Archives-J  

This study investigated factors that contributed stress and the level of occupational stress among the technical teachers who are currently teaching in technical schools in Johore, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan. There were five teacher stress sources that included in this study: pupil misbehaviour, teacher workload, time and resources difficulties, interpersonal relationships, and recognition. A total of 92 teachers (N = 92) from nine technical schools in three states, which are Johore, Malacca and Negeri Sembilan were choosed randomly to represent the population by using the cluster over cluster method. The instrument for this study was adapted from the Teacher Stress Inventory constructed by Boyle, Borg, Falzon and Baglioni (1995) and had been modified by Mokhtar (1998) and Mazlan (2002). A pilot survey was done among 20 technical teachers in a technical school in Johore Bahru. The alpha croncbach for the instrument in this study was 0.982. The data were analyzed using both despcriptive (mean, frequency, and percentage) and inferency (Independent t-Test, Pearson Correlation, and One Way ANOVA) methods. Data analysis indicated that the overall stress level of respondent was moderate. Among the five stressors, pupil misbehaviour was the strongest determinant of teacher stress with a mean of 3.67. Other factors were teacher workload (mean = 3.00), time and resources difficulties (mean = 2.97), recognition (mean = 2.90), and interpersonal relationships (mean = 2.85) respectively. The workload and other factors had caused a moderate stress on the respondents. The results indicated that there was no significant difference of work stress among the respondent based on gender, marriage status, and highest academic qualification. Furthermore, the results were failed to indicate a significant correlation between teacher stress and demographic factors such as age, length of teaching experience, and the respondents’ monthly salary.

Occupational stress according to the current World Health Organization's (WHO) definition "is the response people may have when presented with work demands and pressures that are not matched to their knowledge and abilities and which challenge their ability to cope”. While planning for stress intervention a combination of organizational change and client centered stress management is often the most useful approach for preventing stress at work. Both organizations and employees can employ strategies at organizational and individual levels. This article tries to provide conceptual understanding on occupational stress and effectiveness of occupational stress interventions with trying to provide evidence for the effectiveness of stress interventions.

Nowadays, there are innumerable innovative technologies are emerging in the era of image processing and pattern recognition field. One of the challenging and interesting fields of research in image processing and pattern recognition is the “Optical Character Recognition”. Genetic algorithm is class of evolutionary algorithm which is based on the ideas of natural selection and natural genetic system. Genetic algorithm is an impartial optimization algorithm which makes parameter selection in an optimized way so as to obtain the global optimum. Devnagari script is very popular script in India for Marathi, Hindi, Nepali, Sanskrit, Konkani etc. In past few years, the enormous amount of innovations in research work related to the character recognition of printed as well as handwritten documents is established for numerous types of scripts. But the accuracy of recognition will not provide the satisfactory results. The genetic algorithm is used for optimizing the classification error and also improving the recognition rates. So, this is an attempt of improving the accuracy and optimizing the classification error by introducing the genetic algorithm for feature extraction as well as the classification for the handwritten devnagari script.

A Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme offers high spectral efficiency and better resistance to fading environments. In OFDM the data is modulated using multiple number of sub-carriers that are orthogonal to each other because of which the problems associated with other modulation schemes such as Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) and Inter Carrier Interference (ICI) are reduced. This paper deals with the analysis of OFDM System utilising different modulation techniques (QAM and BPSK) over Rayleigh, Rician and Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) fading environments with the use of pilot aided arrangement and finally the results are conveyed.

The phenotypic analysis and correlations of the eggs laid by black-skinned and white-skinned ectotypes of giant African land snails (Archachatina marginata var. saturalis) in Calabar, Nigeria were evaluated. Two hundred (200) snails, One hundred (100) each of black-skinned and white-skinned ectotype were used to generate eggs used for this study. The snails were divided into two mating groups, black-skinned x black-skinned and white-skinned x white-skinned. The results of the study on phenotypic traits of the eggs revealed a high significant (P<0.05) mean number of egg, mean egg weight, mean egg length and mean egg width between the black-skinned and white-skinned ectotypes. The variations in mean egg traits between the two ectotypes in this study may indicate variation in genetic composition of the snails. The results of correlation among the egg traits revealed positive and highly significant phenotypic correlation (rp) within egg traits for the two ectotypes studied. The correlation could suggest that there are direct relationships between the traits, and that selection for one trait will lead to improvement in the other trait. It is recommended that intensive production and domestication of black-skinned be carried out since it seems to have high production rate to meet the animal protein supply of the populace then the white-skinned. This is due to its larger size.

We are very happy to announce that from 29th August 2011, Prof.Sundarsingh has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on English. Prof Sundarsingh is currently working at Department of English, Karunya University, Coimbatore, India. The appointment of Prof Sundarsingh 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 chiefeditor@elixirjournal.org. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief

The banking sector has been an instrument for the economic development of any nation and its role in a developing nation like ours is a vital importance. Globally, the banking activities are undergoing rapid diversification. In order to maintain their status in the present competitive environment, banks have to concentrate to utilize the human resources efficiently for the better development. It should faster cohesive team work and create commitment to improve the efficiency of its human capital. Thus, the primary apprehension of the bank should be to bring in proper integration of human resource management strategies with the business strategies. The long-term vision for India’s banking system is to transform itself from being a domestic one to the global level may sound far-fetched at present. To take up this industry to the heights of international excellence requires combination of new technologies, better processes of credit and risk appraisal, treasury management, product diversification, internal control, external regulations and human resources at the most. The most important need in this service industry is naturally the HR. During the early phase of banking development in India after independence, opportunities for employment of the educated man-power were relatively limited. This sector was the preferred employer for the educated persons in the country in addition to civil services. In recent years, this position has changed dramatically. Certain rigidities have also developed in HR within the banking system as this system is public sector. Its hierarchical structure gives preference to seniority over performance, and it is not the best environment for attracting the best talent among the young people. How well Challenges are met will be mainly depend on the extent to which the banks leverage their primary assets i.e., HR in the context of the changing economic & business environment. In this paper a research survey is conducted to elicit the information about Recent HR practices of selected banks in India. This paper is an attempt to review the HR practices in the Indian banking sector taking place in the aftermath period of the new competition emerged with the arrival of new private banks and foreign banks through the process of liberalization.

Core mathematics is a compulsory subject for all Senior High School students in Ghana and many other African countries. Students are expected to pass in this subject before moving on to any tertiary institution. In spite of the compulsory nature of the subject, underachievement of students in mathematics at the Senior High School level has been a matter of concern to the West African Examination Chief Examiner over the years. Though available literature is replete with factors such as pupil-teacher ratio, socio-economic status of students, class size, family background that account for students’ achievement, it is clear that the success of many students depends on the teacher. It is however unclear which aspect of the teacher is statistically significant predictor of what students learn. This paper focuses on the extent to which teachers’ knowledge for teaching correlates with students’ achievement in algebra at the Senior High School level in Ghana. In all, 17 Elective Mathematics¬ teachers and 617 form Three Elective Mathematics students from ten public Senior High Schools in the Central Region of Ghana participated in the study. The samples were selected at random from four school categories; A, B, C and D according to Ghana Education Service classification. Two forms of instruments were administered; form one to students and form two to teachers, and the responses retrieved on the same day. A correlational analysis was used to test for statistical significance in the scores at 0.05 level of significance. Teachers’ knowledge for teaching was found to be significantly related to students’ achievement in algebra.

Energy is the primary need of any society. It is consumed in transportation, in industries and for the heating, lighting and water-pumping etc. To fulfil its energy demand, our society is dependent on fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas. But fossil fuels are conventional resources and are depleting fast. Therefore, it is necessary to find some alternatives sources, so as to fulfil the ever increasing demand for energy. This demand can be fulfilled by utilizing renewable energy sources. This paper studies various types of available non-conventional energy sources. It also includes a brief review of the work done by different researchers on mathematical modeling of solar irradiance.

In this article we are examining how new social challenges and demands towards education and teachers change education institutions with modern aims and social contracts. We are going to depict the characteristics or qualities of ‘ideal teachers’ by exploring recent literature with the results of a survey. In the fast changing world of the early twenty first century public education is also changing. As part of the changes the role of higher education will also be different both in the educational system and in this society. The role of teachers will also change. In the survey teachers reveal their professional aims and needs for the future. Finally, we are going to explore teachers knowledge base in the twenty first century in higher education system.