Archives-December 

This paper describes a research methodology which was developed to study the implementation of Hospital Autonomy Reforms in Pakistan. The research attempted to answer two questions: what happened? And why did it happen? (with regards to the implementation process of hospital autonomy reforms). The environment for this study was very political and characterized by high power distance and low rule of law. Moreover it had an aura of formality and reservation. Few respondents were willing to share information due to their status and busyness. The researcher had to develop a strategy to be flexible and innocuous to be able to accumulate relevant information. Moreover, respondents would rarely honor any official request for information about the process, so the researcher had to use personal connections to gain entry into the environment and to extract data. Main stakeholders were donors, politicians, bureaucrats and doctors. Long unstructured interviews were conducted with them. For the second question, the technique of sense making was used to find out why reform adopted the specific strategy that it took. Use of contextual historical back ground data was made in this regards.

With the huge upsurge of information in day-to-day’s life, it has become difficult to assemble relevant information in nick of time. But people, always are in dearth of time, they need everything quick. Hence clustering was introduced to gather the relevant information in a cluster. There are several algorithms for clustering information out of which in this paper, we accomplish K-means and K-Medoids clustering algorithm and a comparison is carried out to find which algorithm is best for clustering. On the best clusters formed, document summarization is executed based on sentence weight to focus on key point of the whole document, which makes it easier for people to ascertain the information they want and thus read only those documents which is relevant in their point of view.

We are very happy to announce that from 28th June 2019, Dr. Kumaraswamy, Gandla has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Pharmaceutical Analysis. Dr. Kumaraswamy, Gandla is working as Professor of Pharmaceutical Analysis in Care College of Pharmacy, Warangal (Telangana). The appointment of Dr. Kumaraswamy, Gandla as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

We are very happy to announce that from 23rd January 2021, Dr.M.K.Subramanian has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Physics. Dr.M.K.Subramanian is working as Associate Professor & Head, PG and Research Department of Physics, Thiruvalluvar Government Arts College, Rasipuram, TamilNadu, India. The appointment of Dr.M.K.Subramanian as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

This project investigate the ability of banana musa L peel for adsorption of lead and copper ions from refinery petroleum wastewater. The main functional groups in banana peel were identified by FTIR, Elements composition of used medium has been characterized by Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP). Lead and copper were determined in refinery petroleum wastewater and their standard solutions before and after passing on banana peel medium by using Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry technique (AAS). The adsorption isotherm fitted by Freundlich model at 38 oC and pH=5.5. The FTIR spectrum revealed that the main functional groups in banana peel are OH, C-H stretching, carboxylic acids and amino groups. Elements composition of banana peel medium was found to be Fe, Cu, K, Li, Mg, Mn, Mo, Na, Ni, P, Pd, Sr, Ti, V and Zn. The banana peel showed high ability to uptake lead and copper ions from refinery petroleum wastewater and their standard solutions. The R2 of leaner shape of adsorption isotherm for lead and copper ions was found to be 0.999 and 1 respectively. The concentration of lead and copper ions in refinery wastewater was reduced from 0.091, 0.060 ppm to 0.027 , 0.013 ppm respectively, after being passed through banana peel medium.

Hybrid composites developed by combining natural fibers/natural fiber and natural fibers/synthetic fibers with epoxy, polyester, phenolic, poly vinyl ester, etc., resins are well established. In this present study, hybrid composites were prepared with banana fiber, sisal fiber and with bamboo charcoal by hand layup method according to ASTM standards. The various weight percentages of fibers in the resin and bamboo charcoal were used to gain insights into the effect of fiber content and charcoal filler on the mechanical properties (Impact, Tensile and Flexural). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to examine the morphology of these materials.

An attempt was made to investigate the effect of copper on germination, protein content and peroxidase activity in Phaseolus vulgaris. Increasing copper concentration does not show significant effect on seed germination. An increase in total protein concentration was found with increase in copper concentration however the increase was more prominent in shoots. Peroxidase was found to enhance in shoots whereas in roots the activity increases upto 50µM after which the activity was found to decrease.

Shea butter contributes minimally to edible fat supply due to variations in product quality, low yield and acceptability. Research reports have not related these to processing methods which vary from place to place. Effect of heat treatment methods on yield, sensory quality and some properties of manually extracted shea butters from fried, toasted, boiled and parboiled sheanuts pastes were evaluated using standard methods. Yield, sensory attributes and characteristics of shea butter from same sheanuts varied depending on method of heat treatment. Fried sheanuts had highest % shea butter yield (40.80±0.84) and saponification value (197.14±0.03). Boiled sheanuts butter was organoleptically preferred.

The effect of DOP plasticizer percentage on limiting oxygen index and thermal stability of plasticised PVC was investigated in this paper. DOP was added PVC with various quantities (20, 30, and 50) pphr. LOI and thermal stability instruments used for estimating LOI and thermal stability of plasticised PVC as a function to DOP percentage. The results showed that the thermal stability of plasticised PVC was improved by increasing DOP percentage, but in the same time has a reverse behavior where the LOI decreases as the DOP percentage increases.

A study was carried out at the Toxicology laboratory of the Department of Crop and Environmental protection, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology Ogbomoso, to determine the effects of powdered castor oil seed (Ricinus communisL.Euphorbiaceae) on kidney, liver, spleen of albino rats. The rats were in five groups, which were replicated three (3) times. The castor oil seed was turned to powdery form using pestle and mortal. Four feed formulations were used;powdered castor oil seed and commercial rat feed mixed in ratio 1:1,1:2,1:5, 1:10and ordinary commercial rat feed, which serves as the control.These formulations were given to four separate groups of rats for a period of three days.Thebehaviour of the rats was monitored over the three day period. The histology of the kidney, liver andspleen which was initially preserved in formalin was later analysed.Compared with the control the hemorrhagic and necrotic tissues in rats administered with ratio 1:10 and ratio 1:5 showed mild disruption. In ratio 1:2 fed group, hemorrhagic and necrotic tissues showed complete disruption while group fed with 1:1 were extensively disrupted. The results also relayed changes in the body weight and the spleen weight where significant highest, spleen weight were recorded for the rats fed with commercial feed (control) than the rats fed with the treated feeds. The rats fed with ratio 1:1 (treated feed) had the least spleen weight compared to the animals fed with treated feed of ratio 1:2 and 1:5 respectively. No significant difference was observed in the kidney fresh weight for all the treatments. Also, there is significant highest liver weight in rats fed with control feed when compared with rat fed with treated feed, followed least concentration ( 1:10 ) of the treated feed. The observation revealed that a powdered castor oil seed to commercial rat feed can be effectively used as rodenticide and it is clearly seen that the function of a powdered castor oil seed affected the internal organ tested.