Archives-December 

Forward contracting can help reduce the problem of inputs supply risk which is inherent in Nigeria’s agriculture. This research work concentrated on the prospect of the strategy among crop farmers and agricultural input marketers. ‘The results of the study revealed that majority of the respondents’ supported forward contracting of inputs and were willing to engage in the strategy. However, low capital base of enterprise, possible default by farmers and late payments are possible reasons why Agricultural input marketers may not be willing to go into a forward contract with crop farmers. The age of farmer, number of crop enterprises, years of experience, capital base of farmer and extension visits were significant factors influencing farmers’ willingness to engage in forward contracting of inputs. There is need to create more awareness about ‘forward contracts’ among agricultural input marketers and farmers in the country. Agricultural credit should be made affordable, available and accessible to input marketers by Micro Finance Banks and the Nigeria Agricultural Bank to improve their capital base. State and Local Government Authorities in collaboration with farmers’ cooperative societies should stand as guarantors for Farmers who are willing to engage in forward contracting.

Knowledge management can play a vital role in increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of businesses. The earnings from utilizing knowledge management has caused that most organizations try to execute this process. In their initial attempts, however, most organizations were faced with a major challenge that despite of investing on knowledge management, the penetration of its usage is too low. The main reason is the lack of an applied model by the organization in order to achieve the aims rapidly. After introducing the concepts of knowledge management, present study studies various models on executing knowledge management provided by various authors. Affecting factors on each model are extracted. Likewise, various introduced processes of knowledge management by authors are studied. By using such factors, we achieved knowledge management execution model in organization.

This paper aims to study the effectiveness of the current education systems from the point of view of satisfying the industry demand for workforce. The current system is translated into the terminology of supply chain management (SCM), as it can be formulated as a ‘push system’ in SCM. As opposed to this education system which is highly centralized and lacks cooperation between the stakeholders, a new ‘pull system’ is proposed in this research. The proposed system incorporates high level of cooperation between the educational institutions and the stakeholders in the policy-making process. Shift from a push system to a pull system is considered along with a shift from the current paradigm of social sciences to the new paradigm, named as Quantum Paradigm. The concepts of SCM are evaluated through the window of quantum theory. The research also covers management issues for the educational leaders in practice.

Radioactivity concentrations of natural radionuclides, namely 226Ra, 232Th and 40K, in fertilized and non-fertilized soils and vegetables from some agricultural areas were investigated using gamma spectrometry in order to assess the radiological implications of the extended use of phosphate fertilizers in agriculture. The mean activity concentrations of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K in the fertilized soils were 23.84 ± 2.52 Bqkg-1, 43.64 ± 2.19 Bqkg-1 and 199.69±3.67 Bqkg-1 respectively. For the non-fertilized soils, mean activity concentrations were found to be 14.01 ± 5.90 Bqkg-1 for 226Ra, 29.40 ± 2.03 Bqkg-1 for 232Th and 120.92 ± 4.67 Bqkg-1 for 40K. The study has shown that fertilized soils contain slightly higher concentrations of the three radionuclides than non-fertilized soils. The measured activity concentrations of the five most frequently utilized agricultural fertilizers showed that the highest levels of 226Ra (139.37±11.15kg-1) and 232Th (47.58±3.81 kg-1) were measured in NPK 151515 and the highest level of 40K (8383.47±6.70) was measured in Super master. It was also found that Sulphate of Ammonia recorded the lowest levels of 226Ra, 232Th and 40K. The average value of 226Raeq was 93.32 Bqkg-1for fertilized soils and 63.30 Bqkg-1 for non- fertilized soil. The calculated mean values of the internal hazard index (HIN) and external hazard index (HEX) for all samples were less than unity. The average absorbed dose rate (D?r) values were 38.79 nGyh-1for fertilized soil and 25.60 nGyh-1for non- fertilized soils. The calculated mean annual effective dose due to ingestion of vegetables by the general public was 0.11 mSv/y for 226Ra, 0.05 mSv/y for 232Th and 0.62 mSv/y for 40 K. The result from the study indicates that radiation exposure from consumption of vegetables from the selected farming communities does not pose significant radiological hazard.

Hon’ble Supreme Court order for inclusion of NOTA has been welcomed by a larger section of the society who were questioning the relevancy and significance of democracy in India. This paper is an attempt to assess the impact of recently incorporated change in the EVM. The researcher on the basis of trends and existing no effect on outcome feel that recent changes and direction of supreme court will be futile exercise in terms of outcome in election process unless we will not affect the fate of candidates contesting and election outcome. Result of Madhya Pradesh Assembly is indicative of on the basis of those NOTA votes which are more than difference of winning candidate. If we include NOTA against the winning candidate what is the outcome. A serious thought are needed to redesign the consequence.

Excessive use of pesticides resulted in serious ecological and environmental problems as well as health hazards. Histopathological changes are mostly confined to organs directly involved in their metabolism and detoxification. In Molluscs, hepatopancreas is the main site of action, degradation and detoxification of pesticide, hence hepatopancreas is chosen as test organs. Ascorbic acid is main dietary antioxidant. For different physiological acts vitamins are essential, although required in trace amount. Therefore, the present study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of L-ascorbic acid in Methomyl -induced toxicity in an experimental model, the fresh water bivalve, Lamellidens marginallis. The animals were exposed to acute dose (35 PPM LC 50/2 value of 96 h) of Methomyl, Methomyl in same dose along with 50 mg/L of L- ascorbic acid and Methomyl in same dose along with100mg/L of L-ascorbic acid for 96 hours. Control animals were maintained in normal water. Due to Methomyl intoxication damage to the hepatopancreas was extensive resulting epithelial hyperplasia, necrotic changes in basement membrane and intertubular connective tissue at 24 hours of exposure. The severity of damage progressed with longer exposure, after 96 hours of exposure to Methomyl, swelling, rupture and flattening of epithelial cells along with displacement of nuclei and widening of tubular lumen were noted. Exposure to Methomyl in combination with 50 mg/l of L-ascorbic acid showed considerable reduction in nature of damage, while with 100 mg/l of L-ascorbic acid showed almost normal histological structure of hepatopancreas.

A successful entrepreneur is a unit of society and hence, an entrepreneur is the contribution of constellation of factors or forces working in tandem within a cultural context. At the same time an entrepreneur is also a reflection of the cultural context he/she is a part of. Hence, it becomes imperative to highlight and explicate the role of those socio-cultural factors in a country like India where cultural diversity with regards to norms, values, beliefs, religion, kinship and institutions forms the bedrock for conditioning and tailoring of an individual to become a successful entrepreneur. Nevertheless, entrepreneurs are the creations of the socio-cultural environment. Thus, this paper with the objective of bringing to fore the imperative role of socio-cultural milieu in tailoring an entrepreneur in an Indian society is purely based on the secondary literature.

The second order slip boundary condition influence on diffusion of chemically reactive species of non-Newtonian fluid over a vertical permeable linearly stretching or shrinking sheet with surface mass transfer is considered using a second order slip flow model. Casson fluid model is used to characterize the non-Newtonian fluid behavior. The first order chemical reaction is considered. Choosing appropriate similarity variables, the partial differential equations are transformed into a set of non-linear self-similar ordinary differential equations, which are then solved numerically using the function bvp4c from Matlab for different values of the governing parameters. The results clearly show that the second order slip flow model is necessary to predict the flow characteristics accurately. A comprehensive numerical computation is carried out for various values of the parameters that describe the flow characteristics.

Cement is most generally utilized development material because of its great compressive quality and solidness. One of the significant parameter which impact quality is curing. Curing assumes a noteworthy part in building up the solid microstructure and pore structure. Curing is the way toward keeping up appropriate dampness content especially inside 28 days to advance ideal bond hydration promptly after situation. Great curing is not for all intents and purposes conceivable in the majority of the cases, for example, vertical individuals, human mistakes, places where there is shortage of water. In such conditions self curing cement is exceptionally versatile and alleviating the above issues. The self curing solid implies that no outside curing is required for cement. The idea of self curing cement is to decrease the water vanishing. As characterized by ACI, "Self or interior curing alludes to the procedure by which the hydration of bond happens in view of the accessibility of extra inner water that is not part of the blending water." One of the methods of self curing is by utilizing hydrophilic materials. A portion of the regularly accessible hydrophilic materials are Polyethylene Glycol, Paraffin wax, Acrylic corrosive. The utilization of hydrophilic materials minimizes the loss of water from the solid and aides in ceaseless curing of cement. In this study, considered review of cement is M40. The admixture utilized for self curing is Fluid Paraffin Wax, which is dry, scentless and dull. The impact of variety in quality parameters i,e., Compressive Strength, Split Tensile Strength and Flexural Strength were considered with Liquid Paraffin Wax (self curing specialist) (0.1% by weight of bond) and contrasted and that of traditional cured cement. The admixture Conplast SP430 was included (0.3% by weight of bond) in both traditional concrete and self curing concrete for increment of workability. The plan blend extent was 1:1.45:2.95. Quality of self curing cement is keeping pace with customary cement. From this study, reasoned that utilizing of Liquid Paraffin Wax as self curing operator can indicate critical variety in quality of cement.

Determination of subscriber satisfaction level during the period of getting access towards wireless network would support service providers to optimize their network. The subscriber satisfaction level with respect to successful call attempt was studied considering Slotted Aloha and Fixed Resource allocation (FCA) algorithm of GSM Network. The uniform allocation of aloha channel among all the subscribers was found when simulation was carried out for one hour. Slotted Aloha Algorithm performance found to be excellent when it was analyzed for a longer duration. In FCA, the percentage of total subscribers accessing the network in busy hour found to be very less and would result in high level of subscriber dissatisfaction. A novel method of resource allocation technique is proposed to improve the subscriber satisfaction while accessing the network in busy hour. An average improvement of 35 % was found in proposed method.