The Influence of Employee Engagement on Organizational Profit

This study is designed to determine the relationship between employee engagement, and organizational profit. In addition the study examines whether there is a significant difference in mean score on employee engagement between males and females in Palestinian telecommunication company. The scope of the study is limited to managers in Palestinian Telecommunication Company. The results showed statistically significant positive relationships between employee engagement and organization performance. It also shows that there is a significant difference in employee engagement between male and female in Palestinian Telecommunication Company

Rumen Degradation Characteristics of Multinutrient Blocks in Semi-Arid Region of Nigeria

. An investigation was carried out on eleven different multinutrient blocks in the semi-arid region of Nigeria. Three crossbred steers fitted with permanent rumen cannula were used to evaluate the nutritional value of multinutrient blocks using the nylon bag techniques. A randomized design was employed to determine the ruminal degradability of multinutrients and their effect on rumen ecology. Approximately 5 g of the feed sample were weighed into duplicated nylon bags (45 µ pore size) and incubated ruminally at 0, 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 h-post feeding. The results showed that the mean values of the ruminal temperature (38.7oC) and pH (6.6) were not different among different incubation. All the multinutrient blocks recorded above 59% DM degradability at 48h period of incubation. The mean values for the potential degradation of the multinutrients were generally high and ranged from 83.2 to 95.8%. It was concluded that inclusion of multinutrients in the diet of ruminants result in a significant improvement in DM degradation in the rumen

In Silico Domain Structural Model Analysis of Coronavirus ORF1ab Polyprotein

The world today is battling with a coronavirus infection that is considered a global pandemic. Coronavirus infection is mainly attribute to the varying technique of the replication and release of different genomic components of the virus. The present study aims to establish the physical and chemical features, as well as the basic structural and functional properties of Coronavirus ORF1ab domain. A molecular approach was adopt in this study using the Swiss Model and Phyre2 server whereas the prediction of the active ligand binding sites was done using Phyre2. The analysis of the structure of the protein showed that it has good structural and heat stability, as well as better hydrophilic features and acidic in nature. Based on the Homology modeling, only two binding active sites were noted with catalytic function being mediated by Zn2+ as the metallic heterogeneous ligand for binding sites prediction. The proteins mostly exhibited helical secondary configurations. This study can help in predicting and understanding the role of this domain protein in active coronavirus infection

Perceived Attributes of Diffusion of Innovation Theory as a Theoretical Framework for understanding the Non-Use of Digital Library Services

Rogers’s diffusion of innovation theory is one theoretical approach to understand how members of a social system can adopt an innovation. Certain attributes of the innovation itself may facilitate its adoption. This paper highlights the necessity of designing a Digital Library Service (DLS) in conformity with the attributes of Innovation. These attributes are: relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. It further discussed previous studies that have used the theory of perceived attribute of innovation to conduct research on acceptance and rejection of an innovation in different fields and concluded that Digital Library Service designers who adopts the theory of the perceived attributes of innovation will understand why there is low or non-use of these services and help them in designing DLS that can easily be adopted by potential users

A comprehensive review on the exergy analysis of combined cycle power plants

The arriving optimum improvement of a thermodynamic system of energy conversion such as a combined cycle power plant (CCPP) is complicated due to the existence of different factors. Energy and exergy analysis is utilized as effective methods to determine both the quantity and quality of the energy sources. This paper reviews the latest thermodynamics analysis on each system components of a CCPP independently and determine the exergy destruction of the plant. A few layouts of the CCPP plant from different locations considered as case studies. In fact, the most energy losses occurred in the condenser compared with the plant components. It found that in the combustion chamber (CC) the highest exergy destruction occurred. The ambient temperature causes an evident decrement in the power production by the gas turbine (GT). The result has proved that besides energy, exergy analysis is an efficient way to the assessment of the performance of the CCPP by recommending a more advantageous configuration of the CCPP plant, which would lead to reductions in fuel required and emissions of air pollutants

Chemical Fingerprinting Profile and Targeted Quantitative Analysis of Phenolic Compounds from Rooibos Tea (Aspalathus linearis) and Dietary Supplements Using UHPLC‐PDA‐MS

Aspalathus linearis (Burm.f.) R. Dahlgren, commonly known as rooibos tea, was consumed traditionally by the indigenous South African inhabitants as an herbal remedy. Beside antioxidant properties, it displays antiallergic, antispasmodic, and hypoglycemic activities. An ultra‐high-performance liquid chromatography method coupled with photodiode array and mass spectrometry detectors were developed for the determination of 14 phenolic constituents from leaves and stems of A. linearis. The efficient separation was performed within 30 min at a temperature of 30 °C by using C‐18 column as the stationary phase and water/acetonitrile with 0.05% formic acid as the mobile phase. Method validation for linearity, repeatability, limits of detection, and limits of quantification was achieved. The limits of detection from 0.2–1 μg/mL were reported for the standard compounds. Their total content varied substantially (1.50–9.85 mg/100 mg sample) in 21 dietary supplements. The presence of regioisomers and diastereomers which co‐elute on a variety of stationary phases make separation for quantification purposes challenging. This method was found to be efficient in providing low retention times and excellent resolution for this type of phytochemicals. The established method is suitable for chemical fingerprint analysis of A. linearis and cost‐effective for quality control of rooibos tea products

Surfactant-free purification of membrane protein complexes from bacteria: application to the staphylococcal penicillin-binding protein complex PBP2/PBP2a

Surfactant-mediated removal of proteins from biomembranes invariably results in partial or complete loss of function and disassembly of multi-protein complexes. We determined the capacity of styrene-co-maleic acid (SMA) co-polymer to remove components of the cell division machinery from the membrane of drug-resistant staphylococcal cells. SMA-lipid nanoparticles solubilized FtsZ-PBP2-PBP2a complexes from intact cells, demonstrating the close physical proximity of these proteins within the lipid bilayer. Exposure of bacteria to (-)-epicatechin gallate, a polyphenolic agent that abolishes β-lactam resistance in staphylococci, disrupted the association between PBP2 and PBP2a. Thus, SMA purification provides a means to remove native integral membrane protein assemblages with minimal physical disruption and shows promise as a tool for the interrogation of molecular aspects of bacterial membrane protein structure and function

Preparation of Yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) Biomass from Sugarcane Bagasse

In this study, the pretreatment by milling, dilute-acid hydrolysis of sugarcane bagasse, and subsequent fermentation of its glucose product was performed to investigate the effects of process conditions on the production of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The hydrolysis was carried out using HCl at three substrate concentrations of 20, 25, and 30% (w/v) of bagasse to distilled water. Hydrolysis parameters (time, acid concentration, and temperature) were varied for each case of substrate concentration in full factorial experiments, and an optimum glucose yield of 1.907 g/L was obtained with the 20% (w/v) substrate concentration, at conditions of 10 min time, 0.5 M acid concentration, and 80°C temperature. Thereafter, fermentation experiment was performed with S. cerevisiae in the product of hydrolysis. An optimum ca. 207 yeast number of colonies (yield: 20, 700, 000 cfu/ml) was achieved in 40 h, and the growth of S. cerevisiae was governed by the kinetic equation, ln Xt = 8.4338 + 0.2943t

Conductive and inductive coupling between faulted power lines and buried pipeline by considering the effect of soil structure

The AC total interference of faulted power lines to gas pipelines sharing the same right of way, which may pose a threat to operating personnel and equipment, was studied. The main advantage of this work is to determine the effects of different soil structures on the induced voltage for various soil resistivities. Two main approaches were used to compute the induced voltages, namely the method of moment (MOM), which is based on electromagnetic field theory, and the circuit based method, which uses the circuit grounding analysis to compute the conductive interference and the circuit based models to compute the inductive interference. A 10-km-long parallel pipeline-transmission line model was developed. The soil resistivity was varied, and the induced voltages obtained from both approaches were compared. Soil resistivity and soil structure are important parameters that affect the AC interference level. The results of the study show that the earth potentials and the metal GPRS are independent. Higher soil resistivity causes the tower ground resistance to increase, thus making the shield wire’s attractiveness as a fault current return path to increase, which in turn forces the induced net EMF and the cumulative GPR in the pipeline to reduce