Magic masala

This thesis is the written component accompanying my graduate exhibition “Magic Masala”. The exhibit consists of an animated film, photographs, and a cooking performance. My thesis and art focuses on the important role played by food as a cultural signifier in the lives of Indian diaspora in the United States. I examine current food practices and consumption rituals from the perspective of a particular Indian immigrant. Though this work is informed by my personal experiences, memories and imagination, it also reflects wider global issues. This thesis contains a discussion of the personal, artistic and narrative influences on my original body of work. The central concepts and the techniques used to create the work in this exhibition are explained and the conclusions are incorporated. This thesis mainly examines the significance of cooking, assimilation, impact of Westernization, changing realities of the immigrant Indians and gender roles in the Indian domestic arena

Smart cities and entrepreneurship: An agenda for future research

Smart city is an entrepreneurial city. There is a bidirectional relationship between entrepreneurship and smart cities. First, entrepreneurs initiate technological interventions that help cities undergo socio-technical transitions and become smart cities. Second, the technologies being adopted in cities generate data which then helps enterprises to explore new opportunities. Despite the potential of this bidirectional relationship, this connection has been less explored. In order to fill the gap, this paper reviews the extant literature in the field to contextualize the role that entrepreneurship plays in building smart cities and how smart cities influence entrepreneurial business models. I referred to 479 papers published until June 2017 on smart cities and 35 papers out of those related to entrepreneurship using the method of clustered content analysis. This article contributes towards increasing our understanding of this bidirectional relationship, and opens up research avenues for future research in the fields of smart cities and entrepreneurship

Sustainable entrepreneurship training: A study of motivational factors

We argue that sustainable entrepreneurship training typically aims to achieve one of the three objectives – initiate, ensure and integrate. Based on this assertion, we conducted a field study in India to answer the following research question - What motivates business schools to undertake sustainable entrepreneurship training? We interviewed 37 sustainable entrepreneurship programme educators. Our results indicate that business schools engage in sustainable entrepreneurship training to encourage students address growing social problems by initiating sustainable enterprises. These findings highlight that the business schools focus on ‘initiate’ based training, which may help create ventures, but not to help grow the sustainable entrepreneurship industry. This study makes three contributions in the sustainable entrepreneurship field

Smart technologies for fighting pandemics: The techno- and human- driven approaches in controlling the virus transmission

How do governments in China and Western democracies differ in their technological response to control the transmission of the pandemic? Based on an analysis of academic papers, World Health Organization reports and newspapers, this research compares two opposing approaches, whereas the Chinese cities and government have adopted a techno-driven approach, Western governments have adopted a human-driven approach to control the transmission of Covid-19. The findings highlight that although the techno driven approach may be more productive to identify, isolate and quarantine infected individuals, it also results in the suppression and censoring the citizen views. It is further emphasized that human interaction with the technology is mediated by the political and institutional context in which the technologies are implemented. This paper contributes to literature by understanding the human-technology relationship, and offers five practical observations for controlling virus transmissions during pandemics

Why distance matters: The relatedness between technology development and its appropriation in smart cities

How does the distance between the development and adoption of technology determine its affordance? By referring to the sociomateriality literature, I discuss why the corporate-driven push of technologies into smart cities can lead to ineffective outcomes. This review paper then argues that technologies should be locally built, with a stronger connect between the humans in cities and the technologies being developed and implemented, in order to achieve technological affordance. Finally, I identify a number of research avenues to understand technology-human connect in smart cities

Relating tissue/organ energy expenditure to metabolic fluxes in mouse and human: experimental data integrated with mathematical modeling

Mouse models of human diseases are used to study the metabolic and physiological processes leading to altered whole‐body energy expenditure (EE), which is the sum of EE of all body organs and tissues. Isotopic techniques, arterio‐venous difference of substrates, oxygen, and blood flow measurements can provide essential information to quantify tissue/organ EE and substrate oxidation. To complement and integrate experimental data, quantitative mathematical model analyses have been applied in the design of experiments and evaluation of metabolic fluxes. In this study, a method is presented to quantify the energy expenditure of the main mouse organs using metabolic flux measurements. The metabolic fluxes and substrate utilization of the main metabolic pathways of energy metabolism in the mouse tissue/organ systems and the whole body are quantified using a mathematical model based on mass and energy balances. The model is composed of six organ/tissue compartments: brain, heart, liver, gastrointestinal tract, muscle, and adipose tissue. Each tissue/organ is described with a distinct system of metabolic reactions. This model quantifies metabolic and energetic characteristics of mice under overnight fasting conditions. The steady‐state mass balances of metabolites and energy balances of carbohydrate and fat are integrated with available experimental data to calculate metabolic fluxes, substrate utilization, and oxygen consumption in each tissue/organ. The model serves as a paradigm for designing experiments with the minimal reliable measurements necessary to quantify tissue/organs fluxes and to quantify the contributions of tissue/organ EE to whole‐body EE that cannot be easily determined currently

Acute oral sodium propionate supplementation raises resting energy expenditure and lipid oxidation in fasted humans

Short chain fatty acids (SCFAs), produced from fermentation of dietary fibre by the gut microbiota, have been suggested to modulate energy metabolism. Previous work using rodent models have demonstrated that oral supplementation of the SCFA propionate raises resting energy expenditure (REE) by promoting lipid oxidation. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of oral sodium propionate on REE and substrate metabolism in humans. Eighteen healthy volunteers (9 females and 9 males; Age: 25±1 y; Body Mass Index: 24.1±1.2 kg/m2) completed two study visits following an overnight fast. Tablets containing a total of 6845mg sodium propionate or 4164mg sodium chloride were provided over the 180 min study period in a random order. REE and substrate oxidation was assessed by indirect calorimetry. Oral sodium propionate administration increased REE (0.045±0.020 kcal/min; P=0.036) accompanied with elevated rates of whole-body lipid oxidation (0.012 ± 0.006 g/min; P=0.048) and independent of changes in glucose and insulin concentrations. Future studies are warranted to determine whether the acute effects of oral sodium propionate on REE translate into positive improvements in long-term energy balance in humans

Blended Value Creation: The Mediating Role of Competences

Research on prosocial entrepreneurship so far has focused either on ex-ante motives to create prosocial enterprises or on ex-post strategies to protect mission orientation. Surprisingly little is known about the prosocial entrepreneurial competences that help acquire resources to create blended value once a venture has been established. To fill this gap, we conduct a qualitative study in an Indian setting from which we determine that prosocial entrepreneurs adopt three types of competence encompassing seven dimensions to assemble resources when they establish their ventures. This study makes three contributions into prosocial entrepreneurship literature

Grand challenges, corporate legitimacy, and community integration: an integrative smart technology model

By referring to the smart city industry, this research studies how commercial firms gain legitimacy when their products aim to address grand challenges. Despite the reputation of giant technology companies and the overall legitimacy they enjoy in technology markets, exploiting opportunities in social contexts connected to grand challenges requires a societal-oriented approach. Firms that engaged in smart cities initially approached cities with a business-as-usual approach, to be met with sharp criticism from local communities and pressure groups. In response, firms had to redraw their strategies to include communities in the process to stay close to local reality. This paper theorizes the process and highlights an Integrative Smart Technology Model (ISTM) to narrate how firms strategically include communities in the planning process and gain legitimacy for the technologies