Archives-December 

We are very happy to announce that from 17th April 2017, Dr. Surya Deo Choudhary has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Dr. Surya Deo Choudhary working as Associate Professor, Department of ECE, NIET Greater Noida, India. The appointment of Dr. Surya Deo Choudhary as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

Cadmium sulphide (CdS) thin films were deposited from different cadmium salts by acidic chemical bath deposition (CBD) method. The effect of cadmium source on CdS thin films by thickness, optical properties, structural properties, functional groups and surface morphology with elemental composition were studied. Film growth rate and band gap were found to the sensitive to the Cd source used. The transmittance data analysis indicates that the optical band gap ranging from 2.37 eV to 2.43 eV was deduced. The XRD study reveals that the films were cubic in nature. SEM with EDS data shows that all the particles were spherical and average atomic ratio of Cd/S increases with the decrease in particle sizes.

The study was based on the premise that the business environment is influenced by different factors that affect corporate governance on the performance of the organization. The research is carried out in Mombasa County; the main objective is to analyze the effects of corporate governance on the performance of an organization. The site of the study is at Wartsila eastern Africa limited which is located outside the Town center of Mombasa. The study used a descriptive, explanatory, comparative, and associational and cross-sectional research designs data. A sample of 75 respondents was to provide the data, the proportion of the respondents was, 5 from top level executive, 20 from middle level managers and 50 from low level employees. Findings on the relationship between Corporate Governance variables and board roles indicated significant positive relationship.

Bovine blood/rumen content mixture (BBRCM) is an abattoir by-product that provides a cheap source of livestock feed. It is a source of protein which is readily available at the slaughter house. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of broiler chicks fed bovine blood/ rumen content mixture (BBRCM) as partial replacement for soybean meal. Experimental diets T1 which served as the control contained 0% BBRCM, diets T2, T3 and T4 contained 20%, 40% and 60% BBRCM respectively. Sixty (60) five weeks old Anak 2000 broiler chicks were randomly assigned to the four dietary treatments in a completely randomized design (CRD). Each treatment was replicated three times with five birds per replicate. The experiment lasted for 35 days. Results showed that there were significant differences in the growth performance of the birds on the treatment groups in all the measurements recorded. Birds fed T4 diet had the highest weight gain and the best feed conversion ratio. There was a significant (p<0.05) increase in weight gain as the inclusion level increased. The feed intake of birds fed diet T1 was significantly (p<0.05) higher than those fed other treatment diets while T4 recorded the least. There were significant (p<0.05) differences on the feed conversion ratio of the birds fed diets T1, T2, T3 and T4. T1 had the poorest feed conversion ratio. Organ weights were not significantly affected (p>0.05). The result of the experiment showed that bovine blood/rumen content mixture can replace soybean meal in the diet at up to 60% level without any negative effect. Economics of production showed that bovine blood/rumen content mixture were profitable as regards to the cost of feed per kg weight gain and thus cost savings. Key note: BBRCM (Bovine Blood Rumen Content Mixture), carcass characteristics, economics of production.

Buccoadhesive disk of diltiazem hydrochloride were prepare by solvent casting method. Sodium alginate was used as bioadhesive polymer. Polyethylene glycol 4000 and mannitol were used as solubilizers. One of each formulation was cross-linked with calcium chloride (0.1 % w/v). The disks were evaluated for surface pH, swelling index, surface diameter study, in-vitro drug release, ex-vivo buccoadhesion and ex-vivo residence time on sheep buccal mucosa. Studies were carried out to evaluate the effect of cross-linking agent on the swelling and buccoadhesive characteristics of sodium alginate buccal disks. Addition of solubilizers in less concentration (0.5%) improved the drug release without erosion of the disks (batch F2 and F4). Buccal disks containing PEG – 4000 had less buccoadhesion than disks containing mannitol. PEG-4000 containing disks showed higher in-vitro drug release rate than mannitol containing disks. It was found that crosslinked disks (batch F1 and F3) of sodium alginate controlled the swelling profile; eroded well during release study without affecting the buccoadhesion of the disks. Cross-linked disks showed more than 80 % drug release within 3 hours by erosion-diffusion mechanism followed by first order release kinetic. Good in-vitro drug release and in-vitro buccal permeation was observed in selected buccal patch.

Oral mucositis is one of the most common complaints of patients who had chemotherapy. Different of mouthwashes have been used to alleviate the symptoms but none of these agents help in wound healing. This study evaluates the effectiveness of phenytoin mouthwash on these ulcers. In this cross sectional study oral mucosa of 40 patients undergoing chemotherapy due to blood malignancy, was examined. All patient with oral mucositis grade 2 and 3(NCI scale) during 2 weeks after chemotherapy were assessed for severity and duration of lesions at three intervals (0, 3, 14 days) by using serial photographs and clinical observation. Oral pain severity was recorded daily by a visual analogue scale (VAS). Patient rinsed 10 ml of PHT syrup in their mouth for one minute, three or four times a day and then expectorated. To describe the qualitative data, simple frequency, means, standard deviations was used. The study population consisted of 17 female (42.5%). and 23 male (57.5%) with mean age of 29 years old .The most common affected area was buccal mucosa. During two weeks after treatment, oral ulcers disappeared totally and pain relief was seen in all subjects gradually. There is no any side effect after using of topical phenytoin in this period. Phenytoin mouthwash accelerated healing of oral ulcers due to mucositis and decreased pain.

This study was performed to evaluation of Water Stress and Organic matter simultaneously on some morphological characteristics of German chamomile under two mineral and biological N fertilizer treatments. Experiment done as RCBD Experimental design in split split design with 3 factors and 3 replications. First factor included organic fertilizer (application and no application), second factor was biologic nitrogen (application and no application) and third factor included drought stress (80%FC and 50%FC). At the end of study some properties were evaluated such as: Height, Stem diameter, Branch stem number, Flower number, Dry yield of flower and Essential oil%. Using organic matter led to increasing 22, 25, 28, 18, 4 and 9 percent of Height, Stem diameter, Branch stem number, Flower number, Dry yield of flower and Essential oil% respectively. Application of biologic fertilizer had significant on all characteristics, significant reductions were observed by application of drought stress, So Height, Stem diameter, Branch stem number, Flower number, Dry yield of flower and Essential oil% were decreased 22, 23, 35, 50, 60 and 4% in compare to control.

Lack of social and emotional skills is perhaps the most undermining problem that students with hearing impairments confront; by taking that into consideration, the goal of the present study is to appraise the effectiveness of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) on the emotions management of students with hearing loss studying in normal schools. This study is based on an experimental method and a pre-test and post-test design has been applied to the control group. To that end, 30 male and female hearing-impaired students from junior and senior high schools covered by Tehran’s Department of Exceptional Children Education were handpicked through multistage sampling and those who met the research criteria were randomly placed in two control and experimental groups and after a pretest, the social-emotional learning program was taught to the experimental group in 12 sessions. To measure the emotions management, Schutte Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire was used. The findings of the present research display a significant difference (p< 0/0001) between the control and experimental groups with regard to emotions management. The conclusion can be drawn that the Social-Emotional Learning program is efficient in the emotions management of students with hearing impairments in regular schools.

This study investigated relationship between Emotional intelligence and willingness to communication in speaking ability. To this end, three types of instruments were applied to collect research data, i.e., Mccrosky’s (1992) Willingness to Communicate Scale, Bar-On’s (1997) Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) as well as a final achievement exam administered at the end of the term to gather students English speaking grades. For the analysis of the data correlation and independent samples t- test to test the hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance were used. The findings indicated that there was a relationship between speaking ability and emotional intelligence. Also, there was a positive relationship between speaking ability and willingness to communication. On the other hand, there was not a significant difference between females and males on the speaking task, emotional intelligence and willingness to communicate.

Self-Organizing Map (SOM) can be used to quickly create a qualitative overview of the data. It maps nonlinear statistical relationships among different variables of a high dimensional input data on a low dimensional network, preserving most of the topographic relationships from the input space. Hence, for dealing the complex problem of separation of incipient faults of highly overlapping nature, an epistemological decision making approach using SOM is proposed in this paper.