Human Resource Outsourcing: Lesson From Multinational Enterprises

This paper examines the consequence of the organization internalization on the practice of human resource (HR) outsourcing among manufacturing organizations. The assumption is that HR outsourcing is perceived as an innovative practice and that multinational enterprise (MNEs) will employ this practice more than local organizations. The data was gathered from survey questionnaires of 232 manufacturing organizations. Of the sample, 113 organizations engaged with HR outsourcing, and 71 are MNEs that partially outsource their HR functions. The findings reveal that HR outsourcing among MNEs is used to a greater extent than local organizations. A significant difference is found in the extent of outsourcing payroll, benefits, training and recruitment between MNEs and in local organizations

Growth enhancement and protective potential of feed-based outer membrane proteins against vibriosis in Macrobrachium rosenbergii

The use of antibiotics to curtail vibriosis, which is a major infectious disease, plaguing shrimp and prawn is rather becoming less effective and the need for a better alternative is expedient. The outer membrane proteins (OMPs) of V. alginolyticus were extracted, mixed with powdered commercial feed and fed to the prawns to evaluate its effect on growth performance and protective potential. Sixty prawns were divided into groups A, B and C of 10 prawns each, with two replicates in six (150 L) glass aquaria. Groups A, B and C were fed with OMPs mixed diet, with OMPs-Freund’s incomplete adjuvant mixed diet and OMPs or adjuvant free diet (control diet) respectively. All the prawns were weighed weekly, and haemolymph was collected to determine the total haemocyte count (THC) and phenoloxidase (PO) activity. At the end of the feeding trial, prawns were intramuscularly challenged with 50 μL of 107 CFU V. alginolyticus. The treated groups were significantly higher in growth performance and THC than the control group, but no significant difference between the groups in terms of PO activity and mortality rate. The study, however, submitted that oral administration of OMPs with or without adjuvant is a good growth promoter and has the potential for protection against vibriosis in giant freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii)

Critical data-based incremental cooperative communication for wireless body area network

Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are single-hop network systems, where sensors gather the body’s vital signs and send them directly to master nodes (MNs). The sensors are distributed in or on the body. Therefore, body posture, clothing, muscle movement, body temperature, and climatic conditions generally influence the quality of the wireless link between sensors and the destination. Hence, in some cases, single hop transmission (‘direct transmission’) is not sufficient to deliver the signals to the destination. Therefore, we propose an emergency-based cooperative communication protocol for WBAN, named Critical Data-based Incremental Cooperative Communication (CD-ICC), based on the IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA standard but assuming a lognormal shadowing channel model. In this paper, a complete study of a system model is inspected in the terms of the channel path loss, the successful transmission probability, and the outage probability. Then a mathematical model is derived for the proposed protocol, end-to-end delay, duty cycle, and average power consumption. A new back-off time is proposed within CD-ICC, which ensures the best relays cooperate in a distributed manner. The design objective of the CD-ICC is to reduce the end-to-end delay, the duty cycle, and the average power transmission. The simulation and numerical results presented here show that, under general conditions, CD-ICC can enhance network performance compared to direct transmission mode (DTM) IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA and benchmarking. To this end, we have shown that the power saving when using CD-ICC is 37.5% with respect to DTM IEEE 802.15.6 CSMA and 10% with respect to MI-ICC

Assessment of worn textile antennas’ exposure on the physiological parameters and well-being of adults

This paper presents the assessment of short-term wireless body area network (WBAN) exposure, which is operated at the industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) band (2.45 GHz) in the vicinity of the human body. The experiment utilizes two popular textile antenna topologies, a planar monopole and a patch antenna as the radiating sources. The objective of this experiment is to investigate whether the exposure from WBAN may influence the physiological parameters (body temperature, blood pressure, and heart rate) and the well-being of the wearer. Counter-balanced, crossover, and the single-blind method was applied in the experimental setup. P-value is the probability value, under the assumption of no effect or no difference (the null hypothesis) of obtaining a result equal to or more extreme than what was actually observed. If P<; 0.05, it indicates that P-value will be less than the level of significance. Thus, the null hypothesis (no effect or no difference) can be rejected, and it can be concluded that there exist effects to the respondents. The results showed that there is statistically no significant difference between the active exposure and the Sham (no exposure) which may affect the physiological parameters and well-being of the wearers, with P>0.05, which failed to reject the null hypothesis (no effect)

Studies on Pathogenicity Effect of Aeromonas hydrophila Infection in Juvenile Red Hybrid Tilapia Oreochromis sp.

This study was conducted to evaluate the ability of motile Aeromonas species (MAS) to induce clinical symptoms and some pathological changes in juvenile red hybrid tilapia. A standard dose of infection was selected based on predetermined LD50. Infected fish were observed for any clinical sign and symptom for 96 hours. Samples of liver, spleen and kidney were collected for histopatological changes due to Aeromonas hydrophila infection. Clinical signs of fish included abnormal swimming behaviour and loss of balance. Most of infected fish suffered from haemorrhagic eyes and lesions on the body surface. Some of the them also developed bilateral exophthalmia. Histopathological changes were observed in kidney, liver and spleen. The infected liver showed severe congestion of hepatic veins and vacuoles formation while anterior kidney manifested degeneration of excretory tubules and glomeruli followed by severe haemorrhages and hyaline droplets degeneration. Spleen on the other hand showed tissues degeneration and vacuoles formation. All targated tissues also showed deposition of haemosiderin pigments followed by proliferation of melanomacrphage centres. Development of such symptoms was associated with the infection with Aeromonas hydrophila. The current study has shown that MAS could serve as the primary cause of severe infection not only in red hybrid tilapia but may also infected other freshwater fish species.The results of histological analysis of various tissues indicates a direct correlation between disease infection and histopathological disorders observed in the tissues

Enhancement of the duty cycle cooperative medium access control for wireless body area networks

This paper presents a novel energy-efficient and reliable connection to enhance the transmission of data over a shared medium for wireless body area networks (WBAN). We propose a novel protocol of two master nodes-based cooperative protocol. In the proposed protocol, two master nodes were considered, that is, the belt master node and the outer body master node. The master nodes work cooperatively to avoid the retransmission process by sensors due to fading and collision, reducing the bit error rate (BER), which results in a reduction of the duty cycle and average transmission power. In addition, we have also presented a mathematical model of the duty cycle with the proposed protocol for the WBAN. The results show that the proposed cooperative protocol reduced the BER by a factor of 4. The average transmission power is reduced by a factor of 0.21 and this shows the potential of the proposed technique to be used in future wearable wireless sensors and systems

Feed formulation based on local feed resources and its effects on nutritional-related blood profile in breeder goats

A comparative study was conducted to determine the nutrient composition of different feed formulations and its effect on nutritional related blood profile in breeder goats. Eighteen female adult goats, Capra aegagrus hircus (Boer cross) were selected and allocated into three different groups (n = 6) and assigned according to different feed formulations. Blood sampling was conducted before and after fourth weeks of feeding trial and analysed for selected parameters. Proximate analysis of diets was done and revealed comparable value of crude protein and crude fat. Glucose, total protein and calcium level in serum showed significant difference between groups (P-value 0.05). Fatty acid analysis of feed and serum showed polyunsaturated fatty acid was higher than satureated fatty acid. Overall, diet 3 shows the highest value of all blood parameters analysed in this study. Hence, it is very important to provide animal with nutrient according to production stages as sufficent protein and energy will improve the animal performance in terms breeding efficacy and quality of animal products. This study indicates that different feed formulation affects certain nutritional related blood profile in goat

Non-Cooperative Game Theory Approach for Cognitive Cooperative Communication in WBAN

To increase the Quality of Service (QoS) of wireless body area network, we need an effective data-rate delivering method, which capably forwarding the data over several path. For this reason, we proposed a non-cooperative game approach, based on utilizing a pricing-based spectrum leasing mechanism to transmit the data over several path based on non-cooperative game theory. The parameter price c is together determined by WBAN sensor and D2D users. Then, all selected D2D users used optimized powers that can fulfil the need of the WBSN users. Numerical results show the proposed approach improves the utility of WBSN users and their throughput

The effect of different feed formulation based on local feed resource on performance and stress parameter in breeder goat

Balanced nutrition is essential for health and performance of livestock. It is best when feed is formulated according to production stages of goat. However, as the goat grows, it may undergo transition of different feed formulation to meet its daily requirement. The transition may affect the performance of animals as well as it is a stressful condition. In this study, body weight gain and feed intake were used as indicators on performance, whereas hematological stress leucograms were used as indicator of stress parameter during implementation of different feed formulation among does. Eighteen adult does with similar body condition score and body weight approximately 20 kg were selected and divided into three groups equally (n = 6) and fed with different feed formulations, which were formulated using local feed source in the farm for a period of four weeks. Body weight was measured before implementation, on week 2 and week 4, blood sampling was conducted before implementation and during week 4 for comparison and feed intake was measured every day. All data were statistically analyzed using SPSS. Does fed with Diet 3 showed highest body weight gain and feed intake, followed by Diet 2 and Diet 1. There was significant difference (P0.05) as compared to normal value. Neutrophils:lymphocytes ratio for all groups were within normal range and no significant difference (P>0.05). The implementation of feed formulation according to production stages is recommended as it increases performance and prevents from nutritional stress

A wearable textile dipole for search and rescue application

A wearable textile antenna for search and rescue application is presented in this work. It is designed based on the dipole topology to operate at 406 MHz for the Cospas-Sarsat application and fabricated fully using textile materials. The meanderline miniaturization technique is chosen to compact the proposed dipole due to its expected large size and wavelength at 406 MHz. The antenna evaluated in planar and bent forms indicated satisfactory performance when evaluated in terms of reflection coefficients, gain and radiation patterns