Archives-September 2011

Marsdenia tirunelvelica A. N. Henry & Subram. a rare and little known asclepiad, endemic to Southern Western Ghats has been rediscovered after a lapse of about 38 years since its type collection. To facilitate easy identification of the species a brief description and relevant notes are provided.

The contemporary organizations are confronting the issue of managing and retaining diverse workforce. This issue of diversity management becomes more significant when employees are very pertinent about preserving their social and cultural identity. Multiple diversity management programs are used to cater the issue of heterogeneity of the employees. Our paper focused on the management and employees’ perspective on diversity management while keeping in view the social identity of employees. Our theoretical underpinning was based on the idea that success of diversity management programs is contingent on the volitional participation of employees. Qualitative research methodology was followed to explain the management and employee opinion about diversity management in context of social identity. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews of 12 representatives of management and employees. It was found that there are differing opinions of employees and management which are the main cause behind the failure of diversity management programs. This research—conducted in Pakistani fast food chain store—is completely new up to the best of knowledge. The findings of this research will contribute towards the theoretical understanding and practical applications of diversity management.

Tarig transform, whose fundamental properties are presented in this paper, is little known and not widely used .Here Tarig transform used to solve ordinary differential equation with variable coefficients without resorting to a new frequency domain.

Considering to Importance of Food Industries related to generate employment, more so than many other manufacturing sector and also it’s vital role in Iran’s economy. This paper examines the determinants of labour productivity in food industries of Iran over the 1995-2006 period. The study applied the Cobb–Douglas production function of industry. The results showed that total factor productivity is 17.8 percent. The determinants like education, skilled, specialist, capital per worker and wages have affected on productivity’s differences in Iranian food industries. The most important factor was employee’s specialization in this industry.

The paper presents an optimal fuzzy logic controller – controlled shunt active power filter (SAPF) used to compensate for harmonic distortion in three-phase systems. A optimal fuzzy logic controller based current controller strategy is used to regulate the filter current and hence ensure harmonic free supply current. The optimal adjustment of the membership functions and normalization gains are realized by using Ant Colony Optimization. Simulations results show the best dynamic behavior and performance control compared with traditional Fuzzy controller. as well as effective in reducing harmonic. The validity of the presented approach in harmonic mitigation is verified via simulation results of the proposed test system under different loading conditions.

This paper presents the characterization of solid state sintering schedule for near-net shaping of warm formed metal powder compacts. Iron ASC 100.29 powder was used as main powder constituent during this investigation.  The feedstock was prepared by mechanically mixed iron powder with 0.4 wt% zinc stearate as admixed lubricant. The powder mass was then formed as solid cylinder at 180ºC.  The defect-free green compacts were sintered in an argon gas fired furnace at different sintering schedule. The sintered products were characterized through dimensional measurement, and mechanical testing. The results revealed that sintering schedule plays an important role in manufacturing near-net shape yet high strength components.

A simple, precise, accurate and rapid high-performance thin-layer chromatographic method has been developed and validated for the estimation of Montelukast sodium and Levocetrizine Hydrochloride simultaneously in combined dosage forms. The stationary phase used was precoated silica gel 60F 254. The mobile phase used was a mixture of Chloroform: Benzene: Methanol: Toluene (5:7.2:1:0.2 v/v/v/v). The detection of spots was carried out at 286 nm. The method was validated in terms of linearity, accuracy, precision and specificity. The calibration curve was found to be linear between 500-1500 ng spot-1 for Montelukast sodium 1000-5000 ng spot-1 for Levocetrizine Hydrochloride. The limit of detection and the limit of quantification for Montelukast sodium were found to be 170 ng/spot and 570 ng/spot respectively, for Levocetrizine Hydrochloride and Levocetrizine Hydrochloride, 20 ng/spot and 70 ng/spot respectively. The proposed method can be successfully used to determine the drug content of marketed formulation.

Traditional linear industries led to dwindling resources and even exhaustion, as well as environment pollution, it is a short-sighted unsustainable development mode of the economy. Industry ecology is to realize the harmonious development between economy and nature ecology by planning industrial systems according to material cycle in the natural ecological system, and to establish the circular economy mode of “resources-products-renewable resources”. There are strong similarities between the enterprises in an industrial eco-system and organisms in a natural eco-system, the paper first conducts a comparison of the natural eco-system and the industrial eco-system in several features, such as diversity, cyclic orientation and food chains, then discusses the functional benefits of an industrial eco-system in environment, economy and society, after that this paper points out that industry ecology is conducive to completely change the current way of economic growth mode, it is one kind of ecological economy pattern and a sustainable economic development model.

This paper reveals the mechanical and metallurgical properties of the dissimilar joints of AA2024 aluminium alloy and commercial grade copper alloy fabricated by diffusion bonding process. Three diffusion bonds with varying diffusion layer thickness were fabricated and study the effect of diffusion layer thickness on mechanical and metallurgical properties. Mechanical properties such as lap shear strength, bonding strength and hardness are evaluated, Metallurgical characteristics such as diffusion layers thickness, phases in diffusion layer, elemental composition of diffusion layers were analysed. From this investigation, it is found that the diffusion bond with a medium diffusion layer thickness (in between very minimum to very maximum) exhibits superior mechanical properties.

Labelling can perform many different functions, like the identification, description or promotion of food products (Teague and Anderson, 1995; Bernues et al., 2003), however based on reasearch the main purpose of food labelling is to inform consumers on the content and the nutrienst of the food. All food labels need to have minimum amount of mandatory or legally set information, but a producer may add any voluntary but correct information should they feel that the information stated would be off an advantage and that would lead a consumer to purchase the product. Food producers also would at times, use terms which would only be understood by experts and non experts would be left gueesing and interpreting the terms themselves. Consumers also consider food labelling to be very important component of their lifestyle and regard nutrition as a positive attribute to the products. With that, this study attempts to see the correlation between Label Messages and Label Effectiveness. These findings will provide a view on what is the relationship between the label messages and its effectiveness. This would also assist manufaturers to identify on what information or messages which would have an impact before consumers makes their buying decisions.