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Commuters in Accra, Tema and major cities of Ghana continue to suffer heavy vehicular traffic jams each working day, particularly during the peak hours, when most people travel to their work places or to school and back. Formal sector employees, including those from Scancom Ghana, are spared of the negative effects of this phenomenon which include loss of working time, lateness, commuting stress and fatigue among others. However, in order to avoid these negative effects of traffic jams mentioned earlier, some workers cut down on their sleep and get up very early to be able avoid the enormous traffic congestions. This also comes with loss of sleep and associated stress and fatigue. Similarly, some workers leave the office earlier than required to be able to “beat” the huge traffic congestion and reach home early. Through a survey, this study sought to find out how the traffic congestion in Accra and Tema affect employee productivity, particularly among workers who use the major streets to the Central Business Districts and Tema. Using employees of SCANCOM Ghana Ltd, the study also sought to evaluate workers’ views on the extent to which traffic congestions affect employee productivity. The study findings revealed that while majority of the respondents agreed that vehicular traffic congestions moderately or seriously affected employee productivity, they were still able to meet their daily work targets, their productivity was not affected by the traffic jams they encountered.

We have reformulated equations of state (EOS) for superconductors based on Lagrangian and Eulerian strains following the method developed by Stacey. The expressions thus obtained are used conveniently to assess the validity of various EOS for different types of superconductors. The logarithmic EOS based on the Hencky measure of finite-strain is also modified by including the higher terms arising from the fourth-order contribution in the Taylor series expansion of the free energy. In the present work, pressure of five different superconductors viz. YBa2Cu3O6.6, YBa2Cu3O6.93, YBa2Cu3O7, Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8 and Nd1.32Sr0.41Ce0.27CuO3.96 has been computed at different compression ranges using five different EOS based on finite strain theory viz. Third order Eulerian EOS, Third order Lagrangian EOS, Second order Born-Mie EOS, Third order Born-Mie EOS and Bardeen EOS. the obtained results are compared with available experimental data to test the validity and success of these equation of states.

This article examines the historical development of ethnicity in the Nigerian political terrain. It posits that the distinguishing feature of Nigerian politics is the role played by ethnicity in staunting the task of national development. It argues that federalism in Nigeria is a farce, as the major ethnic nationalities monopolize political power for self interest. This ethnic consciousness heightened political competition at the centre resulting in the social, political, administrative and cultural maladies that bedevil Nigeria. it concludes that elites crude accumulation for personal wealth field crisis, instability and violence which affected national development efforts.

A multi layer artificial neural network (ANN) and multiple regression (mathematical) models were developed for the investigation of cadmium removal efficiency of powered activated carbons of coconut oilcake, neem oilcake and commercial carbon. Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) Back-propagation algorithm is used to train the network. The network topology was optimized by varying number of hidden layers and number of neurons in hidden layers. The effective parameters on the removal of cadmium (%R) by adsorption process, which included the pH, contact time (T), distinctiveness of activated carbon (Cn), amount of activated carbon (Cw) and initial concentration of cadmium (Co) were investigated. The model was developed in terms of training; validation and testing of experimental data, the test subsets that each of them contains 60%, 20% and 20% of total experimental data, respectively. Standard deviation (SD) with respect to experimental output was calculated for outputs of ANN and regression model. The experimental data were best fitted with the artificial neural network model.

This paper deals with the study of the potential substitution of Karanja methyl ester blends for diesel as fuel for automobiles and other industrial purposes. The objective of this study is the analysis of the performance, combustion and emission characteristics of the karanja methyl esters and comparing with petroleum diesel. The tests were carried out on a 4.4 KW, single cylinder, direct injection, Air-cooled diesel engine. The results of investigations carried out in studying the fuel properties of karanja methyl ester (KME) and its blend with diesel fuel from 20 to 100% by volume and in running a diesel engine with these fuels. Engine tests have been carried out with the aim of obtaining comparative measures of Brake power, specific fuel consumption and emissions such as CO2, CO, HC, smoke density and NOx to evaluate and compute the behavior of the diesel engine running on above mentioned fuels. The reduction in exhaust emissions together with increase in brake power, brake thermal efficiency and reduction in specific fuel consumption make the blends of karanja esterified oil (B20) a suitable alternative fuel for diesel and could help in controlling air pollution.

This paper discusses the performance characteristics of a single cylinder four stroke diesel engine using lean coconut biodiesel blended with diesel fuel. The experiments were carried out for the various biodiesel-diesel blends i.e., B5, B10, B15, and B20. Results were compared with the neat diesel. The blended biodiesel is being injected to cylinder and tested up to 20% blended biodiesel. The experiment ensures that up to 20% biodiesel blended with diesel can be used without any modification in the diesel engine and enhancement of combustion, FC, BSFC, efficiency and the overall performance of the engine.

The agro hydrological model SWAP3.03 was used for two wheat crops, cultivars “Ghods” and “Rowshan” under different irrigation regimes. The field study was conducted during 2005-2006 growing season in the Research Field of Birjand University. Different qualities of irrigation water (namely 1.4, 4.5 and 9.6 dS/m) obtained from three local wells were used in a factorial plot design with four levels of water depths (namely, 50, 75, 100 and 125% of ETc). The model was initially calibrated with respect to the winter wheat crop coefficients, based on a study in the province of S. Khorasan. The simulated values fitted well the trend of actual crop production for various amounts and qualities of irrigation water. Maximum yield was obtained for a deficit irrigation of 75% ETc with the best water quality, that of 1.4 (dS/m). Results also showed that different levels of water and salinity stress would affect crop production. The correlation coefficients between the simulated and actual crop production were 0.72 for “Ghods” and 0.83 for “Rowshan”, both statistically significant at 1% level. As compared to the actual yield, the Average simulated yield was 15% higher for “Ghods” and 10% lower for “Rowshan”. A t-test showed that such deviation between simulated and observed values were not lower than required for significant differences. The results of this study, therefore, show that SWAP3.03 model is a useful tool to estimate wheat production under different levels of water and salinity stress.

The concept of Frequency Response Analysis (FRA) has been successfully used as a diagnostic technique to detect winding deformation, core and clamping structure for power transformers. The main problem about FRA techniques is to interpret the observed evolution of the frequency response in order to identify failures. Transformer high frequency computer modeling is proposed in this work to be used with the practical FRA measurements. The physical meaning of the model parameters allows the identification of the problem inside the transformer. Two high frequency transformer models based on lumped and distributed parameters approaches are investigated. A comparison of both models is conducted using their transfer function plots, and hence based on the amount of information revealed from the plots, a distributed model is chosen for further analysis. The model validation is carried out through the comparison of the simulation and field results. Mechanical and short circuit faults are simulated into the model to compare the differences in the frequency response of healthy and deformed transformer signatures. The advantage of this technique is that the FRA measurements can be obtained from meaningful parameters that can aid interpretation and classification of FRA signatures.

This article is a comprehensive study to find out the maximum age group victims of certain diseases due to the usage of pesticide Endosulfan people in South Indian State of Kerala (Palakkad and Kasargod) using CETD matrix. In the year 2003 W.B.Vasantha used to study migrant labours who were affected by HIV/AIDS. For this paper the data have been collected from Palakkad and Kasargod District of Kerala covering 101 victims.

Let G = (V,E) be a simple graph. A set S ? V is a dominating set of G, if every vertex in V? S is adjacent to atleast one vertex S. Let Dg(Pn, i) be the family of geodetic dominating sets of the graph Pn with cardinality 'i'. Let dg(Pn, i) = | Dg(Pn, i)|. In this paper, we obtain a recursive for dg(Pn, i). Using the recursive formula, we construct the polynomial, Dg(Pn,x) = xi which we call geodetic dominating polynomial of Pn and obtain some properties of this polynomial.