Archives-J 

This present investigation aimed at assessing the water quality of the Densu delta. Data on some ions namely Na⁺, HCO₃^-, Cl^-, K⁺, SO₄^2-, NO₃^--N and PO₄^3--P were measured. The pH, temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand were also determined to assess the chemical status and pollution levels of the river. The ranges for BOD (3.40-4. 21), Na⁺ (104-29800), Cl^-(67.98-19194 ), K⁺ (16.90-4630),PO₄-P(0.0063-0.032 ), NO₃-N(0.19 - 0.60 ) and SO₄^2-(224.67-23700) were found to be higher than the natural background levels for surface water. This indicates pollution of the river water samples from the areas studied. Our findings highlighted the deterioration of water quality of the river due to anthropogenic activities.

Various researches and studies on speech acts among different languages and contexts would help the man bridge the gap among the speakers of different languages. In other words, it could help to inform and alert speakers of the potential pragmatic mistakes that may arise in social, pedagogical and translation domains. To cope with interethnic communication difficulties can be also helped by these studies and researches for the speakers of dissimilar languages and cultures. The strategies employed by Native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners for expressing promising in different situations in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages are investigated in this study. Researchers working in second language (L2) acquisition have investigated interlanguage pragmatics to document learners’ formulation of speech acts (SAs) and they have found that most of the problems that EFL learners face in intercultural communication are mainly pragmatic. Unlike comprehensive studies on SAs such as request and apology, the number of cross-cultural studies investigating expressions of promising is fairly limited and there are few studies investigating this speech act in both languages. The participants of this study were 27 among whom 20 were Iranian EFL learners and the native English speakers included 7 people. The participants were both male and female, aging from 18 to 31 years old. An open-ended DCT were employed for studying participants' responses and verbal reactions to different situations. The results of Chi-square test suggested that these two groups vary in their use of strategies and types of promising. Iranian EFL learners’ sensitivity to L1 made them use inappropriate expressions and strategies in their English responses. It suggested that Persian learners of English transfer some of their L1 pragmatic norms to L2 because they perceive these norms to be universal.

Plants respond with changes in their pattern of gene expression and protein products when exposed to low temperatures. Thus ability to adapt has an impact on the distribution and survival of the plant, and on crop yields. Many species of tropical or subtropical origin are injured or killed by nonfreezing low temperatures, and exhibit various symptoms of chilling injury such as chlorosis, necrosis, or growth retardation. In contrast, chilling-tolerant species are able to grow at such cold temperatures. Conventional breeding methods have met with limited success in improving the cold tolerance of important crop plants involving inter-specific or inter-generic hybridization. Recent full-genome transcript profiling studies, in combination with mutational and transgenic plant analyses, have provided a snapshot of the complex transcriptional network that operates under cold stress. The changes in expression of hundreds of genes in response to cold temperatures are followed by increases in the levels of hundreds of metabolites, some of which are known to have protective effects against the damaging effects of cold stress. Various low temperature-inducible genes have been isolated from plants. Most appear to be involved in tolerance to cold stress and the expression of some of them is regulated by C-repeat/dehydration-responsive element binding (CBF/DREB1) transcription factors. Genetic analysis has revealed important roles for cellular metabolic signals, and for RNA splicing, export and secondary structure unwinding, in regulating cold-responsive gene expression and chilling and freezing tolerance. Numerous physiological and molecular changes occur during cold acclimation which reveals that the cold resistance is more complex than perceived and involves more than one pathway. The findings summarized in this review have shown potential practical applications for breeding cold tolerance in crop and horticultural plants suitable to temperate geographical locations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of marketing mix strategies used by travel agencies in Mauritius during off peak seasons, in order to determine how to stimulate demand for international travel services and thus maximise the organisation’s revenue. This study explores the impact of off peak season on marketing mix strategies of travel agencies in Mauritius. The researcher adopted a quantitative research method. The target population comprised of 91 licensed travel agencies in Mauritius and the factor analysis carried out in the survey enabled the identification of latent factors that could affect the performance of travel agencies. The results of the findings led to the development of a marketing framework that travel agencies could consider in order to maximize their profitability during low seasons.

One of the most obvious and controversial matters seen in the modern literature is circularity of structure. Not being found only in the content of these works, i.e. the speech and thought of the characters, the incident and the actions of such works, circularity also penetrates to the form of such works. The case is that, circularity is not a futile element. It fortifies an aesthetic effect of the works on the reader to a great extent. Furthermore, it represents the circularity of human thought and life and consequently the circularity of his confusion and frustration what he cannot find a convincing answer for it and its occurrence. This article tries to discuss circularity in The Blind owl written by one of the most famous modern Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat.

In Wireless sensor networks the major concern is how to conserve the nodes' energy so that network lifetime can be extended significantly. Employing one static sink can rapidly exhaust the energy of sink neighbors. Furthermore, using a non-optimal single path together with a maximum transmission power level may quickly deplete the energy of individual nodes on the route. This all results in unbalanced energy consumption through the sensor field, and hence a negative effect on the network lifetime. In this paper, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of the various mechanisms applied for increasing the network lifetime. These techniques, whether in the routing or cross-layer area, fall within the following types: multi-sink, mobile sink, multi-path, power control and bio-inspired algorithms, depending on the protocol operation. In this taxonomy, special attention has been devoted to the multi-sink, power control and bio-inspired algorithms, which have not yet received much consideration in the literature. Moreover, each class covers a variety of the state-of-the-art protocols, which should provide ideas for potential future works. Finally, we compare these mechanisms and discuss open research issues.

The behavior of electron and the nucleons are simulated through soft computing using MatLab language meant for Science and Engineering. Since the electrons and nucleons movement confined around nucleus and within the nucleus, to visualize the behavior the coordinates were taken with incremental value of 0.001 and less to visualize the behaviour. The graphical output shows the path and tendency of electron movement around the nucleus of Hydrogen atom. These curves show that the energy of electron is not constant but increases with the principal quantum number(n) and azimuthal quantum number(l).Some quantum mechanical problems have been solved and reported.

An access control mechanism in a user hierarchy is used to provide the management of sensitive information for authorized users. The users and their own information can be organized into a number of disjoint sets of security classes according to their responsibilities. Each security class in a user hierarchy is assigned an encryption key and can derive the encryption keys of all lower security classes according to predefined partially ordered relation. In 2006, Jeng and Wang proposed an efficient key management scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystems. This paper, however, pointed out that Jeng–Wang scheme is vulnerable to the so-called compromising attack that the secret keys of some security classes can be compromised by any adversary if some public information modified. We further proposed a secure key management scheme based on elliptic curve cryptosystems to eliminate the pointed out the security leak and provide better security requirements. As compared with Jeng and Wang’s scheme (Jeng and Wang, 2006), the proposed scheme has the following properties. (i) It is simple to execute the key generation and key derivation phases. (ii) It is easily to address dynamic access control when a security class is added into or deleted from the hierarchy. (iii) It is secure against some potential attacks. (iv) The required storage of the public/secret parameters is constant.

Marketing and advertising experts seek for novel methods and intelligent means to attract consumers and customers. Subliminal messages can play crucial role in attracting consumers in the branding world. The important task in advertising is to find novel techniques for convincing the consumers to use the products and services. The first impression of the word “advertising” is the publicities on posters and via public media which are in fact audio and visual media. However, advertising industry affects the behaviors of consumers unconsciously with the aid of the tools they use via promoting the emotions followed by changes in their purchase decisions. Utilization of subliminal stimuli is among the new methods deployed by marketing specialists for sales of products aimed at persuading the customer and changing their minds in purchase process. The present study proposes role of subliminal perception in effectiveness of non-personal advertisements. The model is researcher-made and derived from literature review. Having reviewed historical background of the respective research and codifying the objective relationships between variables within a theoretical framework, subliminal perception was tested using three indexes namely, personal factors, stimulus-related factors, and attention to stimulus. Personal factors were analyzed using three components (perceptual consciousness, acceptance, and experience) and stimulus-related factors were taken into account using four components (color, freshness, size, and situation). The data were collected via codification of a structured questionnaire with 5-choice Likert scale consisting of 4 general and 33 specialized questions. The questionnaire was distributed among the sample members after checking its reliability and validity levels. Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to verify normality of data distribution. The results corroborated normality of data distribution. Statistical parametric test was also applied to analyze and test the research hypotheses. The data were analyzed using LISREL software. Based on the results of structural equations method and confirmatory factor analysis, personal factors influenced effectiveness of non-personal advertisements with a value of 0.52%. The respective values for stimulus-related factors and attention to stimulus were respectively equal to 0.45% and 0.67%. Furthermore, the independent variable of subliminal perception influenced effectiveness of non-personal advertising with a value of 0.33%.

Due to economic reasons arising out of deregulation and open market of electricity, modern day power systems are being operated closer to their stability limits. Maintaining voltage stability and specified voltage levels at all nodes in a large & heavily loaded Power network is a critical & challenging task for power engineers. A number of different approaches have been reported in papers for improvement of voltage stability. In this paper a method for improving voltage stability in a power network has been suggested based on Network Reconfiguration approach. Network Reconfiguration is intended to enhance the voltage stability by determination of switching options that maximizes voltage stability for a particular set of loads and is performed by altering the topological structure of the system. In this paper, reconfiguration of a power network is achieved by addition of new power lines to the existing network. The paper reports an application of ANNs in voltage stability enhancement. A generalized ANN model has been proposed for enhancement of voltage stability under varying load conditions. Training data sets for ANN training is generated by varying both real and reactive loads at the buses. An IEEE-14 Bus system considered to demonstrate the performance of the developed ANN model. The proposed ANN model is trained using conjugate Gradient Descent Back-propagation Algorithm and tested by applying arbitrary input data. The test results of the ANN model are found to be closely matching of the results obtained by off-line simulation.