Advances in Research

India has got a well-structured and simplified taxation system, where authoritative segregation has been done among the Central government, state governments and local bodies. But with the implementation of GST, the harmonization of tax rules, regulations, rates, processes and procedures across the states was expected to improve the ease of doing business in India. The removal of cascading of taxes and transaction costs associated with inter-state transactions was also expected to encourage investment and therefore, the economic growth of country. With the objective of the impact assessment of Goods and Services Tax on shopkeepers the present study was carried out. The study was conducted in Hisar city of Haryana state where the findings highlighted that shopkeepers had highly increased tax burden and legal compliances, followed by increase in workers hiring capacity and no impact on ease of doing business, no loss and transparency in business. Further, results also showed that there was decrease in profit as they have to pay taxes more than 6 times in a year. With the implementation of GST, shopkeepers were having constraint in filing GST as now is getting a complicated process and due to changing GST rates they were facing high competition amongst the market.

The study involved two auxins viz., 2,4-D (2,4-Diclorophenoxyacetic acid) and picloram at three different concentrations (1,2, 3 mg/L) in full strength MS media to study their comparative influence on induction of somatic embryogenesis from immature zygotic embryos of two gynodioecious varieties of papaya ‘CO.7’ and ‘Red Lady’. In papaya cultivar ‘CO.7’, 2,4-D at 2 mg/L gave the highest callus induction frequency of 90.93%, whereas comparatively higher concentration of 3 mg/L 2,4-D was found suitable for ‘Red Lady’ (87.26%). Although there was profuse callus formation, 2 mg/L 2,4-D recorded comparatively higher frequency of embryogenic calli in ‘Red Lady’ (51.67%) when compared to ‘CO.7’ (30.00%). Somatic embryo maturation was achieved upon transfer of embryogenic calli exhibiting globular stage embryos on to maturation medium (MS medium + ABA (Abscisic acid) and BAP (Benzyl amino purine) in different concentrations + glutamine 400 mg/L). In the maturation medium, the combination of 1.5 mg/L ABA and 0.4 mg/L BAP registered better conversion of the globular embryo to cotyledonary embryos than other levels. The frequency of somatic embryo germination was higher in ‘Red Lady’ (50.00%) as compared to ‘CO.7’ (31.67%) on half-strength MS medium devoid of growth regulators.

Aims: The study was aim at extraction, saponification and quality determinations of shea nut fat samples obtained from different major sheanut producing areas of Kebbi state.

Study Design: The quality determination done with and without additives such as perfume, colour and silicate in terms of pH, foam stability and height from four major shea nut producing areas in Kebbi state, Nigeria.

Methodology: The dry powdered sample of ground shea kernel was extracted in soxhlet apparatus using n- hexane as the extracting solvent. Cold process saponification was used in preparing the soap. The soap pH was measured using pH metre. Foam ability of the soaps was also determined.

Results: The highest foam height was observed on the shea soap from Tsamiya (60 cm³), Kwanga (50 cm³), Kwere (40 cm³) with colour additive and the lowest on soap from Illo with perfume additive. For the foam stability test, shea soap from Tsamiya at 43 cm³ was the highest followed by Kwanga at 38 cm³ both with colour additive.  Lowest foam stability was recorded on shea soap from Illo with perfume additive. The pH of the shea soap from Illo without additive (9.73) increased with addition of colour, silicate and perfume at 10.70, 10.98 and 11.63 respectively. It showed decrease on addition of perfume, silicate and colour from 11.72 to 10.45, 11.38 and 10.15 respectively from Kwanga.

Conclusion: Variation occurs in the foam stability and pH of the shea soap from the four locations and the addition of colour, perfume and silicate had effect on the foam stability and pH of the shea soaps.

Equipment procurement budget is of a great challenge in manufacturing industries by reasons of its multi-objectives, insufficient funds, and inflation problems. Solutions were proffered to these problems by identifying the strategic decisions required in equipment procurement (machine, accessories, spare parts and miscellaneous costs). Procurement changes from year to year based on equipment industrial needs. Hence eleven (11) scenarios for procurement but this study focused on a scenario where all the decisions are needed for procurement. This problem is multi-objective decision problem where there is need for multi-objective decision tool for its solution, therefore a goal programming tool was adopted and improved by integrating inflation model into it to be able to solve inflation problems. International Brewery Ilesha, Nigeria was used as case study for the model’s application to evaluate its performance. The strategic decisions deviated above or positively by 0.4604, 4.1311 and 2.3760 for machines, spare-parts and miscellaneous costs respectively while accessories cost was not deviated. Therefore, the procurement cost for Machines, Accessories, Spare-parts and Miscellaneous costs would be (N 166,015,000; $ 461,152.77), (N 127,968,000; $ 355,466.67), (N 548,075,000; $ 1,522,430.56), (N 271,091,500; $ 753,031.94). US Dollar exchange rate was at N 360 to a Dollar as at the time of this research. This multi-criteria decision tool will find its application useful in small, medium and large scale industries that equipment procurement budget affects their production.v

During the contemporary period, man has undergone transformations in terms of lifestyle, social relations, and economic affairs throughout all human history. These changes, in some cases, have had a reversible effect on human health, due to the lack of coordination with the evolutionary processes that man has acquired over the course of tens of thousands of years of social evolution. One of these dimensions is the mental health of the community; among other things, the mental health of the elderly is of particular importance due to human capital and future generations. In this research, the main goal is to achieve the current state of mental health of the elderly living in the home (in the neighbourhood) and living in the nursing home and compare these two. The concept of mental health in this research is based on various approaches, from the point of view of global health ontologists and role theorists (Conrad Lorenz), self-actualisation and realization (Yong and Allport), humanists (Maslow), the network of sustainable social networks Adler), theories of psychoanalysis (Freud, Ericsson, Kurt Levine, Carl Rogers) and theories with other approaches have been suggested. The concepts and variables used in this research are mental health and ageing and 28-GHQ measurement tools, which are components of depression, anxiety, social functioning and physical condition of the elderly living in the home and the nursing home. The research method is Ali-Comparative and 100 non-Alzheimer's sample of 50 men and women from Tabriz and 50 men and women from Urmia, including 100 people, 50 people living at home and 50 people living in nursing homes. In analysing data, descriptive and inferential statistics and t-test were used. The results of this study revealed that the mental health of men living in nursing homes has a better mental health status than the women living in nursing homes; and, conversely, women living in the home have a higher mental health status than men living at home.

An experiment was conducted to study heavy metals bioaccumulation pattern in edible tissues of different farmed fishes and to assess human health risk through their dietary intake. Total 3 different species viz. grass carp (Ctenopharyngodon idella), silver carp (Hypophthalmichthys molitrix) and mrigel (Cirrhinus cirrhosis), and 3 dissimilar sizes of fish samples were collected from Muktagacha and Trishal area of Mymensingh district, Bangladesh during January 2018 and analysed for this study. Among the fish species, mean concentrations of Ca, Na and K were higher in mrigel; Mg and S contents were higher in silver carp and P content was higher in grass carp. As regards to heavy metals, mean concentrations of Pb (18.98 µg g^-1), Ni (0.688 µg g^-1) and Cu (15.197 µg g^-1) were higher in mrigel; Cd (1.127 µg g^-1), Cr (15.097 µg g^-1) and Zn (36.023 µg g^-1) contents were higher in grass carp, while contents of all metals were lower in silver carp. In context of size, both mineral nutrients and heavy metals bioaccumulation pattern in all species were higher in large size fishes. Similarly, metal pollution index values for all species of fish samples showed a sequence- large size> medium size> small size, which indicates that heavy metal bioaccumulation pattern was directly related to the size and age of fishes. The study results revealed that the daily intakes of Pb and Cd for all species and sizes of fish samples were higher than that of upper tolerable intake level. Target hazard quotients (THQ) values for Pb and Cr surpassed 1.0 for both male and female, which indicate that the exposed populations are in a level of concern interval. But in context of other heavy metals, these farmed fishes can assume as safe for human consumption.