Archives-December 

Radon is a naturally occurring colourless, odourless, water-soluble gas produced by the radioactive decay of radium. Chronic exposure to radon is recognized as a health risk. Ingested water with elevated levels of radon can present a risk for developing internal organ cancers. Thirty (30) water samples collected from four different water sources (borehole, pond, hand – dug well and river) in Pwalugu and their environments were analysed using the Gamma Spectrometry System. The radon concentration varied from 29 ± 1.1 to 40 ± 2.1 µBq/L. These values fall below the maximum concentration level, of 0.148 Bq/L proposed by the US EPA. The highest concentration was recorded in borehole samples because of the nature of the geology and because no radon was lost due to aeration. The calculated annual effective dose by ingestion varied between 2.920 × 10-7 and 2.117 × 10-7 Sv/y which is below the recommended value of 1mSv/y.

An investor considering securities investments faces the challenge of deciding which securities to invest in from a vast number of options and allocating his cash among them. The investor is once again faced with the decision of which assets to hold and how much to invest in each security. The two most significant qualities of a portfolio are risk and return. The investor seeks to select the best portfolio by weighing the risk and return characteristics of all available options. Individual stocks and portfolio characteristics alter over time. This necessitates an investor's investment portfolio to be reviewed and revised on a regular basis. An investor always puts his money into a portfolio in the hopes of getting a decent return that is proportional to the risk he is willing to take. The portfolio's return on investment must be quantified, and the portfolio's performance must be assessed.

Chairman’s Statement plays a significant role in communicating the corporate affair to the stakeholders and subsequently serves one of the tools to the stakeholders in making their economic decision. However, the usefulness of which will depends upon their readability and understandability (Courtis, 2004). Therefore, this study examines the readability of Chairman’s Statement for companies under Main Board of Bursa Malaysia, starting from 2004 until 2006. The study employs Readability formula developed by Rudolf Flesch in 1949, Microsoft Word’s Flesh Reading Ease (FRE) Score. The results show that all the chairman’s statements in Malaysia are difficult to read.

The effects of exposure from electromagnetic radiations of wireless cellular transmission towers on human health have attracted the attention of many researchers. Different works have revealed the harmful of electromagnetic radiation exposure to human health based on distance from the source and period of exposure. As one stays closer and at a pro-longed period from the transmission sites, the possibility of being affected by the radiation source becomes higher. This work was designed and conducted on the basis of selection of the three major telecommunication companies’ towers in Khartoum state, namely ZAIN, SUDANI and MTN. Generally, the measurements employed showed that bigger amount of radiations were detected right away closer to the tower and remain smaller when the distance from the tower is increased. The level of EMR is not that significant and still safe with reference to the recommendation of world health organization (WHO) and International telecommunication corporation (ITC). Therefore a non adverse obvious effect on the biological system is expected.

This study investigated the feelings of loneliness felt by older adults in Keelung City as well as the relationship between demographic variables, voluntary service participation, social support, and the feelings of loneliness felt by older adults. This study looked at the predictive ability of demographic variables, voluntary service participation, and social support in predicting levels of loneliness. This was a cross-sectional study conducted on a population consisting of older adults aged 65 and above. Purposive sampling was used to obtain a valid sample of 364 people. Tools used include the UCLA Loneliness Scale and a structured questionnaire (prepared by the author) which factored in demographic variables, voluntary service participation, and social support. Statistical analysis of the data obtained was carried out using IBM SPSS Statistics 20 (Windows version). Significant differences were found for education level and self-perceived health status. Respondents who graduated from high school or above felt lower levels of loneliness compared to respondents who were illiterate or had only graduated from elementary school; respondents who perceived themselves as having poor health felt greater levels of loneliness compared to normal or healthy respondents. Voluntary service participation and social support were found to be significantly and negatively correlated to the level of loneliness, indicating that respondents felt lower levels of loneliness when they had stronger intentions of participating in voluntary service or received stronger levels of emotional and social support. Together, voluntary service participation, social support, education level, and self-perceived health status explained 36.4% of the variance in loneliness levels. Of these factors, voluntary service participation was the main predictor of loneliness, followed by social support.

Wavelet Transform is an emerging tool to solve the problems related to Mathematics, Physics and Engineering. In this paper we review and discuss the advantages of Wavelet transform in comparison of Fourier Transform for the study of signal analysis. Wavelet transforms is the improved version of Fourier Transform. The main difference between them is that wavelets are well localized in both time and frequency domain whereas Fourier Transform is only localized in frequency domain. The discretely sampled form of wavelet transform which is called discrete wavelet transform is used in the study of data compression so that one can modify, encode a source of data in digital form that it occupies fewer bits than the original. This will consume less space on the disk and reduce transmission time when such information is communicated over a distance. Further the Wavelet based data compression technique is applied for the study of compression of various data signals such as image, audio, video, seismic and biomedical signals. In this paper we have reviewed about the data compression technique using wavelet transform in different type of signals.

Harvesting the benefits of a sensor-rich world presents many data analysis and management challenges. Recent advances in research and industry aim to address these challenges. Modern sensors and information technologies make it possible to continuously collect sensor data, which is typically obtained as real-time and real valued numerical data. Examples include vehicles driving around in cities or a power plant generating electricity, which can be equipped with numerous sensors that produce data from moment to moment. Though the data gathering systems are becoming relatively mature, a lot of innovative research needs to be done on knowledge discovery from these huge repositories of data. The data management techniques and analysis methods are required to process the increasing volumes of historical and live streaming data sources simultaneously. Analysts need improved techniques are needed to reduce an analyst’s decision response time and to enable more intelligent and immediate situation awareness. Faster analysis of disparate information sources may be achieved by providing a system that allows analysts to pose integrated queries on diverse data sources without losing data provenance. This paper proposed to develop abstractions that make it easy for users and application developers to continuously apply statistical modeling tools to streaming sensor data. Such statistical models can be used for data cleaning, prediction, interpolation, anomaly detection and for inferring hidden variables from the data, thus addressing many of the challenges in analysis and managing sensor data. Current archive data and streaming data querying techniques are insufficient by themselves to harmonize sensor inputs from large volumes of data. These two distinct architectures (push versus pull) have yet to be combined to meet the demands of a data-centric world. The input of sensor streaming data from multiple sensor types further complicates the problem.

The spectroscopic characteristics (IR) and the thermal properties (TGA, DTG and DTA) of the solid complexes obtained by the reaction of 2-hydroxyphenylhydrazoacetoacetanilide (2-HPHAAA) with Uranyl(II), and Thorium (IV) are reported and discussed.

Cyclotriphosphazenes are prominent inorganic N-heterocycles.They consist of six-membered ring structures of alternating phosphorus and nitrogen atoms. The tetravalent phosphorus atoms carry two exocyclic substituents, which can be widely varied enabling fine-tuning of the size and shape of the molecular periphery. This study involved the synthesis and characterization of hexa (diethanolamino) cyclotriphosphazene by an enveremently and friendly system catalyst consist of clay layered called Maghnite-H+ (Algerian MMT) and diethyl ether. The effect of different synthesis parameters such as amount of catalyst, effect of time, temperature and solvent are discussed.