Archives-December 

In the current paper, the fundamental principles of Canada stock exchange are firstly reviewed and then, the importance of stock exchange’s instruments in Canada, especially their role in development of money and capital market, is investigated. Finally, some basic recommendations are presented.

Sand inclusion is an important defect in Cast Iron castings. On an average this defect is almost thirty to forty per cent of the total defects occurring in a foundry. Sand inclusion is undesirable since it results in reduction in the strength of the casting and bad finish of the casting surface. More than hundred parameters are responsible for sand inclusion and hence it is difficult to control defect during casting. A detailed Literature review of the previous work mostly on sand inclusion for almost last fifty years is done in this paper to find appropriate parameters for defect formation of sand inclusion. From the literature review it is found that the exact remedy for sand inclusion is not easy. The papers describing different techniques like Quality Function Deployment, cause and effect diagram, Design of Experiments etc. are also referred for finding the appropriate parameters responsible for sand inclusion. Corrective action should be taken on responsible parameters to eliminate the defect and improve quality of ferrous castings.

In order to get good-quality crystals, method of slow evaporation was adopted to grow pure and L-Arginine doped Zinc (tris) Thiourea sulphate (ZTS) single crystals. The grown crystals are semiorganic non linear in nature whose lattice parameter values were found out using single x-ray diffraction analysis. The different functional bond frequencies associated with the crystals, decomposition temperature, and weight loss were found out from Fourier transform infra-red (FTIR) spectroscopic analysis, differential thermal analysis (DTA), and thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA) respectively. The optical behavior, mechanical stability and etching nature were also analysed. The SHG efficiency of the grown crystals was measured through NLO studies.

Anamorphs are common and widespread. They are among the most successful groups of moulds with important roles in natural ecosystems and the human economy. The present paper deals with the study of aeromycological study of Dongargarh hill-top with the help of petriplate method in one year one year from May 2010- April 2011. 31 fungal floras were isolated during the investigation period. Only anamorphic fungal group contributes major 24 out of 31 fungal species. It was also observed that 341 colonies of anamorphic fungi isolated out of total 389 fungal colonies. The fungal species Cladosporium oxysporum, Fusarium Aspergillus, Penicillium,Curvularia,Cladosporium, Trichoderma etc were observed.

All over the world today, there is monumental degeneration and degradation of everything that hold human together for a better society. There is moral, economic, social and even political bankruptcy. There also exist natural disaster like the catastrophic earthquake – tsunami, great flash flood, hurricane and other natural disasters that have occurred and continue to occur claiming so many lives in recent times. In all these, catalysm, ruinations and great calamities, can humans be of assistance? Can we fix our seemingly titanic and mounting challenges? This paper seeks to analytically establish and affirm the cause of these problems and proffer a way out.

The Indian retail sector is going through a transformation and this emerging market is witnessing a significant change in its growth and investment pattern. Both existing and new players are experimenting with new retail formats. The growth and potential of the sector is being widely acknowledged both in the domestic as well as international forums. India topped AT Kearney’s Global Retail Development Index 2009 for the third consecutive year, retaining its position in the global market as the most preferred retail destination amongst emerging markets. Consumer dynamics in India is changing and the retailers need to take note of this and formulate their strategies and tactics to deliver value to the consumer. This paper investigates impact of emergence of modern retail formats on Indian consumers in organized and unorganized sector.

Current study intended to explore cost of financial distress in case of Pakistani manufacturing ongoing firms listed at KSE. In doing so, financial distress is divided into operating distress and financial but not operating distress. Sample consists of ongoing firms that were at least once on distress counter for the period of analysis. To conclude the proposed theory descriptive and independent t-test for mean differences are used. It is found that firms bear opportunity loss before and after entering to both operating and financial distress. Moreover, results also show that operating distress affects more to firms’ value as compared to financial but not operating distress category. However, result for pre financial but not operating distress is found insignificant. In conclusion current study provides opportunity to all investors, management and other stakeholders to assess firms’ performances before and after entering to both operating and financial distress.

The occurence of building collpased has become a national embarrasment with its human and societal casualties. The issue of load bearing capacity in terms of the number of occupants observed in the building in comparism with the standard expected occupancy ratio has not being well identified. The study therefore uses purposeful method to select six buildings from the collapsed buildings in different of areas of Ikeja lagos. Questions were administered Orally to the immediate residents of the collapsed buildings. With a chi square of 65.34% in the conducted analysis it reveals that therew is a strong statistical relationship between the observed load bearing capacity in terms of occupacncy rate and the standard expected. This tend to suggest that the the occurence of buildings collpased in lagos may be due to an abnormal occupancy ratio or a higher load bearing capacity. The study thus recommends a strict adherence to the use of building codes and zoning to enforce building design and type for residential areas and the adpotion of fees payment in lieu of default for those building with a higher ratio than normal.

Wireless Sensor networks are dense wireless networks of small, inexpensive, low-power, distributed autonomous sensors which accumulate and propagate environmental data to facilitate monitoring and controlling of physical environments from remote locations with better accuracy. With the advent of new technology and low production costs, wireless sensor networks (WSN) prove to be useful in myriad of diversified applications, although its original development was motivated by military applications, such as battlefield surveillance. This paper describes the software architecture of an intelligent autonomous gateway, designed to provide the necessary middleware between locally deployed sensor networks based on mobile node and a remote location. The gateway provides hierarchical networking, auto management of the mobile wsn (MWSN), alarm notification and SMS/Internet access capabilities with user authentication. The main concern of QoS-based quadratic assignment technique is to increase reliability of network along with lifetime of the network. Several factors such as energy lifetime, throughput, end to end delay, packet delivery ratio and network security have been taken into consideration. Simulation results shows that the protocol offers a better performance in terms of network lifetime and energy consumption.

Globalization has caused dramatic changes to business practices around the world. Globalization is an interesting phenomenon since it is obvious that the world has been going through this process of change towards increasing economic, financial, social, cultural, political, market, and environmental interdependence among nations. Virtually, everyone is affected by this process because globalization brings about a borderless world. This study investigated how sustainable global market uncertainty, global market opportunities and global competitive threat affect the performance of bankers in Nigeria which can lead to a competitive advantage and an enhancement of industrial development that can bring about global partnership for development which is one of the pivotal goals of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Subjects for this study were three hundred and one bankers in Lagos, Nigeria. Two hypotheses were tested and the findings of the study revealed that that there was a significant relationship between performance of operators and global market opportunities. The result also revealed that global market uncertainty, global market opportunities and global competitive threat significantly jointly predicted performance of operators. Conclusively, the findings from this study support the argument that globalization not only benefits firms in terms of increasing opportunities, but also hurts business performance due to higher competitive threats. This study also confirms that globalization is a universal phenomenon and that firms are inevitably affected either positively or negatively. While global market opportunities are likely to enhance firm performance, global competitive threats tend to worsen it. Therefore, managers must be aware of such double-edged effects, and try to capitalize on opportunities while converting threats into opportunities. Appropriate strategies, such as developing networking relationships with other firms, must be carefully designed and implemented in order to take advantage of global market opportunities and minimize the threats from increasing competitive intensity.