Archives-December 

Images containing faces are essential to intelligent vision-based human computer interaction, and research efforts in face processing include face recognition, face tracking, pose estimation, and expression recognition. The rapidly expanding research in face processing is based on the premise that information about a user’s identity, state, and intent can be extracted from images and that computers can then react accordingly, e.g., by knowing person’s identity, person may be authenticated to utilize a particular service or not. A first step of any face processing system is registering the locations in images where faces are present. However, face registration for whole database is a challenging task because of variability in scale, location, orientation (up-right, rotated), and pose (frontal, profile). Facial expression, occlusion, and lighting conditions also change the overall appearance of face. The Image registration algorithm will register all these images present in the database. The face recognition algorithm which is insensitive to large variation in lighting direction and facial expression is to be implemented. Taking a pattern classification approach, each pixel in an image can be considered as a coordinate in a high-dimensional space. The advantage of this is that the images of a particular face, under varying illumination but fixed pose, lie in a 3D linear subspace of the high dimensional image space—if the face is a Lambertian surface. However, since faces are not truly Lambertian surfaces and do indeed produce self-shadowing images will deviate from this linear subspace. Rather than explicitly modeling this deviation, project the image into a subspace in such a manner which discounts those regions of the face with large deviation. This is achieved by using dimension reduction techniques like Principal component analysis (PCA), Linear Discriminant analysis (LDA), Laplacian faces, and other modified approaches like A Priori Laplacian and PCDA.

This study investigates the different montages used in mounting silkworm before spinning of cocoon. In this investigation, palm fronts, basket, woven montages were used along with the plastic ones to study their efficacy. The silkworms were brushed into the rearing tray from disease-free egg card. After feeding on mulberry leaves for several days, silkworms of the 5th instars stop feeding and begin to spin cocoon. The result showed that 78% cocoon was formed from the palm front montage. This was followed by plastic montages 58%; woven montages 54%; but basket montage does not support the formation of cocoon 0%. The quality parameter that were measured include, cocoon weight, filament weight, filament length and pupa weight. Palmfront montages have the highest cocoon weight1.684gm, filament weight 0.125gm and pupa weight 1.235. The results obtained were summarized in table and graph. The palm fronts, from oil palm tree, are readily available to the rural and urban farmers in the community, exhibit the best cocoon formation. Palmfront montages, plastic montages and woven montages support the formation of cocoon. However the use of palmfront could be encourage having shown a better quantity and quality parameters.

The present study aimed to determine the relationship between self-regulation and self-esteem with Resiliency of adolescent was conduct in Borazjan secondary schooldays, thus, it’s descriptive study. Participants in the study were 200 boys and girls students of Borazjan high schools who were selected with random multi-stage cluster sampling method. For data gathering, self-regulation Questionnaire (SRQ), Cooper Smith scale of self-esteem and Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) were used. The results of Pearson correlation between self-regulation and self-esteem with resiliency show that self-regulation, general self-esteem , social self-esteem and academic self-esteem have a positive and significant relationship with resiliency, But, there is no significant relationship between family self-esteem and resiliency. Also, step-by-step regression results for determine of effect size of self-regulation and self-esteem on resiliency show that the social self -esteem (0/16), general self- esteem (0/22) and self-regulation (0/20) have predictive power of resiliency, But family self- esteem and academic self- esteem haven’t predictive power of resiliency. Based on these findings, can understood that adolescents with high self-esteem and self-regulation, may have the greater opportunity and possible for self-determination, self-expression, self-awareness, self-regulation and self-synergy that these psychological constructs affect the resiliency of people.

The aim of this article is to examine the advantages and disadvantages of extending the retirement age for employees in Malaysia. Retirement falls under as one of the phases of career development, which happens to be the last phase of an individual’s career. As the last phase of employment, people have different views regarding the retirement period. Some can easily accept it as it is and some other may find it hard to face. This article will emphasize on the pros and cons of extending the retirement age as some organizations feel that it is necessary, while some other organizations refuse to. The article highlights the different point of views of different countries on this matter.

Number of plant species, in present time, is on the verge of extinction. Thus owing to this threat to plant species their identification has become very important. This paper presents a technique that has been implemented for the identification of plant species based on leaf images. The plant species identification involves three steps such as pre-processing, feature extraction and classification.

Sarcomatoid renal carcinoma is a rare and agressive variant of the cancer of the kidney. These tumors are indifferencied and originates from all renal cell carcinomas. The diagnosis is exclusively histologic and therapeutic modalities are limited to radical nephrectomy. We report a new case and will discuss diagnosis, therapeutic and prognostic characteristics of this rare and agressive entity

Small Scale Enterprises have been recognized to be the main engine of economic growth and a major factor in promoting private sector development and partnership in the developing economies of the world. The enterprises in this category have not only brought about substantial local capital formation, it has really increased the level of productivity and capabilities of the dwellers of the rural commodities thereby redistributing the nations income and curbing rural-urban drift of citizens. However, despite the benefit accruable from the development of Small Scale Industries (SSI), little attention has been paid to its improvement by various tiers of government because of the distance between the government and the local dwellers. Also, lack of infrastructural facilities like power supply, provision of water, accessible roads to link the rural communities to the commercial centers, and non – availability of formal financial institutions have negatively affected the optimum performance of the various Small Scale Enterprises in Nigeria. Therefore the thrust of this paper is to assess how far the Small Scale Industries have been thriving in the face of various problems ranging from infrastructural to financial, confronting the entrepreneurs in the local communities and the effects of such constraints and problems on their business and how the problems can be ameliorated in order to improve the welfare and enhance the social economic development of the citizens at the grassroots. The population for the study comprises the small scale entrepreneur in Osun State of Nigeria. The sample consists of Iwo Local Government Area and Ola Oluwa Local Government Area. The two local councils are predominantly of villages and towns which can be regarded as real grass root communities and the major enterprises being practiced is the small scale type. Out of this population, 200 respondents randomly chosen were served questionnaires, in which 153 respondents returned their questionnaire filled. The researcher also made use of oral interview with the officials of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in Iwo Zonal office serving the two local councils as well as using some relevant data from the internal Revenue Board of Osun State. For the analysis of the data, simple percentages were used to classify the responses of the respondents and Chi-square (x2) was used to test the various hypotheses proposed. The findings of the study indicate that Small Scale business entrepreneurs have no access to funds from the formal financial institutions (Banks) due to non-availability of banks in these rural areas and where there are few of the banks, the formality of processing loans and the interest on such loans have been very discouraging. Due to this, majority of the respondents make use of non-bank financial institution like thrift and cooperative societies, and also get financial assistance through Revolving Loan Scheme (ESUSU) and Daily Contributions Arrangement (AJO). However, in spite of all these challenges, it was found out by the researcher that investing in small scale business in these areas has great prospect and thus profitable to the owners. Small scale businesses have really served as a very charitable linkage between the source of raw materials and the usage of such materials by the large scale counterparts in the state. Also, of small scale business have thrived greatly by helping the rural dwellers to have access to the finished products of large corporations through buying and selling.

Space-based solar power (SBSP) is the concept of collecting solar power in space for use on Earth. It has been in research since the early 1970s.This paper projects how SBSP would differ from current solar collection methods in that the means used to collect energy would reside on an orbiting satellite instead of on Earth's surface. Besides the cost of implementing such a system, SBSP also introduces several new hurdles, primarily the problem of transmitting energy from orbit to Earth's surface for use. Since wires extending from Earth's surface to an orbiting satellite are neither practical nor feasible with current technology, SBSP designs generally include the use of some manner of wireless power transmission. The collecting satellite would convert solar energy into electrical energy on-board, powering a microwave transmitter or laser emitter, and focus its beam toward a collector (rectenna) on the Earth's surface. Radiation and micrometeoroid damage could also become concerns for SBSP

Brachyuran crabs for the present investigation were collected from offshore region of Mallipattinam (Lat. 10°12¢ NS. and Long. 79°20¢ EW) which is situated near sethubhava ghatiam on sethusamudram canal. Ashvini River enters into Palk Strait at Mallipattinam, which carries large among of nutrients flushing into the probably promotes the species biodiversity both racially and individually. In the present investigation nearly 23 species of marine crabs are landing at Mallipattinam coast. Out of these twenty three species frequency of landing restricted to 12 species alone. They are Portunus pelagicus, P. sanginolentus, C. lucifera, C. feriata, C. callinosa, Podophthalmus vigil, Galene bispinosa, Ocypoda macrocera, Ocypoda platytarsis, Calappa lophos, C. bicornis, and Philyra globasca. In these groups some species are non-edible and others are edible but the non-edible species are commercially important because of their use in aqua and poultry feed industry. The population density, distribution frequency, sex ratio, fecundity of these crabs showed significant variation with reference to seasons. The study critically focusing the fact, that the biodiversity of brachyuran species and even other species may be decline in future due to the deposition of sand into the Palk Strait region. In these areas indicates that this area suitable for crab inhabiting and propagation.

Objective: To determine superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione dismutase (GPX) malondialdehyde (MDA), uric acid, zinc, ascorbic acid, albumin, blood lipids and glycated hemoglobin A1 (HbA1c) in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetic patients. Study Design: Case control study Place & Duration: Department of Medicine -Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences Hospital from December 2014- August 2015. Subjects & Methods: 95 newly diagnosed type 2 diabetics and 55 controls selected through non-probability purposive sampling according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. 8-12 hour fasting was ensured for blood samples. BUN, serum creatinine, albumin, bilirubin, uric acid, blood glucose, HbA1c, blood lipids, triglycerides, cholesterol, glucose, MDA, SOD, GPX, zinc and Ascorbic acid were determined by standard methods. Data was entered in Statistix 8.1. (USA) Continuous and categorical data was analyzed by student’s t test and Chi square test respectively. Microsoft excel was used for graphing. Data was analyzed at 95% confidence interval (p- ? 0.05). Results: Blood pressure, obesity, blood glucose, blood urea nitrogen (BUN) and serum creatinine showed statistically significant differences (p<0.05). VLDL, triglycerides, LDLc were elevated in diabetics, while HDLc was reduced. MDA, SOD, GPX, zinc, ascorbic acid, uric acid and bilirubin showed significant differences (p<0.05). MDA in diabetics and controls was noted as 5.17±0.81 vs. 2.15±0.62 µmol/ml respectively (p=0.0001). SOD, GPX, AA, Zn++, UA, serum albumin and serum bilirubin were decreased in diabetics. Conclusion: The superoxide dismutase (SOD), glutathione peroxidase (GPX), uric acid, bilirubin and zinc were reduced and malondialdehyde (MDA), altered blood lipids and glycated HbA1 were increased in diabetics in present study.