Archives-December 

Pollution of inland waters by agricultural, industrial and municipal wastes is a global problem and a common phenomenon in developing countries. These anthropogenic activities within the landscape facilitate the transfer of nutrients into aquatic ecosystems, sometimes leading to eutrophication which has adverse effects on aquatic ecosystems. Deposition of nutrient-rich sediments washed into rivers and stream is common during rainy season in places where the riparian buffer zones have been destroyed. River Isiukhu watershed land use comprises sugar-cane farm, forested, peri-urban and mixed agriculture from upstream to downtream. The research employed stratified random sampling. Nitrate-nitrogen was determined through ultra-violet screening spectrophotometric method while phosphate-phosphorus through ascorbic acid method. Data analyses were done using Statistical Analysis System, version 9.1. Land use had a significant effect of both nitrate-nitrogen (F=1372.25, p<0.05) and phosphate-phosphorus concentrations. Peri-urban and mixed agricultural land uses recorded higher concentrations of these two nutrients while the forest land use recorded the lowest. The study showed that the type of riparian land use land cover influences nutrient concentrations in a water body and is an important area to be focused on by watershed managers.

The hexavalent chromium present in waste water has adverse affect on aquatic life and humans. Various methods are available for the removal of hexavalent chromium includes chemical precipitation, ion exchange, reduction, electrochemical precipitation, solvent extraction, membrane separation, evaporation, foam separation and biosorption. Among these, biosorption is one of the low cost separation technique for the removal of chromium using agricultural waste as adsorbents which are cheap and readily available and also has the advantage of practical replacement to conventional processes. The kinetic models and adsorption isotherms for the efficient removal of hexavalent chromium are presented from various sources. The present review elaborate the findings of hexavalent chromium removal with the maximum metal uptake, adsorption parameters using agricultural wastes as adsorbents

The English language teaching tradition has been subjected to a tremendous change, especially throughout the twentieth century. Perhaps more than any other discipline, this tradition has been practiced, in various adaptations, in language classrooms all around the world for centuries. While the teaching of Maths or Physics, has, to a greater or lesser extent, remained the same, this is hardly the case with English or language teaching in general. In the Western world back in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, foreign language learning was associated with the learning of Latin and Greek, both supposed to promote their speakers' intellectuality (Cercignani, 1981). At the time, it was of vital importance to focus on grammatical rules, syntactic structures, along with rote memorisation of vocabulary and translation of literary texts. There was no provision for the oral use of the languages under study; after all, both Latin and Greek were not being taught for oral communication but for the sake of their speakers' becoming "scholarly?" or creating an illusion of "erudition." Late in the nineteenth century, the Classical Method came to be known as the Grammar Translation Method, which offered very little beyond an insight into the grammatical rules attending the process of translating from the second to the native language (Malloy, 2005).

Ultrasonic velocities, viscosities and densities of binary liquid mixtures containing dimethyl carbonate and cresols (ortho, meta and para) have been measured at temperatures T= (303.15, 308.15, 313.15 and 318.15) K over the entire mole fraction range of dimethyl carbonate. The theoretical values of ultrasonic velocity were evaluated using Nomoto’s relation (UNR), impedance relation (UIR), ideal mixing relation (UIMR), Jungie’s relation (UJR), and Rao’s specific velocity relation(UR).The molecular interaction parameter (?) has been evaluated from the values of experimental and theoretical velocities. The experimental data of viscosity is used to test the applicability of semi empirical relations of various viscosity models like Grunberg–Nissan, Katti–Chaudhri, Heric–Brewer and Hind et al. for the systems studied. On the basis of the values of interaction parameters (d) of these viscosity models and interaction parameter (?) obtained from various velocity models ,the nature of molecular interactions between the components of mixtures have been explained.

The present study focuses on the role of remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) in assessment of changes in vegetation cover, between 1973 and 2010, in the Salem revenue division, Salem district of Tamilnadu, India. The trend of vegetal cover changes over the time span of 37 years, was precisely analysed using Satellite images. The study revealed that the vegetal cover was 1325.99 and 1199.04 sqkm in 1973 and 2010 respectively. It was noticed that vegetal cover has decreased in 2010, because of the urban expansion led deforestation. It also revealed that the vegetal cover loss is due to expansion of cultivation and human interference. It is envisaged that the study would prove the usefulness of Remote Sensing and GIS in forest restoration planning.

The FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra of 2-hydroxy-4-methyl-3-nitropyridine (HMNP) have been recorded and analyzed. The optimized geometry, and harmonic vibrational wave numbers of HMNP have been investigated with the help of B3LYP scaled quantum mechanical (SQM) method supplemented with 6-311++G** basis set. The infrared and Raman spectra were predicted theoretically from the calculated intensities. The observed and simulated spectra were found to be well comparable.

The FT-IR and FT Raman spectra of 2,4-dihydroxy-3-nitropyridine (DHNP) molecule have been recorded in the region 4000-400cm-1 and 3500-50cm-1 respectively. Optimized geometrical parameters, harmonic vibrational frequencies and depolarization ratio have been computed by HF and density functional theory (DFT) using B3LYP/6-311++G(d,p) method and basis sets. The observed FT-IR and FT-Raman vibrational frequencies are analysed and compared with theoretically predicted vibrational frequencies. The calculated HOMO and LUMO energies shows that charge transfer occur within molecule. Unambiguous vibrational assignments of all the fundamentals was made using the total energy distribution (TED).

The present study was aimed to find out the relationship of marital adjustment between working and non-working married women. Sample of the study consisted of 100 working and non-working married women (working married women = 50, non-working married women = 50). Their age ranged between 25 to 46 years. Urdu Translation of Dyadic Adjustment Scale (Naseer, 2002) was administered to measure the Marital Adjustment of the entire sample. Results showed that that the non-working married women are better adjusted than working women. Working married women were facing more problems in their married life as compared to non-working married women; non-working married women are better adjusted than working women.

Medical diagnosis is very much essential for the human beings to survive. Earlier the diagnosis, lesser is the pain. The disease unattended will lead to extreme conditions and greater pain, loss of health and high expenditure. This paper focuses on the comprehensive scalability analysis conducted on two kinds of thyroid dataset: original and synthetic. The results obtained with original dataset consisting of 215 instances with 5 features have been compared with the results obtained with synthetic dataset consisting of 1075 instances with 25 features. Initially the features were reduced to 3 features and 13 features on both the cases respectively. Subsequently classification accuracy is obtained using top most performing classifiers namely C4.5 and Multi layer perceptron. The results obtained are promising and the dimensionality reduction technique has proved better for smaller datasets as well as for larger datasets.

The development of polymer solar cells has improved power-conversion efficiencies from 3% to almost 9% in recent progress. Based on semiconducting polymers, these solar cells are fabricated from solution-processing techniques and have unique prospects for achieving low-cost solar energy harvesting, owing to their material and manufacturing advantages. The potential applications of polymer solar cells are broad, ranging from flexible solar modules and semi transparent solar cells in windows to building applications and even photon recycling in liquid-crystal displays. The various device structures used in organic polymer solar cells are reviewed. The operating principles behind these devices are explained in order to provide the reasoning behind the different structures and bilayer and bulk heterojunction devices discussed.