Archives-J 

Nowadays, tractor is one of the most important power sources in agriculture. Replacement of tractor is one of the most important decisions that should be made by farmer. Proper performance in this case can lead to timely, high quality farm operations which in turns results in considerable decrease in product expenditures and also more income. The current study was performed in order to determine economically optimum life of MF285 tractors in Debal Khazaei Agro-Industry Co. in Khuzestan province of Iran. Moreover, listed price of tractor, annual depreciation and Internal Rate of Return in the study period were calculated. Then, these items accompanied by their repair and maintenance cost were used to determine their economic life. Finally, replacement time for the study tractors was obtained equal as 6981 hours. These hours of operation are performed in about 14 years and thus the tractor should be replaced.

In this work two samples of a (Pandanus amaryalifolious) leaves extracts, were exposed to sound waves length of (528 nm and 741 nm) while the third sample of the leaves was left without exposure to any sound. The effect of different wave lengths absorption shows a dramatic difference at the organic compounds and sulfur compounds of each sample, these differences were detected using spectroscopic techniques.

The article focuses on the problem of the foreign language training of future specialists in different fields. The requirements of employers to young applicants for a job are analyzed. English becomes a necessary component of the professional training of future specialists and a way for developing certain skills of future specialists. The role of ESP for the development of some personal qualities, skills and professional competences is determined. The potential of certain exercises, tasks and tests is considered concerning the skills development of the future specialists in health study.

Rosa [13] introduced the notion of graceful labelings. The concept of magic, antimagic and conservative labelings have been extended to directed graphs [11]. Bloom and Hsu [3, 4, 5] extended the notion of graceful labeling to directed graphs. In 1985, Lo [12] introduced the notion of edge – graceful graphs. We introduced [8] the concept of edge – graceful labelings to directed graphs and further studied in [9]. In this paper we investigate directed edge – graceful labeling of trees.

Any straightjacket formula, for a distributive justice in any given community or system is difficult to be evolved. And when the question is of international community, the task goes even more difficult, or at times nearly impossible. Any system to be fair and just has to work with the notion of ‘universal equalities with fair distribution of resources’ immaterial of the birth and power of the people in the society. But the inequalities between the developed and developing nations have given rise to different facets of distributive justice. When one talks about the problem of profit sharing of the Indigenous communities as to their Tradition Knowledge, this sounds to be an economic issue. But the reality is that it engulfs various social, cultural and political concerns of the distribution of ‘materials’.To convert the traditional knowledge and cultural heritage of the indigenous people into definitions of patents, copyrights, trademarks, personality, and trade secrets is to ignore that traditional knowledge and cultural heritage that identify an indigenous people and makes a mockery of their struggle for freedom and self-determination. Their struggle for self-determination has the symbiotic benefits of maintaining cultural cohesion and the protection of the greater public welfare. So the paper concentrates upon the distribution of honours and materials in a justified manner especially in context of indigenous people.

Ethnic conflict is a worldwide issue that has challenged many countries since the second half of the twentieth century in particular. As multi-ethnic country Iran, which is positioned at the center of an ethnic conflict area namely the Middle East, has experienced many ethnic conflicts since the formation of the modern nation state in 1906, and especially after Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979. The main ethnic groups involved in these conflicts are Kurds, Turkmen, Arabs, Baluchs and Azeries. Since the Revolution, Iran had attempted to quarrel the ethnic conflict severely. When Khatami took power, however, he behaved peacefully towards minorities and ethnic tensions eased. Based on the theory that states duplicate their domestic patterns of behavior in their inter-state relations, the paper intends to examine this theory in the case of Iran during Khatami’s administration. The article concludes that when Khatami came to office, he attempted to deal with the ethnic groups on the basis of democratic values. He extended these values to Iran’s foreign policy arena which led to an improvement in relations between Iran and other countries. In other words, he could replicate internal peaceful policy in Iran’s inter-state relations and he made a direct connection between these two spheres.

Improving tomato production is one of the important greatest challenges facing Nigeria government today. Since tomato is an important fruit crop for the country and for individual households, it has important implications for livelihood of rural people. In order to achieve this, several interventions in the sector were done in an attempt to improve production. The study analyzes the tomato production from year 1981-2017. The study was carried out to examine the trend in tomato production and importation, the determinant of tomato production and the effect of tomato import on it producer in Nigeria. Secondary data obtained from Central Bank of Nigeria Statistics and Food and Agricultural Organization were used for the study. Dickey-Fuller unit root test and Co-integration test were employed to analyze the data collected. The result showed that the time series used for the study are all stationary at first difference. The result of co-integration test in the short-run Error Correction Model (ECM) estimation at 1 lag length shows that Agricultural labour, local tomato price and rainfall are significant to tomato production. The result of the long-run ECM estimation shows that Agricultural labour, local tomato price and rainfall are significant to tomato production. The result of the trend local tomato price showed it was stationary at first difference and also positively significant to tomato production at both short-run and long-run ECM estimation which indicates that local tomato price time trend has being favourable for tomato production. Result of the trend of agriculture labour showed that it was stationary at first difference and positively significant in the short-run and positively in the long-run ECM estimation to tomato production which indicates that agricultural labour time trend is inversely related to tomato production. All this can be due to the country not depending on importation of agricultural produce, food production through agriculture to the masses by the government within the country, implying that the government support production and more exportation resulting in an government increasing revenue. It is therefore concluded that more agricultural produce should be produce in the country to control importation.

This study investigated the effect of activity-based learning strategies on secondary school Physics students’ performance in Yenagoa metropolis, Bayelsa State. Quasi-experimental pretest-posttest research design was adopted for the work. The study sample consists of 150 senior secondary school Physics (SS2) students drawn from a population of 926 Physics students using purposive sampling technique. Two schools were assigned to the experimental group, while one class was used as the control group. A 20-item multiple choice achievement test on Heat Energy titled PATHE was used to gather data for the study. The reliability of the instrument PATHE was obtained using Kudder-Richardson formula 21 ( KR21 ) and a value of 0.82 was obtained. Two research questions and two null hypotheses guided this work. Research questions were analyzed using mean and standard deviation, while the hypotheses were tested using ANCOVA at 0.05 level of significance. Major findings of this study showed that students taught using the activity-based learning strategies (cooperative, and practical work) performed significantly better than their counterparts taught using the demonstration method. Practical work method was more effective than cooperative method while cooperative method proves to be more effective than the demonstration method. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that The use of activity based learning strategies in the teaching and learning of Physics should be made compulsory for all Physics teachers, especially at the secondary school level and that Government at all levels should show commitment and support in promoting innovative teaching in Physics and other science subjects at the secondary school level by providing an enabling environment and the required facilities in secondary schools so as to make students’ centered learning activities a reality

Simple Lattice Design (SLD) was used to study the effect of level of inclusion of Orange Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP) on some physical parameters of bread made from composite flour while the whole wheat flour bread (sample A) served as control. The proximate composition of the various flour blends used for the preparation of the breads were determined using standard methods. The bread loaves were evaluated for their physico-chemical analyses, nutritional composition and sensory attributes. The physico-chemical analyses results obtained showed an increase in the range of 0.72 g/cm3 for BD, 0.97 g/g for WAC, 465.67 cP for trough, 1329.33 cP, 863.67 cP and decrease of 416.67 cP in setback values respectively. The chemical analyses results obtained showed an increase in the range of 32.72% for moisture, 15.63% for protein, 0.30% for crude fibre, 1.25% for ash, 72.73 g/100g for starch 0.95 mg/100g for Beta carotene, respectively. There was also a decrease in Crumb Hydration Capacity (CHC) and bread volume by 47.51 and 38.03%, respectively, with inclusion of the OFSP flour. It was concluded that a substitution of 79.75g of wheat flour and 20.25 g of flour gave the optimal mixture for the productions of enriched the bread

Although Savings and credit cooperative societies (SACCO) are formed to promote thrift among members by affording them an opportunity to accumulate savings and deposits to provide credit at fair and reasonable rate of interest, they operate in an competitive environment characterized by banks, micro finance institutions, insurance companies, capital market and pension fund that offer similar or near equal financial services to the same clientele in Kenya. In today's highly dynamic and competitive business environment, firms are exposed to strict challenges with meeting the ever-increasing market and customer needs and expectations, coping with sophisticated requirements, and facing technological obsolescence. In order to achieve sustainable competitive advantage level that not only matches those of their business rivals? but that exceed the financial industry performance averages, financial institutions have to seek understanding of relative degree on the relationship between competitive strategies and sustainable competitive advantage. Competitive strategies adopted determine the consumer satisfaction that propels the SACCO to attain sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of the study was to establish the effects of competitive strategies on sustainable competitive advantage of SACCOS in Kenya. Specifically, the study was to examine the effect of focus strategy and identify the effect of innovation strategy on sustainable competitive advantage of SACCOs in Kenya with specific interest in Mombasa County. The literature reviewed in the study was the theory of Resource-Based View of the firm (RBV), Market-Based View (MBV) and the Game Theory. A descriptive survey research design was adopted with a survey involving 168 SACCOs according to the Kenya Union of Savings & Credit Co-operatives ltd.