Archives-June... 

The present paper identifies the critical success factors while the implementation of TQM, to evaluate their impact on the primary measures as expressed by the operational performance and the secondary measures as organizational performance, and to find out the effect of the operational and organizational performance of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a selected industrial sector using the semi structured interview approach. A total 297 samples are identified for analysis. 139 responses received with all detail. Respondent’s profiles are quality managers and deferent sectors are targeted. A focus is needed on analyzing various techniques and strategies to be adopted by the Indian companies.

The simple random sampling technique was employed in selecting 62 farmers drawn from the sampling frame obtained from the list of Agricultural Development Programme (ADP) contact farmers in the four Local Governments Areas (LGAs) of Egbedore, Olorunda, Ede South and Ife Central, which made up the study area. The main instrument for collecting the primary data was structured questionnaire. It is evident from the result is that an average total cost of N371486.35 was incurred per annum by fish farmers while gross revenue of N791242.52 was realized with a gross margin of N 574314 and a profit of N 419756.17. The rate of return on investment of 0.58 implies that for every one naira invested in Fish production by farmers, a return of N1.5 and a profit of 58k were obtained. The multiple regression result revealed that fish output was significantly determined by pond size, labour used, cost of feeds, cost of lime and cost of fingerlings. The coefficient of determination indicates that 52.2% of the variation in the value of fish output was explained by pond size, quantity of labour used, cost of feed, cost of lime and cost of fingerlings. The study concluded that fish production in the study area is economically rewarding and profitable.

Objective: to understand the conditions of the elder’s depression and to explore the connections between personal background, self-concept, and depression. Design: The population included 366 samples of the older people above 65 in Ren-Ai district, Keelung City, Taiwan. A self-designed structured questionnaire was used as our research tool. Our data were collected through both questionnaire and one-on-one interview, and then processed and analyzed by package software - IBM SPSS Statistics 20 (Windows version). Results: The average depression scores from our research targets were 2.69 (±2.76). Some major factors that might have to do with the elder’s depression included gender, age, education degree, marriage status, self-consciousness of economic condition, chronic disease index, self-consciousness of health condition, self-concept, and social support.The degree of depression developed by the population of higher education degree (such as college) is less than lower education degree (below junior high school and the illiterate); the female are less than the male; the married and the widowed are less than the divorced; self-consciousness of the economic sufficiency is less than economic insufficiency; and the self-consciousness of healthy condition is less than unhealthy condition.The age and chronic disease index both are positively correlated to the degree of depression, but self-concept and social support are negatively correlated. Lower education degree (below junior high school and the illiterate), self-consciousness of economic condition, self-consciousness of health, age, chronic disease index, self-concept, and social support all have important forecasting capability for the elder’s depression. Self-concept, among them, has the highest explaining capability for the elder’s depression. Conclusions: Our study suggested self-concept and social support should be emphasized for treating the elder’s depression. This should be considered for any future researches.

Aeromonas species are ubiquitous bacteria in terrestrial and aquatic milieus. They are becoming renowned as enteric pathogens of serious public health concern as they acquire a number of virulence determinants that are linked with human diseases, such as gastroenteritis, septicaemia, and skin diseases. Identification of Aeromonads to the species level is problematic and complex due to their phenotypic and genotypic heterogeneity. With the aim of clarifying taxonomic relationships among the strains, Repetitive Extragenic Palindromic sequence (REP) was used as molecular marker for biotyping Aeromonas strains isolated from surface and sub- surface soil sediments from Forest ecosystem. Out of a collection of 120 strains isolated from surface and sub-surface soil sediments, 15 strains were confirmed as Aeromonas based on phenotypic fingerprinting obtained from 69 biochemical tests. Genetic diversity among Aeromonas sp. was determined by analysing their REP fingerprint patterns using NTSYS pc software package and UPGMA cluster method. Considerable amount of genetic diversity was observed among the isolated strains. Furthermore, dendrogram demonstrated the existence of distinctive clusters at various similarity levels. These fingerprinting techniques can therefore be used to recognize the relatedness of strains derived from clinical and environmental isolates, which helps in further characterization of factors/genes responsible for the disease.

Cloud delivers computing resources as a service. Finest usage of cloud services is used to store information in the cloud servers. Pool of virtual servers is configured to store the users’ data with low cost. Cloud offers more advantages to the cloud users. Apart from the advantages and benefits of cloud, it has more security issues and vulnerability on the data stored in the cloud. This paper proposes asecurity service named AROMONcrypt to address the security issues in cloud storage. This security service is used to secure the data in cloud storage. AROMONcrypt uses two types of techniques to ensure the confidentiality of data namely encryption and obfuscation. This paper also describes Security as a Service (SEaaS). SEaaS provides AROMONcrypt security service from the Cloud Service Provider (CSP). Simulation is conducted with AROcrypt and MONcrypt security services considering time and security level. AROMONcrypt provides optimum security, and MONcrypt has taken minimum time.

Partnerships have the potential to create significant benefits for all participants provided that there is a mutual understanding of and respect for the inputs required and the outputs sought from the arrangements by each party. The aim of this study was to explore the inputs required and the outputs achieved by partners as a function of the level of involvement required within the partnership arrangement. The study has investigated the extent to which the input criteria defined by the DTI and the output criteria defined by Kantar, within three health and safety initiatives involving home worker-employer, employee-employer, and contractor-employer partnerships varied, as a function of the level of partnership defined by Thompson and Sanders. The examination of the partnership arrangements within the three case studies demonstrated that the inputs were very similar whether the arrangements were classified as co-operation, collaboration or coalescence, although the extent of the output criteria was greatest in the case of the coalescence partnership. The results illustrated the level of inputs required within a range of partnership arrangements in the context of health and safety management and the range of outputs that might be anticipated.

In Nigeria, access to finance has been identified as a key element for Small and Medium Scale Enterprises to succeed in their drive to build productive capacity, compete, create jobs and contribute to poverty elimination in the country. Banks in Nigeria have been recapitalized and adopt necessary infrastructures (ICT) to enhance their performance and stimulate the real sector as catalysts of development. How effectively have they performed this function as a pivot around which economic development revolves? Without finance SMEs cannot acquire or absorb new technologies neither can they expand to compete in global market or even strike business linkages with larger firms. Despite this, SMEs have faced difficulties in obtaining formal credit or equity from the commercial banks. A regression of bank facilities to SMEs prior and after recapitalization with GDP showed a downward trend and eventual positive downward correlation movement in the main two variables. It was found that banks need to do more to assist the SMEs for effective performance than mere recapitalization.

The economic and social benefits derived by women who join credit unions was measured in terms of the state of their businesses, income levels, monthly savings and the financial contribution of beneficiaries towards dependants’ education. The simple random sampling technique was used to select 50 women who had obtained business loans from the Credit Union within the time period of June 2009 to July 2010 financial year. The study showed a significant influence of loans on the socioeconomic status of the women beneficiaries of loans.

The present study deals with the isolation of polyurethane (PU) degrading microorganisms from the soil, analysis of biodegradation and optimization of various factors (temperature, pH and by using different co-metabolites). Soil sample was collected from dumping area, Sector H/8, Islamabad, Pakistan and was used as a source for isolation of polyurethane degrading bacteria. Sterilized polyurethane films were buried in soil for three months. The PU pieces were taken from the soil, washed with sterilized distilled water and enriched in liquid MSM for a period of one month. Six different bacterial strains were isolated through enrichment technique, which were identified on the basis of standard morphological and biochemical tests. The study yields that the bacteria with the ability to degrade polyurethane were isolated from soil. It is therefore concluded that soil contains the potential candidates for bioremediation of plastic wastes.

This study empirically examines the commitment factors contributing to employee share in Higher Education Institutes of Khyber Pakhtonkhuwa (KPK) province of Pakistan. In total 200 questioners are distributed out of which 133 are returned in completed form with a percentage of 66.5%. A multiple regression analysis is performed; Employee Commitment is taken as the Dependent variable while Top Management Behavior, Compensation & Benefits, Career Development Opportunities and Working Conditions are the independent variables of this study. The results of this study confirm that employee’s commitment is significantly associated with their independent factors. The results of the study are valuable to both academics and policy makers.