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We are very happy to announce that from 7th November 2013, Mr.Hussein Hakim Abad AL-Shammari has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Physics. Mr.Hussein Hakim Abad AL-Shammari is currently working as Department of Physics, College of Science, University of Babylon, Hilla, Iraq. The appointment of Mr.Hussein Hakim Abad AL-Shammari as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to elixirpublishers@gmail.com. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief

The monitoring of toxic heavy metals in fish is essential for protecting public health against the hazards of metal toxicity. The concentrations of metals (Hg, Pb and Cd), in different fish species were analyzed using Atomic Absorption Spectroscopic (AAS) procedures. The objective of this study was to look at the distribution of heavy metals in different species of fish on Ghanaian markets. Levels of cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were determined by graphite furnace atomic absorption spectrometry (GF-AAS). Mercury (Hg) content was analysed by the cold vapour atomic absorption spectroscopic technique after Hg ions reduction with SnCl₂ (CV-AAS). Amongst the metals analysed, Lead (Pb; 0.1-0.49, average 0.24 mg/kg) showed the highest concentration, followed Mercury (Hg; 0.01-0.37, average 0.073mg/kg) and Cadmium (Cd; 0.06-0.11, average 0.084 mg/kg).  Amongst the species analysed, tuna had high lead concentrations with lobsters having the lowest concentration of lead. With respect to Hg contamination, shark specimen had the highest with cephalopods and octopus having the least Hg concentrations. Levels of cadmium in the examined species averaged from 0.06 mg/kg for octopus to 0.11 mg/kg for tuna. The study revealed that the studied metals concentrations were generally low in species of fish in the two study areas. Although the levels of these heavy metals are not high, a potential danger may emerge in the future depending on pollution sources and frequency of exposure.

Chicken feather disposal has contributed significantly in the galloping elephantiasis in our society; hence this research work was targeted on recycling chicken feathers into a more useful material that would find its applications in virtually all discipline. These natural Fibres are low-cost with low density and good mechanical properties. This study uses Taguchi’s robust design on the basis of the higher the better to investigate the effect of (A: Volume fraction, B: Fibre length and C: Fibre orientation) to determine the optimum Tensile strength, Flexural strength and Hardness strength of the chicken feather barbs (CFB) and chicken feather rachis (CFR) when reinforced with epoxy. The optimum tensile strength, flexural strength and hardness strength of the chicken feather barbs are (34.40MPa, 60.05MPa and 18.87MPa) while that of the chicken feather rachis are (34.00MPa, 70.30MPa and 19.1MPa), respectively. This study shows that the composite of the CFB are better in tensile, while the CFR are better both in flexural and hardness strength. The young’s Moduli of the CFB ranges from 0.81GPa to 1.63GPa, while that of the CFR ranges from 0.58GPa to 1.90GPa. Higher proportion of the chicken feather barbs, however, showed significant reduction in the density and void fraction of the composite material. It can therefore be concluded that a low cost composite material could be processed from the chicken feather thereby reducing the risk of pollution and disease associated with it.

Team multicast identifies clusters of nodes with same affinity as teams and manages the multicast membership information using the unit of team rather than dealing with individual node members. The source propagates a data packet to each subscribed team’s leader and each leader forwards the data to the entire team. But none of the existing work on team multicasting consider the QoS metrics of the team leader like power, bandwidth etc. In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware team multicast protocol for MANETs, which gives a better solution to the above said problems. In our proposed protocol, the team leaders are selected based on the QoS metrics like bandwidth, residual energy and stability. Thus, the problem of link breakage can be reduced proactively. In case of link breakage occurring at any place of the network, a new team leader is selected in reactive basis. This avoids the delay in route repair mechanism. By simulation results, we show that the proposed protocol achieves better packet delivery ratio with reduced delay and overhead.

Retailing is an interface between manufacturer & consumer, who insures the easy flow of goods to the customer. Retailing is one of the largest sectors in the global economy and is going through an evolutionary stage in India. Retail is currently a flourishing sector of the Indian economy. The Indian Retail industry has grown at a 14.6% CAGR during FY 07-12. This growth can be directly credited to the emergent Indian economy as well as increase in Private Final Consumption Expenditure (PFCE) and bring revolution in Indian peoples’ consumption pattern. This tendency is expected to continue for at least the next two-three decades, magnetizing huge attention from entrepreneurs, business heads, investors as well as real estate owners and builders segments of the economy. Consumers’ perceptions about these retailers are determined by number of factors like format or size, proximity, varieties available as well as intangible factors like the store atmosphere, complaint handling, etc. It is essential to examine perceptions of unorganized retailers on organized retailers because most of unorganized retailers and unorganized retailer’s forums argue against organized retailing. This study is an attempt in this regard.

In this paper a new Trigonometric shear deformation theory is developed for the static flexure of thick isotropic beam, considering Trigonometric functions in terms of thickness co-ordinate associated with transverse shear deformation effect. The most important feature of the theory is that the transverse shear stress can be obtained directly from the constitutive relations satisfying the shear stress free surface conditions on the top and bottom of the beam. Hence the theory obviates the need of shear correction factor. Governing equations and boundary conditions of the theory are obtained using the principle of virtual work. Results obtained for static flexure of simply supported isotropic beam subjected to various loading cases are compared with those of other refined theories and exact solution.

The present study intended to evaluate serum homocysteine and serum cobalamin in subclinical hypothyroid patients. Case control study. Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center Hospital, Karachi from January to August 2015. Subjects were divided into Group A Controls- normal subjects (n=50), Group B Cases – diagnosed cases of subclinical hypothyroidism (n=50). 5 ml of venous blood sample was collected and centrifuged at 4000rpm for 10 minutes. The serum obtained was frozen at -20oC and used for estimation of thyroid hormone profile, serum cobalamin and serum homocysteine. The data was analyzed on SPSS version 22.0. Student’s t test and chi square test was used for continuous and categorical data respectively at 95% confidence interval (p ? 0.05). Mean ±SD age of controls and cases noted was 52.1 ± 5.6 and 51± 8.7 years respectively. Serum homocysteine in controls and cases was found as 6.89±3.75 and 15.9 ±12.3 µM/L respectively (p=0.0001). Serum cobalamin in controls and cases was noted as 298± 56.5 and 199.7±67.9 pg/dl respectively (p=0.0001). Serum homocysteine was raised with low serum cobalamin in subclinical hypothyroidism patients. The present study reports raised serum homocysteine and low serum cobalamin in Subclinical hypothyroid patients.

A dynamic graphical display among the set of independent variables (partial regression plot), tolerance value, variance inflation factor (VIF) and pair wise correlation matrix among the set of predictors offers a variety of measures for assessing the problem of collinearity and multicollinearity in a multiple regression analysis. Multicollinearity is a violation of one of the assumption of regression analysis. Many diagnostics measures have been proposed for detecting multicollinearity. A tolerance value of less than 0.10 or 0.20 which is equivalent to a VIF of 5 or 10, p value>0.05 and the pair-wise correlation showing a linear dependence of 0.90 and above. A transformation is carried out to remove the problem of multicollinearity and the removal will help to improve on the model (yi = ?0 +? 1X1 + ?2X2 +……+ ?kXk, improve coefficient of determination (r2) and validate any of the assumption of regression analysis of homocesdasticity, linearity, normality and independence of the observations. Examples using stimulated small data sets illustrate this approach

The feasibility of activated carbon prepared from Jatropha Curcas stem waste to remove Reactive Blue 2 from aqueous solution was investigated through batch mode contact process. The effect of various experimental parameters, such as initial dye concentration (20mgl/L), pH 6.5, adsorbent dosage 50mg and Temperature 30 °C was investigated in a batch mode-adsorption technique, the optimum condition for removal of Reactive Blue 2 Dye was found to be pH 6.5. The equilibrium data were best represented by the Langmuir isotherm model, with maximum mono layer adsorption capacity. The kinetic data were fitted to pseudo first order, pseudo second order and intra particle diffusion models and it was found to follow closely the pseudo second order kinetic model.

High quality bulk single crystal of L-arginine phosphate (LAP) was grown by slow evaporation which is based on temperature reduction method. L-arginine phosphate (LAP) seed crystals were grown at pH value of 5.8 at 30⁰ C by slow evaporation technique around 12 days and the bulk crystal was grown by Mason-jar method for 20 days. The grown crystals were subjected to optical and morphological studies. The unit cell parameters were calculated by X- ray diffraction. The UV-Vis spectrum shows the transmitting ability of the crystals in the entire visible region and the transmittance percentage is increased for the LAP crystals. The presence of the functional groups was identified by FT-IR spectrum. Hence L-arginine crystals are found to be more beneficial from an application point of view as compared to KDP crystals. From Micro hardness test the mechanical strength of the crystal has been observed.