The process of racemisation of atropisomeric biaryls was modelled by means of DFT calculations at an advanced B3LYP/6-31G* theoretical level. Thus, the detailed protocol of determination of the racemisation rate presented herein provides a practical prediction tool for elucidation of the configurational stability of atropisomers.

This study perused the impact of E-banking services on customer satisfaction of selected bank customers in bank branches located in Challenge, Dugbe, Agbeni, Gbagi, Ojoo, and Secretariat districts in Ibadan metropolis. The study employed a cross-sectional survey design and convenience sampling technique. One hundred (100) bank customers were surveyed through a self-report questionnaire. Four research questions and two hypotheses were tested using Pearson correlation analysis and, t-test for independence at p≤ 0.05. The results revealed high utilization of electronic banking products (ATM (98%), internet banking (85%), electronic transfer (97%). Constraints experienced include internet network failure, bank fraud and business loss due to failed e-transactions. Customers were satisfied with e-banking due to its cashless nature, cash accessibility, saves time from bank visitation and seamless transactions. The study exhibited that customers used and were glad with e-banking products. Customers’ segmentation and more investment in e-banking infrastructure were advised for promoting electronic banking services.

This study was aimed at highly stereoselective ring-opening of epoxides with acetic anhydride in the presence of molecular sieves 4Å as an efficient reagent. Yields of the 1,2-diacetates are uniformly good to excellent and the reagent may be recycled without the requirement for purification. High yields, short reaction times, ease of preparation and simple work-up procedure (filtration) are advantages of this method.

A new and simple synthetic methodology for the preparation of 3-arylpyrimido[4,5-c]pyridazine-5,7(6H,8H)-diones and 3-aryl-5-oxo-7-thioxo-7,8-dihydropyrimido[4,5-c]pyridazin-5(6H)-ones by a one-pot three component reaction of barbituric acid or thiobarbituric acid with arylglyoxals in the presence of catalytic amount of ZrOCl2∙8H2O as green Lewis acid and hydrazine hydrate at ambient temperature in water was reported. All of these pyrimidopyridazines derivatives have one clustered water molecule in their molecular structure. The use of ZrOCl2∙8H2O catalyst is feasible because of its easy availability, convenient handling, high stability, simple recovery, reusability, good activity and eco-friendly.

The general objective of this study is to examine the relationship among financial accountability, ethical issues and organizational citizenship behaviour, in a national economic system. The null hypothesis of the study examined the inverted trajectories of the variables. The work is situated within the context of Nigeria’s national economy, which typifies a fragile economic system. We have argued in the work that the fragility of the Nigerian national economic system (which is representative of similar economies among developing nations) is a function of its input-output processes. The study essentially finds that to reverse the trend of fragility in an economic system (a national economic system) in the context of developing economies, the issues of financial accountability, ethical questions and great organizational citizenship behaviour must in their combinatory format, be elevated to the status of a national imperative. We found in the work, that ethical regeneration is antecedent to institutional reform, in the schemata of mechanisms, for reversing the tendency of fragility, in troubled economic systems, classifiable as developing or underdeveloped.

In this paper, a method for severity fault diagnosis of ball bearings is presented. The method is based on wavelet packet transform (WPT), statistical parameters, principal component analysis (PCA) and support vector machine (SVM). The key to bearing faults diagnosis is features extraction. Hence, the proposed technique consists of preprocessing the bearing fault vibration signal using statistical parameters and energy obtained through the application of Db8- WPT at the third level of decomposition. After feature extraction from vibration signal, PCA is employed for dimensionality reduction. Finally, particle swarm optimization with passive congregation-based support vector machine is used to classify seven kinds of bearing faults. The classification results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method for severity faults diagnosis in ball bearings.

Indium (III) chloride (InCl3) and metaphosphoric acid ((HPO3)n) were found to be efficient and recyclable catalysts for the synthesis of 1,8-dioxooctahydroxanthene derivatives as biologically important molecules in high turnover numbers and rates. Several substituted xanthenes can be prepared in high yield and purity by direct reaction of cyclic B-diketones and aldehyde derivatives in the presence of a catalytic amount of InCl3 and (HPO3)n as Lewis acids and at ambient temperature under solvent-free conditions. This newly reported procedure profit some advantages such as short reaction times, high yields of products, cheap, easy to use, facile practical conditions, and wholesome with green chemistry without using harmful solvents.

When a structure is influenced by the earthquake external force, some energy imposed to the structure is dissipated and remained energy causes structure displacements. Dissipated energy in the structure depends on the type of structure and its optimal engineering design. In any typical structure, the type of connections, stiffness of structure, dampers, place of windfall and damper and other factors play significant role in the amount of dissipated energy. This article introduces a new resilience factor which is a function of energy dissipation factors of input seismic energy. Mathematical equations are presented for this factor and its limits are determined for different periods. The applicability of the proposed factor is also investigated for two typical structural examples.

Global pandemic has provoked industries with unprecedented challenges. Stratagems to squash the COVID-19 bow like communal lockdown, social isolation, work at home, containment zones and all restraints sited on travel with stay home orders issued by the authorities led to sharp failure in revenues of service and manufacturing industries. The COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the transportation links with supply chain amongst suppliers, production amenities and consumers. Mostly the business executives are penetrating about passable strategies and plans for restoring production lines to encounter customer mandates. In this paper the pandemic effect of Indian business is considered which are affected by critical barriers of supply chains in the Indian scenario. These critical barriers are identified on a priority basis using the MADM approach. Furthermore, the study will help the scholars to grow conceptual models for maintaining a better supply chain to overwhelm this world-wide problem.

This article deals with the thermoelastic interaction in a three-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic viscoelastic medium under the Dual-phase-lag model of generalized thermoelasticity. The resulting non-dimensional coupled equations are applied to a specific problem of a half-space whose surface is traction-free and is subjected to a time-dependent thermal shock. The analytical expressions for the displacement components, stress, temperature and strain are obtained in the physical domain by employing normal mode analysis. These expressions are also calculated for a copper-like material and have been depicted graphically. Discussions have been made to highlight the effect of viscosity on the studied field. The phenomenon of a finite speed of propagation is observed for each field. Also, if the effect of viscosity is neglected, the results agree with the existing literature.