Archives-December 

We are very happy to announce that from 23rd April 2013, Prof. Mohammad Mehdi Rashidi has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Heat and mass transfer, Thermodynamics, Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and Nonlinear analysis. Prof. Mohammad Mehdi Rashidi is currently working as Professor of Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran. The appointment of Prof. Mohammad Mehdi Rashidi as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to elixirpublishers@gmail.com. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief

Although Ethiopia is working hard to exploit its enormous potential of beekeeping through the introduction of improved hives and capacity building, the country has been challenged by absence of appropriate queen rearing practice. This paper tries to review existing situations of queen rearing and colony multiplication in Tigray region of Ethiopia. In order to the bridge gaps and promote beekeeping in the region, higher education and research institutions should focus on the establishment of bee centers committed for research and bee breeding programs whereas the extension should target on capacity building for beekeepers to accomplish queen rearing and bee breeding effectively.

The adverse effects of erosion may be not much noticeable in short term, yet it will be important in long term. Soil loss and erosion is one major factor interfering reduced fertility, reduced products, deposition of materials in waterways, irrigation canals and rivers, a decrease in reservoir capacity of dams and their reduced life, floods, environment pollution and road closures. The current research was carried out using GIS technique and PSIAC model in order to estimate the erosion and sediment of Sardasht watershed located in Kohkiluyeh& BoyerAhmad province with an area of 5940 hectares. PSIAC studies erosion status and sediment production in a business unit based on the strength and weakness of 9 environmental factors including; geology, soil, climate, runoff, topography, land cover, land use, surface erosion and river erosion. Here, layers corresponding to model factors are prepared in GIS environment and, in the end, the amount of sediment is measured using spatial analysis and overlapping layers of information. In order to measure particular erosion, SDR index (ratio of precipitation evolution) was used and 27.88 tons per hectare per year was estimated as erosion amount for the area considered. In the evaluation of soil erosion and sediment production of Sardasht basin, among factors influencing the erosion, land cover and land use with highest ratio (15.24) are first and weather with lowest ratio (4.11) is the last in rank. Qualitative classification of basin based on PSIAC model guide shows that the basin as a whole is located in high erosion class. The approximation of results from the model considered (27.88 tons per hectare per year) with real statistical analysis (30.3 tons per hectare per year) shows that currently, this model is effective for the basin.

This paper is focused on selection of optimal parameters in drilling of Aluminium Metal Matrix Composites (AMMC) using “Fuzzy Logic”. AMMC samples are prepared based on selected material parameters and drilling experiments are conducted on these samples as per Taguchi OA L27 which is designed based on material and drilling parameters. The experimental results: power consumption, temperature, surface roughness, and burr height are measured for each experimental run. These results are analyzed using Fuzzy Logic and optimal parameters combination is identified. The identified combination of influential factors is tested through confirmation experiment and is satisfactory.

Disorders of sexual function seriously disrupt the experience of women followed by periodic but unfortunately they are encor taboo hemodialysis. The aim of our study is to determine the prevalence and find a correlation between clinical and biological parameters on the one hand and sexual disorders observed other. This is a multicenter, descriptive and analytical referred conducted in 63 premenopausal women followed by periodic hemodialysis cross-sectional study. The definition of sexual disorders is primarily based on the subjective assessment of patients. They were selected each time the patient reported that alteration of one or more stages of the sexual response. The mean age of patients was 39.25 ± 15.26 years. Causal nephropathy was 14% of glomerular , vascular 9.5% , 4.7% diabetic , tubulo- intrestitielle 4.7% and indeterminate in 66 % of cases. Sexual problems were present in 69.2 % of cases, in 77% of cases they appeared after the start of hemodialysis . It showed a decreased libido (61.9%) , anorgasmia (38.4%) , vaginismus ( 15%), dyspareunia (30%) , disorders of arousal (53.8 %) , lack of sexual satisfaction (69.2% ), an irregular cycle ( 30%) and secondary amenorrhea (15 %). Only 30 % of patients had previously talked about their troubles : a nephrologist ( 40%), partner ( 20%), friends (20% ) , herbalist (20 %). Twenty percent of these patients were using traditional treatment. A comparative study between the group who had sexual dysfunction (group I) and those who had not ( group II) was performed. No significant difference was found (p> 0.05) Discussion and The sexual problems are common in women hemodialysis. More efforts are needed to better understand their pathogenesis and optimize their care

This study examines staff development as veritable tool for Secondary school effectiveness in Rivers State. The study used a descriptive design. In all, 2 research questions and 2 null hypotheses were posed. The population of the study is 1200 teachers; this consists of 700 teachers drawn from public schools and 500 teachers that were drawn from the private schools. The sample of the study is 480 teachers making 40% of the total population. The collected data were first converted to means and further subjected to Z-test. The means were used to derive answers for the research questions, while the Z-test was used to test the hypotheses of the study at 0.05 level of significance. Findings are that: A significant difference exists between the public and private secondary school teachers of Rivers State in their mean opinion of the type of development programme that are available in Rivers State; there is no significant difference between the opinions of public and private school teachers on the problems of staff development programmes in Rivers State. The recommendations include that government should as a matter of necessity fund development programmes, and teachers should not be reluctant to participate in development programmes.

In this study, an extension of the class of state-dependent model (SDM) for which optimal forecasts may be computed using a recursive examination procedure referred to as the Kalman filter is developed for the analysis of Inflationary rates in Nigeria. The SDM formulation yields a practical means of estimation for the complex time varying dynamical process and provided a generic flexible framework for inflationary rate modelling and inference. A straight forward implementation was achieved in the study by the use of R software package.

The deterioration of the flexible pavements are also due to extreme climatic conditions prevailing in the country in addition to the heavy traffic. The polymer modification of the bitumen can improve the quality of binders and enhance the properties of binders used for the construction of pavements. Ageing of bitumen is one of the principal factors causing the failure of bituminous pavement components due to the prolonged exposure to air and environmental conditions. Ageing are of two types i.e. short term and long term. Short-term ageing occurs when binder is mixed with aggregates in a mixing plant. Long-term ageing occurs after pavement construction and is generally due to environmental exposure and loading. The properties of bitumen mainly depend on the age of bitumen. Therefore there is a need to study the properties of modified bitumen before and after ageing. In this paper the the physical properties of EVA (Ethyl Vinyl Acetate) modified bitumen is discussed, optimum dose is determined and the effect of ageing on the binder prepared using the optimum dose is evaluated.

Corrective Feedback was been extensively debated in the ESL/EFL writing. Both focused and unfocused corrective feedbacks seem to have a positive effect in ESL/EFL writing. The present study examined focused and unfocused corrective feedback for the target form of articles for elementary group as anaphoric reference in written narrative of Iranian EFL learners. 60 participants were selected via the Oxford Placement Test and were assigned to two elementary and advance groups. Then members of each group were randomly divided to subgroups. One subgroup received focused feedback and another half received unfocused feedback. In other words, the focused group received feedback in the form of the correction of articles while the unfocused group received correction of articles error alongside correction of other errors. The participants were given a narrative writing with some pictures and key terms and after reading them, the narrative writing, but not the pictures, was taken away and they were asked to rewrite the narrative in their own words. This task was conducted three times, as a pretest, a post-test and a delayed post-test. This study attempted to examine whether different kinds of corrective feedback does have any effect on learning of articles for elementary level.An in-group paired sampled t-test was calculated between the scores obtained in the pre-test, the post-test, and the delayed post-test.A close examination of the results the data showed that focused corrective feedback was more efficient and significant. The findings are consistent with other studies conducted under similar circumstances.

The application of artificial neural network (ANN) methodology for modeling flood prediction for a large size catchment of the river Jhelum in Jammu and Kashmir (India) is presented. Development of flood prediction models for river Jhelum, flowing through the Srinagar city (J and K ) based on the tail side discharge of upstream tributaries is studied because major inundation caused due to the floods in river Jhelum occurs in the highly populated and largely developing city of Srinagar. The 22 years data records between the years 1990-2012 were used and ANN technique along with conventional regression analysis was employed. The performance was compared based on statically parameters root mean squared error (RMSE), mean square error (MSE), coefficient of determination (R2) and absolute average deviation (AAD) values. NNtp model emerged as the best model with the highest value of R2 compared to other models as 0.93, value of MSE and RMSE being the least as 0.008 and 0.09 respectively. The study proved ANNs to be much better in predicting the flood discharge when judged on all the above parameters. It also showed that transfer function tan-sig performs better than pure-lin in the networks developed for flood prediction. The flood discharge could be thus predicted at least a day before the discharge reaches the station with a high predictability based on the ANN model NNtp.