Archives-December 

Table of contents for the month of May 2019

Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma is an undifferentiated carcinoma with histological features similar to undifferentiated, non-keratinizing carcinoma of the nasopharynx. Lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the urinary bladder is uncommon with a reported incidence of 0.4%- 1.3% of all bladder cancer. We report a case of a 68 year-old-man with a muscle-invasive lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the bladder who was treated with radical cystectomy with 12 months follow up.

The levels of minerals and fatty acids in Clarias gariepinus, Channa striatus and Tilapia zillii were determined using standard analytical techniques. Results showed high levels of most of the minerals especially sodium 49.9-84.6 mg/100g and potassium 67.5-93.2mg/100g. The zinc contents (21.3-36.4 mg/100g) were above the recommended daily allowance (RDA) whereas, the iron levels (10.5-18.4mg/100g) fell within the range of 10-15mg, 18mg and 12mg requirements for children, women and men respectively. The most concentrated saturated fatty acid in the samples was palmitic acid (22.3 – 23.5%) and it was equally the most concentrated of all the fatty acids determined. The total saturated fatty acid (SFA) ranged between 35.0 – 38.1%. The monounsaturated fatty acid (MUFA) ranged between 38.3-39.4% whereas, polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ranged between 22.5-26.1%. Total unsaturated fatty acid (MUFA + PUFA) range was 61.9 – 64.9%. MUFA/SFA range was 1.03 – 1.11 whereas PUFA / SFA ranged between 0.59 - 0.75. This range is reasonable enough to discourage the development of atherosclerosis. The n-6 / n-3 ratios in C. striatus (7.75) and T. zillii (5.78) compare favourably with the recommended range of 5-10 whereas, that of C. gariepinus (274) was much higher.

Mining frequent item sets from data streams is of great interest recently in many applications. Sliding windows are used in many applications to overcome an important problem with data streams i.e. unbound size. In this paper we propose an effective transaction based one-pass algorithm that uses a circular queue to implement the transaction-sensitive sliding window. The proposed algorithm, FIM_CQTransSWin has three phases representation of transaction, maintenance of the sliding window and generation of frequent item sets in the current sliding window. In the first phase, each transaction is read from the data stream and is converted into a decimal number based on the items present in this transaction. In the second phase, the decimal numbers representing the transactions are put in a circular queue with the front pointer indicating the oldest transaction and the rear pointer indicating the latest transaction. When the circular queue becomes full the oldest transaction is removed using dequeue operation and then the new transaction is appended at the rear end. The first and second phases are repeated indefinitely as long as the transactions keep arriving in the data stream. The third phase gets activated when the user requests for the frequent item sets. When the user request arrives, the frequent item sets in the current sliding window are generated using the candidate generation approach of the apriori algorithm and MASK operation.

Solar parabolic trough collectors are the most useful technology that directly supports renewable energy for conventional energy for water heating. But it is observed that due to ambient temperature many convective losses occur which effects the temperature variation. This article shows the practical work for increasing temperature to cover it by thin transparent glass plate which creates the oven effect and decreases its convective losses which increases the temperature and finally it increase its efficiency.

Lack of good research proposal and its presentation is a growing concern in academics researches worldwide. This has been linked to increased poor research writing skills and unavailability of relevant materials including presentation and interpretations of researches. What makes a good research proposal and the basic ideas and steps of the research proposal in scientific investigations were lacking also. The nature, scope and role of research proposal was conceived with the mind to attempt to overcome this non-unique approaches into researches but from different disciplines by providing a-one-stop article for good research proposal writing and presentation. In order to get the above fulfilled, the concept and procedures of good research proposal writing were examined and explained. The basic steps and the importance of research proposal were equally outlined. Good examples were used in illustrations and recommendations were also advanced.

Granule size is used as a parameter and as a quality specification by manufacturers while designing a cost- effective prilling tower for obtaining a standard granule size. In this study, we obtained a standard 2 mm diameter granule using an alternate prilling method other than those available in the industry.

Black liquor the main waste remained from paper industry composed mainly of some organic compounds as a soluble salts and a high portion of sodium silicate. The idea of this paper is to transfer the inorganic part from this waste into useful product (calcium silicate hydrate) which has a lot of known applications nowadays. The preparation of calcium silicate from black liquor was done through direct reaction between the black liquor, calcium carbonate and calcium hydroxide and boiling for about 2 hrs. This method was known as hydrothermal method. The obtained materials as well as the raw materials were investigated using both IR and XRD analyses.

The nutrient composition of processed minor millets was investigated by various cooking methods like wet heating (boiling, blanching, soaking and germination) and dry-heating (roasting) and to compare the antioxidant activity of processed minor millets in relationship with their total phenolic content. Foxtail and proso millet were subjected to different processing methods; samples were dried and powdered into fine flours, respectively. Standard methods were used to evaluate the flours for moisture, ash, protein, fibre, iron, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium and zinc. The antioxidant activity was estimated with respect to DPPH radical scavenging activity; FRAP assay and reducing power method. The soaked samples of foxtail and proso millet showed higher scavenging activity which was found to be (51.06% and 52.12%) respectively. The antioxidant power of roasted foxtail millet and blanched proso millet had significant increase ranging about (317.5 ? mol and 236.8 ? mol) respectively using FRAP assay. The blanched samples had higher reducing power indicating enhanced antioxidant activity i.e. (0.426 and 0.418) respectively. The phytochemical content was determined qualitatively. The blanched and germinated millet samples possessed higher antioxidant activity.

There has been an increasing level of interest, among government and industry constituents, in the growth of the SME sector in India. There is today a recognized need felt for the transformation of firms in this sector from a hitherto ‘family-owned-and-run’ orientation to a more ‘professionally managed’ one. This transformational process unfolds several challenges to the organizations in the SME sector. This exploratory study, on a sample of auto-components firms in the SME sector, located in the Tamilnadu Capital Region of Chennai, has the objective of furthering our understanding of the specific challenges faced by these organizations. The case-study method has been used to carry out this study. Areas in this sector that need immediate attention have been identified. A couple of propositions based on this study, related to the source of organizational transformation and to the major challenge to firms in this industry, have also been put forth.