Archives-May 2013

A brief, simple, and solid disproof, by contradiction, of Dr. Einstein’s Special Relativity is presented.

Sample pretreatment methods, such as separation / preconcentration prior to the determination of metal ions have developed rapidly due to the increasing need for accurate and precise measurements at extremely low levels of ions in diverse matrices. The development of new sorbents and their application in preconcentration methods for determination of trace analytes is subject of great interest. This review summarizes and discusses several analytical methods involving the preparation and use of new solid phase extractant. A literature survey of the last ten years offering a critical review of these new sorbents available for use in trace analyte enrichment is provided.

The importance of erosion in relation to variability of water and soil losses from a parcel of land can be revealed in the measurements of the infiltration characteristics and runoff under a comparable vetiver grass strips and collection tanks within the plots. This experiment is aimed at assessing the variability of runoff and soil loss due to infiltration characteristics of the runoff plots. This study involved three vetiver plots of 20 m interval measured out of six plots (40 m × 3 m each) randomly distributed over a land area of 0.072 ha. The study was conducted on a 6 % slope experimental plot, along Parry Road of the University Ibadan, during the 2007 raining season. The texture of the soil was generally loamy sand. Mean total runoff among the plots was in the trend of no-vetiver plots > vetiver plots (13.50mm > 4.99 mm), the same was true for mean total soil loss (28.78kg/ha > 12.96kg/ha). Variability in the amounts of runoff was moderate in vetiver plots and highly variable in no-vetiver plots (CV = 24 % and 40 % respectively. The correlation between measured soil physical properties and infiltration characteristics with runoff revealed that fine sand content of the soil was negatively related with runoff (r = 0.6450*), but the reverse relationship was true for porosity inferred from soil bulk density and sorptivity of the soil (r = -0.7650*, and -0.8956* respectively).

This paper investigates the influence of terrorist activities taking place in Pakistan on KSE (Karachi Stock Exchange) for the period of 01/2005 to 12/2010 using the GARCH & GARCH- EVT to identify the relationship between these two variables, the study establishes that the terrorist activities adversely affect the financial markets and in case of KSE, it is highly significant relation. Reason for the negative relationship exists because of the foremost increase in number of terrorism attacks in Pakistan.

This paper presents the concept of Responsive Web Design and Development for Web Applications meant to be present on screens of different resolution like desktop, tablets and mobile phones. It brings into light some of the features of Web Application and Native Applications and how the difference between them is narrowing down. A brief look into the traditional form of web designing is also mentioned in order to understand its drawbacks. It also focuses on the concepts of Media Queries and Twitter Bootstrap, a new front end framework. It overall brings into limelight the new perspective of Web Development so as to make it more flexible and efficient.

For some time now, researchers in pedagogy have been finding ways of improving language teaching and learning in schools in Africa. In Ghana, various governments have sought assistance/cooperation from professional as well as donor agencies, both national and international, to improve language teaching methodology in schools. Until then, language teaching in the basic schools had depended rather extensively on the ‘Segregated Method’. With the coming of these interventions, however, teachers are becoming more and more aware of the ‘Integrated Approach’ to teaching language. Even then, the focus has been on what is popularly referred to as ‘Language across the Curriculum’. This paper seeks to reinforce the fact that language is better learned as a whole, and that students of ESL learn better when the various language skills are integrated in a single lesson, and that there is no single ‘best method’ of teaching English.

Five brands of cigarette were randomly sampled and analyzed for heavy metals. The brands include Aspen, Benson, Dunhill, Pall-mall and Rothmans. From the result obtained, concentration of Zinc was found to range between 11.1 - 4.15 mg/kg, concentration of Copper ranges between 13.65 - 4.55 mg/kg and Iron concentration ranges between 7.4 - 1.85 mg/kg. Nickel and Lead concentrations were found to range between 30.75 - 7.7 mg/kg and 32.6 - 17.4 mg/kg respectively. Lead was found to be highest in three brands (Rothmans, Pall-mall and Benson) respectively while Nickel was highest in two brands (Aspen, Rothmans) respectively. Generally the levels of the content of some of the metals in all the brands were low compared with the values set by world health organization (WHO) and accepted by standard organization of Nigeria (SON), it was believed that continuous bio-accumulation of heavy metals through smoking of cigarette may lead to additional health complication apart from the inherent dangers to which cigarette is known for.

Bacterial antagonism is a phenomenon in which the growth and activity of other bacteria is inhibited. In general microorganisms produce secondary metabolites which are not as essential for the survival of the organism. The organism produces an inhibitory product may be an antibiotic which doesn’t allow the growth of other organisms. In this present study the bacteria are isolated from the gut of short horned grasshoppers and screened for antagonistic activity. A mixed population of bacteria was observed in the respective agar plates and was identified as Pseudomonas sp, Bacillus sp, Micrococcus and Escherichia coli. To test for antagonistic effect the gut isolated bacteria were tested against four human pathogenic bacteria Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumonia, Escherichia coli, Vibrio parahameolyticus and one yeast like fungus Candida albicans. It was observed that gut associated Pseudomonas sp had antagonistic activity against yeast like fungus Candida albicans and Escherichia coli. The most potent strain was subjected for 16srRNA gene sequencing in order to identify the antagonistic bacteria. The 16srRNA partial sequences have been run in the Bioinformatics tool, (BLAST) Basic Local Alignment search tool to find out the most similar sequences which matches with our strain. Phylogenetic tree has been constructed and our strain matches with Pseudomonas otitids which has (99.1%) similarity.

Harvesting the benefits of a sensor-rich world presents many data analysis and management challenges. Recent advances in research and industry aim to address these challenges. Modern sensors and information technologies make it possible to continuously collect sensor data, which is typically obtained as real-time and real valued numerical data. Examples include vehicles driving around in cities or a power plant generating electricity, which can be equipped with numerous sensors that produce data from moment to moment. Though the data gathering systems are becoming relatively mature, a lot of innovative research needs to be done on knowledge discovery from these huge repositories of data. The data management techniques and analysis methods are required to process the increasing volumes of historical and live streaming data sources simultaneously. Analysts need improved techniques are needed to reduce an analyst’s decision response time and to enable more intelligent and immediate situation awareness. Faster analysis of disparate information sources may be achieved by providing a system that allows analysts to pose integrated queries on diverse data sources without losing data provenance. This paper proposed to develop abstractions that make it easy for users and application developers to continuously apply statistical modeling tools to streaming sensor data. Such statistical models can be used for data cleaning, prediction, interpolation, anomaly detection and for inferring hidden variables from the data, thus addressing many of the challenges in analysis and managing sensor data. Current archive data and streaming data querying techniques are insufficient by themselves to harmonize sensor inputs from large volumes of data. These two distinct architectures (push versus pull) have yet to be combined to meet the demands of a data-centric world. The input of sensor streaming data from multiple sensor types further complicates the problem.

Ethical accounting concept of business ethics relates directly to transparency, accountability & Corporate Responsibility. The major ethical issues occur in accounting and finance are reporting false income, falsifying documents, allowing or taking questionable deductions, illegally evading income taxes, engaging in frauds etc. Indian Ethos is all about what can be termed as “national ethos”. Self-governance is an abstract concept that refers to several scales of organization. Some degree of consensus decision making is usually involved in any self-governance system, if only because individual members of the group may choose to violate the criteria for invoking outside authority, break the code of silence, or otherwise cause the group to lose its autonomy. The need of the hour is the requirement of ethical accounting regulations and in this research paper tried to relate the Indian ethos for self governance.