Archives-December 

In this world of emerging technology ultrasound imaging is widely used in medical field for disease diagnosis and treatment. Ultrasound imaging is a safe medical technique, due to its non-invasive nature, low cost, portable ultrasound system and the capability for forming real-time imaging. However the main problem with the ultrasound imaging is the image quality of ultrasound image which degrades by the presence of noise called as speckle. The speckle noise depends on the structure of tissue and various imaging parameter. This paper proposed the filtering techniques to reduce the speckle noise from ultrasound image and edge detection in ultrasound image. In this paper we describe a hybrid wiener-H filtering technique to remove speckle noise. This gives a better resulting ultrasound image for disease diagnosis and treatment by clinician.

The vehicle routing problem is to determine K vehicle routes, where a route is a tour that begins at the depot, traverses a subset of the customers in a specified sequence and returns to the depot. Each customer must be assigned to exactly one of the K vehicle routes and total size of deliveries for customers assigned to each vehicle must not exceed the vehicle capacity. The routes should be chosen to minimize total travel cost. This paper gives a solution to find an optimum route for vehicle routing problem using Hybrid Encoding Genetic Algorithm (HEGA) technique. The objective is to find routes for the vehicles to service all the customers at a minimal cost without violating the capacity, travel time constraints and time window constraints

Vermicomposting of textile and dye sludge is an economically viable and environmentally safer method of final disposal. Use of earthworms in the industrial sludge management has been termed as vermistabilization (Neuhauser et al.,1988). The worms and microorganisms enhance the biodegradation of organic matter. During this process, important plant nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, calcium etc. present in the waste are converted through microbial action into forms that are much more soluble and available to plants than those in the parent substrate (Ndegwa and Thompson, 2001).. In this study, textile and dye sludge had only four per cent organic carbon content. The C: N ratio is one among the important factors that affects manure quality. To adjust the C: N ratio of the initial materials, the carbonaceous material like sawdust and crop waste were added at different proportions. At maturity phase, the highest P content was observed in the treatment that received sludge, poultry waste and saw dust (T7, T8). Kaushik and Garg (2003) reported that textile mill sludge could be potentially useful as raw substrate in vermicomposting if mixed up to 30 per cent with cow dung. E. foetida is an epigeic earthworm species which lives in organic wastes and requires high moisture content, adequate amounts of suitable organic material and dark conditions for proper growth and development (Gunadi et al., 2002). The enhancement of P in vermicompost was due to mineralization of the organic matter accompanied by a reduction in the total volume of the waste under ideal conditions. The finished vermicompost obtained by mixing 30 per cent sludge with 20 per cent poultry waste and 50 per cent crop waste contains higher nutrient status (NPK) with narrow C: N ratio (15.5).

In this work, the vibrational spectral analysis is carried out using FTIR and FT Raman spectroscopy in the range 400-4000cm-1 and 50-3500 cm-1, respectively, for the molecule 2-6-dichlorobenzyl chloride. The molecular structure, fundamental vibrational frequencies and intensity of the vibrational bands are interpreted with the aid of structure optimizations and normal coordinate force field calculations based on HF and DFT methods with 3-21 + G basis set. The complete vibrational assignment for different normal modes of the molecule is done. Mulliken population analysis, charge distributions, thermodynamic properties and HOMO-LUMO are also discussed. With the help of specific scaling procedure, an excellent agreement between observed and calculated frequencies has been made.

This present investigation aimed at assessing the water quality of the Densu delta. Data on some ions namely Na⁺, HCO₃^-, Cl^-, K⁺, SO₄^2-, NO₃^--N and PO₄^3--P were measured. The pH, temperature, electrical conductivity (EC), total dissolved solids (TDS), dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand were also determined to assess the chemical status and pollution levels of the river. The ranges for BOD (3.40-4. 21), Na⁺ (104-29800), Cl^-(67.98-19194 ), K⁺ (16.90-4630),PO₄-P(0.0063-0.032 ), NO₃-N(0.19 - 0.60 ) and SO₄^2-(224.67-23700) were found to be higher than the natural background levels for surface water. This indicates pollution of the river water samples from the areas studied. Our findings highlighted the deterioration of water quality of the river due to anthropogenic activities.

Various researches and studies on speech acts among different languages and contexts would help the man bridge the gap among the speakers of different languages. In other words, it could help to inform and alert speakers of the potential pragmatic mistakes that may arise in social, pedagogical and translation domains. To cope with interethnic communication difficulties can be also helped by these studies and researches for the speakers of dissimilar languages and cultures. The strategies employed by Native English speakers and Iranian EFL learners for expressing promising in different situations in order to find the differences that may exist between these two languages are investigated in this study. Researchers working in second language (L2) acquisition have investigated interlanguage pragmatics to document learners’ formulation of speech acts (SAs) and they have found that most of the problems that EFL learners face in intercultural communication are mainly pragmatic. Unlike comprehensive studies on SAs such as request and apology, the number of cross-cultural studies investigating expressions of promising is fairly limited and there are few studies investigating this speech act in both languages. The participants of this study were 27 among whom 20 were Iranian EFL learners and the native English speakers included 7 people. The participants were both male and female, aging from 18 to 31 years old. An open-ended DCT were employed for studying participants' responses and verbal reactions to different situations. The results of Chi-square test suggested that these two groups vary in their use of strategies and types of promising. Iranian EFL learners’ sensitivity to L1 made them use inappropriate expressions and strategies in their English responses. It suggested that Persian learners of English transfer some of their L1 pragmatic norms to L2 because they perceive these norms to be universal.

Plants respond with changes in their pattern of gene expression and protein products when exposed to low temperatures. Thus ability to adapt has an impact on the distribution and survival of the plant, and on crop yields. Many species of tropical or subtropical origin are injured or killed by nonfreezing low temperatures, and exhibit various symptoms of chilling injury such as chlorosis, necrosis, or growth retardation. In contrast, chilling-tolerant species are able to grow at such cold temperatures. Conventional breeding methods have met with limited success in improving the cold tolerance of important crop plants involving inter-specific or inter-generic hybridization. Recent full-genome transcript profiling studies, in combination with mutational and transgenic plant analyses, have provided a snapshot of the complex transcriptional network that operates under cold stress. The changes in expression of hundreds of genes in response to cold temperatures are followed by increases in the levels of hundreds of metabolites, some of which are known to have protective effects against the damaging effects of cold stress. Various low temperature-inducible genes have been isolated from plants. Most appear to be involved in tolerance to cold stress and the expression of some of them is regulated by C-repeat/dehydration-responsive element binding (CBF/DREB1) transcription factors. Genetic analysis has revealed important roles for cellular metabolic signals, and for RNA splicing, export and secondary structure unwinding, in regulating cold-responsive gene expression and chilling and freezing tolerance. Numerous physiological and molecular changes occur during cold acclimation which reveals that the cold resistance is more complex than perceived and involves more than one pathway. The findings summarized in this review have shown potential practical applications for breeding cold tolerance in crop and horticultural plants suitable to temperate geographical locations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effectiveness of marketing mix strategies used by travel agencies in Mauritius during off peak seasons, in order to determine how to stimulate demand for international travel services and thus maximise the organisation’s revenue. This study explores the impact of off peak season on marketing mix strategies of travel agencies in Mauritius. The researcher adopted a quantitative research method. The target population comprised of 91 licensed travel agencies in Mauritius and the factor analysis carried out in the survey enabled the identification of latent factors that could affect the performance of travel agencies. The results of the findings led to the development of a marketing framework that travel agencies could consider in order to maximize their profitability during low seasons.

One of the most obvious and controversial matters seen in the modern literature is circularity of structure. Not being found only in the content of these works, i.e. the speech and thought of the characters, the incident and the actions of such works, circularity also penetrates to the form of such works. The case is that, circularity is not a futile element. It fortifies an aesthetic effect of the works on the reader to a great extent. Furthermore, it represents the circularity of human thought and life and consequently the circularity of his confusion and frustration what he cannot find a convincing answer for it and its occurrence. This article tries to discuss circularity in The Blind owl written by one of the most famous modern Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat.

In Wireless sensor networks the major concern is how to conserve the nodes' energy so that network lifetime can be extended significantly. Employing one static sink can rapidly exhaust the energy of sink neighbors. Furthermore, using a non-optimal single path together with a maximum transmission power level may quickly deplete the energy of individual nodes on the route. This all results in unbalanced energy consumption through the sensor field, and hence a negative effect on the network lifetime. In this paper, we present a comprehensive taxonomy of the various mechanisms applied for increasing the network lifetime. These techniques, whether in the routing or cross-layer area, fall within the following types: multi-sink, mobile sink, multi-path, power control and bio-inspired algorithms, depending on the protocol operation. In this taxonomy, special attention has been devoted to the multi-sink, power control and bio-inspired algorithms, which have not yet received much consideration in the literature. Moreover, each class covers a variety of the state-of-the-art protocols, which should provide ideas for potential future works. Finally, we compare these mechanisms and discuss open research issues.