Search results

The purpose of this study is to assess the current practices and state of solid waste management systems (SWMS) in one medium‐sized Indian town, identifying main issues and problems to its ineffectiveness, inefficiency and to gain some suggestions and recommendations to improve the SWM infrastructure and practices in such Indian towns.

A medium size city, Aligarh, having a population of about 0.7 million and situated 130 km from the capital city of India, Delhi, was selected for this study. An extensive literature review was conducted to establish a theoretical framework. Field visits were conducted to collect the primary data and to understand the SWMS of the city, including interaction and interviews with the various officials and workers of the municipality responsible for SWM and residents of the city. A protocol was developed to analyze the sources, quantification, and to determine the composition of waste streams. Existing reports related to SWM and recommendations of planners/NGOs/consultants for improving the system were studied.

Despite all efforts being made by the local municipality within their limited resources, the solid waste management situation in Aligarh is still not adequate. The waste is being dumped on low lying or open areas in the outskirts of the city without engineering and scientific methods. This situation of SWMS can be compared with other Indian towns of similar size.

The paper discusses problems, opportunities and perspectives in the existing solid waste management system in Aligarh city and assesses the potential for its improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the e-resource collection development practices of the engineering college libraries of Aligarh. The research includes budgeting, collection development policy, collection evaluation, sources of funds, modes of procurement, pricing models and other aspects related to collection development activity.

The descriptive method was used for conducting the study, in which a well-structured questionnaire was administered followed by interview of the librarians of six engineering college libraries under study.

It was found that these colleges are much more interested in focusing on building a strong e-resource collection in their libraries. During the past few years, the budget has also been increased in majority of libraries for the acquisition of e-resources. The study found that the major factors affecting the selection of electronic resources (e-resources) in these colleges are quality, subject coverage, license agreement and vendor support. It was also revealed that majority of libraries lack proper collection development policy, especially for e-resources. The study suggested that these libraries should build their collections keeping in mind the different areas of specializations of engineering studies and the contemporary changes in the field.

The paper is restricted exclusively to the study of collection development process of e-resources and the librarians of six major engineering colleges of Aligarh as respondents.

This study has great importance for the librarians of the similar engineering colleges in India. The findings and suggestions of the study can help not only in understanding the engineering college librarianship and its current trends but can also help library professionals who are facing similar challenges in their libraries.

The present study is about the e-resource collection development practices followed in engineering colleges of Aligarh, which can serve as a pedestal for future studies in other academic and special libraries in India and elsewhere.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the impact of automation on library management services of four selected management institutes at Aligarh.

The investigators used a fashioned questionnaire and informal interviews. They chose samples on the basis of a stratified sampling method and administered the questionnaire according to a random method for collecting the data.

The study revealed that 3 of 4 libraries are partially automated, with the exception of Al-Barkaat which is completely automated. Seventy per cent of librarians believe that automation has improved their library’s services, while 85 per cent of users believe that an automated library system is better than the traditional manual system. Of the four libraries, three have a shortage of general staff and three also lack qualified specialized staff to deal with automation.

The investigators could only select four management institutes because of time and logistic constraints, despite Aligarh being the educational hub of western Uttar Pradesh.

Although many studies of the same kind have already been conducted on library automation in different areas of world, this paper revealed the current status of automation in libraries of selected management institutes at Aligarh.

The purpose of this study is to collaborate with environmental engineering and management making an effort to provide evidence for the irresponsible behavior of small business set up in north India with special reference to Aligarh City. Corporates have huge accountability for sustainable development, and they cannot overlook the major responsibilities which are lying on their shoulders. CSR is related to the concept of “doing good” but, beyond “doing good” businesses have the responsibility for “avoiding bad” to avoid corporate social irresponsibility (CSI), such as damaging the environment by polluting land, water and air, cheating customers, violating human rights, or doing any unethical practices.

In this study, random groundwater samples were collected from “Aligarh Nagar Nigam” installed hand pumps from industrial influence areas of Aligarh during the month of October and November 2017. These samples were collected nearby small-scale metal plating industries plants. The samples analyzed by the Atomic Absorption Spectrometer (AAS) Perkin Elmer PinAAcle 900 F, for Fe, Mn, Pb, Zn, Cu and Cr (Jahromi et al., 2007; Chen and Teo, 2001; Bidari et al., 2007; Land and Hoops, 1973; de Oliveira et al., 2016; Akoto et al., 2016). In addition, some other parameters also taken in this study and the results obtained are compared with the World Health Organization (WHO) and Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS).

These results of the study revealed that the penetration of heavy metals like Cr, Pb, Cu, Zn, Fe and Mn into the soil is found much higher than the permissible limit stated by the government. The concentrations of metals in groundwater found to be within limits, but some metals are exceeding the standard limits in few samples. Concentrations of these heavy metals Cr>Cu>Pb>Fe>Mn are exceeding standard limits, Zn found within permissible limits as per WHO and BIS standard. This result proves to be a means to an end for an irresponsible behavior toward the society and environment which leads to serious health and environmental hazards.

The results are beneficial for data generation on various quality parameters of groundwater. The results of this study help in proper decision-making by concerned authorities to prevent, reduce toxic levels and begin to take steps for making water fit for drinking and other purposes. The research is limited in Aligarh City and other cities are like Kanpur, Noida and Ghaziabad are also tested by taking samples of water, as these cities are extensively captured by SME’s and large scale industries.

The results of this study have several implications for both governmental and non-governmental practice and policy development. As society expects positive attitudes of the businesses toward CSR activities and concern about the environment, businesses, institutions and governments should pay more attention to promote the initiative of environment safety to intensify their public concern. The small business unit must know about the serious health hazards of discharging the waste water in the open and therefore regular checking of heavy metal contamination in the groundwater in these areas is needed and use of contaminated water must be prevented to lessen the health risk caused by using the metal contaminated groundwater. The small-scale industries should follow the guidelines for proper disposal of wastewater discharge. The water treatment technology should involve and take possible steps to remove heavy metals contamination.

This study provides real data to municipality and other government offices which can be used as a benchmark to plan strict policy to prohibit the open discharge of wastewater by industries.

Ukraine hosts thousands of international students for educational tourism, of which more than 18,000 Indian medical students were compelled to escape Ukraine under emergency conditions of war. This paper aims to examine their intention to return to Ukraine to complete their education based on an integrated theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework with added constructs, i.e. risk perception, career anxiety, rescue and relief memory.

The data were collected from 26 February 2022 to 30 June 2022 in two phases and two modes. It was ensured that the respondents were strictly confined to Indian medical students who had travelled to Ukraine for educational tourism. SPSS 25 and AMOS 23.0 were used to analyse the data. The hypotheses proposed were statistically tested.

The analysis reveals that the extended TPB model resulted in a strong model and the empirical findings corroborate that the students’ attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and career anxiety significantly and positively influence the students’ revisit intention (RI) while risk perception and rescue and relief memory have a negative influence on the RI.

The study provides timely insights and implications to the Ukrainian tourism industry, particularly educational tourism business and medical institutions under the present turmoil, which can also act as blueprint research for destinations with a similar unstable political background.

The primary value of this research work is that it provides an understanding of the intention of medical students (educational tourists) towards revisiting the war-hit destination of Ukraine.

Reports the results of a study into the urban health issues of Muslim minorities, in the city of Aligarh, India, in 1991‐1993. Outlines the conceptual framework and presents the methodology before providing a brief portrait of the Muslim minority status and urbanization. Concludes that basic health information is still lacking. Comments that infectious diseases, malnutrition and occupational diseases are the most common, with women, children and elderly being the most vulnerable.

Software defect prediction (SDP) is a critical aspect of software quality assurance, aiming to identify and manage potential defects in software systems. In this paper, we have proposed a novel hybrid approach that combines Grey Wolf Optimization with Feature Selection (GWOFS) and multilayer perceptron (MLP) for SDP. The GWOFS-MLP hybrid model is designed to optimize feature selection, ultimately enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of SDP. Grey Wolf Optimization, inspired by the social hierarchy and hunting behavior of grey wolves, is employed to select a subset of relevant features from an extensive pool of potential predictors. This study investigates the key challenges that traditional SDP approaches encounter and proposes promising solutions to overcome time complexity and the curse of the dimensionality reduction problem.

The integration of GWOFS and MLP results in a robust hybrid model that can adapt to diverse software datasets. This feature selection process harnesses the cooperative hunting behavior of wolves, allowing for the exploration of critical feature combinations. The selected features are then fed into an MLP, a powerful artificial neural network (ANN) known for its capability to learn intricate patterns within software metrics. MLP serves as the predictive engine, utilizing the curated feature set to model and classify software defects accurately.

The performance evaluation of the GWOFS-MLP hybrid model on a real-world software defect dataset demonstrates its effectiveness. The model achieves a remarkable training accuracy of 97.69% and a testing accuracy of 97.99%. Additionally, the receiver operating characteristic area under the curve (ROC-AUC) score of 0.89 highlights the model’s ability to discriminate between defective and defect-free software components.

Experimental implementations using machine learning-based techniques with feature reduction are conducted to validate the proposed solutions. The goal is to enhance SDP’s accuracy, relevance and efficiency, ultimately improving software quality assurance processes. The confusion matrix further illustrates the model’s performance, with only a small number of false positives and false negatives.

Following a crucial COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, the coronavirus has affected every academic institution, particularly libraries and information centres. To address this unprecedented scenario, libraries’ staff has decided to provide their services via digital access while staying close to the users. To predict users’ intention to use digital libraries after COVID-19, the authors combined the technology acceptance model (TAM), the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) and perceived risk.

Data were collected via a paper-based questionnaire using a convenient sampling method which was distributed at two major libraries; Maulana Azad Library, Aligarh Muslim University and Dr Zakir Husain Library, Jamia Millia Islamia in India.

Empirical findings suggested that all the proposed hypotheses were supported, and the integrated model had strong explanation power as the proposed model explained a 74.5% variance in users’ intention to use digital libraries after COVID-19.

This study offers substantial information to librarians, digital libraries, universities, institutes and other stakeholders and sheds light on the potential for a developing nation to transition to an economy with a strong digital infrastructure. The scope of the study is constrained to the users in India only, hence, leading to the possibility that it may be challenging to generalize the findings.

According to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is one of the few studies to predict users’ intentions for using digital libraries after COVID-19 by applying the integrated model of TPB and TAM in an emerging economy. It helped understand the users’ attitudes towards using the digital services and resources available at the respective libraries. It also contributed considerably to the argument that users have grown accustomed to harnessing digital libraries during the post-COVID-19 period.

The purpose of this paper is to find out the level of awareness and use of e‐journals by the researchers of the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) and the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) – both central universities funded by the University Grants Commission.

A well‐structured questionnaire is administered to the research scholars of the AMU and BHU to collect data regarding the use of e‐journals.

The survey reveals that most of the research scholars are aware of the availability of e‐journals and largely use them for reference purposes in their research work. They fully agree that with the usage of e‐journal the quality of research work improves with enrichment of appurtenant contents and materials leading to high‐quality manuscript. It is however found that lack of training is the obstacle in proper and full utilization of e‐journals.

The present paper consists only of e‐journal users and the geographical area is restricted to AMU, Aligarh and BHU, Varanasi. The scope of the paper can be extended to additional centrally funded universities. An intra‐comparative study could also be made between some select central and state universities for users of e‐journal.

There are a number of studies on the use of e‐journals, but this is the first of its kind within Indian central universities. As such, it should pave the way for research in other Indian universities as well as elsewhere.

Nickel aluminide coatings on mild steel have been prepared by pack cementation process. The high temperature oxidation behaviour of the coatings have been studied at 750°, 800° and 850° in flowing air. The influence of different rare earth oxide addition on the oxidation rates of nickel aluminide coating on mild steel has also been investigated. The kinetic of the oxidation of nickel aluminide coating on mild steel, with or without addition of RE2O3 proceeds by a diffusion controlled mechanism as revealed by the parabolic nature of weight gain Vs time plots. At higher temperatures the oxidation rates of the nickel aluminide coatings are lowered down markedly irrespective of rare earth oxide concentration. The oxidation rates are significantly affected by the morphology of the oxide scales, in cases where the structure of oxide scales is not seriously disrupted due to decarburization, the oxidation rates are significantly reduced.