Archives-September 2015

Sediment management strategies are a key requirement in developing countries including Iran because of the limited resources available. These targeting however hampered by the lack of reliable information on catchment sediment sources. This paper reports the results of using a quantitative composite ?ngerprinting technique to estimate the relative importance of the primary potential sources within the Amrovan and Royan catchments in Semnan Province, Iran. Fifteen tracers were first selected for tracing and samples were analyzed in the laboratory for these parameters. Statistical methods were applied to the data including Nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test and Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA). For the Amrovan catchment three parameters (N, Cr and Co) were found to be not significant in making the discrimination. The optimum fingerprint, comprising C, P, Kaolinite and K was able to distinguish correctly 100% of the source material samples. For the Royan catchment, all of the 15 properties were able to distinguish between the six source types and the optimum fingerprint provided by stepwise DFA (Chlorite, XFD, N and C) correctly classifies 92.9% of the source material samples. The mean contributions from each sediment source obtained by multivariate mixing model varied at two catchments. For the Amrovan catchment Upper Red Formation was the main sediment sources as this sediment source approximately supplied 36% of the reservoir sediment whereas the dominant sediment source For the Royan catchment was from Karaj formation that supplied 33% of the reservoir sediments. Results indicated that the source ?ngerprinting approach appears to work well in the study catchments and to generate reliable results.

The study is related with the strengths and weaknesses of the integrated curriculum and the intelligent use of latest technologies in it. The study also pointed out that why there is a sort of hesitancy in using technologies. Integrated curriculum has certain important features as it gives the students a holistic look of the world and improved their ability to make connections around the topic. It required a great deal of efforts and skills on the part of the teacher and it needs excellent planning and team work too. The slow learners find it difficult to follow this curriculum pattern and he technology integration make them more confused. Technology integration is the modern trend of education and must be integrated in all the subjects in keeping mind the aims of the education and must be relevant to students’ needs.

The study was aimed to analyse “Effect of problem solving teaching strategy on 8th graders’ achievement ". Major objective was to compare the achievement of the 8th grade students in General Science taught through problem solving teaching strategy and traditional methods. The population of the study was 150 grade 8th students of the Federal Government Model secondary school F-8/3, Islamabad. Two groups of 30 each were selected randomly including 10 in each category of high, average and low achievers. These groups were randomly assigned as experimental and control group. A research tool ‘Achievement Test in Science (ATS) for 8thgrade was developed to use as pre-test and post- test. The test was validated through peer review, expert opinion and pilot testing. In the beginning of treatment pre-test was administered, after six moths teaching through problem solving teaching strategy to experimental group only, the post-test was administered. On the collected data, t-test and ANOVA was applied. It was concluded that the students taught through problem solving teaching strategy, showed better achievement than the students taught through traditional teaching methods.

The present study examined the perceptions and problems of teachers and administrators regarding the English language curriculum implementation at secondary level. The study was based on the purposive sample of 10 administrators and 40 teachers of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. The responses of school administrators and English language teachers were gathered through interview. The course content of English language was analyzed in the light of curriculum guidelines. Finding revealed that overall teachers are believe that loud reading and extensive writing helps in the acquisition of English language. For better English language teachers should use new teaching styles and methods in their classes. Teachers encourage students to think in English because if a child starts thinking in a particular language then it becomes easy for them to communicate in that language. Major drawback is that even after having a good syllabus of English language at secondary level many students do not have proficiency in speaking because of the clash in the mother tongue and the foreign language.

In this work, the natural radionuclide contents of some building materials widely used in Nigeria were measured by the means of gamma-ray spectrometry using Na(I)Tl detector. A total of 15 samples were assayed from different materials. The mean of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K concentrations determined are 30.35±8.69BqKg-1, 20.12±6.00 BqKg-1 and 241.95±76.31 BqKg-1 respectively. These values were lower than permissible global values except for potassium which is higher than that of global permissible value of 52.2, 41.0 and 230.0 (BqKg-1 ) respectively by UNSCEAR. The obtained mean absorbed dose rate for all the collected building materials samples is 39.90(nGgh-1). These results, along with the results of the estimated annual effective dose rates, radium equivalent (Raeq), external hazard index (Hex) are presented and they are found below the internationally accepted safe limits. It suffices to say therefore the analyzed samples could be used for building and construction purposes. It is safe to say that there is no threat pose to any users of the materials.

The purpose of writing this paper is to identify, measure and prioritize the driving affecting factors on Abyek Company (Iranian cement producer) situation in markets. For conceptual framework, 3 main criteria and 13 sub criteria were considered. First of all, by applying Chi-square test, the factors were surveyed in which all 3 ones were affective on compatibility. Also the results of utilizing Average test show that all 3 criteria were placed in favorable place. And finally by using fuzzy TOPSIS technique, the indices were ranked in which “customer relationship management”, “innovation in product” and “competitors related intelligence” were selected as the most important sub criteria.

The volume calculation of MR Image segmented and estimate the affected intensity of Alzheimer’s disease is dealt with this paper. It is concerned with Voxel Based Morphometry to render the first part segmentation. The result gives an active region which further needs an estimation to justify the diagnosis. As in this case the image is in form of voxels. When properly processed, classified images can represent foundations for diagnostic purposes. A VBM - fuzzy approach was used to take advantage of Voxel Based Morphometry’s ability to fine segmentation based on voxel comparisons of GM, WM & CSF and membership degrees andfunctions of fuzzy logic, respectively. The method of VBM is done with SPM. The method is based on the spatial properties of the MR Brain image features and makes use of SPM multi-scaled representations of the image. A fuzzy classifier is created on basis of the previous segmented data. The method showed high quality classification for images of complex components in determining the intensity of Alzheimer’s and GUI is used as front end for the user comfort.

A biometric system provides automatic identification of an individual based on a unique feature or characteristic possessed by the individual. Iris recognition is regarded as the most reliable and accurate biometric identification system available. Most commercial iris recognition systems use patented algorithms developed by Daugman, and these algorithms are able to produce perfect recognition rates. However, published results have usually been produced under favorable conditions. The work presented in this paper involved developing an iris recognition system in order to verify both the uniqueness of the human iris and also its performance as a biometric. For determining the recognition performance of the system one databases of digitized grayscale eye images were used. The iris recognition system consists of an automatic segmentation system that is based on the Hough transform, and is able to localize the circular iris and pupil region, occluding eyelids and eyelashes, and reflections. The extracted iris region was then normalized into a rectangular block with constant dimensions to account for imaging inconsistencies. The Hamming distance was employed for classification of iris templates, and two templates were found to match if a test of statistical independence was failed. The system performed with perfect recognition on a set of 450 eye images; however, tests on another set of 340 images resulted in false accept and false reject rates of 0.005% and 0.238% respectively. Therefore, iris recognition is shown to be a reliable and accurate biometric technology.

The aim of this study is to recognize existing trends explicit to the Madhya Pradesh tourism sector and propose potential means of improvement .This study focuses on an inter-county appraisal of tourism flows within Madhya Pradesh .As a result an analysis was undertaken covering factors including the number of the tourism. There is a vast scope for tourism in Madhya Pradesh. Hence, there is a need for the further improvement of appropriate marketing and information distribution strategies intended at both middle and lower income consumers. The purpose was to analyze Local financial improvement initiated partnership and sustain services for emerging tourism entrepreneurs in the Madhya Pradesh with the objective to establish the impact of the tourism sector in contributing to the achievements of Local financial improvement objectives.

This paper explains the process of measuring and analyzing Bank’s total productivity (BTP) and the productivity changes in bank branches using Slack Based Measure (SBM) of DEA and Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI). in Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI). For this purpose, we have measured and analyzed the productivity growth in EDBI branches using MPI in the period of 2000-2011. The trend of efficiency scores’ moving averages confirms improvement in BTP over the period of study. Moreover, the results show %1 and %2 on average improvement in the productivity of EDBI branches in period 2000 and 2011, respectively.