Development and Evaluation of a Manual Multi - crop Planter for Peasant Farmers
Farming today has gone beyond subsistence farming that produces for the farmer and his household. Research shows that the consumption of grains or cereal crops is at an alarming rate in the world, so to encourage small farm holders a manually operated multi-crop hand push planter with changeable metering devices for cowpea, maize and soybean was designed, fabricated and evaluated to improve planting efficiency and reduce drudgery involved in manual planting method. The laboratory and field tests were conducted to determine weight of seeds discharged from the planter, seed percentage damage, field capacity, average depth of placement of seeds in furrow, average inter-row spacing of seeds and the emergence of the seedlings. Results revealed that the planter had field efficiency and field capacity of 76.3% and 0.39 ha/hr with seed rate of 0.25 kg/ha, 0.18 kg/ha and 0.21kg/ha respectively for cowpea, maize and soybean. Percentage difference between the seed damage of 3.54%, 2.32% and 1.32% of cowpea, maize and soybean respectively obtained was from an average spacing of 40.8cm and depth of 3.98cm. The single-row multi-crop planter is very simple to use and it is maintenance free, except for the bearings which needs to be lubricated from time to time to allow the planter's ground wheel to move freely. For this design, the drive shaft directly controls the seed metering mechanism which eliminates completely attachments such as pulleys, belt systems, and gears thereby eliminating complexities which increase cost, and increasing efficiency at a highly reduced cost which is the focus of this project work. The planter can be easily maintained without any technicality and all materials used for the fabrication are locally available in the case of worn - out parts.
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Development of occupational stress scale for medical doctors working in the teaching hospitals
Present study was carried out to develop and validate a research instrument for the measurement of occupational stress among the medical doctors working in teaching hospitals. Review of literature was done and focus group discussions were held in order to generate items for the instrument. Initially item pool thus gathered, constituted of 80 items falling under the dimensions of psychological, physiological, social adjustment and personal life. After qualitative item analysis the items were reduced to 61 in order the establish reliability and validity of the statement empirically 61 statements were administered on 150 doctors working in teaching hospitals situated in Rawalpindi region namely Benazir Bhutto Shaheed Hospital, Holy Family Hospital and Fauji Foundation Hospital. The data was subjected to prinicipal factor analysis; as a result five factors were extracted called subscales. Psychometric properties and percentile norm were determined for the final occupational stress scale for the medial doctors. Finding demonstrates that 44 items OSSMD is a reliable and valid instrument to be used to the measurement of occupational stress of the medical doctors working in the hospitals.
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Dionne Brand and Dialectical Materialism: A Marxian Reading of Her Fiction
As a progressive and studied writer, Dionne Brand takes into her hand the responsibility of dealing with all the issues confronted by men and women and children of the Black community being not only the members of the proletarian class, but also because of belonging to the Black race. Right from the sufferings of the Blacks during slavery down through the periods of feudalism, early capitalism, the colonial period, the neo-colonial period and also globalisation-ruling currency are subject matter in her works. As a member of the Black community, she is committed to the task of unravelling the exploitative past and present of her people. She does it with panache and power.
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Doctrine of Basic Structure as a Constitutional Safeguard in India: Reflection in the Jurisprudence of Other Countries
A representative government is always understood as a limited government for the reason that the representatives are mere delegates under special orders. The Sovereignty in such forms of government lies with the people and is expressed in a Constitution, written or unwritten. India has adopted a representative form of government under a written Constitution operating as a limitation on governmental action. The framers of Indian Constitution came up with a written Constitution in order to ensure that there was some sort of rigidity in the Constitution. Also the power to amend was given to the Parliament under Article 368 in order to overcome the difficulties which may encounter in future in the working of the Constitution. However, the extent of flexibility embraced by a Constitution has to be balanced by a need to preserve its normative character as a higher law that restrains temporary parliamentary majorities of the nation. Article 368 of the Constitution does not prescribe any express limitation upon the parliament’s amending power, however the Supreme Court in Keshavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala (1973) declared that Article 368 did not enable parliament to alter the ‘Basic Structure or Framework’ of the Constitution. With the intention to preserve the original ideals of the Constitution, the Supreme Court pronounced that the Parliament could not distort, disfigure and mutilate the basic features of the Constitution which are sacrosanct to the ideals of the Indian society. The doctrine of Basic Structure is an expression of a much deeper notion of democracy where the sovereignty of the people in a republic is retained by the people even against its own representatives. Vigorously debated since its inception, the doctrine continues to be a central feature of recent institutional contests over Constitutional identity and change. This paper examines the development and the scope of the doctrine of basic structure as a Constitutional safeguard and its reflection in the jurisprudence of some other countries.
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Economic Outlook of Pakistan Economy
The paper focuses on review of Pakistan economy in order to evaluate the performance of the economy to identify leading economic problems of Pakistan. It discusses various macro economic problems indulging micro economic problems while highlighting the origin of these problems. It contributes in understanding of various concepts of macro economic parameters with respect to the economy and developing the interlink between these concepts. The analysis achieved the conclusion that Pakistan is currently facing adverse economic problems that need to be rectified with systematic mechanism in order to retrieve the identity of Pakistan that had been achieved with innumerable sacrifices.
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Effect of exchange rate policies on non - traditional agricultural export - a case study of pineapple export in Ghana
Exchange rate policies associated with developmental programs of the past 28 years have led to the transformation of the agricultural export sector in many ways in Ghana. This study examines the effect of the exchange rate on pineapple export, one marked example of an increase in agricultural export for the European market. Based on a priori economic and statistical considerations, a logarithmic Cobb-Douglas functional model was used which applies annual time series data from 1980 to 2004 to estimate the export of pineapple as a function of real exchange rate, income of trading partner, competing price of pineapple of Cote d’Ivoire, and the local producer price of pineapple. The study shows that the real exchange rate has an effect on the pineapple export of the country, especially in the long run confirming the devaluations over the period of 1980 – 2004 with its concomitant increase in pineapple export. The study ended suggesting that authorities adhere to the fundamentals of the real exchange rate to be able to improve the performance of the exports, but this action must be consistent with other fiscal policies in order to attain balance of payment equilibrium.
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Effect of probiotics (BinifitTM) on survival, growth, biochemical constituents and energy budget of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii post larvae
The present study was conducted to investigate the effect of probiotics, BinifitTM on survival, growth, biochemical constituents and energy budget of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii post larvae (PL). The basal diet was prepared by the supplementation of probiotics BinifitTM at four different concentrations (0.5%, 1%, 1.5% and 2%) was incorporated. Feed without BinifitTM served as control. These feeds were fed to M. rosenbergii PL for a period of 60 days. Leaching of these diets varied between 13.7%-15.0% at time duration of 8 hrs. The growth parameters, such as survival, weight gain, specific growth rate, feed conversion efficiency and protein efficiency rate were significantly (P<0.05) higher in 2% BinifitTM incorporated diet fed PL followed by other experimental groups when compared with control. On the other hand, the food conversion ratio was significantly (P<0.05) lower in 2% BinifitTM supplementation diet fed PL. This indicates the fact that this diet had resulted in higher growth rate than that of other experimental diets. Similarly the proximate composition of the total protein, amino acid, carbohydrate, and lipid content were significantly (P<0.05) higher in 2% BinifitTM incorporated diet fed PL. However, insignificant differences were recorded in moisture content between control and experimental groups. The energy utilization parameters, such as feeding rate, absorption rate, conversion rate, excretory rate and metabolic rate were significantly (P<0.05) higher in 2% BinifitTM supplementation diet fed PL. However, BinifitTM supplementation diet fed PL resulted in better growth performance. This is only because of presence of BinifitTM in the feed. Therefore, incorporation of this probiotics in aqua feed is stressed for promoting sustainable culture of Macrobrachium.
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Emotional Intelligence and Job Satification among University Teachers
The study aimed to explore the relationship of emotional intelligence on the job satisfaction among university teachers. This research was descriptive in nature .The research objectives included to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction among university teachers and to explore the role of demographic variation such as age, gender, experience, qualification of the university teachers in determining their level of emotional intelligence and their perception about job satisfaction. The population of this study was university teachers of public and private sector universities in Islamabad. A stratified random sample comprised of 50 male and 50 female university teachers were collected from two public and two private universities of Islamabad. Two questionnaires were used for data collection in which one for measuring Job satisfaction while other for measuring emotional intelligence (self-awareness, social skills, self-regulation, motivation, social awareness) of prospective teachers. Data was analyzed with the help of SPSS 16. The major finding of the study concludes that is positive significant correlation between Emotional intelligence and Job satisfaction among public and private sector universities(r=0.78). Result showed that female university teachers are more emotional intelligent than male university teachers whereas male university teachers perceive greater job satisfaction. However, Older university teachers are more emotionally intelligent and perceives greater job satisfaction .Result concluded that lecturers are more emotional intelligent while Professor perceives higher job satisfaction. Result portrays that PHD qualified university teachers shows more emotional intelligence while PhD qualified teachers perceives greater job satisfaction. Findings conclude that less experienced university teachers are more emotional intelligent whereas experienced university teachers perceives greater job satisfaction. It further discloses that a private sector university teachers experiences higher emotional intelligence whereas public sector university teacher recognizes higher job satisfaction The study was beneficial to teachers, researchers, curriculum developer, trainers, psychologists and education planners. Job satisfaction among teachers can be enhanced by training, needs satisfaction, providing facilities and improving their emotional intelligence.
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Examining customer’s satisfaction towards national car attributes among Malay, Chinese and Indian
Rapid entry of foreign or imported cars in the domestic market leaves Malaysian car manufacturers struggling to compete with their foreign counterparts. Despite of high sales, customer’s satisfactions towards national car were low as compared to imported cars. This prompted the current investigation with the objectives to identify the most important automobile attributes influencing customer’s satisfaction and also to determine the most appealing automobile attributes among major ethnic groups in Malaysia. This study employs survey approach where 370 responses were collected from car owners and drivers of national car in Klang Valley area. Results from the regression analysis showed that all variables namely safety feature, vehicle apperance, resale value and standing charges are related to customer’s satisfaction. Thus, all hypotheses were accepted. Secondly, all major ethnic groups; Malay, Indian and Chinese were influenced mostly by safety feature. In addition, the result depict that Chinese has lower satisfaction level towards national car consumption as compared to other races.
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Exploration of mechanical behavior of Al2O3 reinforced aluminium metal matrix composites
The Present research has focused on mechanical behaviour of aluminium oxide reinforced aluminium metal matrix composites. Aluminium metal matrix composites are fabricated using stir casting process by varying the reinforcement percentage volumes between 0 and 10, with 30 ?m particles size. To study the mechanical behaviour through the effect of weight percentage of aluminium oxide, the fabricated specimens are tested for the mechanical and physical properties such as tensile strength, hardness and density and these values are compared with theoretical values which are obtained through the rule of mixtures. The mechanical properties of the composites are found to be greatly influenced with increasing the percentage volume of the reinforcement. Also it was observed that the experimental values of mechanical behaviour of AMMCs are nearer to the theoretical values.
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