Archives-February 2015

The investigation focuses on the effectiveness of fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) confinement in upgrading ductility and strength of concrete columns under axial compression. An experimental program is carried out to investigate the influence of the radius of the cross sectional corners on the strength of small scale square column specimens confined with FRP composite laminates. This study was achieved by testing 63 specimens depending on the selected corner radius, the section varied from square to circular. The various parameters such as corner radius, wrap thickness and fiber orientation of 0°, 90°, +45°,-45° and combinations of them were investigated. Smoothening of the edges of square cross-section plays a significant role in delaying the failure of FRP composite at these edges and the efficiency of FRP confinement is directly related to the radius of the cross-section edges.

Hydromagnetic and thermal radiation effects on unsteady free convective flow of a viscous incompressible flow past an exponentially accelerated infinite isothermal vertical plate with variable mass diffusion has been considered. The fluid considered here is a gray, absorbing-emitting radiation but a non-scattering medium. The plate temperature is raised to and the concentration level near the plate is raised linearly with time. An exact solution to the dimensionless governing equations has been obtained by the Laplace transform method, when the plate is exponentially accelerated with a velocity in its own plane against gravitational field. The effects of velocity, temperature and concentration are studied for different physical parameters like magnetic field parameter, thermal radiation parameter, thermal Grashof number, mass Grashof number and Schmidt number. It is observed that the velocity increases with decreasing magnetic field parameter or radiation parameter. But the trend is just reversed with respect to or .

The basic purpose of this study is to investigate how English language cohesive devices are exploited in a news text. The analysis has been carried out on news article “The Pleasure of Reading” by Zubeda Mustafa published in one of the famous newspaper- Dawn news. Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework was applied for the cohesion analysis. Halliday and Hasan (1976) provided the concepts of referencing, ellipsis, conjunction, substitution and lexical cohesion which have been analyzed in the present study. The study establishes the fact that all the above mentioned cohesive elements are exploited in the text which have ultimately contributed to clarify the overall meanings of the text by binding it in a more organized way. It has been observed that news writers do introduce cohesion in order to give a sense of connection and order in the text. In fact, these cohesive devices provide a sense of connectivity and unity in the text.

Drugs normally synthesized to use as medication to treat diseases like cancer and microbial infections, these synthesized drugs were interested more than naturally-derived drugs which have been shows low activity or not as efficient against diseases. A new ligand 3-methylbenzyl (2Z)-2-[1-(pyridin-4-yl)ethylidene]hydrazine carbodithioate (PE3MBC) and its Cd(II), Cu(II), Co(II) and Zn(II) metal complexes. The new ligand and metal complexes were characterized via various physico-chemical and spectroscopic techniques. Cd(II) complex show more activity against microbes and against cancer cell line MCF-7, while other complexes does not shows activity like cadmium complex, all the complexes does not shows any activity against MDAMB-231 cell line. The fatal of the cancer and the microbes cell was due to inhibition of DNA synthesis which was probably due to chelating with metals complexes, or could be referred to lipophilicity, presence of hydrophobic moiety in the complex molecule, also could be due to steric effects and electronic effects.

In India, the wastewater at large from distilleries is known as spent wash, which is highly acidic in nature. In India 2004, distillery industry number has gone up to 319, producing 3.25x109 l of alcohol and generating 40.4x1010 l of wastewater annually (Uppal, 2004). Because of using large quantities of water in distillery industries it is essential to treat and reuse their waste water. In the most of time the discharge standards applied for distilleries are often too tough and below the level that can be achieved with appropriate biological treatment technologies (Pant and Adholeya, 2007a,b). In distillery industry, the production and characteristics of spent wash is highly variable and dependent on feed stocks and various aspects of the ethanol production process. The molasses spent wash (MSW) is a potential water pollutant in two ways. First, the highly coloured nature of MSW can block out sun light from rivers and streams thus reducing oxygenation of the water by photosynthesis and hence becomes injurious to aquatic life. Secondly, it has a high pollution load which would result in eutrophication of contaminated water sources (FitzGibbon et al., 1998). The first reason is due to the presence of water soluble recalcitrant colouring compound called melanoidin (Evershed et al., 1997). Melanoidin are dark brown to black coloured natural condensation product of sugar and amino acids produced by nonenzymatic browning reactions called maillard reactions (Plavsic et al., 2006). Ohmomo et al. (1988a) concluded that microbial decolourization of melanoidin is due to two decomposition mechanisms; in the first the smaller molecular weight melanoidin are attacked and in the second the larger molecular weight melanoidin are attacked. Satyawali and Balakrishnan (2008 a b) have investigated that the degradation of low molecular weight compound occurred in the membrane bioreactor (MBR) while the higher molecular weight compounds comprising the colour imparting melanoidin remained unaffected. As melanoidins are recalcitrant to biodegradation, the elimination of colored effluents in molasses-based distillery wastewater treatment system is mainly based on physical or chemical procedures such as adsorption, coagulation, precipitation, and oxidation. Although these methods are effective, they suffer from such short coming as requiring high reagent dosage, high cost, and formation of hazardous byproducts and intensive energy consumption.

In multivariate sampling, the major interest is on the problem of estimation of several population characteristics which often make conflicting demands on the sampling procedure. In this type of survey, the best allocation for one item may not in general be the best for another. There is the need to come up with compromise solution in a survey with many characteristics under study. This paper focuses on comparing some techniques of optimum sample allocation which are Yates/Chatterjee, Booth and Sedransk and Vector Maximum Criterion (VMC) on five sets of real life data stratified into six strata and two variates with desired variances using: (i.) Method of maximum variances with fixed n and (ii.) arbitrary fixing of variances. The stratum sample size nh among the classes are obtained to ascertain the criterion that will produce the smallest n. Based on the set of data collected and used for the empirical study it was discovered that Vector Maximum Criterion (VMC), Booth and Sedransk are superior to Yates/Chatterjee.

Different parts of Moringa oleifera shoot are reportedly useful for nutrition, medicine, water purification and as raw material for the industry. It is however hypothesized that the growth and mineral composition of Moringa could be affected by the medium in which it is growing. Consequently, a factorial experiment involving three pre-determined soil depths of 0-15, 15-30 and 30-45 cm at four soil water levels: 100, 75, 50 and 25% Field Moisture Capacity (FMC ) was conducted in Ibadan, South western Nigeria, to investigate the effect of soil depth and water stress on the growth and mineral composition of Moringa shoot. The total N, C, P, K, Mg and Ca contained in the soil samples collected from the three soil depths were in the order of 0-15>15-30>30-45 cm. As a result, Moringa plants produced in the surface soil (0-15 cm) was superior in height; stem girth, number of leaves and dry matter yield irrespective of water- stress condition. Reduction in FMC from 100 to 50% did not significantly affect growth performance. Surface soil produced stems and leaves richer in mineral composition (Ca, Mg, K, Fe, Cu and Zn) than subsoil. Therefore, growing moringa on a fertile-soil is better for animal health.

This research was carried out in Keta Municipality of Volta Region of Ghana to investigate how resources are used in the production of chili pepper. A simple random technique was used to select 100 chili pepper farmers from three communities in Woe, Keta Municipality. The data was collected from December 2010 to January 2011. The Cobb-Douglas production function was used to determine the resource use efficiency of inputs used by the farmers. The findings of the study showed that the farmers were operating in stage two of the production frontier. This was shown from the elasticities of the various inputs, showing diminishing return which is a characteristic of the stage two of the production function. However, the farmers were found not to be efficient in allocating the resources for production in the study area. The ratio of the marginal value product (MVP) and the marginal factor cost (MFC) was found to be less than unity for all the inputs except labour and organic manure. The study recommends that the farmers should reduce the level of those inputs that are being over used. They should rather increase the use of organic manure and maintain the quantity of labour use.

Two sets of field experiments were performed in two successive summer seasons to study the effect of soil and foliar fertilization of mungbean. The first set included the effect of late foliar applied N or K under different levels of phosphatic fertilization on mungbean yield and chemical constituents. Mungbean (Vigna radiata (L) Wilczek) var. Kawmy-l was fertilized with 0,19,38,57 and 76 Kg P205 ha-1 at sowing. Foliar applied N was sprayed as 1 % urea solution and K was applied as potassium sulphate 36% K20 solution; both N and K sprays were carried out at early pod formation stage. The second set of experiments aimed to study the effect of micronutrient application when combined with urea. The foliar applied treatments were urea (1%); and four key micronutrients; i.e. Fe (0.5%); Zn (0.1%); Mn (0.2%) and CuSO4 (0.05%). Micronutrient treatments were sprayed either alone or combined with urea at early pod formation. The obtained results showed that P fertilization significantly increased mungbean pod weight per plant, 100-seed weight, yield per plant and per hectare compared with the untreated control. Mungbean seed yield per hectare showed more response to foliar applied N than that with K. The best seed yield per hectare was reported from the combined effect of 76 Kg P205 ha-1 and foliar spraying with N. Protein percentage in mungbean seeds was not affected by either soil or foliar applications and ranged between 20.6 to 22.9%. However, protein yield kg ha-1 significantly increased when the plants were fertilized with 76 Kg P205 ha1 and foliar sprayed with N. In addition, soil application of P and foliar spray treatments showed significant effects on carbohydrate percentage and carbohydrate yield ha-1of mungbean seeds. Micronutrient application showed beneficial effects on yield and yield components from the association of urea with Zn on pod-number and with all micronutrients on pod-weight per plant. The highest seed yield per plant was recorded when the plants were foliar sprayed with Fe and Mn alone or Urea+Zn. Meanwhile, the highest seed yield per hectare was achieved by foliar spraying with Fe or Zn alone as well as by the combined application with urea Fe, Mn or Zn. Micronutrient concentrations in mungbean seeds were elevated more than in the control treatment due to foliar spray treatments but it did not reach the level of significance for Fe, Zn and Cu. It could be concluded from this study that mungbean productivity responds to combined soil application of P at 57 Kg P205 ha-1 and late foliar applied N at early pod formation stage. Foliar spray of urea combined with Fe or Zn may increase seed yield and improve the quality of seeds.

The conservation of towns is a growing field in Malaysia. In the context of cultural heritage, the exceptional conservation practice in this country has enabled Malacca and Georgetown to be chosen as two of UNESCO’s world heritage town. The conservation of towns emerges from the awareness that cultural heritage possesses eminent uniqueness which must be conserved in order to safeguard it from extinction. In the context of Malaysia, the traditional shop lots are the remaining cultural heritage from the past, for the present and future. The variety of shapes and architectures of the shop lots makes them unique and should be preserved for the future generation. Therefore, the efforts to conserve a city or town usually concern the conservation of traditional shop lots. Nevertheless, the conservation efforts usually put more emphasis on facade that an equally unique element is overlooked. The element is the walkways of the shop lots. This article aims to discuss the need and significance of traditional shop lot walkways as one of the elements in the conservation of towns. The need for shop lot walkways has an apparent motive in term of a town’s image or in the epistemology perspective of the town conservation field itself.