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Eddy current (EC) is a non-destructive method, which plays an important role in the quality inspection sector of various metal industries. It has been used for a wide range of inspection purposes, such as detecting cracks and defects, and inspecting the coating quality. The EC method can also be utilised in the material and microstructure characterisation of engineering steels and alloys. In this study, the EC method is used to detect the microstructural changes during the annealing of a cold rolled steel plate. To support the EC findings, the electromagnetic results are compared with the hardness measurements and the microstructure observations. The comparison proves that the EC method is able to separate recovery and recrystallisation stages, and extract useful information from the changes in the microstructure at various recrystallisation levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Farmers' trust in extension staff may improve the performance of agricultural extension services and productivity through transferred knowledge and new farming practices. Using the trust game and trust questionnaire, this study measured farmers' trust in extension staff. Measures obtained from the two methods were statistically different. We examined the relationship between the measured trust and agricultural productivity to control socio-economic factors. The findings revealed an insignificant relationship between trust and productivity that might be due to inappropriate attributes of extension programs. This emphasizes the need for more participation of farmers in researching and structuring training programs. While age had a negative impact on trust, traditional farmers with high experience showed a high level of trust. This indicates that young farmers who mostly inherited their lands from their parents and have occupations other than farming or practice modern farming, do not trust the extension staff. Farm size positively influences productivity by reducing the number of laborers per hectare. This emphasizes that the traditional way of farming is the cause of low productivity in Iranian agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nano-crystalline particles of barium hexaferrite have been prepared by co-precipitation route using solution of iron and barium chlorides with a Fe/Ba molar ratio of 12 by addition of NaOH with O[H.sup.-]/[Cl.sup.-] molar ratio of 2. A mixture of water and diethylene glycol with volume ratio of 1:3 was used as a solvent in the process. Dried co-precipitated powder was annealed at various temperatures for 1 h. FTIR, XRD, DTA/TGA, SEM, and TEM techniques were used to evaluate powder particle characteristics. DTA/TGA results confirmed by those obtained from XRD indicated that the formation of barium hexaferrite occurs at relatively low temperature of 614[degrees]C for precursor synthesized in diethylene glycol/water solution. The corresponding mean crystallite size measured by TEM for sample annealed at 700[degrees]C was 35 nm. Index Terms--Ferrites, materials processing, nanotechnology, permanent magnets.