Consumer Response: Examining Religiosity, CSR Attitude, CSR Behaviour of SMEs Executives in Odisha

It is very essential to study the consumers’ behaviour towards the religious product in order to find out the attitude and behaviour of consumers. The SMEs executives are consumer of various products. Their religion, religious belief holds a special role in product development and use of products. The religiosity of executives of an organisation endorses quality standard and specification to a product. The owners and executives’ thought, belief, attitude and their personal behaviour impacts on innovation and diffusion of product range. The SMEs executives’ acceptance of products from the house of religious organisation indicates their attitude and behaviour. The products of social responsible and religious organisation are promoted to test the religiosity, attitude and behaviour of SMEs executives. The SMEs executives of hindu religion are taken as samples. Data are collected from two places of odisha. The social responsibility values of products are promoted to SMEs executives at the time of sales and promotion of the products to test the consumers’ response towards CSR attitude and behaviour of SMEs executives. After selling the products, questionnaires are given to consumers. The questionnaires are collected after few days of sales and approached for repeat purchase of products from same religious house. The consumer behaviour is taken as the major scale of measurement of religiosity, CSR attitude and CSR behaviour of SMEs executive of Odisha. The personal values of SMEs executives and sales performance of religious organisation are tested to find out the results. The products from the house of THE ART OF LIVING are promoted by its direct distributor ABISHKAR MARKETING in Odisha. Keywords: Consumers response, Religiosity, CSR attitude and CSR behaviour, SMEs executives, Sales Performance

Haemoprotozoa Infection of Domestic Birds in Hilly Areas of Bangladesh

The blood protozoa of two important domestic birds namely chickens (Gallus domesticus) and pigeon (Columba livia) reared in the hilly areas of Bangladesh were studied. A total of 400 birds (200 chicken and 200 pigeons) were examined of which 149 (37.3%) [95% CI] birds were found infected by one or more haemoprotozoan parasites. Haemoprotozoa belonging to three genera were identified. Pigeon 80 (40%) was recorded more susceptible to haemoprotozoa infection than chicken 69 (34.5%). 118 birds (29.5%) were found to be infected with single infection where as mixed infections were found in 31 birds (7.8%). The prevalence of blood protozoa in female birds (69.5%) was found significantly higher (p ≤ 0.0001) [95% CI] than male birds (5%). Within the study period, the prevalence rate of Haemoprotozoa was 60.6% in summer season, 36.7% in rainy and 23% winter seasons. This study has archived a high prevalence of haemoparasites, henceforth encourage further to determine the effect of contamination on the productivity and profitability of these birds, and evaluation of cost-benefit of various control strategies need to be undertaken

High density culture of human induced pluripotent stem cells through the refinement of medium by dialysis in suspension

Human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) hold great promise in the field of regenerative medicine for cell-based therapies, tissue engineering, and drug discovery because of their pluripotency and self-renewal capacity. To implement their potential, bio-process developments for robust expansion of hiPSCs are important since large numbers of hiPSCs are required for cell therapy application. Although suspension culture is superior to obtain large numbers of cells, the cost of culturing hiPSC increases with increasing medium consumption, as the culture medium contains many costly macromolecules including basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-β1), and insulin. Moreover, hiPSCs secrete essential autocrine factors that are removed along with toxic metabolites when the growth medium is exchanged daily. In this study, after determining the minimum inhibitory level of lactic acid for hiPSCs, a medium refining system was constructed by which toxic metabolites were removed from used culture medium and autocrine factors as well as other growth factors were recycled. Specifically, about 87% of bFGF and 80% of TGF-β1 were retained in the refined medium after dialysis. The refined medium efficiently potentiated the proliferation of hiPS cells in adherent culture. When the refining system was used to refresh medium in suspension culture, a final cell density of (1.1 ± 0.1) × 106 cells mL-1 was obtained, with 99.5 ± 0.2% OCT 3/4 and 78.3 ± 1.1% TRA-1-60 expression, on day 4 of culture. These levels of expression were similar to those observed in conventional suspension culture. Moreover, to obtain high density culture, size- and time-dependent boundary conditions were also considered for the preferable growth of hiPSC in suspension culture. Thus, the concept for high density culture was proposed by considering the boundary conditions for preferable growth of hiPSC, as well as, medium refinement by dialysis to remove toxic metabolites, recycle autocrine factors, and reduce the use of macromolecules for the reduction of culture cost in suspension

A Study on Ultrasonic Vibration Cutting of Difficult-to-cut Materials

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Approximation of absolutely continuous invariant measures for Markov compositions of maps of an interval

We study the approximation of absolutely continuous invariant measures of systems defined by random compositions of piecewise monotonic transformation (Lasota-Yorke maps). We discuss a generalization of Ulam's finite approximation conjecture to the situation where a family of piecewise monotonic transformations are composed according to a Markov law, and study an analogous convergence result. Also, we present bounds for the L 1 error of the Ulam's approximation

Cross-stream migration of drops suspended in Poiseuille flow in the presence of an electric field

The present study focuses on the cross-stream migration of a neutrally buoyant two-dimensional drop in a Poiseuille flow in a channel under the influence of an electric field. In the absence of an electric field, the important nondimensional parameters describing this problem are the viscosity ratio (λ) between the drop fluid and the surrounding medium, the ratio of drop diameter to channel height (a∗), and the capillary number (Ca). The influence of all these parameters on drop migration is investigated. It is observed that a large drop moves slowly as compared to a smaller drop, but attains a steady shape at the center line of the channel. The increase in value of the capillary number enhances the cross-stream migration rate, while the increase in viscosity ratio reduces the tendency of the drops to move towards the channel center line. The presence of an electric field introduces additional interfacial stresses at the drop interface, which in turn alters the dynamics observed in the absence of an electric field. Extensive computations are carried out to analyze the combined effect of the electric field and the shear flow on the cross-stream migration of the drop. The computational results for a perfect dielectric indicate that the droplet migration enhances in the presence of an electric field. The permittivity ratio (S) and the electric field strength (E) play major roles in drop migration and deformation. Computations using the leaky dielectric model also show that for certain combinations of electrical properties the drop undergoes immense elongation along the direction of the electric field. The conductivity ratio (R) is again a vital parameter in such a system of fluids. It is further observed that for certain conditions the leaky dielectric drops exhibit rotation together with translation