Archives-June... 

The objective of the study is to identify the perception of the students on aggressive attitude in five secondary schools in Johor Bahru town. This study also attempts to identify the factor of aggressive and types of aggressive attitude in the school. About 260 questionnaires were distributed at random stage to aggressive student from form one, two and four. The instrument used was the Mooney Problem Check List which was later analysis by the SPSS11.5 (Statistical Package For Sosial Science). It contained 64 likert skill items. The reliability value (alpha croanbach) of the instrument was 0.81. Descriptive statistic in the form of mean, standard deviation and percentage was used in data analysis. As a whole, the result of the study shows the level students aggressiveness in secondary schools in Johor Bahru area were quite high. The hypothesis shows that there is no significant difference between aggressive factor and student rate. There is significant relationship between types of aggressive and family income. Students’ perception between aggressive attitude in secondary school show that environment of school is dominant (mean 4.1), less attention from family background (mean 3.8), students’ attitude (mean 3.88), psychology (mean 3.65) and their friends (mean 3.68). The most aggressiveness among student was shown that physical attitude (mean 3.57), verbal (mean 3.53) and anti social (mean 3.34). Thus this research shows that the aggressive attitude among students in Johor Bahru town is quite high. The study suggested that the school should identify aggressiveness culture among the students and should implement the peer program therefore the problems will be decrease.

Micro Electro Mechanical System (MEMS) controlled electromagnetic micro power generator was designed with basic cantilever structure using comsol software. This paper presents a micromechanical-system-based electromagnetic vibration-to-electrical power generator that can harvest energy from low-frequency external vibrations. The efficiency of vibration-based harvesters is proportional to excitation frequency, so the proposed generator is designed to convert low- frequency environmental vibrations to a higher frequency by employing the frequency upconversion (FupC) technique. It has been shown that the generator can effectively harvest energy from environmental vibrations of 70-150 Hz and generates 0.57-mV voltage with 0.25-nW power from a single cantilever by up converting the input vibration frequency of 95 Hz-2 kHz. The fabricated generator size is 8.5*7*2.5 mm^3,and a total of 20 serially connected cantilevers have been used to multiply the generated voltage and power. The generator demonstrated in this paper is designed for the proof of concept, and the power and voltage levels can further be increased by increasing the number of cantilevers or coil turns.

Seasonal or calendar anomalies in equity markets (over specific days, weeks, months, and even years) have attracted a widespread attention and considerable interests among practitioners and academics alike. The day of the week effect refers to the existence of a pattern on the part of stock returns, whereby these returns are linked to the particular day of the week The primary objective of the study is to investigate the existence of seasonality in stock price behavior in Indian stock market, more specifically to investigate the existence of the day of the week effect in banking sector. The rationale behind the selection of banking sector is stocks in this sector always experience high volatility in the market, linked to the movement of broad market index and banking in India is critical to economic development of the nation. Thus this sector hence needs special attention by investors. The period of the study is from 3rd November 1994 to 31st December 2013. For the purpose analysis, the study has employed daily price series that have been obtained from the official website of National Stock Exchange (NSE). The daily price series of selected nine banks were selected for this study, and used multiple regression technique to examine the significance of the regression coefficient for investigating day of week effects. It is found that all the nine selected banks evidenced day of the week effect and mostly either on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Only IDBI, OBC and PNB evidenced significant Thursday effect. The existence of seasonality in stock returns violates the weak form of market efficiency because equity prices are no longer random and can be predicted based on past pattern. This facilitates market participants to devise trading strategy which could fetch abnormal profits on the basis of past pattern. These findings have important implications for the financial managers, financial analysts and investors. The understanding of seasonality would help them to develop appropriate investment strategies.

The concept of customer loyalty has received much consideration and attention from both academics and practitioners in different industries. In increasingly competitive markets, being able to build consumer loyalty is seen as the key factor in winning market share and developing a sustainable competitive advantage. Banking industry is no exception as it has high interaction with the customers, so managers must understand the factors which influence the loyalty of the customers towards their respective banks. The purpose of this research is twofold: 1.examine the impact of competency, ability to establish communication, commitment, ability to solve customers’ problems, trust and quality of relationship on customer loyalty. 2. Presenting an integrated model for bank customers. Data obtained from 178 survey questionnaire were analyzed using the structural equation modeling (SEM). The results revealed that competency has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Ability to establish communication has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Commitment has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Ability to solve customers’ problems has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. Trust has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty and quality of relationship has a significant positive effect on customer loyalty. In addition results show that Ability to solve customers’ problems was the best predictor of their loyalty.

The core objective of cureent study is to investigat the costs of financial distress of ongoing manufacturing sector of Pakistan. A panel of 146 manufacturing firms Pakitan are selected for this study for the period of 2001-2011. Two most applicable panel data teachniques (fixed effects and random effects models) are utilized to investigate the costs of financial distress and Hausman’s specification test recommended that fixed effects model is most appropriated model in this study. The results of fixed effects model suggest that financial distress of onging firms of Pakistan has significant direct impact on opportunity losses in case of Pakistan after control average collection period, total assests growth, fised to total assets ratio, tangibility of aessts and sector distresssed. The upcoming studies msut explore direct costs of financial distress and bankruptcy in case of manufacturing as well as service sector of Pakistan.

The knowledge of the women farmers on renewability potential of natural resources are critical determinants of the attitude and farmland conservation measures adopted to achieve a sustainable use. This study was carried out in Ekiti state, Nigeria to reveal the socio-economic characteristics of women farmers and their attitude towards sustainable farmland management practices in food crop production. Multistage sampling technique was adopted in selecting a total of 345 women farmers drawn from eight (8) Local Government Area of the state. Data were collected on socio-economic characteristics and attitude towards farm land management practices. The data were t analyzed using both descriptive and inferential statistics. The results revealed that majority (92.8%) of women farmers fell between the age categories of 31 -55 years and most of the farmers (69.5%) were married. Majority of the farmers inherited their farmland and majorly practiced crop rotation system. The correlation analysis revealed that there was a strong positive correlation (r=0.67, P< 0.05) between the attitude score and farmland management practices adopted by the women farmers, there is neutral attitude towards sustainable farm land management practices among women farmers in the study area. This study therefore recommend increase in awareness campaigns on farmland fertility conservation through appropriate management practices and women farmers should be given opportunity to have access to land resources like male counterpart which could be possible through adequate policy formulation on agriculture.

In this paper we present a slightly modified Binary Inversion Algorithm (BIA) to speed up scalar point multiplication of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recommended elliptic curve with moduli 2521 -1. The effectiveness of the above method is mathematically analyzed by using statistical analysis and by computing series of scalar point multiplications Q= k.P for randomly generated k. Our method uses 2 random generators for generating ‘k’ namely, Random number generator based on Elliptic Curve Operations and Blum-Blum-Shub Generator. The mathematical analysis shows that above technique speeds up the inversion operation and consequently the scalar point multiplication of the above NIST recommended curve. New architecture based on the modified BIA is proposed. The results show that the modified BIA can be implemented in the hardware to speed up the scalar point multiplication.

Research and investigation was carried out on “Assessing the impacts of climate change on Surface Water Resources of Dal Catchment”. Two catchments of Dal Lake viz. Dachigam and Telbal were selected for the study purpose; since the two alone contribute about 80% to the waters of Dal Lake. The stream discharges and climatic data were obtained for the previous 20 years. The three main variables of study were discharge, temperature and precipitation; discharge being the response variable with respect to the remaining two. Trend lines were established for each of the variables with the help of the 5 year moving averages; which revealed the increasing trend in the temperature and the stream discharge, while a decreasing trend was visible in the precipitation. The trend of the three parameters was in accordance with the global climatic and hydrological findings. Further, to analyze the findings, Mann-Kendal’s test was used to ascertain the results. As per this test, discharge displays a significant trend over the given period of study at 5% significance levels with a p-value of 0.006; temperature also indicates a significant trend at 10% significance level with a p-value of 0.086 while the precipitation could not reveal any significant trend over the limited time frame of study even at 10% significance level, which could be a result of the seasonal dimension to it. The given study concluded that there was an adverse effect of the climate change on the catchment of the Dal Lake.

Moringa preparations and its consumption have become popular among Ghanaians. In the present study a survey was carried out in Techiman in the Brong Ahafo to determine the existing socio-economic status and Moringa safety knowledge of consumers. Data on socio –economic profile of 100 consumers were obtained through questionnaires. Results from the study showed that more of the respondents got the information on Moringa from family (46 %,) followed by other sources (20%), from the media (18%) and from friends (16%) in that order. Results also indicated that majority of the manufacturers fail to indicate the exact amount of metal concentrations incurred by consumers after consumption.

Educational blogs are used to allow educators to interact with students from any location. Teachers sharing ideas through blogs is a promising way to communicate teaching ideas and allows multicultural teaching methods to be disseminated. The blogs that tell the educator how to use technology within the classroom are informative as many teachers would have no idea about such teaching methods. Research based blogs allow users to see different educational topics discussed in more depth. This paper provides an overview of the impact blogs are having in an educational context.