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Organizational performance in the motor industry has become a major focus of managers due to the stiff competition witnessed in the industry and technology which is changing so rapidly. With this in mind, the issue of competitive strategies of the motor industry has become paramount and organisations are preparing for stiff competition from existing competitors as well as new entrants within the industry. To achieve this objective, these organisations need strategies that are competitive, sound and outstanding to gain a competitive edge and enhance their organisational performance. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of competitive strategies on organizational performance at Scania East Africa Limited which is in the motor industry, specifically retail and distribution of the heavy commercial vehicles. Four specific objectives formed the basis of study and these were: to examine the effect of differentiation strategy, pricing strategy, focus strategy and innovation strategy on the organizational performance at Scania East Africa Limited. The theoretical framework included theories such as, stakeholder theory, Resource based view theory and competitive advantage theory. The target population consisted of 144 employees of Scania East Africa Limited. However, the respondents were sampled. Quantitative research design was adopted for the study. The sample size of the study was 43 which was calculated by using 30% of the total population. A modified Likert scale questionnaire was developed and divided into four parts. A pilot study was carried out to refine the instrument. The quality and consistency of the study was further assessed using Cronbach's alpha. Data analysis was performed on a PC computer using Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS Version 23) for Windows 10 computer. Analysis was done using frequency counts, percentages, means and standard deviation, regression, correlation and the information generated was presented in form of tables. The stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that the competitive strategies namely; differentiation strategy, pricing strategy, focus strategy and innovation strategy explained statistically significant portion of the variance associated with the extent of organizational performance. The stepwise multiple regressions indicated that among the factors influencing organizational performance at Scania East Africa Limited, the variables had more effects on improving organizational performance. This result was an emphasis on the role of differentiation strategy, pricing strategy, focus strategy and innovation strategy and explained statistically significant portion of the variance associated with the extent of organizational performance of Scania East Africa Limited. The study recommended the following: That differentiation should be derived from customer experience in other words the customer’s suggestions should be central in designing products that meets the customer’s needs; that the company should continuously use cheaper quality raw materials and skilled labour to create value for the shareholders; that the company should continuously focus on its core business activities: that innovation should be at the centre of all operational activities. Pricing strategy, Innovation strategy and focus strategy also had statistically significant effect on organisational performance at Scania East Africa Limited therefore contributing positively to organisational performance of the company

Celecoxib, a selective COX-2 inhibitor, exhibits poor water solubility, dissolution and flow properties. Thus, the aim of the present study was to improve the solubility and dissolution rate of Celecoxib by preparing microparticle by Freeze drying technique. Celecoxib microparticle containing different ratio of drug and ?-cyclodextrin were manufactured by Freeze drying using Isopropyl alcohol as solvent to enhance solubility and dissolution rate. The prepared microparticle containing different ratio of drug and polymer were evaluated for in vitro dissolution and solubility. The prepared formulations were characterized by scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimeter, X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. Dissolution profile of the Freeze dried microparticle was compared with its physical mixture and pure sample. Freeze dried microparticle exhibited decreased crystallinity. The solubility and dissolution of the microparticle containing different ratio of drug and ?-cyclodextrin were significantly improved compared with its physical mixture and pure sample of Celecoxib. Dissolution of microparticle containing 3:1 w/w (FD 3) showed higher % release i.e. 98.6 % in 30 min compared to other ratio of microparticle. Consequently, hence, from the above result it can be concluded that Freeze dried microparticle of Celecoxib is a useful technique to improve the solubility and dissolution of poorly water soluble drug like Celecoxib.

Information assurance (IA) projects serve as critical elements of the information technology industry, yet enjoy limited success since these pursuits are often plagued by classical project management failures stemming improperly managing budgets, cost overruns, and missing projected timelines, commonly attributed to performance of the project teams. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to explore the leadership and other strategies necessary to enhance IA project performance achievement and success. The Lewin (1939) situational leadership theory underpinned the study and served as a theoretical reference source for deeper interpretations of the study data, against these propositions. Interviews were conducted with 20 IA professionals located in the Washington, DC Metropolitan area of the United States. The data were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using a process of thematic analysis using the Moustakas’ modified van Kaam analysis method. The major themes from the analysis of the interviews of IA professionals denoted the importance of leveraging the technical knowledge of these resources, with a balanced mix of technical and subject matter experts in make-up of project teams. Training in increasing the success of these teams indicated that this must commence at the leadership level. The study results may contribute to existing knowledge in improving project success and in the development and growth of the IA industry.

This investigation deals with finite population loss and delay multi server queue with no passing, discouragement and additional servers. The concept of no passing has its own consideration as the customers are permitted to leave the system in the same chronological order in which they join the system. Due to no-passing restrictions, the customers can be categorized into two types (i) those who do not need service even waiting in the queue and (ii) the customers having exponentially distributed service time. Also customer is assumed to be discouraged on seeing long queue at the service station. This discouraging behaviour of the customer puts the system to loss and the customer decides not to join the queue. To overcome such situations the system organigers may facilitate the additional removable server to provide faster service. Keeping this in view the above-mentioned factors have been included in this study. By using birth death rate and product type solution, queue size distribution is established, which is further employed to derive various performance indices namely expected waiting time, average number of customers in the system and the difference between the expected waiting time of both types of customers in the system.

The study aimed at estimating the crop water requirements under climatic and geographical conditions of Armenia with the help of FAO-56 methods to improve irrigation. To calculate the evapotranspiration at 5, 25, 50, 75 and 95 % probability using 10 years’ meteorological data of 24 meteorological stations the Republic territory was conditionally divided into six irrigation zones. The comprehensive analysis show that by the end of this century the air temperature increases by 20 C degrees and precipitation decreases by 10 %, thus the crop water requirements increases resulting in irrigation water consumption change. The Republic irrigated land area will increase by 25-50 % over the existing one. The resulting evapotranspiration patterns before and after the climatic changes were mapped with the use of GIS technology.

In the present work, chitosan was coated onto the activated carbon and characterized by FT-IR study. The FT-IR spectra of all three chitosan coated carbon showed the characteristic adsorption peaks, which are shifted to lower wave number. The -OH stretching of pure chitosan were observed at 3454 cm-1, whereas the composite showed -OH peak at lower frequency. Due to this, the strong interaction between chitosan and carbon made the bio sorbent effective material for the removal of toxic metal ions from water.

This study was designed with the objectives to assess the facet-specific job satisfaction levels of the head teachers of elementary school in context of their school size and to determine significant differences between head teachers of smaller and bigger schools for their job satisfaction levels for each of the twenty dimensions of the job as measured by the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire. The study was descriptive and survey type in nature. The relevant data were collected from the head teachers using Urdu version ofthe MSQ. The collected data was computed using mean, and t-test statistics. It was concluded thatoverall, the head teachers were found satisfied with their jobs. Compensation, school policies and practices, social status, and working conditions were found least contributors of their job satisfaction. Among these factors compensation and social status were contributing less satisfaction to the head teachers of bigger schools as compare to the smaller schools. Recommendations were made focusing on the factors which were contributing least satisfaction for the head teachers. There is need to improve the compensation package and social status of the head teachers, andworking conditions and policies and practices in these schools.

This paper summarizes the introduction and importance of hidden markov model (HMM) as a classifier, learning and classification. A Markov process is a particular case of stochastic process, where the state at every time belongs to a finite set, the evolution occurs in a discrete time and the probability distribution of a state at a given time is explicitly dependent only on the last states and not on all the others. In this survey we present details of hmm, its mathematical foundations, advantages and applications in the field recognition.

Geophysical exploration using electrical resistivity surveys have been taken up as method to delineate the thickness and resistivities of different layers and identification of potential zones for groundwater development in Naguleru Sub-Basin of Guntur District, Andhra Pradesh, India. It is part of Cuddapah Basin of Peninsular India. Vertical Electrical Sounding were carried out up to 100 meters with 1/2 meter electrode spacing. The absolute resistivity values in the first layer of these formations range from 2 to 160 ohm-meters. and thickness ranges from 1.2 to 29meters, second layer ranges from 4 to 1160 ohm-meters and thickness ranges from 1.3 to 38.4 meters. The third layer commonly represents hard rock displaying the resistivity values ranging from 7 to 1621 ohm-meters to as high as infinite. The co-efficient of anisotropy varies from 1 to 2.59 and the spatial distribution of anisotropy values correlate with the water table fluctuation data. Groundwater potential zones have been demarcated by using interpreted geophysical analysis.

Image inpainting is the science of filling in the missing or damaged area of an image from the enclosing area’s information. Its purpose is to recover images with limited data loss and tries to obtain inpainting outputs of damaged parts in such a way that the recovered images look usual. In our proposed method we will divide the damaged portion of image in the form of reference pixel according to their dissipating property. Then by applying image inpainting we have obtained an image whose visuable quality is identical to cover image.