Sharif Digital Repository

Nonstructural carbohydrates and antioxidants affect the yield of any plant. In this study, changes in nonstructural carbohydrates and antioxidant metabolism in leaf and spike, as well as their effects on grain yield, were examined in relation to elevated CO2 and nitrogen supply. For this, a wheat (Triticum aestivum) was grown at two levels of CO2, i.e., ambient 400 ppm (T1) and elevated 800 ppm (T2), with two levels of nitrogen supply, i.e., 0 gN (N1) and 1 gN (N2). In the sink, elevated CO2 and nitrogen caused a several-fold increase in glucose content. Fructose showed an increase of 53% and 60% in N2 treatment under both carbon levels. At the same time, sucrose content decreased by 112%... 

Workplace bullying (WB) and workplace incivility (WI) appear to be the most alarming events with a potentially threat to the entire workforce and organization. Considering their implications, this research study is examining the effect of WB and WI on employee performance (EP) in the presence of psychological well-being (PW) among both relationships. Sample of the female employees (Nurses) working in the health care units and hospitals of the Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K), Pakistan was taken to collect the data. Data were collected from female nurses and their supervisors working in the public sector hospitals of AJ&K, Pakistan. The current study uses AMOS 21.0 for empirical analysis to... 

Two groups of cotton growers participated in this study; the first, referred as “conventional cotton producers” (CCPs), continues to use traditional techniques. The second group, known as sustainable cotton producers (SCPs), adheres to practices that are socially acceptable, economically feasible, and environment friendly. This study was designed to undertake a thorough socio-economic analysis of CCP and SCP in terms of cost of production, yield, and adaptations for climate change. The data were collected from a total of 275 farming households (138 SCPs and 137 CCPs) from two districts, namely, Bahawalpur and Rajanpur, Punjab, Pakistan. The data were analyzed using the benefit–cost ratio... 

Drought is the worst environmental stress constraint that inflicts heavy losses to global food production, such as wheat. The metabolic responses of seeds produced overtransgenerational exposure to e[CO2] to recover drought’s effects on wheat are still unexplored. Seeds were produced constantly for four generations (F1 to F4) under ambient CO2 (a[CO2], 400 μmol L-1) and elevated CO2 (e[CO2], 800 μmol L-1) concentrations, and then further regrown under natural CO2 conditions to investigate their effects on the stress memory metabolic processes liable for increasing drought resistance in the next generation (F5). At the anthesis stage, plants were subjected to normal (100% FC, field capacity)... 

Workplace events play a significant role in shaping the performance of employees and organizations. Negative events, in particular, require careful attention due to their severe impact on employee wellbeing and performance. Workplace bullying and incivility are two negative events that can cause significant harm to employees and contribute to poor performance. This study examines the effects of workplace bullying and incivility on employee performance in the presence of perceived psychological wellbeing (PWB), with the moderating role of perceived organizational support (POS) considered for both independent variables and employee performance (EP). The study focuses on female nurses working... 

The history of plants to be utilized as medicines is thousands of years old. Black cumin is one of the most widely examined plant possessing naturally occurring compounds with antimicrobial potential. Foliar application of growth stimulators is a successful strategy to enhance yield and quality in many crops. A field study was planned to apply growth stimulator like moringa leaf extract on black cumin crop grown under field conditions using RCB design with three replications. All other agronomic inputs and practices were uniform. The treatments were moringa leaf extract concentrations (10%, 20%), growth stages (40 days after sowing, 80 DAS, 120 DAS, 40 + 80 DAS, 40 + 120 DAS, 80 + 120 DAS,... 

Estate administration involves managing and distributing a deceased individual’s assets to beneficiaries, as well as managing the liabilities. This process comprises legal, financial, and administrative tasks that ensure assets are transferred based on the deceased's wishes and in accordance with the law. In Southeast Asia countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei where Muslims represents the majority of population, the Islamic law plays an integral part in the inheritance management as the process to be in line with the Islamic teachings and principle. The role of the syariah authority namely the syariah courts is prevalent and therefore, abidance to the rule under the syariah legal... 

A novel intelligent semi-active control system for an eleven degrees of freedom passenger car's suspension system using magnetorheological (MR) damper with neuro-fuzzy (NF) control strategy to enhance desired suspension performance is proposed. In comparison with earlier studies, an improvement in problem modeling is made. The proposed method consists of two parts: a fuzzy control strategy to establish an efficient controller to improve ride comfort and road handling (RCH) and an inverse mapping model to estimate the force needed for a semi-active damper. The fuzzy logic rules are extracted based on Sugeno inference engine. The inverse mapping model is based on an artificial neural network... 

Using CNG as an additive for gasoline is a proper choice due to higher octane number of CNG enriched gasoline with respect to that of gasoline. As a result, it is possible to use gasoline with lower octane number in the engine. This would also mean the increase of compression ratio in SI engines resulting in higher performance and lower gasoline consumption. Over the years, the use of simulation codes to model the thermodynamic cycle of an internal combustion engine have developed tools for more efficient engine designs and fuel combustion. In this study, a thermodynamic cycle simulation of a conventional four-stroke spark-ignition engine has been developed. The model is used to study the... 

With the declining energy resources and increase of pollutant emissions, a great deal of efforts has been focused on the development of alternatives for fossil fuels. One of the promising alternative fuels to gasoline in the internal combustion engine is natural gas [1-5]. The application of natural gas in current internal combustion engines is realistic due to its many benefits. The higher thermal efficiency due to the higher octane value and lower exhaust emissions including CO2 as a result of the lower carbon to hydrogen ratio of the fuel are the two important feature of using CNG as an alternative fuel. It is well known that computer simulation codes are valuable economically as a cost... 

Gaining insight into possible vibratory responses of dynamical systems around their stable equilibria is an essential step, which must be taken before their design and application. The results of such a study can significantly help prevent instability in closed-loop stabilized systems by avoiding the excitation of the system in the neighborhood of its resonance. This paper investigates nonlinear oscillations of a rotary inverted pendulum (RIP) with a full-state feedback controller. Lagrange’s equations are employed to derive an accurate 2-DoF mathematical model, whose parameter values are extracted by both the measurement and 3D modeling of the real system components. Although the governing... 

A suction-controlled ring device has been developed to continuously measure the coefficient of lateral soil pressure in deformable unsaturated soil samples from the at-rest to the active condition under application of increasing vertical pressure and controlled matric suction. The device incorporates a thin aluminum specimen ring equipped with horizontal strain gages for recording the lateral soil strains. In addition, a sensor recording water volume changes is utilized to continuously monitor the degree of saturation of the soil sample during tests. The matric suction within the soil texture is controlled using the axis translation technique. In order to verify the performance of the ring... 

We introduce a new smooth, non-toxic, biocompatible method for cross-linking of gum tragacanth (GT), a polysaccharide of natural origin, in order to serve as a new supporting matrix for immobilization systems. The modified gum is used as a matrix for the catalysis of the conversion of benzyl penicillin to 6-aminopenicillanic acid (6-APA) by means of Escherichia coli ATCC11105 with penicillin G acylase (PGA) activity. The results show that GT beads can not only serve as a proper matrix for immobilization, but show enhanced hydrolysis rate and stability compared to other immobilization systems used for this reaction. This signifies the potential of GT as a biocompatible matrix for... 

The Class-E power amplifier has been widely studied and formulated in the literature. Although the majority of reported inductive coupling wireless power transfer (WPT) systems use a class-E power amplifier for driving the primary coil, still there is a lack of a comprehensive study on class-E circuit dedicated to WPT, providing a set of closed form design equations for proper class-E operation. This paper presents the required design equations needed to design a 'true' class-E circuit for WPT applications. Equations for the series-tuned secondary coil WPT system are presented, as well as two different design procedures for the parallel-tuned secondary coil. The derived equations have been... 

Pole Side Impact Tes is one out of three crash tests described by Euro NCAP standard for star rating of a vehicle and is required for assessing the Adult Occupant Protection. In this paper the goal is to determine the crashworthiness of side doors and B pillar in a Pole Side Impact Test based on Euro New Car Assessment Program (Euro-NCAP) using computer and simulation method. In this matter, a vehicle model has been prepared and meshed using Hypermesh and CATIA. The velocity of 29 km/h has been assigned to the vehicle which was on top of a cart while the pole has been assigned as a rigid static object based on Euro NCAP requirements specifically. Results show that different amounts of energy... 

To assess a car under the Euro New Car Assessment Program (Euro-NCAP), Adult Occupant Protection is one out of three parameters which need to be calculated with a weight factor of 50% while the other parameters, Child Occupant Protection and Pedestrian Occupant Protection, have a weight factor of 20%. The Pole Side Impact Test, beside two other tests, Side and Front Impact, is also required to calculate the Adult Occupant Protection. It shows how important the Pole Side Impact Test is and what an effective role it has in the car rating assessment. In this paper, the objective is to evaluate the effect of thickness on the energy absorbed by the side doors and the B pillar and its... 

In Euro NCAP standard, adult protection is one of the most important rating scores with 50% weight factor while child protection and pedestrian protection are accounted into consideration with 20% weight factor. For adult protection testing, three tests are required to perform: (1) side impact, (2) pole impact, (3) front impact. In the side impact test, dummy's head, chest, shoulder, thorax, ribs, abdomen, pelvic and femur must be studied to evaluate the rating score. Crashworthiness of a car during side impact can describe the score rated for that car. In this paper the goal is to determine the crashworthiness of side doors and B-pillar in side impact crash est by simulation using LS DYNA... 

In side impact test which is one out of three tests of Euro NCAP standard, front and rear doors and B pillar are most absorbance parts among vehicle body parts. Passengers are highly in danger while side crash, because of the distance between passenger's head and vehicle body. In this paper effect of material and thickness of doors and B-pillar and their absorbed energy during crash and improvement of its crashworthiness with respect to light weight design are studied using LS DYNA solver. The objective of this paper is to propose a material for doors and B-pillar with a specified thickness to achieve maximum absorbed energy and minimum weight. The shape of the doors and B-pillar remains... 

In this study, the influence of CO2 and CH4 on the performance and selectivity of Co-Ru/Al2O3 catalyst is investigated by injection of these gases (0-20 vol.% of feed) to the feed stream. The effect of temperature and feed flow rate are also inspected. The results show that low amounts of CO2 in the feed stream do not change the catalyst activity, but increasing the amount of CO2 (more than 10 vol.%), causes the CO conversion to decrease and the selectivity of heavy components to increase. Methane acts as an inert gas and does not affect the catalyst performance. Increasing feed flow rate has a negative effect on both CO conversion and heavy component selectivity. By raising the temperature,... 

In this paper, we present a nano-quantum photonic approach for the calculation of normal dispersion phenomena in organic crystals such as N-(4-nitrophenyl)-L-prolinol(NPP). We assume that a laser beam consists of a flow of energetic particles that interact with the distorted π-electron system. We approximate the distorted π-electron cloud by an ellipse to simplify calculations. By the precise analysis of photon interaction with the π-electron system of benzene ring in the NPP crystal, we obtain the refractive index in any wavelength by Monte Carlo simulation. The maximum error between our simulation results and the measurement data is 0.058, which is agreeable. © 2007 IOP Publishing Ltd