Archives-February 2014

This study aims to identify whether the shifting from Human resource management to strategic human resource management in the leading industries of Iran has passed its’ fundamental alteration. Statistical Population covers 45leading manufacturing organizations from three pioneer industries, comprising 1280 employees including, senior managers, and members of strategic committee, board of directors, department managers, line managers and staff experts. Sampling method is random and classified. 619 questionnaires out of totally 712 samples has returned (87% return rate). Research methodology is a descriptive survey in the field study. Results show that strategic human resource management in pioneer industries of Iran is not in a desirable status. It requires a foundation and intention to cultural, social and theoretical components so that concept of diversity from traditional human resource and staff management to strategic human resource management can be provided.

The centre of concern in the Indian economy these days is the falling value of the Indian currency. Though much is being said about the reasons and the impact a fall in currency will have, little is being presented with clarity. As Lionel Trilling rightly said "We invented money and we use it, yet we cannot understand its laws or control its actions. It has a life of its own." This life blood of the economy is very enigmatic in nature, and more so for the common man. In the global economy that we live in it is essential for the people of the nation to understand the economic implications of money, its fall and its weakening. When he Indian rupee touched a lifetime low of 68.85 against the US dollar on August 28, 2013 RBI had announced a number of measures to take control of the situation, with government requesting not to but gold. All these measures and actions did not yield the desired result. This qualitative research paper aims at presenting the complex matter of the falling value of Indian currency, its reasons and its impact in a simple way to be understood by a layman. The research uses secondary data from various sources. To make the perplexing figures understandable the paper uses flow charts and diagrams.

Medical Tourism forms a significant proportion of less developed countries’ income. With regard to Iran’s attractiveness for tourists and big advantages of developing this industry in the country and lack of researches in this field, identification of motivations of medical tourists for choosing Iran, can significantly improve this burgeoning industry. Statistical population of this research is foreign medical tourists which have traveled to Iran for medical treatments. The data is gathered through distributing 56 questionnaires consist of 38 questions between medical tourists which were chosen by the method of convenience sampling. For testing the conceptual model multi linear regression has been applied. Results showed that while treatment cost, waiting time, treatment options, medical facilities and sociological factors are significantly and positively influential on medical tourists’ motivation, service quality, political conditions and tourist attractions has not any significant influence on medical tourists’ motivation. Therefore, we suggest concentrating the investment on the first 5 above mentioned factors in marketing plans and considering prevention of bad effects of the other factors.

The security of cloud users, a few proposals have been presented recently. Core objective of using cloud is to provide Security, Scalability, Availability, Performance, and Cost effective. A Safe Cloud Storage to provide con?dentiality and fine-grained access control for data stored in the cloud. This system enables the users to enjoy a secure outsourced data services at a minimized security management overhead. Here outsources not only the data but also the security management to the cloud in a trust way. Our system is fully integrates with Encryption , storing and retrival operations. Propose a threshold proxy re-encryption scheme and it integrates with decentralized erasure code such that a secure distributed system is formulated. Analyze and suggest appropriate limitations for the number of copies of a message transmitted to storage servers and the number of storage servers queried by a key server. These restrictions allow more flexible regulation between the number of storage servers and robustness.

This study was conducted to investigate the learning environment through the perception of prospective science teachers (PSTs) and science teacher educators (STEs) in teacher training institutions of Pakistan. Instrument used was extracted from a valid and reliable scale entitled “what is happening in the class” for both samples and it covered three aspects of learning environment: Cooperation, Instructor’s Support and Investigation. For data collection, two samples consisting of 410 Prospective Science Teachers (PSTs) and 38 Science Teacher Educators (STEs) were randomly selected from eight training institutions located in three states of Pakistan. Findings of study revealed that in some aspects of the learning environment, the teacher training institutions were rated poor while in various aspects these were perceived average and in a few aspects these were rated as good. The perception of PSTs and STEs was different about some characteristics of institutional learning environment while it was almost same about some other fact regarding learning environment.

The quality of employees hired depends on an effective recruitment and selection strategy. Recruitment and selection are critical human resource functions for businesses. Recruiting the right type of employees having the organizational fit remain a big challenge to the employers who want to achieve guaranteed success in their business operations. Hiring the right employees for the business can positively affect the turnover rate, company culture, production and profit. HR departments have become strategic entities in their functioning since these have to recruit the best resources, involve them fully in organizational productivity and plan for their value addition in order to ensure retention. This study was conducted to know the recruitment process followed by organizations and challenges faced by the HR recruiters while recruiting and selecting the candidates. The recruitment and selection issues that are prevalent today are not unique to any organization and research has shown that the issues are almost identical. Recruitment should be based on qualification, merit and experience. High unemployment doesn’t necessarily mean that it is easy to find good candidates. Centralized recruitment is advantageous. Line and staff co-operation is essential with regard to recruitment and selection. A fake resume affects the recruitment process badly and affects the efficiency and credibility of the company.

Today, the violence against women is the most pervasive yet under recognized social problem, not only in India but also throughout the world. It is present in every country, cutting across boundaries of culture, class, education and age. More significantly, with the increasing trend of urbanization the number of cases of violence against women has rapidly grown over the years. Hence in the present study an attempt is made to analyze the relationship between urbanization and increasing violence against women. For the said purpose, the data on the total number of cases registered under major six types of violence against women (Rape, Kidnapping of Women & Girls, Dowry Deaths, Cruelty by husband/in laws, Molestation & Sexual Harassment and PIT Act) during the period of 2001 to 2011 has been collected from all the police stations of all the seven divisions of Bangalore city. In the present study the pattern of violence against women in Bangalore city particularly during the period of 2001 to 2011 has been examined in the larger context of Indian society. The major casual factors for the violence against women have been discussed from sociological perspective. Further, important suggestions have been made to reform the existing legislative system regarding violence against women and at the end to provide gender justice in all the sections of the society.

In this paper, the structure of Hybrid Power Flow Controller (HPFC) is proposed in order to improve static voltage stability characteristics. HPFC forms a hybrid controller using IPFC series converters as a hybrid with existing parallel and passive compensator (SVC) in power system. Utilization of hybrid structures makes it possible to use converters for improving performance of both old and existing compensators in power networks. In this study, the power injection model (PIM) is used to model the hybrid power flow controller in Newton load flow. The aforementioned model is simulated in MATLAB software. The P-V curves of PQ buses of a typical system are evaluated by a continuous power flow (CPF) method to analyses the effect of this controller on static voltage stability characteristics. Meanwhile, SVC as existing devices in the system and UPFC and IPFC as state-of-the-art compensator devices are compared with the proposed hybrid structure. The amount of active and reactive power loss and improvement of loading limit of the system are used as main parameters in our comparison.

The effects of dewaxing on the physico-chemical properties of some brands of vegetable oil have been investigated. Five (5) brands of crude vegetable oil including soybean oil (SO), beniseed oil (BO),cottonseed oil (CSO) and palm kernel oil (PKO) were used for these investigations. The physico-chemical properties and the wax contents were determined before and after the dewaxing operation. The wax contents (ppm), saponification numbers, % free fatty acid contents, slip melting points (0C) of the oil samples were reduced while the iodine values of the oil samples increased after the dewaxing operation. The dewaxed oil samples showed good abilities to withstand refrigerator temperature.

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of bleaching red palm oil with fuller’s earth, kaolin, charcoal and activated carbon on some of the physico-chemical characteristics. Each of the adsorbent materials was separately employed in the bleaching of the crude palm oil sample. In the removal of colour, fuller’s earth showed highest ability (67.23%) in the removal of carotenes (R-Band). Charcoal (56.50%) compared favourably to fuller’s earth in the removal of carotenes. However, the adsorbent materials- fuller’s earth (3.96%), kaolin (4.32%) and charcoal (5.04%) showed very poor, but comparable abilities in the removal of xanthophylls (Y-Band) from the palm oil sample. Bleaching of the red palm oil sample with the adsorbents resulted in total colour reduction of 58.20% with fuller’s earth, 40.14% with kaolin; 49.50% with charcoal and 38.87% with activated carbon. The lovibond tintometer scale was used in the colour measurements. Generally, bleaching with the adsorbents resulted to reductions in the colour mixture content, free fatty acid (FFA) content, peroxide value (POV) and the unsaponifiable matter content but increased the melting point (M.Pt.OC) and the cloud point of the bleached oil samples. The treatment with the adsorbents showed no pronounced effect on the saponification numbers, iodine values, specific gravities and the refractive indices of the bleached oil samples.