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The mile stone of the scientific technologies and methodologies, shown its well improved evidence based proof and created a striking landmark at global level. The various sectors, including Government and the private sectors involved in introducing new improved technologies cum methodologies day today in competitive manner. Though many sophisticated rapid technologies such as PCR etc., created a land mark in current scientific world, still if seems, the scientists, researchers, those who involved in the initial step of their research rely on the golden traditional techniques and methodologies even today. Innumerous research publications indicating the interests of the scientists and researchers towards the drug discovery especially from the plant sources. The initial step for the drug discovery involves the primary screening of the plant extracts or any other testing agents for their antimicrobial activities pertain to the antibacterial activities. The disc diffusion and the agar well diffusion methods are the traditional choice to perform the antibacterial activity. In this study we have presented an innovative plate technique and certain innovative methods in the screening of antibacterial and synergistic bioactivities of the mangrove plant extracts and antibiotics which is time and energy saving, economic and easy to perform.

The paper presents a new approach to the classification of rolling element bearing faults by implementing Artificial Neural Network. Diagnostics of rolling element bearing faults actually represents the problem of pattern classification and recognition, where the key step is feature extraction from the vibration signal. Characterization of each recorded vibration signal is performed by a combination of signal's time-varying statistical parameters and characteristic rolling element bearing fault frequency components obtained through the frequency spectrum analysis method. The experimental data is collected for four bearings at three different speeds. The sensor is located at three different positions for each bearing. Both time domain and frequency domain signals were measured. Thus the data was three time spectrums and three frequency spectrums for each speed for a bearing. The entire data set comprised of 72 (6 x 3 x 4) data. The time domain signal was comprised of 8192 samples and extracting these features from a huge data set was difficult. To overcome this difficulty the 8192 samples were split into 32 bins each containing 256 samples. The entire process of splitting and evaluating the seven features was coded in MATLAB. From these seven features the most suitable features for explaining the intensity of the defect is discussed.

Problem faced by today’s communicators is not only security but also the speed of communication and size of content. Security in today’s world is one of the important challenges that people are facing all over the world in every aspect of their lives. In this paper a method is proposed in which the concept of compression and data encryption is used. In this first data is compressed to reduce the size of the data and increase the data transfer rate. Thereafter compress data is encrypted to provide security.

Concentration of Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn were determined in the surface water of Usuma Dam and in the treated drinking water from the same source using Atomic absorption spectrophotometry. The concentrations of Cd, Cu, Pb, Ni and Zn in the surface raw water were 7.0, 17.0, 24.1, 14.0 and 43 µgl-1 respectively. While their concentration in the treated drinking water were 5.0, 10.0, 18.0, 9.0 and 25.3 µgl-1 respectively. The trend of the concentration is in the order of Zn > Pb> Cu> Ni> Cd in both the water samples. The result shows that the metal concentrations in the treated drinking water are lower than the metal concentration in the raw water. This may be attributed to water treatment processes and distribution.

The involvement of subordinates in decision-making has attracted much attention among academicians as well as practicing managers. In the school scenario, there had been fervent calls to involve teachers in the decision making process ever since the advent of the school based management concept. However many are still debating on how to involve teachers effectively in the decision making process. One of the major concerns is, whether the decisional situation is in the zone of acceptance of the teacher. Even though much has been done in evaluating teachers’ participation in decision making in schools, there is still lack of systematic procedure to develop the right instrument to assess this phenomena. In light of this, the following paper discusses the process of developing and validating an instrument to assess teachers’ participation in decision-making. The instrument was developed via focus group interviews involving teachers and school administrators. The instrument measures teachers’ participation in decision-making from five perspectives: curriculum and instruction, student related issues, staff related issues, financial issues, and general administration. The instrument was administered to 48 school administrators and 216 teachers and based on the results the reliability index was computed. The Crobach Alpha values for the dimensions ranges from 0.79 to 0.94. Apart from that, the instrument was also subjected to various types of validity check such as face and content validity, concurrent validity, and dimensionality to ensure that it has sound psychometric properties.

Molecular interaction between brompheniramine with 1-methanol, 1-ethanol and 1-propanol were analyzed by Time Domain Reflectometry technique at 303K. Dielectric relaxation times, Dielectric constants, dielectric loss, were calculated. Physical and chemical parameters varied with alcohols concentrations in brompheniramine medium. Intermolecular interaction strength of alcohols with brompheniramine was observed in the order of 1-methanol<1-ethanol<1-propanol

Patharia forest is situated near the north of Tropics of Cancer on Vindhyan peaks. The forest is a dry deciduous forest .It has a undulating topography with low rising hills scattered all round. The average monthly minimum and maximum temperatures are 11.1°C and 25°C in January and 40°C and 44°C in June. Forest is dominated by Tectona grandis,, Butea monosprma, Accacia sp. etc., and ground floara consist of Lantana camara, Parthenium hysterophorus, Euphorbia geniculata, Heteropogon contortum, Cyanadon dactylon, Biophytum sensitivum, Cassia tora etc. Occurrence of various shapes, sizes, colours of mushrooms in the forest suggest that climatic conditions together with forest waste provides conducive environment to these mushrooms. Present studies deals with the diversity of mushrooms in Patharia forest. After survey of Patharia forest which has been done during the period of July 2012-July 2013, there are number of wild mushrooms were collected but only 18 mushroom species which belong to 12 families are identified viz. Tyromyces caesius, Coprinus saccharinus, Clavaridelphus sp., Tremets elegans, Schizophyllum commune, Macrolepiota procera, Geastrum triplx Polyporous sp.,Lepiota caerulescens, Pycnoporus cinnabarinus,Macolepiota sp., Tricoloma sp., Pleuteus sp Ganoderma sp., Pluteus flavofuligineus, Fomoptopsis pinicola Stereum hirsutum,Coltricia sp.

In Lebanon, Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has a major public health impact through high disease prevalence, significant downstream pathophysiologic effects, and enormous financial responsibilities. Diet is an important environmental factor in the development and prevention of T2D. This study aimed to investigate the association between the adherence to the Mediterranean diet and the risk of T2DM in Lebanese non-diabetic men and women and to compare the adherence to the Mediterranean Diet among non-diabetic versus diabetic as well as to validate the Arabic version of a 14-point Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener (MEDAS) questionnaire. This cross-sectional study was conducted in the greater area of Beirut region. Study subjects were 150 diabetic and 150 non-diabetic aged ?40 years. They were matched by age and gender. The level of adherence to the Mediterranean Diet was identified using the MEDAS questionnaire and the risk of diabetes was identified using a short diabetes risk assessment questionnaire. Compared to Non-diabetic men, the majority of women in our population were obese (44%) and 63% of them were inactive (p=0.01).The majority of men had overweight (52%) (p=0.004). No significant differences between genders concerning body weight (p=0.002). Moreover, no significant differences between men and women concerning the family history of diabetes, the occurrence of high blood pressure or the risk of diabetes (p=0.4, p=0.6, p=0.2 respectively). The level of adherence to the Mediterranean diet among non-diabetic subjects shows no statistical differences among MEDAS score categories between genders, age categories, body weight and BMI (p>0.05). Unadjusted binary logistic regression shows that diabetic participants had low adherence to the Mediterranean diet by 0.53 times more than non-diabetic participants (OR=0. 53, 95% CI 0.288-0.994). In addition, regression shows that more than 70% of non-diabetic subjects with low adherence score had a high risk of diabetes (OR=0.35, [95% CI 0.12-1.0]) compared to those with moderate + high score. Concerning the validation of the MEDAS questionnaire, Cronbach’s alpha was not statistically significant in our population.These findings confirm that lifestyle modifications provide potentially useful and relevant information on the relationship between diet and disease prevention among Lebanese adults.

This work reports the numerical study of MHD free convection boundary layer flow of Casson fluid brought by vertically inclined porous surface in presence of thermal radiation and chemical reaction effects. Darcian viscous flow model for the porous medium is employed and the Rosseland diffusion approximation is used to describe the radiative heat flux in the energy equation. The homogeneous chemical reaction of first order is accounted in mass diffusion equation. The arising mathematically modelled non-linear partial differential equations of Casson fluid flow are successfully converted into linear coupled partial differential equations with the source of suitable transformation. The numerical solutions are computed through the application of finite difference method. The effect logs of an interesting physical parameters namely, Grashof number for heat and mass transfer, Magnetic field parameter, Permeability parameter, Prandtl number, Schmidt number, Thermal radiation parameter, Heat sink parameter, Chemical reaction parameter, Casson fluid parameter and Angle of inclination parameter number are discussed graphically. Further, the variations of skin-friction coefficient, heat and mass transfer rates are identified by way of tables. Comparison with the previous published literature is presented and an excellent agreement is reported.

We are very happy to announce that from 9th June 2018, Dr. Abd El-Aleem Saad Soliman Desoky has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Agriculture. Dr. Abd El-Aleem Saad Soliman Desoky working as Professor of Agricultural Zoology Assistant in Plant Protection Department, Faculty of Agriculture, New Campus (ElKawamel), Sohag University, New Sohag City, Sohag, Egypt. The appointment of Dr. Abd El-Aleem Saad Soliman Desoky as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.