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Consumers are deeply concerned about how their health care is managed, administered and priced. They are frustrated with the expensive, high-tech disease treatment approach predominantly in modern medicine. Positioned at the interface between food and drugs, a growing body of products is assuming importance; the consumer is now looking for complementary or alternative beneficial products and that’s why nowadays they are using nutraceuticals. Increasingly, they are using natural dietary supplements and other forms of nutraceuticals as part of a tremendous surge to have physiological benefits or to provide protection against diseases. Functional foods and nutraceutical products represent a value added growth opportunity both domestically and internationally. Development of better characterized and research proven products will help enhance consumer confidence in nutraceutical and functional food products in the world. This article briefly discusses about the basic information about the nutraceuticals and its importance.

The challenge to feed the increasing world’s population with nutritionally balanced food is enormous hence determining the nutritional value of food is highly valuable in order to ensure the status of food. In our study, we determined the carbohydrate, protein, lipid, ash, fibre, energy and moisture content of Colocynthis citrullus and Sesanum indicum consumed in Nigeria, particularly in Nasarawa State. The Na, K, Ca, Mg, P, Zn, Fe, Cr, Cd, Pb and Cu contents of the two samples were also determined. High contents of carbohydrate, proteins and fat of 11.89, 27.67, and 52.48%; and 12.58, 24.92 and 49.44% were found in Colocynthis citrullus and Sesanum indicum respectively. The mineral contents of the two seeds showed a relatively high content of some of the minerals.

In this study, a comparison of performance among four different methods (Probability Weighted Moments (PWM), Maximum Likelihood Methods (MLM), the Methods of Moments (MOM), and the least Square Method (LSM)) of estimating the parameters of the Weibull distribution was done, using different values of ? and ?. This study contains two different experiments; experiment I and experiment II. Values of ? > ?, ? < ?, ? = ? were used in experiment I, and another varied values of ? < ?, ? < ?, ? = ? in line with some modeled distribution of the Weibull distribution, were used in experiment II. These values were generated by simulation. The aim is to find the best methods of estimating the two-parameter Weibull distribution. Based on the sample sizes and parameters considered, the method which gave the best estimate for the two-parameter Weibull distribution, is the method of Moments (MOM), taking into consideration the total deviation as a measurement for comparison. This study will help to estimate parameters associated with various models of a component or system such as reliability problems, maintainability and predictions such as MTTF, MTTFF, MTTR, MTBF, Hazard Rate etc.

Practical transceivers have hardware impairments, which may affect the data rate of a system. In this paper, two way relaying with hardware losses is considered and is different from previous methods, which considers only ideal hardware case. Here both hops are subjected to independent and non-identical distributed nakagami-m fading variants with Amplify-and-Forward (AF) protocol and Decode-and-forward (DF) protocol. Hardware impairments are calculated at source, relay and destination. The outage probability is calculated with a function effective end-to-end signal-to-noise-and-distortion ratio (SNDR). In a similar way ergodic capacity also achieved. For low SNR values losses will be less but substantial. And for high SNR values losses will increase without bounds. But for SNDR case, increasing SNR makes some constant value of threshold, which is inversely proportional to the SNDR, called SNDR ceiling. Finally, this paper suggests the design guidelines for selecting hardware equipment to overcome hardware impairments with maximum extent.

The phenotypic correlations among egg weight, external and internal egg quality traits of two commercial egg type chickens, Isa brown and Harco black chickens were determined. A total number of 200 point of lay hens of 100 each of Isa brown and Harco black were used for the study. Data were collected on egg weight, egg length, egg content, shell weight, shell thickness, yolk weight, albumen height, albumen weight, yolk height, yolk length and yolk colour, from 960 eggs consisting 40 each of the strain analyzed on weekly bases for 12 weeks. Results shows a significant (P<0.05) effect between the measured parameters and the two strain of hens. Isa brown eggs had higher values of egg length (54.12mm), egg content (45.48g), shell weight (4.68g) and albumen length (5.75mm) than its counterpart Harco black eggs. The association between egg weight and other egg biometrical traits were found to be positive and very highly significant (r = 0.31- 0.80; p<0.0001) while other egg parameters were either positively or inversely correlated with each other for Isa brown strain. The relationship between egg weight and other egg biometrical traits were found to be very highly significant (p<0.0001; r = 0.73) while other egg variables were also either positively or inversely correlated with each other for Harco black strain .It can be concluded that Isa brown hens eggs was better than Harco black hens in respect to egg length, egg content, shell weight and albumen length while the phenotypic correlation coefficient results can be used in selection criteria. 

We are very happy to announce that from 31st October 2017, Prof. Massoud Kaykhaii has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Analytical Chemistry. Prof. Massoud Kaykhaii working as professor of analytical chemistry, University of Sistan and Baluchestan, Zahedan, Iran. The appointment of Prof. Massoud Kaykhaii 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.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the risk management behaviour of selected commercial banks in Malaysia based on their stock performance in term of Average Daily Return (ADR) and Value at Risk (VaR). VaR is measured using Historical Simulation Model. We present results of ADR and VaR at 99% confidence interval, on one-day horizon from year 2003-2010, for the following stock index of eight commercial banks in Malaysia: RHB; Maybank; CIMB; Affin; Alliance; Ambank; Hong Leong and Public Bank. The ADR and VaR of each commercial bank in Malaysia are measured and compared to identify their risk behaviours. The risk management behaviour of commercial banks in Malaysia can be categorised into three categories: conservative; moderate; and aggressive. Our results show that the risk management behaviour of one bank is considered conservative, three banks are considered moderate and four banks are considered aggressive. This may give suggestions to the investors which bank/banks to invest in.

For some decades, power quality did not cause any problem, because it had no effect on most of the loads connected to the electrical distribution system. Voltage sags is the most common type of power quality disturbance in the distribution. Recently various power electronic devices are proposed for this purpose. Among these devices special attention was given to the family based on the VSC technology for faster response. This project intends to investigate mitigation technique that is suitable for different type of voltage sags source with different type of loads. The mitigation techniques that will be studied are such as Dynamic Voltage Restorer (DVR), Distribution Static Compensator (DSTATCOM). The simulation is done using PSCAD/EMTDC software.

Physico-chemical properties of ink particles have an important role in deinking using either washing or flotation processes. To study such properties, turbidity, zeta potential and surface tension techniques were used in this research. In this work, oleic acid and xylanase are used as surface modifiers for the ink particles. The results show that addition of enzyme alone to the ink suspension and due to its adsorption on ink particles, increase ink dispersion. This will facilitate separation of ink using washing process. On the other hand, the addition of enzyme-oleic acid blend to ink suspension reduces the electronegativity of ink particles. This will make the ink particles to flocculate and facilitate its adhesion to the negatively charged air bubbles during the flotation process. It is expected that this fundamental knowledge will lead to process technology improvements in the deinking of office wastepaper.

The study of liquid properties using spectroscopy and acoustic methods In the present investigation, non-aqueous solutions of constitutes mining field for scientists. L. Arginine are studied. FTIR spectra have been taken for the sample solutions. The observed vibrational spectra are analysed. Ultrasonic velocity and density are measured for different temperatures(278.15K to 328.15K) and at various molalities. Using the above measurements, adiabatic compressibility solvation number, apparent molal compressibility, apparent molal volume and equivalent conductivity are computed. From the computed results structural influence of the salt in the solvent is studied. The results obtained from spectroscopic study are corroborated with the acoustic behavior of the solutions.