Archives-November 2012

“Survival of the Fittest” is the best quote applicable for this 21st century. The continuous changes coming up in the technology, politics, culture, demography etc are creating complex situations to the individuals. Thus this 21st century has been termed as ‘Century of Stress’. Resiliency is the most important character needed to make an individual psychologically fit to face any problem and emerge successfully. Family, society and environment which builds the personality of an individual affects the presence of resiliency. Resiliency not only helps people to resolve the problems coming up in their way but will help the individuals to live with a positive approach towards growth and success.

Some physical properties of the rough rice were studied at 10.29, 15.37, 20.5, 25.4, and 30.6% d.b. moisture contents. The length, width, thickness, equivalent diameter, and sphericity increased linearly from 10.63 to 10.82 mm, 1.96 to 2.14 mm, 1.82 to 1.99 mm, 3.34 to 3.55 mm, and 31.52 to 33.24%, respectively, as moisture content increased from 10.29 to 30.6% d.b. In the same moisture range, the one-thousand grain mass, grain volume, surface area, and angle of repose increased linearly from 21.34 to 25.04 g, 20.62 to 24.16 mm3, 34.45 to 38.36 mm2, and 28.54º to 39.41 º, respectively. Results showed that the bulk density, true density, and porosity increased linearly from 480.32 to 499.12 kg/m3, 945.71 to 1131.02 kg/m3, and 49.21 to 55.87%, respectively, with increasing moisture content. The static coefficient of friction varied from 0.479 to 0.732 over different structural surfaces in the specified moisture content range. The specific heat capacity varied from 1654 to 2517 J/kg K in 50, 60, 70, and 100 ºC particles temperatures and for the specified moisture content levels.

Peri-urban cultivated areas of many cities in Pakistan are being irrigated from municipal and industrial wastewater since long. Similarly wastewater of Nullah Lai is also being used for irrigation in Rawalpindi. Wastewater and soil samples were collected from six locations of Rawalpindi districts for investigating fungal diversity. Eight fungal species were found in these soils. The most common fungal strains were Aspergillus sp., Acremonium sp., and Chaetomium sp. To isolate the fungi in different soil samples, sterilization technique, serial dilution and spread plate technique were used. Presence of fungi was detected in the different soil samples on the bases of morphological characteristics, percentage frequency, growth rate and colony forming units. The results obtained showed that most widely distributed fungi in soil samples were Aspergillus sp. Aspergillus niger and Aspergillus flavus grew well in contaminated soil containing heavy metals. This ability of Aspergillus makes it attractive potential candidate for further investigation regarding its ability to remove metals from contaminated soil. The usage of untreated wastewater in agricultural land put harmful effects on soil physical, chemical properties and biodiversity. To recognize health risk due to wastewater usage for irrigation, treat the wastewater to the recommended level.

The combine performance characteristics are related to threshing ability, the minimum amount of loss and fuel consumption. Loss is the most important of these factors. Material threshing is one of processes which have more effect on combine performance. Threshing efficiency has been inversely associated with threshing loss. It is desired to maximize threshing efficiency in threshing mechanism, because it will decrease the load of separation and cleaning mechanisms, which lead to reduction of separation system losses. Stem height, feed rate, threshing clearance ratio and rotational speed of threshing cylinder are operation parameters, which are used in combine design and its performance evaluating. In order to evaluate effect of these parameters on threshing material, experiments were conducted in 4×3×3 factorial pattern with Randomize Blocks design. Material threshing was considered as a dependent variable. These experiments were done on 68’s Sahand combine harvester. Results were analyzed in Neurosolutions 5.0 software. Multilayer Perceptron with four inputs and one output, with a different number of neurons in hidden layer, was used to estimate the amount of material threshing. Results showed that a network with 21 neurons in hidden layer had minimum MSE with R2=0.9. Furthermore, results showed that the amount of material threshing had dependent on stem height, threshing clearance ratio, speed of threshing cylinder and feed rate, respectively. Material threshing was increased with reduction in stem height, feed rate, threshing clearance ratio and speed up of threshing cylinder.

From the primitive period medicinal plants have occupied a distinct place in human’s life. They have been the backbone of traditional herbal medicines and have been extensively studied because of their pharmacological importance. Orchids are one of the largest groups of Angiosperms belonging to the family Orchidaceae. A number of constituents obtained from different parts of orchid suggest biological activity. Alkaloids are nitrogenous organic heterocyclic molecules that have pharmacological effects on humans and other animals..In orchids, 214 species in 64 genera contain 0.1% or more alkaloids. Besides alkaloids, they also possess flavanoids, phenanthrenes, terpenoids, bibenzyl derivatives and other biologically active compounds. The present review deals with the phytochemicals present in orchids and their medicinal properties.

This study focuses on a manufacturing process modification that can be carried out during the process of casting Aluminium-Silicon alloy in order to obtain desired properties and characteristics of a material for a particular usage. The effect of cooling rate was studied using sand and die moulds. Three types of mould were used namely dry sand mould, green sand mould and die mould .The result shows that the rate of cooling is faster in the die mould and the specimen obtained has the highest value of yield strength, ultimate tensile strength and hardness value but a low impact strength. The microstructure reveals that specimen A(dry sand mould) has a coarse microstructure, specimen B(green sand mould)exhibits a fairly wide spread distribution of silicon deposits while specimen C(die mould) exhibits fine and even distribution pf silicon deposits.

The study focused on the economic assessment of marketing of Non-Wood Forest Products in Ibadan metropolis with a view to identify the socio-economic characteristics of marketers of NWFPs, to identify various NWFPs marketed by the people, to estimate costs and returns from marketing of NWFPs and to identify factors influencing the marketing of NWFPs in the study area. The data for the study were collected through the use of structured questionnaires randomly administered to one hundred and twenty (120) marketers of various NWFPs in eight (8) selected markets. The result from the study revealed that women were mainly involved in the marketing of NWFPs (85%) being their primary occupation with a higher percentage of the marketers earning above N20, 000 monthly. Profit margin analysis showed that the business is both feasible and viable with the marketing efficiency and rate of return on investment between 1.18-1.90 and 28%-75% respectively. However, marketing of NWFPs in the study area was confronted with some challenges including transportation, perishability, seasonality, poor storage facility, price fluctuation, poor processing facility and poor market structure.

Cryonics-raising the dead: The concept goes like this: When a patient’s heart stops beating, but before the structure of his brain starts to degenerate, the patient is attached to a heart –lung machine and progressively infused with ‘antifreeze’ and other cellular stabilizers and then his body temperature is lowered until the patient is at ‘liquid nitrogen temperatures’. At this point, all molecular change stops indefinitely and the patient are put in storage. When the nanotechnology cell repair devices become available, the fatal disease that caused ‘death is reversed, the anti-freeze toxicity is removed, and the patient is warmed back up alive and well. In cryonics- freezing people fore future – scientists take patients who have been labeled as ‘dead’ by current medical criteria, replace their blood and much of their body water with chemicals to inhibit freezing damage, and preserve them in liquid nitrogen at (-196 Celsius). At that temperature all molecules in the body are locked in solids can no longer move around to react. Thus the individual can remain unchanged for thousands of years. It is possible that frozen patients will repairable and relabeled as ‘potentially alive’ by using nannies

The present investigation was undertaken to study of Cauvery river water at ten different locations in Namakkal district, Tamilnadu, India. The water samples were collected from different places and analyzed for various water quality parameters like Appearance, Adour, Turbidity, pH, EC, TDS, Total alkalinity, Total hardness, Calcium, Magnesium, Sodium, Potassium, Iron, Manganese, Ammonia, Nitrite, Chloride, Fluoride, Sulphate, Phosphate, Tidy’s, Dissolved oxygen, Biological oxygen demand, Chemical oxygen demand. The water quality parameters are analyzed after biomass treatment using vetiveria Zizanoides. Water quality parameters were compared WHO, USPH, BIS

We present two high speed and low power full adder cells designed with modified pass transistor logic styles that lead to have a reduced power delay product (PDP) as compared to the previous logics DPL and SR-CPL logic. We carried out a comparison against other full adders reported as having a low PDP, in terms of speed and power consumption. All the full-adders were designed with a 0.12µm CMOS technology. Simulations of the circuit show that the proposed full-adders have reduced the power from 0.326mW to 0.242mW.