Archives-December 

The main objective of the present work is to conduct the computational study of steady flow through the air intake system of a multicylinder SI engine. The CAD geometry of the air intake system of the multi cylinder in line engine was created. Two modification on the induction side one with circular cross section (Path A) and another with rectangular cross section (Path B) were carried out. All the three models are simulated using ANSYS FLUENT, CFD code for the computational study, steady state flow conduction was assumed and the analysis is carried out assuming the intake air flows steady into the system at mean piston speed of the engine. Flow field is predicted by solving the Navier strokes equation and the turbulence is modelled using k-? RNG model. Good agreement is observed from predicted result.

Rural marketing determines the carrying out of business activities bringing in the flow of goods from urban sectors to the rural regions of the country as well as the marketing of various products manufactured by the non-agricultural workers from rural to urban areas. The predominantly rural character of India’s national economy is reflected in the very high proportion of its population living in rural area’With more than 700 million people living in rural areas, in some 5,80,000 villages, about two—third of its workforce was engaged in agriculture and allied activities with a contribution of 29 percent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), India’s economy is predominantly rural in character. India’s economy can be thought of as comprising of two main sectors, namely, the Rural Sector and the Urban Sector. The Rural sector is composed of two main sub sectors i.e. the agricultural sub sector and the non— agricultural sub sector For the past decade, business visionaries have argued that these people, dubbed the “Base of the Pyramid”, make up an enormous, untapped market. Some of the world's biggest, savviest corporations have aimed to address their basic needs — by selling them everything from clean water to electricity and from FMCG to consumer durables. “Improving the lives of billions of people at the bottom of the economic pyramid is a noble endeavour. It can also be a profitable one.” C.K. Prahlad. The paper studies the changing scenario of Indian rural markets and implies some suggestions in improving the marketing strategy in rural selling and market promotion. This paper is an attempt to provide some mettle solutions to these challenges as it studies and follows some successful rural marketing strategies of modern times. This is particular in context of rural sales strategies rural promotion mix.

In present study shows the seasonal biochemical variations in different tissues of M. meretrix. In summer and monsoon seasons the glycogen content was decreased as compared with winter season. Glycogen level fell during spawning and later recovered with gametogenesis. Protein content in different tissues in winter and monsoon season was high as compared with summer season. Protein contents values observed high during the period of spawning. In summer and monsoon seasons, the lipid content was increased but decreased in winter season. The lipid content level was high at the period of spawning.

Incidence of guava orchards decline was surveyed in different localities of District Larkana. The samples were collected from trees showing clear disease attack. Pure culture was obtained by transferring single spore/ piece of mycelium to PDA plates. Identification was made by using microscopic characters and taxonomical keys. The fungal pathogens responsible for guava orchard decline were fusarium oxysporium f.sp. psidii. and Botryodiplodia theobromae.

Of the several leaf surface characters, leaf architecture has drawn relatively less attention when compared to the epidermal studies which are in the limelight especially after the initiation of SEM studies. In the last decade, with the publication of Hickey’s work on the dicotyledons (1973, 1979) a new thought was provided to this field. A perusal of the past literature revealed that there are no specific reports on the leaf architectural features of the Commiphora wightti Arnott belonging to the family Burseraceae. Leaf architecture act as a pharmacognostic tool for identifying the adulterant because adulteration and misidentification of medicinal plants can cause serious health problems to consumers and legal problems for the pharmaceutical industries. Therefore, the present investigation has been carried out to provide a detailed account of the same besides its evaluation for taxonomic purpose which showed apical orientation, simple leaf organization, lamina and base is asymmetrical, coriaceous texture without any gland. Type of venation is pinnate craspedodromous and semicraspedromous, higher vein order of the leaf is 5⁰.

Proteases are one of the major causative agents used in the biological systems for the inter conversion of protenacious matter. This fact has led to the exploitation of especially bacterial proteases for their use in various industries and in such scenario, the present study explored the potential of the newly isolated soil bacterial isolates, B1, B3, B4 & G2 for the production of proteases using protease specific broth media at 30oC & 120rpm for five days by shake flask culturing method. In the results, the bacterial isolate B3 has emerged as the best protease producer strain with ~52U of enzyme activity by 48Hrs of cultivation and this B1strain was identified as Pseudomonas sp. SPSU B3, the other bacterial strain B4 was found as species with an extended period 72hrs of non-growth associated protease production (~45U) and this strain was identified as Aneurinibacillus migulanus sp. SPSU B4. The other two bacterial strains B1 & G2 were also found to be of comparable protease activity and hence deserve further studies on optimization and production of protease along with the strains of B3 & B4.

Ionically conducting polymer electrolytes are important materials for practical applications in solar cells, high energy density solid-state batteries, super capacitors, fuel cells, sensors and electrochemical devices. Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) have been attracting intensive interest for scientific research and industrial applications owing to their low fabrication cost, environmentally friendly operation and relatively high efficiency. In order to improve the efficiency of DSSCs, many efforts on modification of polymer gel electrolyte have been made through synthesizing new polymers or adding inorganic nanofillers. Hence, we report on the synthesis of polymer nanocomposite electrolyte consisting of polyvinylpyrrolidone-polyethylene glycol (PVP-PEG)/nano ZnO/KI/I2. Zinc oxide nanoparticle synthesized by sol-gel method is used as inorganic nanofiller. Polymeric nanocomposite electrolyte was prepared by blending polymer with ZnO nanoparticle using solution-casting technique. The property of nanocomposites depends mainly on the chemistry of polymer matrices. The dispersion of nanoparticles in the polymer matrices is a general prerequisite for achieving desired mechanical and physical properties. ZnO nanoparticles and polymer nanocomposite were characterised by Ultraviolet-Visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infra Red (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analysis and Field Emission-Scanning Electron Microscopy (FE-SEM). The effect of structural modification of material on conductivity of polymer and its composite was evaluated and compared by SEM and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The polymer nanocomposite electrolyte synthesised have its practical application in the fabrication of DSSC.

In this era of knowledge-based economy, it has been recognized that industrial competitiveness is determined by the presence of technology-intensive industries so as to produce high value-added products through innovation activities. Meanwhile, transformation of the economic structure in Indonesia has set out its manufacturing industry as a pillar of the national economy. Unfortunately, Indonesia's manufacturing industry output is dominated by low technology intensity industries. Considering the importance of technological learning and technological capability to improve innovation performance, using structural equation modelling, this research attempts to model the relationship of technological learning, technological capability, and innovation performance of Indonesia’s manufacturing industry. The empirical model obtained indicates that Indonesia’s manufacturing firm’s innovation performance is not mainly determined by the whole comprehensive process of technological learning. Innovation performance is also not derived mainly from technological capability building. The technological learning activities are not intended to increase firm’s technological capability but more directly to increase innovation performance. Nevertheless, further study is needed to improve the empirical model and obtain stronger justification

Improved agricultural technologies are found to be important in improving the well-being of rural households in Ethiopia. However, the adoption of these technologies is low in the country. Thus, identifying factors that influences farmers' decisions to adopt in their geographical and social contexts is pertinent. The study was undertaken in three purposefully selected rural Kebeles of Tarmaber Woreda namely Koso-ber, Yitam-na-kosta and Yizaba-na-woyin. Farm households categorized into worse-off/poor (41.5%), medium (52.2%) and better-off/rich (6.7%) based on such indicators as land size, livestock holdings (mainly oxen for plough), the number of times that a family feeds its members per day, housing conditions, land renting and/or sharecropping arrangement, household labour force availability, loan status, membership of cooperatives and ability to send children to school. Income loss, vulnerability to crop failure and asset depletion, alcoholism and social isolation are locally believed causes of poverty and extension input adoption. The survey result from cross-section sample of 125 farm households shows that educational status, availability of labour access to extension service, size of land holding, oxen possession, membership of cooperatives, and perceived distance of the market were found to be positive correlates of adoption of chemical fertilizers and improved seeds. The public services should reach poor households in remote area.

Soil, plant and indicators are the main criteria to recognize the function of natural ecosystems and evaluate their potentials. Rangeland ecosystem contains various patches with different functions. The structural and functional characteristics of fertilized patches in Bozdaghy rangeland, in North-Khorasan Province was measured and analyzed in this study. A group of measurable and simple indices of landscape function analysis (LFA) methods were used to evaluate these characteristics. The data were measured from seven land unit which is developed from overlaying of geology map on the dem and slope map. In this research the length and width of ecological patches by the forms of Grass, forb, shrub and bare soil with litter measured. Also we measured 11 soil surface parameters on three, 50 meters transects in the seven mentioned regions. These 11 parameters are belonging to 3 major attributes of soil: Stability, infiltration and nutrients. Statistical analysis of data using the software landscape function analysis, carried. Using multivariate analysis of variance and Duncan's test, functional characteristics associated with each of the land units were studied. Stability, infiltration and nutrients indices of Shrub, forbs and Grass showed significant differences in seven land unit (p<0.05). shrub was most important ecological indicators of areas.