Archives-April 2011

To compare the essential oil composition of two Thyme species T.daenensis and T.fedtschenkoi, the aerial parts of them were collected at flowering stage. The essential oil was obtained by hydro distillation method for 3 hours and their chemical components of essential oil were identified by GC and GC/MS. The main constituents of T.daenensis were thymol (73.86 %), caryophyllene (5.55 %), ?-terpinene (5.03 %), p-cymene (3.92 %) and carvacrol (2.92 %). While the main constituents of T.fedtschenkoi were linalool (63.77 %), ?-terpineol (10.17 %), 1,8-cineole (4.01 %), thymol (3.3 %), sabinene (2.66 %).

Black liquor the main waste remained from paper industry composed mainly of some organic compounds as a soluble salts and a high portion of sodium silicate. The idea of this paper is to transfer the inorganic part from this waste into useful product (calcium silicate hydrate) which has a lot of known applications nowadays. The preparation of calcium silicate from black liquor was done through direct reaction between the black liquor, calcium carbonate and calcium hydroxide and boiling for about 2 hrs. This method was known as hydrothermal method. The obtained materials as well as the raw materials were investigated using both IR and XRD analyses.

Unified Modeling Language has been widely used in software development for modeling the problem domain to solution domain. The major problems lie in comprehension and testing which can be found in whole process. Program slicing is an important approach to analyze, understand, test and maintain the program. It is a technique for analyzing program by focusing on statements which have dependence relation with slicing criterion. Program slicing is of two types (i) Static slicing (ii) Dynamic slicing. Dynamic slicing refers to a collection of program execution and may significantly reduce the size of the program slice because runtime information, collected during execution, is used to compute the program slice. In this paper we introduce an approach for constructing dynamic slice of unified modeling language (UML) using sequence diagram, state chart diagram, class diagram along with the activity diagram. First we construct an intermediate representation known as model dependency graph. MDG combines information extracted from various sequence diagrams along with those from class, state-machine, sequence diagram and activity diagrams. Then dynamic slice is computed by integrating the activity models into the MDG. Finally for a given slicing criterion test cases has been generated.

Information processing model developed for management and psychological literature were from the basis of four general models, which provide a guiding framework for research. These models were term as rational, limited capacity, expert, and cybernetic models of information processing and behavior. Previous researcher argued that each model provides a different explanation of processing in several theoretical domains and has different methodological implications. However, the findings of the present study advanced and tested using structural equation modelling on the data collected from a sample of 118 Malaysian companies suggest that integrated information processing model is more appropriate in explaining extent of environmental scanning and information processing capacity and having a significant bearing on the quality of the decision made.

This paper proposes a new nanofluid thermal conductivity analytical model based on the combination of static and modified Brownian motion mechanism. This is applicable for spherical nanoparticles, the particle volume fraction of 0.005, and critical size nanoparticles. This model is compared with Al2O3/water and CuO /water based nanofluid using existing thermal conductivity models and the experimental results in the open literature. This model deviates 2-5% with the existing Brownian motion theoretical model and experimental results. It is found that the Brownian motion contribution is significant only when the particle size is less that that of critical size and nominal particle volume fraction. It concludes that higher the particle volume fraction leads to lowering the Brownian motion velocity of particles in base fluids resulting degrading the nanoconvection.

The present study is aimed to investigate the detailed financial assistance sanctioned by a specialized financial institution which worked as a nodal agency of the Government of India to cater the financial needs of tourism industry i.e. Tourism Finance Corporation of India Limited (TFCI). This analysis is achieved by an in-depth study of various financial reports of the corporation and ‘Report on Development Banking in India’ published by IDBI time to time. The time period taken for the study is last fifteen years. The study is carried out to satisfy the objectives like (i) To analyse the detailed (purpose-wise, scheme-wise, sector-wise, state-wise and industry-wise) promotional assistance provided by TFCI to tourism and tourism related projects during the last fifteen years, (ii) To comment on Investment catalysts and employment opportunities provided by TFCI, and (iii) To examine the Factors which are responsible for operational and developmental activities of TFCI. The results of the study will be helpful for the TFCI in exploring the areas in which they are lagging behind the market and in which they should invest more in terms of financial assistance.

The issue on branding has been always the talks of the large-sized companies. This has been addressed in many literatures. But, these literatures little or never discussed about branding for small-medium enterprises (SMEs). Many view that branding is not the subject of SMEs around the world. The SMEs play a significant role in the development of economy especially the developing economies around the world. Hence it’s very important for every economy to focus and develop the SMEs. Effective branding is a key factor for the success of the SMEs. Effective brand development takes time. Once successful, similar, if not greater effort is required to sustain and enhance the position of the brand and the brand has to grow to remain strong. Our literature review suggests that the factors that affect branding of SMEs are the number of brands, brand equity, brand mix, consistency in brand communication, positive brand experience, brand differentiation, brand passion, push and pull brand campaign and secondary brand association.

With the newly improved ansaltz for the wave function and adopting the modified approximation scheme to evaluate the centrifugal term, we solve the Schrödinger equation with Woods-Saxon plus Rosen-Morse Potentials analytically, for arbitrary l-state. We also obtain the bound state energy spectrum and the unnormalized real and imaginary wave function.

The paper presents a system developed for recognizing gestures of Indian sign language from images of gestures. The proposed system is based on Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) and neural networks used for gesture pattern recognition. Unlike the systems proposed by other researchers such as using a radio frequency or colored gloves to achieve the recognition our system does not impose any such constraints. Features are extracted from the images using DCT which greatly reduces the size of the feature vector. Neural networks error back propagation algorithm is used to recognize gestures of alphabets of English language. The system was implemented with 130 sample images of gestures of alphanumeric characters with a maximum of 5 images per gesture. Experimental results show that the neural network is able to recognize gestures with an accuracy of 99.52%.

Self compacting self curing concrete is a new type of concrete which have the properties of self compaction as well as self curing. Self compacting concrete requires no external vibration to achieve consolidation and generally results in saving labour and time, improved workability, improved quality, higher durability and better surface finish. The strength and durability of concrete will be fully developed only if it is cured properly. To achieve good cure, excessive evaporation of water from fresh concrete should be avoided. Curing operations should ensure that adequate amount of water is available for cement hydration to occur. Concrete incorporating self-curing agents will represent a new trend in the concrete construction in the new millennium. Better understanding of the self-curing agents and the self compacting nature of concrete will definitely result in a new generation of concrete, which will be stronger, more durable, will have the desired stress-strain behavior and, possibly, with the whole range of newly introduced self curing self compacting properties. Curing compounds can be effectively used with improved strength and sustainability of water. Currently, one of the most active research areas dealing with cement and concrete is the understanding of the hydration of cement particles and achieving the optimum cure of concrete without the need for external curing methods.