Archives-March 2014

Even though lightweight foamed concrete has low mechanical properties compared to normal weight concrete, there is a potential of using this material as partition or load-bearing wall in low-rise residential construction. Before it can be considered for use as a load-bearing element in the building industry, it is necessary to acquire reliable information of its mechanical properties at ambient and high temperatures for quantification of its fire resistance performance. This paper will present the results of experiments that have been carried out to examine and characterize the compressive stress-strain relationship of foamed concrete at high temperatures. Foamed concrete with 650 kg/m3 and 1000 kg/m3 density were cast and tested. The compression tests were carried out at ambient temperature, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 and 600°C.

From the experimental verification, as expected the mechanical properties of foamcrete were reasonably low when compared to normal weight concrete. Nonetheless there was a potential of using foamcrete as fire resistant partition or as load-bearing walls in low-rise residential construction. In order to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, this paper presents a preliminary feasibility study on its fire resistance and structural performance of foamcrete based system. The objectives of this feasibility study are tp investigate the fire resistance performance of foamcrete panels of different densities (650, 800, 1000, 1200 and 1400 kg/m3) when exposed to fire on one side for different fire resistance ratings based on insulation requirement and to examine whether the composite walling system had sufficient load carrying capacity, based on compression resistance at ambient temperature.

Tajikistan is one of the greatest poets and writers Mirza Tarson Zadeh great contribution in the field of literary creation in this part of Persian language and literature is extensive . Tarson Zadeh in 1911. Was born in 1977. He died in Dushanbah . In his works , humanity , equality, prosperity, freedom and patriotism is a special place. Tajik scholar capable of writing not just for artists and writers in contemporary Tajikistan , but all have been worthwhile.

Present study was carried out to develop and validate an instrument for measuring different factors affecting upon students’ success at higher educational level. Focus group discussions and extensive literature review was done in order to generate an item pool for the instrument. Initially 75 items were generated under ten dimensions namely: motivation, intellectual abilities, personality brought up, institutional environment, socio- economic background, family participation, peer group, influence of siblings, awareness about future goals and awareness about current trends in the subject. After qualitative item analysis, the items were reduced to 60 as 15 were found to be repetitive in nature. These 60 item statements were administered to 100 graduating students of public universities in Islamabad region. The data thus obtained was subjected to factor analysis. As a result ten subscales containing 45 items in total were constructed with Eigen value above 2.83. Split half reliability for both halves was expressed at .78 and .89. Psychometric properties demonstrate that SSHL is a valid and reliable instrument to be used in research studies related to students’ academic success at higher level.

Wind energy as a power source is attractive as an alternative to fossil fuels, because it is plentiful, renewable, widely distributed, green, and produces no greenhouse-gas emissions. A performance improvement of the scoop-vane vertical axis wind turbine is described. To improve the performance of the power generation system design of special frame of vertical axis wind turbine which consists of three movable vanes, this uses more effectively the wind energy and depends only on the acting area of the movable vanes. The frame of the wind turbine is designed to increase the drag coefficient. The new frame design makes using the kinetic energy of the wind to increase the positive torque of our model and tested it practically in wind tunnel as well as tested by solid works software. This model shows batter performance in terms of high drag coefficient and increase torque per frame in the direction of wind.

Headache is one of the most common complaints encountered by healthcare practitioners, accounting for more than 1% of visits to physicians’ offices or emergency departments. As one of the top 10 presenting complaints in ambulatory medical care, headache can be symptomatic of a distinct pathologic process or can occur without an underlying cause. A migraine is caused by abnormal brain activity, which can be triggered by a number of factors. However, the exact chain of events remains unclear. Today, most medical experts believe the attack begins in the brain, and involves nerve pathways and chemicals. The changes affect blood flow in the brain and surrounding tissues. Caffeine withdrawal, Changes in hormone levels during a woman's menstrual cycle or with the use of birth control pills, Changes in sleep patterns, Exercise or other physical stress, Missed meals, Smoking or exposure to smoke. Migraine is an incurable disease. The review study was undertaken with the intention of finding a remedy for migraine. Preventive treatments of migraines include medications, nutritional supplements, lifestyle alterations, and surgery. Prevention is recommended in those who have headaches more than two days a week, cannot tolerate the medications used to treat acute attacks, or those with severe attacks that are not easily controlled.The goal of migraine therapy is to reduce the frequency, painfulness, and/or duration of migraines, and to increase the effectiveness of abortive therapy and to reduce drug consumption.

Diurnal fluctuations cannot penetrate at certain depth of ground. Ground at this depth gives stable thermal environment. Utilizing the soil for heat dissipation purpose, ETHE (Earth Tube Heat Exchanger) system was designed and developed for a typical space in closed loop mode for storage of high value seeds maintaining RH in addition to cooling the air. Seed storage structure based on ETHE of 54 m3 was constructed as per design calculations. ETHE was made of PVC pipe 0.16 m outer diameter and 42 m in length, buried 2.7 m deep below soil surface in loop mode. Different seeds were stored in storage structure. Seed storage studies under ETHE indicated higher germination compared to ambient condition storage. However, there was no appreciable change in vigor index. The average relative humidity inside was relatively stable and temperature was considerably different as compared to ambient over the entire year. The work of ETHE was in heating mode from mid July to November and in cooling mode from November to mid July.

While much research has been conducted in the United States on the use of loan loss provisions (LLPs) as a mechanism for managing earnings, managing capital, and as a tool for signaling future earnings strategies, there is a paucity of research in Europe. In this research, we replicate methodology used by Ahmed, Takeda and Thomas (1998) and examine the relative importance of key factors affecting the LLP decisions of Spanish depository institutions. Among others, we focus on the role of organizational structure. We speci?cally examine if and how LLPs are used prior to and after the implementation of capital adequacy regulations in the Spanish depository industry in 1992. Our results indicate that while LLPs were not used as a tool for managing capital after the new regulation came into effect, banks have now adopted a more aggressive earnings management strategy. This appears to be because the capital adequacy regulation of 1992 removed any capital constraint that hitherto acted as a disincentive to aggressive earnings management. Commercial banks appeared to adopt a more aggressive earnings management as well as capital management strategy than savings banks in the post regulatory era. Finally, we did not ?nd evidence that LLPs were used as a signaling tool by Spanish banks to portray their intentions about future earnings.

In this paper Game Theory is applied to the context of SYN flooding and modeled the game as a two-person non-cooperative zero sum game between the defender (web server administrator) and attacker (any malicious client). This is basically a static Bayesian game model. The elements of the payoff matrix are computed based on Erlang loss queuing cost model. The numerical illustrations are also provided.

The present study aimed to compare mental health of female athlete and non-athlete students in the city of Indica. The research methodology was a descriptive survey, which initially described the mental health and then compared it among the students. The statistical population of the study included all high school girls in the academic year of 2012-2013 in the city of Indica accounting for 919 subjects. The sampling was done in this study by two methods of census (enumeration) and multi-stage cluster random sampling. Due to the limited number of athletes (85 subjects), all were included in the study sample. Of the non-athletic population, 106 non-athlete subjects were selected using Cochran formula by multi-stage cluster random sampling method. The measurement tool in this study was the Goldberg and Hiller GHQ Standard Questionnaire (1979) consisting of two parts. The fist part includes demographic information, including questions about demographic and individual characteristics of study samples such as age, type of illness, etc. The second part consisted of 28 questions to measure four subscales (somatic symptoms, anxiety, social functioning and depression). The reliability (reliability coefficient) of the questionnaire was obtained as 0.85 through Cronbach's alpha coefficient. For data analysis, the descriptive statistics was used in order to summarize the data, and the inferential statistics, including Kolmogorov-Smirnov and Mann-Whitney tests were used to test the hypotheses. The results showed significant differences between physical symptoms, anxiety and insomnia, social dysfunction and depression in two groups of female athlete and non- athlete students. It also indicated that the athlete students had a better status than the non-athletic students regarding mental health and its four subscales. It is therefore suggested to encourage students to participate in sports activities in order to enhance their mental health.