Archives-J 

In the present work, cost of the weld is minimized by considering the qualities of weld (strength parameters). Welded joints are prepared with Mild Steel plates and M.S electrodes. Strength properties of welded joints like tensile stress, shear stress are found by conducting experiments with Universal Testing Machine (UTM). An objective function is formulated for minimization cost in terms of geometric properties of weld, where as constraints are formulated in terms of strength properties. The optimization procedure involves the selection of the major geometric parameters such as length of weld, height of weld, depth of weld, width of weld and minimization of cost is considered as the design target. In the present work Mat Lab programs of SA and PSO are developed and executed using weld and test data and the results are compared.

According to United Nations office on drugs and crime UNODC (2011), alcohol and drug abuse posses a great threat to the social economic fabric of nations worldwide. In spite of the governments’ effort in the fight against drug and substance abuse in Kenya, the problem remains untamed. The study assessed the effectiveness of the school community in curbing drug and substance abuse (DSA) among secondary school students. Literature relating to various aspects of school community and curbing DSA in schools was reviewed. The study employed descriptive survey design. The study sample consisted of 35 head teachers and 407 students. Questionnaires were used to collect Data from head teachers and students. Content validity and reliability of the research instruments was ascertained. Descriptive statistics were used to analyse data. The findings of the study show that students obtain drugs from the school community. Lack of cooperation from parents and guardians was frustrating DSA intervention efforts in schools. The study concluded that the use of school community was not effective in curbing DSA in schools. The study recommended an integrated approach where different strategies or combination of strategies are used purposively for different DSA cases. Head teachers should collaborate with law enforcers, government agencies; NACADA, NGOs and FBOs to curb the supply and demand of drugs and substances. The Ministry of Education could review its policy on punishment and expulsion as regards to curbing alcohol and drug abuse among students. This paper is an extract of a study conducted in the year 2012 and 2013 in secondary schools in Nairobi County, Kenya.

The notion of --closed set was introduced and studied by R. Devi, V. Kokilavani and P. Basker [2]. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a -sets and studied the associated separation axioms.

Data mining is a new discipline lying at the interface of statistics, database technology, pattern recognition, machine learning, and other areas. The amount of data being generated and stored is growing exponentially, due in large part to the continuing advances in computer technology. From the financial sector to telecommunications operations, companies increasingly rely on analysis of huge amounts of data to compete. A new generation of techniques and tools is emerging to intelligently assist humans in analysing mountains of data. New problems arise, partly as a consequence of the sheer size of the data sets involved, and partly because of issues of pattern matching. However, since statistics provides the intellectual glue underlying the effort, it is important for statisticians to become involved. Our goal here is to provide a brief overview of the key issues in knowledge discovery in an industrial context and outline representative applications.

The study focused on the design of an acoustic enclosure for 12.5 kVA diesel generator with an objective to minimize the noise level to a moderately loud sound level. Factors which affect noise reduction and heat management were considered. The study revealed that the loss in transmitted sound amounted to 20dB from the initial 95dB without an enclosure, with the insertion loss being 48.6%. The analysis of the transfer of the sound wave revealed that the frequency of the incident wave was lower than the critical frequency of the enclosure, this signifies that the enclosure will not resonate during operation. The heat generated within enclosure is 19280.806kW and this will cause the maximum temperature of the cylinder head to be exceeded. To avert this, acoustic holes where designed to allow a mass flow rate of 0.57kg/sec of air to pass through the enclosure, conducting the excess heat away.

Worms can be classified into various categories; one among them is active worms. These active worms pose a vital security threats to the internet especially in social networks. Defending against such active worms are not as easy as other types of worms. Active worms propagate in an automatic fashion such that it can infect as many as clients. In this paper we evaluate a special type of active worm, called muffle worm (M-worm in short). The m-worm is different from any other worms, for it goes undetected when the scan process encountered. The m-worm identifies the vulnerable clients in the social networks and infects the client. Once the client is infected, then the infected host scans for the other vulnerable clients and infects the client. We studied the comprehensive characteristics of the m-worm and provide the secure computing in the social networks. The scheme that we propose detects the m-worm from where it has been propagated and the current location of the worm. Once the origin of the m-worm is identified, the client that spread the m-worm can be disconnected from the social networks (Blocking). Thus the secure computing can be obviously provided in the networks. Still if the misbehaved client wishes to participate in the communicating network, which would be done by authenticating the corresponding client. The proposed scheme proves that it could provide secure computing in the social networks.

Thin layer chromatographic technique with silica gel – ethyl acetate adsorbent - solvent system has been validated for the determination of herbicides. Precision of the method determined in terms of reproducibility yielded relative standard deviation of 0.3 % and 0.5 % for the Rf of the herbicides and diameter of spots respectively. The minimum detectable quantity (MDQ) of the herbicides ranges from 0.20 – 0.50 ng. The method has been applied to determine the efficiencies of acetone, acetonitrile, methanol, hexane and acetone/hexane (4:1) for the recovery of the herbicides, atrazine, ametryne, propanil, diuron and nitrofen in a forest zone soil in Ghana. Acetone and acetonitrile were found to have approximately equal efficiency as extraction solvents. Extraction with acetone, acetonitrile, acetone/hexane (4:1) yielded more than 90% recovery for all the herbicides. The highest recovery efficiency of 96.2% was obtained for atrazine using acetone. Extraction with methanol and hexane gave relatively low recoveries particularly, with the clean up extracts. In all, the clean up procedure with SPE cartridge equipped with C-18 as adsorbent reduced recovery by 9 – 13 %.

Cloud computing can be observed as the transition of a long held dream called “Computing as utility”, into reality. This is a next generation platform that provides dynamic resources pods, virtualization, and high availability. The success of cloud lies in the terms “pay per use” and “multi tenancy”. But these two major advantages bring some disadvantage with them. The “pay per use” facility requires proper scheduling of tasks for proper utilization of the cloud. And the “multi tenancy” brings some major security threats as all the different organizations use the same physical infrastructure. Many researchers have concentrated in both the fields. In this paper authors have studied various security solutions, scheduling algorithms and their issues related to cloud computing.

We are very happy to announce that from 17th November 2018, Dr. B. Hari Prasad has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Mathematics. Dr. B. Hari Prasad is working as Assistant Professor, Dept. of Mathematics, Chaitanya Degree College(Autonomous), Hanamkonda, Telangana State, India. The appointment of Dr. B. Hari Prasad as member, Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

We are very happy to announce that from 22nd March 2019, Dr. Sandeep Rout has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Environment and Forestry. Dr. Sandeep Rout is working as Assistant Professor in Forestry, Faculty of Agriculture, Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM), Gajapati, Odisha. The appointment of Dr. Sandeep Rout as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.