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We are very happy to announce that from 16th May 2013, Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Surface Analysis and Materials Characterizations. Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman is currently working as School of Engineering & Information Technology, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia 6150, Australia. The appointment of Mr. Mohammad Mahbubur Rahman 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 elixirpublishers@gmail.com. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief

The occurrence of organochlorine pesticide residues in food matrices has become essential due to the toxicity and intransigence of these xenobiotics. Residue levels of organochlorine pesticides (OCPs) were determined in two leafy vegetables sampled from selected major growing areas in Ghana. The determination was carried out using Gas Chromatography/ Mass Spectrophotometer (GC/MS) procedures. The results indicated that cabbage samples had the widest spread of OCP contamination between the two leafy vegetables analyzed. Residues of pesticides (75%) were found in all samples obtained from Akuapem-Mampong compared to samples obtained from the Accra Metropolis (100%) indicating high occurrence of these xenobiotics in the vegetables collected from farms in Accra. The commonest organochlorine pesticides that were used by almost all farmers were endrin, p, p-DDE, p, p-DDD, p, p-DDT, ?-chlordane, endosulfan sulphate, ?-endosulphan, ?-endosulphan, ?-HCH, ?-HCH and lindane. The residual levels of OCPs in cabbage and lettuce clearly indicate that, samples obtained in the city had higher OCP levels compared to samples obtained from the rural areas. The study shows that application of pesticides at higher doses results in higher levels of the chemicals in vegetables thereby exposing the entire Ghanaian population and the consequent health implications. Regular monitoring of OCPs in vegetables and other food matrices is key to prevent their accumulation in the food chain.

In this paper, we review some pattern recognition learning methods and the models published in recent years. After giving the general description of pattern recognition, we discuss the Multi Layer Perceptron algorithm for classification in pattern recognition. Lastly, the example describing the implementation of MLP .The objective of this paper is to summarize and compare some of the methods for pattern recognition, and future research issues which need to be resolved and investigated further are given along with the new trends and ideas

This work studied the pharmaceutical constituents of seed and seedcoat of Mucuna pruriens. Qualitative and quantitative phytochemical Screening of seed and seedcoat of Mucuna pruriens showed the presence of these phytocompounds: alkaloid = 39.21+ 0.014% tannins = 19.07+ 0.001%, Saponic glycosides = 46.03+ 0.014%, Flavonoid = 17.04+ 0.01%, , Phenolic glycoside = 17.04+ 0.01% , terpenoids =2.43+ 0.00%, antrachionomic glycoside = 4.09+ 0.0141%, cardiac glycoside = 7.70+ 0.014%. The ethanolic , n – hexane and aqueous extracts of the seeds and coat of Mucuna pruriens were found to inhibit two test gram positive bacteria, two test gram negative bacteria and two test fungi. The two gram positive bacteria are; S. aureus and B. subtilis. The two gram negative bacteria are: E. coli and S. pyogene. The two fungi are: C. albican and A. flavus. The minimum inhibitory concentration for the three solvent extracts were found for each bacteria and fungi. Elemental analysis showed that the seeds of Mucuna pruriens contain the following microconstituent elements: Ca, Mg, P, Na, and K. KEY WORDS: Seeds and seedcoat of Mucuna pruriens, crud extracts, phytochemical analysis, elemental analysis, anti-microbial activity and minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC).

Pharmacovigilance is an important and integral part of clinical research. Pharmacovigilance is defined as the pharmacological science relating to the detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects, particularly long term and short term adverse effects of medicines. Pharmacovigilance will certainly help identifying risks and risk factors in the shortest possible time so that harm can be avoided or minimised. Pharmacovigilance is the science and activities relating to detection, assessment, understanding and prevention of adverse effects or any other possible medicine related problem. Today its importance cannot be sidelined at all, given the number of new medicines being introduced in the market.

Brucellosis is rare during pregnancy and most common route of infection is unpasteurized milk and milk products consumption. Brucellosis is associated with higher incidence of pregnancy loss, especially early pregnancy during febrile episodes and also associated with vaginal bleeding. Therefore it is advisable to have awareness for brucellosis in pregnant women, both in rural and in urban areas. Public health department should be directed to spread the news about the route of infection, dangers of contact with infected animals, dangers of consumption of raw milk and milk products.

Prophylactic activities of methanol, ethanol and aqueous extracts of neem and lemon grass against plasmodium development in mice were investigated. Various extracts of the plants were prepared with soxhlet apparatus. Growth and reproduction of malarial parasite in the treated animals was delayed 3 days after treatment. The mean % parasitaemia obtained in mice administered with methanolic, ethanolic and aqueous extracts of lemon grasss were 43.01%, 50.21% and 48.08% while those treated with methanol, ethanol and aqueous extracts of neem displayed 59.54%, 61.50% and 13.4% respectively indicating the anti – plasmodial activity of both plants. . It is therefore, concluded that the activities of these plants depend neither on weight of the mice nor dosage but on the solvent used. The parasitaemia development in the group treated with standard drug (Malariech) was significantly minimal having 2.47% and 88.23% % parasitamia and average % suppression recorded. Aqueous Neem extract exhibited highest suppressive effect 76.21% followed by Lemon grass in respect of the methanolic(43.67%) and aqueous(38.07%) extracts as compared with methanolic(25.47%) and ethanolic(23.32%) extracts of Neem.. The suppressive value of aqueous neem extract 76.21%, was considered significant and could serve as sufficient replacement for conventional antimalarial drugs that easily loose their potency with the impending development of resistance.

Parameters design and characteristics optimization of a split-phase single-phase induction motor are proposed in this paper using particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The PSO considers the motor efficiency as objective function and five performance related items as constraints. The main advantages of the proposed technique are; its simple structure and its straightforward verification of maximum efficiency of induction motor for a given output power. The PSO algorithm was implemented on a test motor and therefore, a code has been provided under MATLAB software. The results show that the PSO method gives more suitable design optimization against conventional methods.

Number of smartphones users is rapidly increasing. With this smartphones usage mobile malware attacks are also growing. Any malicious code or program used to access the information, gain the access or disrupt is known as malware. The developers of the malwares use the third party apps in order to inject the malicious contents into the phones and destroy the security. Various malware detecting tools are used to fight against these malwares. Malware detectors use various techniques for the detection of malwares. The main aim of this paper is to put light on the various malwares, malware detection, limitations and the various features involved.

The FT-IR and FT-Raman spectra of 2-bromo-m-xylene (2BMX) have been recorded in the regions 4000–400 cm?1 and 4000–100 cm?1, respectively. The fundamental vibrational frequencies and intensities of the vibrational bands were evaluated using density functional theory (DFT) using standard B3LYP method and 6-311+G** basis set combinations. The vibrational spectra were interpreted, with the aid of normal coordinate analysis based on a scaled quantum mechanical force field. The Infrared and Raman spectra were also predicted from the calculated intensities. The Mulliken population analysis of the molecule is computed by using DFT calculations. The calculated HOMO and LUMO energies shows that charge transfer occur within the molecule. Further, density functional theory (DFT) combined with quantum chemical calculations to determine the first-order hyperpolarizability. Electronic excitation energies, oscillator strength and nature of the respective excited states were calculated by the closed-shell singlet calculation method were also calculated for the molecule.