Archives-December 

We are very happy to announce that from 14th October 2017, Dr. José Luis López-Bonilla has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Mathematics. Dr. José Luis López-Bonilla working in School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico. The appointment of Dr. José Luis López-Bonilla as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

We are very happy to announce that from 4th May 2011, Dr. Milind Baburao Ubale has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Chemistry. Dr. Milind Baburao Ubale is currently working at Postgraduate Department of Chemistry, Vasantrao Naik Mahavidyalaya, Aurangabad. The appointment of Dr. Milind Baburao Ubale as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal. Please send any expressions of interest to chiefeditor@elixirjournal.org. Sincerely Editor-in-Chief

Dynamic Terrain Generator creates terrain and character elements interact with the terrain dynamically during the start and duration of the game .Dynamic terrain tool allow player to navigate unlimitedly through all four directions with newly generating terrain fields as progress forward without consuming system resources too much. It gives the illusion of a real world that gives user the feeling to move anywhere he want while playing the game. It is suited for war games, hunting games and modified version can also use for racing games.

Three years after independence, Indian lifestyle has undergone many changes. Food and taste habits are no exception to this. Indian households today welcome food with convenience in cooking and purchase. The Indian economy has been growing at a tremendous pace for the last few years, with growth rates of 9.6 percent in 2006 and 9.2 percent in 2007. Despite the global slowdown that hit economies across the globe, India is considered to have survived it to a satisfactory extent. The Indian economy is growing at a steady pace with the direct impact being steadily rising income levels of the Indian population. The rising income levels in the population is a very interesting phenomena because of two reasons one being the fact that 55 percent of the population is under the age of 25 years and secondly, the changed family structure of the population, especially in cities (nuclear families with more than one earning member). What this leads to is an increase in spending, but an increase in spending with a changed consumer behavior. This is also seen in the change in the eating-out habits of the population. It is seen that more and more people eat out these days and for a multitude of reasons, ranging from lack of option for a home cooked meal to wanting to have a relaxing experience from a hard day at work to spending time with friends/family and so on. The avenues available to them have also increased over the last few years. Rising disposable incomes and changing consumer behavior brought about a complete change in the way people choose to eat out. The eating out frequency and habits has undergone a total change over the last decade. One reason for such a significant change has been along with the income and a demographic profile is the growing influence of the west. It is because of this that food habits of countries like India are changing and there is a rapid growth in the fast food industry. It is seen that the trend of going to eat out has increased tremendously. And to cater to this of the basic need for food. There is a plethora of other factors on which this decision depends. Demand a number of restaurants have come up. The eating out decision now no longer is based in the satisfaction.

Noctuid moth diversity was studied in three selected places in Rajmahal hills viz., Maharo, Satia and Bathbanga from March 2011 to May 2013. Totally 58 species of Noctuids were identified and their diversity, evenness and dominance were calculated. The study revealed very good diversity and evenness of noctuid moths in Rajmahal hills. A 3.8 value of Shannon index showed very high diversity and 0.89 value of evenness showed the relative abundance of all species of moths. This study will encourage others to take up biodiversity studies in this region.

An attempt to draw a correlation between the bacterial load and diversity of used toothbrushes and their storage environment was made. Five different groups of twenty-five individuals each representing bathroom/toilet (BT), kitchen (KT), cupboard (CB), refrigerator (RF) and bag (BG) as the storage environments for used toothbrushes were given a new toothbrush with in-mould placement of filament (Same type and brand) and advised to follow their normal oral hygiene for a two-month period with storage as designated. At the end, the toothbrushes were collected and analysed for bacterial load and diversity using different selective growth media and subsequently biochemical identification to the genus level. Bacterial load of the entire environment had a range of 9.84×106 to 2.0 104 cfu/ml. BT has the highest microbial load followed by KT while RF had the least. Streptococci had the highest count followed by Staphylococci, Escherichia, Pseudomonas and Aerococci respectively and they were all present in all the storage environments. Salmonella/Shigella was only found in BT, Corynebacterium was found in samples of all the storage environments excluding RF while Lactobacilli was not present in BT and BG. Control test using unused toothbrushes stored at the different storage environments revealed a few colonies of Staphylococci and coliforms from three out of five storage environments. Refrigerator is benchmark the best storage environment though under adequate personal and home hygiene. An extensive study placing apparent correlation between oral health status of human subjects and storage environment is suggested.

The energy use and influences of energy inputs on output levels in corn grain production were investigated. For this purpose, the data on 100 corn grain production farms in the Khozestan province, Iran, were collected and analyzed. The output level was specified as a function inputs and output, and ordinary least squares were employed to estimate equation parameters. The results indicated that total energy input for corn grain production was about 392323 MJha–1; Chemical fertilizers (with 44 %) and electricity (with 27 %) were amongst the highest energy inputs for corn grain production. The energy ratio, energy productivity, specific energy and net energy were 2.6, 0.18 kgMJ–1, 5.66 MJkg–1 and 59248.58 MJha–1 respectively. The regression results indicated that the contribution of energy inputs on crop yield was significant. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the major MPP was drawn for seed and chemical fertilizers energy. Economic analysis indicated that the total cost of production for one hectare of corn grain production was around 1955 $. Accordingly, the benefit–cost ratio was 1.75. The total amounts of CO2 for corn grain production was calculated as 1.54 tonha-1, which indicated the high CO2 output in this cultivation. The use of diesel fuel and chemical fertilizer is in excess for corn grain production, causing an environmental risk problem in the region. The high rate of non-renewable energy utilization in this region can be controlled by using farmyard and green manure instead of chemical fertilizers.

An engaged employee is considered as a panacea for most of the organizational problems. This article focuses on the critical aspects of need for the engaged employee, how an organization can redesign its employee engagement drivers, with the use of different models available in literature. It reviews the traditional method, current studies and research performed on the employee engagement and views that human resource leaders needs to adopt the innovative way and real transformation that happens in corporate world to retain and engage employees to remain competitive in today’s global marketplace.

The present study evaluated the properties of polymeric blend films obtained from chitin and bentonite by the casting/solvent evaporation method. Polymer blend films of chitin and bentonite were prepared from homogeneous solutions in trichloroacetic acid at various proportions of chitin and bentonite. The cross linking agent like formaldehyde were incorporated into the polymer blends to improve the properties such as mechanical strength, tensile strength, surface hardness, stiffness, resistance to temperature and solvent attack. The structure and physical properties of the blend films were analyzed by Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTIR), thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and wide angle XRD analysis. FTIR analyses confirmed that interactions were present between the hydroxyl groups of bentonite and amide group of chitin (lone pair of electrons available on nitrogen atom) in the blend films. Thermo gravimetric analyses showed that in the blend films, the thermal stability increased with increasing bentonite content. The differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) studies revealed an endothermic peak corresponding to water evaporation around 100?C in the films and an exothermal peak corresponding to the decomposition in the chitin side chain and blend films. The chitin-bentonite blend films exhibited a higher thermal stability in the presence of cross linking agents (formaldehyde) was found out.

The depth resolution function (DRF) of Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) analysis has been measured by analyzing delta layers of boron in silicon in different experimental condition using Cameca Ims-6f apparatus. This function has been fitted with an analytical expression initially proposed by Dowsett et al. This is described by three parameters: the rising exponential decay, the standard deviation and the decreasing exponential decay. Physical phenomena related to these fitting parameters are well detailed, in particular, falling exponential decay characterizes the residual mixing effect. The latter is considered the main mechanism responsible for the degradation of the depth resolution in the range of the primary ions energy used in this work. It is shown that when the experimental conditions change, the parameters that govern the analytical expression vary in a satisfactory way. Our depth resolutions are compared with those of the literature. It is shown that our results are in good agreement with those of other authors.