Archives-July 2011

The study assessed the level of gender involvement in household farming decisions and identified constraints to women involvement in household farming decisions in Lafia Local Government Area, North-central Nigeria. Data were collected through structured questionnaire administered on sixty (60) farming households randomly selected for the study. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and factor analysis. The results showed that men dominated (with involvement rate of 79% on grand average) all aspects of household farming decisions (such as selection of farm enterprise, procurement of farm inputs, allocation of farm inputs, selling and storage of excess farm produce) except for household decisions concerning processing and consumption of farm produce dominated (73.5% on grand average) by females members of farm households. Poor personal linkages to socio-economic institutions, land holding constraint, women farming skill, household violence, traditional and cultural belief were constraints to women involvement in household farming decisions. It is recommended that extension activities be expanded to include sensitizing male household heads on need to involve their women in the household farming decisions for greater productivity and to enhance household food security.

This paper is focused on the study of mixed convective heat and mass transfer on the steady MHD flow of a heat absorbing fluid in a permeable vertical plate subject to the influence of buoyancy, viscous dissipation, Joule heating and Soret effect embedded with slip condition at the boundary layer. The momentum, energy and mass diffusion equations are coupled non-linear partial differential equations which are solved by perturbation technique. The effect of skin friction, Nusselt number and Sherwood number distributions are shown in tables. The numerical results are shown on graphs. The effects of various significant parameters entering into the problem have been discussed in detail.

Health services are seen as one of the most decisive dimension to measure the development of a region. The present study is an empirical approach to measure the health facilities available in the different districts of Assam through some indicators of health services supported by current literature. A composite index called as MPI (Mazziotta-Pareto Index), is used for this purpose. The different indicators considered for health facility development are normalized to eliminate the unit of measurement and its variability. The distributional pattern of the composite index is recognized to ease the classification of the districts based on the health services. Finally, the low development districts of Assam are identified and the responsible indicators of such low level of development are discussed. The Government of Assam has made one year rural posting mandatory for those doctors who want to go for post-graduate studies from the government medical colleges from 2009. This study will provide a quantification of the district level scenario on health conditions before the implementation of such a welcome scheme on public interest. A similar study followed after a gap of few years would reflect the impact of such scheme on health facilities of the state.

The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ perceptions about employing GeoGebra in the teaching and learning of mathematics. The study comprises four respondents who are currently enrolled in a mathematics education course at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. The findings indicate a similar opinion among the respondents according to their experience, with regard to GeoGebra. All respondents agree that the software employs straightforward and comprehensible instructions in addition to offering accurate and simple information. They also agree that the software is user friendly. The respondents on the whole have positive opinions regarding the idea of employing GeoGebra in the teaching of mathematics.

Plant cell culture provides an alternative means for producing secondary metabolites. In this study, experiments were carried out to study the effect of cholesterol as precursor and salicylic acid and sodium nitroprusside as elicitors on the enhancement of diosgenin production in the cell suspension culture of Momordica charantia. Callus was induced from seeds when inoculated on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with various concentrations and combinations of auxins and cytokinins to initiate cell suspension culture. The maximum diosgenin recovery was estimated in 6 week old callus (7.54 mg/gdw) which was significantly superior then the rest of time treatment and the treatment doses of salicylic acid (0.05 mM) gave highest diosgenin recovery (8.98 mg/gdw) in comparison to Sodium nitroprusside (8.53 mg/gdw) and control (7.61 mg/gdw).

The detection of benzene vapor composition formed inside the cars cabin has been investigated. Benzene is an organic chemical compound. The sample of benzene vapor composition is taken from a cars cabin and then the samples are analyzed by the gas chromatography-mass spectrometer (GCMS). The data is recorded and plotted by using the 4000 GCMS version 6’s software. Finally, the results show that there are different gases compositions inside the cars cabin. Beside of the gas (Z)-1-(Ethoxycarbonyl-1-Fluoro-2-(Methoxycarbonyl)-1, 3-Butadiene, that found inside the cars cabin, there are other gases as - (3-Oxo-3H-Benzo [F] Chromen-2-Yl)-2, 4(1H,3H) - Quinolinedione, Ethane-D6, Ethylene-D4, Heptacosafluoro-Tributylamine, Nonanal, Decanal, Tetradecanoic Acid, 11-Dodecen-1-Al, benzeneethanamine, 3-fluoro-a, 5-dihydroxy-N-methyl-, 2-Pyridinepropanoic Acid, a-Methyl-a-Oxo-Ethyl Ester, Silane Methyl-, Hexadecanoic Acid.

The ability to track the real-time location and movement of robots offers a range of useful applications in areas such as safety, security and the supply chain. Real-time Ultra Wide Band Location determination is a technology that uses Ultra-wideband (UWB) and aims at delivering high positional accuracy in harsh industrial environments that previously caused problems for traditional location systems due to electromagnetic interference. Ultra Wide Band systems can calculate the location of tags which are designed to be mounted on assets or worn by a person. They transmit UWB signals that are received by sensors which contain an array of antenna and ultra-wideband radio receivers. The data from these sensors combined with dedicated software uses algorithms to work out the angle of arrival (AOA) of the UWB signal from the tag which is then compared to the time difference of arrival (TDOA). This information is determined between pairs of sensors connected by timing cables. The combination of AOA and TDOA measurement technologies delivers a precise three dimensional location system that is powerful, reliable, and robust for harsh industrial environments. This research examines the use of ultra wide band technology in tracking items such as mobile robots.

Electronic mail is a powerful means of communication. It is fast become a primary means of communication. It is however different from other means of communication, for instance the dimensions differ in: speed, permanence of the message; cost of distribution, deliverance to individuals and groups; an ability to filter, channel, record, and control messages. There is also a lack of ‘intimacy’ inherent in email that many believe does exist in posted letters. This can be a problem when emailing unknown persons in the hope of generating a response to a matter which relies on their taking time to ponder the query and compose a reply. We set out to examine whether posted letter would elicit more replies than emails and the rest of this paper describes the results. We conclude that posting a letter does indeed induce more replies than email.

Educational blogs are used to allow educators to interact with students from any location. Teachers sharing ideas through blogs is a promising way to communicate teaching ideas and allows multicultural teaching methods to be disseminated. The blogs that tell the educator how to use technology within the classroom are informative as many teachers would have no idea about such teaching methods. Research based blogs allow users to see different educational topics discussed in more depth. This paper provides an overview of the impact blogs are having in an educational context.

Bluetooth is a short-range wireless cable replacement technology. The Bluetooth Security Architecture is susceptible to a number of attacks such as exhaustive search of short PINs, man-in-the middle attack and denial-of-service attacks. These attacks are made possible by weaknesses exploited in the PIN code, the system of key distribution and the handling of requests from malicious users. This paper also introduces some possible additional security measures which could be implemented to strengthen the overall security architecture of Bluetooth enabled devices.