their Mathematics was taught by a teacher; and randomly assigned were considered one class as experimental group and another class as control group. The total respondents were 60 (29 cases in the experimental group, and 31 cases in control group). To collect the data used from regulated learning strategies questionnaire (MLSQ), and were used lesson math final scores for assessing students' learning. After the pretest in two groups, experimental group were taught by multimedia applications, and control groups by common mode. Dependent and independent t-test was used for data analysis. The results showed that, although the self-regulation and academic performance of students with math learning software were taught in the control group was outperformed, But this advantage was not significant at %95 confidence level. Among the reasons for lack of significant assumptions in this study, it can be noted to non-observance of the principles of multimedia in software used, teachers' lack of familiarity with how to use new technologies and how to combine it with traditional, Students' unfamiliarity with new methods of teaching and Students' lack of proficiency in the use of computers.

Face recognition is major challenge and provides significant attention of research in the computer vision. In recent years, reliable automated face recognition has become a realistic target of biometrics research. This biometrics will provide identity and verification of the person. The objective of face recognition involves the extraction of different features of the human face from the face image which makes it different from the other persons. In this, we give a review on face recognition system and the various classifications of recognition methods. This paper will also contain the various techniques, like PCA, LDA etc, which are used in the recognition of the face.

High speed research in communication trends demands high data rates with reliable transmission system and has thus led to many new emerging modulation techniques. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is one of the most promising technologies for high data rate wireless communications due to its robustness, high spectral efficiency, frequency selective fading, and low computational complexity and easy implementation of Very Large Scale Integrated technology (VLSI) now. Because the OFDM system effectively provides numerous parallel narrowband channels, OFDM is considered a key technology in emerging high-data rate systems such as 4G, IEEE 802.16, and IEEE 802.11n. But there is one main disadvantage of OFDM that is the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of the transmitter’s output signal on different antennas. High Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) for OFDM system is still a demanding area and difficult issue. By now, for reducing PAPR, numerous techniques have been recommended. In this paper the embedded technique which is a combination of Selective level Mapping (SLM), square root and Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) based PAPR reduction technique has been analyzed and discussed. The results have been verified in terms of various graphs and plots and have been compared with earlier results. The performance comparison of the proposed scheme with conventional technique has also been presented in the paper.

The key challenge faced by cellular and wireless communication is high data rate and high Quality of Service (QOS).To obtain these requirements communication channel needs to be shared in an efficient manner. The only hindrance that prevents the efficient utilisation of communication channels is multipath fading resulting from increased bit error rate of system (BER) at higher signal to noise ratio (SNR) resulting in overall system performance degradation. Various diversity techniques can be used to mitigate the fading effects. The implementation of MIMO technology makes use of multiple antennas both at transmitter as well as receiver thus allowing the transmission of signal through various independent paths, providing the receiver several replicas of the transmitted signal. This increases the probability that accurate information is detected at receiver. In this paper BER vs. SNR is being analyzed for various modulation techniques and the results obtained are compared with each other. The proposed technique makes use of minimum mean square error ratio (MMSE) to provide satisfactory bit error rate (BER) performance as compared to earlier results of Maximum Ratio combining (MRC)

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is regarded as one of the most outstanding multicarrier modulation technique in fourth generation (4G) wireless networks, which makes it possible to transfer very high bit rates despite extensive multipath radio propagation (echoes). The use of smart antenna arrays both at transmitter and receiver further increases the bit rate and enhance the system diversity on time variant and frequency selective channels resulting in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration. However one of the main disadvantages associated with MIMO-OFDM is the high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the transmitter’s output signal on different antennas. High Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) for MIMO-OFDM system is still a demanding area and difficult issue. So far numerous techniques based on PAPR reduction have been proposed. In this paper a new method based on the combination of OSTBC Encoder andSpreading code sequence have been implemented and simulated. The results obtained are compared with earlier results based on transformtechniques.Simulations show that better results are obtained in proposed technique.

Osteoporosis is a disease of bones that leads to an increased risk of fracture. Osteoporosis is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as a bone mineral density of 2.5 standard deviations or more below the mean peak bone mass (average of young, healthy adults) as measured by dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry, and calcium metabolism plays a very important role in such bone diseases. Calcium metabolism or calcium homeostasis is the mechanism by which the body maintains adequate calcium levels. Derangements of this mechanism lead to hypercalcemia or hypocalcemia, this article highlights majorly on the calcium metabolism and its effects on our health.

Classification is an important task in data mining and machine learning, in which a model is generated based on training dataset and that model is used to predict class label of unknown dataset. Today most real-world data are stored in relational format. So to classify objects in one relation, other relations provide useful information. Relational data are the popular format for structured data which consist of tables connected via relations (primary key/ foreign key). Relational data are simply too complex to analyze with a propositional (single table learning) algorithm of data mining. So to classify from relational data there is a need of multi relational classification which is used to analyze relational data and predict unknown pattern automatically. This paper contains Multi Relational Classification with weighted voting algorithm for learning from relational data which result in increase accuracy. Also to decrease the running time voting technique is used compared to stacking as a combination method. The experimental study along with results demonstrate the effectiveness of algorithm respect to other existing techniques.

This paper presents a single phase digital prepaid energy meter based on two microcontrollers and a single phase energy meter IC. This digital prepaid energy meter does not have any rotating parts. The energy consumption is calculated using the output pulses of the energy meter chip and the internal counter of microcontroller (ATmega32). A microcontroller (ATtiny13) is used as a smart card and the numbers of units recharged by the consumers are written in it. A relay system has been used which either isolates or establishes the connection between the electrical load and energy meter through the supply mains depending upon the units present in the smart card. Energy consumption (kWh), maximum demand (kW), total unit recharged (kWh) and rest of the units (kWh) are stored in the ATmega32 to ensure the accurate measurement even in the event of an electrical power outage that can be easily read from a 20×4 LCD. As soon as the supply is restored, energy meter restarts with the stored values. A single phase prepaid energy meter prototype has been implemented to provide measurement up to 40A load current and 230V line to neutral voltage. Necessary program for microcontrollers are written in c-language and compiled by Win-AVR libc compiler.