Determining factors influencing sales growth in business banking in Buffalo City municipality, South Africa

The increase in number of banks entering the South African banking sector has caused the big four banks to lose their market share to the new entrants. As a result, the new entrants in this sector have also had negative effects on the existing banks’ sales growth and net profits. Business banking, in particular, has been one of the departments which has become competitive as it is considered to generate the most revenue from all the different bank departments. Business clients have been targeted as their fees are high compared to normal individual clients and also, their investment sizes are big compared to individuals, hence the increased interest in this section. This then prompts the question, what are the factors influencing sales growth in business banking? This question then brings one to the following sub-problems: Is the pricing offered by the various banks to their business bank customers competitive enough to retain them?; How competent and knowledgeable is the staff dealing with business bank customers in ensuring good relationships with business banking clients?; is the technology used by the banks advanced enough to address the banking requirements of business banking customers? Are business banking customers loyal to their respective banks to ensure repetitive sales? In dealing with the above, the author undertook a research study to determine whether factors such as competitive pricing, competent staff, advanced technology and customer loyalty influence sales growth in business banking in Buffalo City Municipality “BCM”. The sample of 90 business banking customers who were given questionnaires to test the above were from a population of business banking customers in BCM. The author underwent a theoretical and an empirical investigation using the survey method through questionnaires. These questionnaires were distributed to the various financing institutions dealing with business banking clients. The findings of the empirical study suggest that through the use of the hypothesis test, it was concluded that of the four factors, advanced technology and customer loyalty influence sales growth in business banking in BCM. While pricing and competent staff do not influence sales revenue growth

Anomaly-Based Intrusion Detection System

Anomaly-based network intrusion detection plays a vital role in protecting networks against malicious activities. In recent years, data mining techniques have gained importance in addressing security issues in network. Intrusion detection systems (IDS) aim to identify intrusions with a low false alarm rate and a high detection rate. Although classification-based data mining techniques are popular, they are not effective to detect unknown attacks. Unsupervised learning methods have been given a closer look for network IDS, which are insignificant to detect dynamic intrusion activities. The recent contributions in literature focus on machine learning techniques to build anomaly-based intrusion detection systems, which extract the knowledge from training phase. Though existing intrusion detection techniques address the latest types of attacks like DoS, Probe, U2R, and R2L, reducing false alarm rate is a challenging issue. Most network IDS depend on the deployed environment. Hence, developing a system which is independent of the deployed environment with fast and appropriate feature selection method is a challenging issue. The exponential growth of zero-day attacks emphasizing the need of security mechanisms which can accurately detect previously unknown attacks is another challenging task. In this work, an attempt is made to develop generic meta-heuristic scale for both known and unknown attacks with a high detection rate and low false alarm rate by adopting efficient feature optimization techniques

AN PERFECT DESIGN FOR TESTABILITY IMPLEMENTATION OF SLEEP CONVENTION LOGIC ON SCAN CELL DESIGN

Design for testability (DFT) refers to a new hardware that reduces check generation quality and checks price also will increase check quality. Sleep Convention Logic (SCL) is associated asynchronous logic vogue that relies on Null Convention Logic (NCL). Within the SCL the combinative blocks are made from threshold gates. SCL utilizes power gating technique to additional reduce the ability consumption by incorporating the sleep signal in each single gate. Their are presently no DFT methodologies existing for SCL. However, within the current NCL, specific DFT strategies cannot be directly used as a result of the sleep mechanism for power gating. The aim of this paper is to implement twin rail sleep convention logic S-BOX and to analyze the varied stuck at faults among the SCL pipeline and also improves the fault coverage. To research the ability consumption throughout traditional AES S-Box and twin rail AES S-Box. Thence the project stands for analyzing the stuck-at faults and up the fault coverage by mistreatment scan primarily based testing methodology

Molecular Radius, Molar Refraction, Polarizability and Internal Pressure Studies on THP + 1-Hexanol at Different Temperatures -Molecular Interactions

Abstract. Molar refraction (R m ), molecular radii (r), polarizability (α) and internal pressure (π i ) values determined from the refractive index data for the binary liquid mixture of Tetrahydropyran (THP) with 1-hexanol have been measured at five temperatures (T=298. 15, 303.15, 308.15, 313.15 and 318.15 K). The measured data utilized to evaluate the excess molar refraction (R m E ), excess molecular radii (r E ), excess polarizability (α E ) and excess internal pressure (π i E ) along with their Redlich-Kister co-efficient and standard error values of the mixed solvents. The results show existence of weak molecular interaction in the mixture

Altered machinery of protein synthesis is region- and stage-dependent and is associated with α-synuclein oligomers in Parkinson’s disease

Mean ratio of the number of nucleolar staining and the total number of neurons (ratio SD) visualized with haematoxylin and eosin and immunohistochemistry to NPM1 and NPM3 in the substantia nigra at stages 1, 3, 4, and 5 of PD. Percentage (%) of nucleolus staining and total neurons. No significant differences are seen regarding the ratios of NPM3 nucleolar staining along disease progression. However, NPM1 immunohistochemistry reveals a significant decrease between PD1 and PD5 (P ≤ 0.05 One-way Anova) (DOC 28 kb

The Fibrinolytic Effects of Intermittent Pneumatic Compression: Mechanism of Enhanced Fibrinolysis

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) is an effective form of deep vein thrombosis prophylaxis for general surgery patients. The antithrombotic effect of IPC is thought to be the result of increased venous velocity and stimulation of endogenous fibrinolysis. However, the mechanism of enhanced fibrinolytic activity and the relative effects on normal and postthrombotic veins have not been defined. The purposes of this study are 1) to quantify changes in fibrinolytic activity with IPC; 2) to study the mechanism of fibrinolytic enhancement with IPC; and 3) to evaluate whether postthrombotic patients have the same capacity for fibrinolytic enhancement with IPC as do normal subjects. METHODS: Twelve volunteers (6 normal and 6 postthrombotic) had 5 IPC devices applied for 120 minutes in random fashion, 1 per week x 5 weeks. The devices included single-chamber, sequential, foot, calf, and long-leg compression. Subjects had an indwelling antecubital venous cannula placed for blood drawn at baseline, 60, 120, and 180 minutes after IPC devices were applied. Global fibrinolytic activity (euglobulin fraction, fibrin plate assay), tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) antigen (Ag) and activity (Act), plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) Ag and Act, alpha-2-antiplasmin-plasmin complexes, and von Willebrand factor (vWF) antigen were assayed. RESULTS: A striking elevation in fibrinolytic activity was noted at 180 minutes with all devices in normal subjects and postthrombotic patients (p = 0.01-0.0001); however, baseline and stimulated fibrinolytic activity was attenuated in postthrombotic patients (<0.03). The tPA-Act increased only in normal subjects (3.8 +/- 1.9%) (p = 0.057), despite a decrease in plasma tPA-Ag, which was observed in both normal subjects (-12.4 +/- 3.8%) (p = 0.009) and patients (-17.2 +/- 3.1%) (p = 0.001). PAI-1-Ag decreased in both normal subjects (-13.4 +/- 3.8%) (p = 0.007) and patients (-12.0 +/- 3.1%) (p = 0.013) with a marked reduction in PAI-1-Act in both normal subjects (p = 0.003) and patients (p = 0.004). There were no changes in vWF, and alpha-2-antiplasmin-plasmin complexes increased only in postthrombotic patients (p = 0.021). CONCLUSIONS: Stimulation of endogenous fibrinolytic activity occurs after IPC, both in normal subjects and postthrombotic patients; however, baseline and overall fibrinolytic response in postthrombotic patients is reduced. The mechanism of increased fibrinolytic activity is likely because of a reduction in PAI-1, with a resulting increase of tPA activity

Thermal Analysis of Single Pass GRITH Weld for Different Materials

Girth welds are the different types of arc welding processes applied in the joining of two pipes along the circumference during a phase construction of a pipeline depending on the ease of implementation and the environmental factor. They are used in making circumferential welds in pipeline and underground systems. They are used in the pipeline industry. Here in this project we have designed a pipe which has be welded to a flange by single pass girth welding. Here we are going to consider two welding cases i.e. normal welding process and welding with an Al block under the welding portion. We are going to consider these two welding conditions for girth welding of the pipe made of two different materials i.e. Stainless Steel and Carbon steel alloy. Thermal analysis is done to the product to study the weld behavior of the component. The Component is designed in CATIA V5 and Thermal analysis is carried out in ANSYS

Altered machinery of protein synthesis is region- and stage-dependent and is associated with α-synuclein oligomers in Parkinson’s disease

Introduction: Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterized by the accumulation of abnormal a-synuclein in selected regions of the brain following a gradient of severity with disease progression. Whether this is accompanied by globally altered protein synthesis is poorly documented. The present study was carried out in PD stages 1-6 of Braak and middle-aged (MA) individuals without alterations in brain in the substantia nigra, frontal cortex area 8, angular gyrus, precuneus and putamen. Results: Reduced mRNA expression of nucleolar proteins nucleolin (NCL), nucleophosmin (NPM1), nucleoplasmin 3 (NPM3) and upstream binding transcription factor (UBF), decreased NPM1 but not NPM3 nucleolar protein immunostaining in remaining neurons; diminished 18S rRNA, 28S rRNA; reduced expression of several mRNAs encoding ribosomal protein (RP) subunits; and altered protein levels of initiation factor eIF3 and elongation factor eEF2 of protein synthesis was found in the substantia nigra in PD along with disease progression. Although many of these changes can be related to neuron loss in the substantia nigra, selective alteration of certain factors indicates variable degree of vulnerability of mRNAs, rRNAs and proteins in degenerating sustantia nigra. NPM1 mRNA and 18S rRNA was increased in the frontal cortex area 8 at stage 5-6; modifications were less marked and region-dependent in the angular gyrus and precuneus. Several RPs were abnormally regulated in the frontal cortex area 8 and precuneus, but only one RP in the angular gyrus, in PD. Altered levels of eIF3 and eIF1, and decrease eEF1A and eEF2 protein levels were observed in the frontal cortex in PD. No modifications were found in the putamen at any time of the study except transient modifications in 28S rRNA and only one RP mRNA at stages 5-6. These observations further indicate marked region-dependent and stage-dependent alterations in the cerebral cortex in PD. Altered solubility and a-synuclein oligomer formation, assessed in total homogenate fractions blotted with anti-a-synuclein oligomer-specific antibody, was demonstrated in the substantia nigra and frontal cortex, but not in the putamen, in PD. Dramatic increase in a-synuclein oligomers was also seen in fluorescent-activated cell sorter (FACS)-isolated nuclei in the frontal cortex in PD. Conclusions: Altered machinery of protein synthesis is altered in the substantia nigra and cerebral cortex in PD being the frontal cortex area 8 more affected than the angular gyrus and precuneus; in contrast, pathways of protein synthesis are apparently preserved in the putamen. This is associated with the presence of alpha-synuclein oligomeric species in total homogenates; substantia nigra and frontal cortex are enriched, albeit with different band patterns, in alpha-synuclein oligomeric species, whereas alpha-synuclein oligomers are not detected in the putamen