Archives-December 

The underlined study aims to explore the level of job satisfaction of the head teachers at the elementary schools from the district of Sahiwal, the Punjab, Pakistan. The researchers also venture to draw a comparison between the criterion of the job satisfaction of male-female and urban-rural elementary head teachers. Since teaching is a highly prestigious profession and the most sensitive domain of all others. So, it is very important to provide teachers with all their peace of mind. It would be possible only if they find themselves satisfied with their job. Hence, this research may be taken a milestone for the provision of a flourishing ambience to the head teachers so that they may indulge themselves with the very idea of a professional teacher. In order to collect the required data for the study, the Minnesota Satisfaction Questionnaire (MSQ) was used as a tool. The sample of 140 head teachers was taken randomly by the researchers; The SPSS-12 (evaluation version) was used to analyze the obtained data and t-test was applied for the sake of comparison. The overall response rate was 86%. This research has successfully got that the head teachers were slightly satisfied with the basic three dimensions of a job i.e. advancement, education policies and compensation. Thus, it is found exigent to overcome the problem in order to give them the maximum job satisfaction.

Table of contents for the month of December 2016

Recent advances in radio and embedded systems have enabled the proliferation of wireless sensor networks. Wireless sensor networks are tremendously being used in different environments to perform various monitoring tasks such as search, rescue, disaster relief, target tracking and a number of tasks in smart environments. In many such tasks, node localization is inherently one of the system parameters. Node localization is required to report the origin of events, assist group querying of sensors, routing and to answer questions on the network coverage. So, one of the fundamental challenges in wireless sensor network is node localization.

This study investigated microbial load and sensory quality of locally produced tigernut-based composite flour. Microbial quality such as total viable count (TVC), presence of yeast and mold, E. coli, Salmonella spp and Staphylococcus aureus were determined. These were compared to the microbiological specification for composite flours. The sensory quality of the composite powders such as colour, taste, aroma, mouthfeel and overall acceptability were also determined. These properties are considered to be very important in the attempt to formulate composite flours. Mean counts of the TVC and Staphylococcus aureus counts ranged between 3.31 to 3.22 and 2.21-2.58 log10 cfu/g respectively. Salmonella, E. coli and yeast and molds were not detected in any of the samples analyzed. Mean sensory scores ranged between 3.2±1.32-1.8±0.63 for colour, 3.1±1.10-2.4±0.52 for taste, 3.2±1.32-2.3±1.06 mouthfeel, 3.1±0.99-2.1±0.57 for aroma and 5.5±1.96-3.5±2.17 for preference. Significant differences were observed between the samples in terms of colour, aroma and preference. The microbial quality of the tigernut-based composite flour falls within the acceptable standard, hence guarantying the safety of the consumer. The use of composite flour would help to improve the nutritional value of food at presumably cheaper cost since all the raw materials are locally available and does not require special skill for the preparation.

Dempster-Shafer theory offers an alternative to traditional probabilistic theory for the mathematical representation of uncertainty. The significant innovation of this framework is that it allows for the allocation of a probability mass to sets or intervals. An important aspect of this theory is the combination of evidence obtained from multiple sources and the modeling of conflict between them. Plash Dutta and Tazid Ali [6,7] proposed methods to combine Fuzzy Focal elements and their corresponding Basic Probability Assignments of two variables. Using evidence theory here we make an investigation for interval focal elements by combining focal elements and their corresponding Basic Probability Assignments (BPA) under Modified Arithmetic operations rather than ordinary arithmetic operations with the help of a numerical example.

The aim of this study to determine the prevalence of multidrug resistance in Acinetobacter species, these are ubiquitous Gram-negative bacteria widespread in nature .They live in soil and water. They utilize a wide variety of carbon and other energy sources and grow well on routine lab media. Originally known as antibiosis, antibiotics were drugs that had action against bacteria. Acinetobacter strain which was isolated from blood, pus and urine was collected from different hospital lab. It was further confirmed to be Acinetobacter using various biochemical test and observing the growth in the Mcconkey agar medium .Also it is found that ESBL strains are weak bio film producers, hence spread these organisms are restricted by bio film production. In quantitative assay by observing the OD at 600nm,the rate of bio film production was observed .This results strongly correlates with qualitative assay .Finally the ESBL strain was subjected to plasmid isolated ,separated using Agarose Gel and the gel was documented .The molecular weight was recorded to be 14000 kb by comparing with the marker protein.

The seeds of Azadirachta indica A. Juss. popularly known as neem collected from five cities of Accra metropolis was studied. Trees with wide girth and different seed weight were observed. Maximum residual oil content was noticed in trees from Haatso. Weight of the seeds had no effect on the oil yield. Seed oil content in most of the cities was not significantly correlated with morphological parameters of seeds. A.indica seed oil extracted was analyzed for their physicochemical properties such as viscosity at 28 ^oC (0.07 kg/ms), pH (5.7), acid value (1.102 ml/g), iodine value (71.0 gI₂/100g) and free fatty acid value (48.35 ml/g). The maximum mean percentage oil obtained (52.5 %) makes the commercialization of the seeds of Azadirachta indica in Ghana a possible and profitable venture. The result also confirms the oil to be good quality and can find application in industrial purposes.

We are very happy to announce that from 9th September 2016, Mr. Mohammad Valipour has joined the team of Elixir Editorial Advisory Board. He/She will carry a special responsibility for dealing with manuscripts based on Agricultural Engineering. Mr. Mohammad Valipour working as Lecturer, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran. The appointment of Dr. Mohammad Valipour as member Editorial Advisory Board strengthens the links and will make it easier for prospective authors to establish contact with the journal.

In Dr. Florentin Smarandache generalized several properties of the nedians. Here, we will continue the series of these results and will establish certain connections with the triangles which have the same coefficient of deformation.

Present paper studies the operational behavior of major part assembly system of an automobile incorporating human error. The system consists of eight main units namely: Engine, transmission, fuel supply system, fuel ignition system, exhaust system, cooling system, brake system and build. The whole system can fail due to failure of any of the units. The system satisfies the usual conditions like perfect repair, joint distributions etc. Each operative unit has a constant failure rate but a general repair time distribution. We transform the basic equation into integro differential equation and outline the solution procedure for a repair time distribution with Laplace transform. The transitional state probabilities, asymptotic behaviour and some characteristics such as reliability, availability, MTTF and the cost effectiveness of the system have been obtained using a time dependent version of the supplementary variable method and Gumble-Hougaard copula methodology. At last, some particular cases and numerical examples have been taken to describe the model.