Scholarly communication in a digital world: the role of the digital repository at the Raman Research Institute

Information and communication technologies have changed the landscape of information handling activities. The proliferation of electronic resources and a paradigm shift from print to electronic format of journals, has led to another crisis due to the escalating costs of electronic resources, dwindling library budgets and cuts in journal subscriptions. Libraries have tried to overcome this situation by a dual approach, viz. consortia deals on one hand to access more information with optimal payment and open access scholarly publishing and communication on a worldwide basis on the other hand. In the last few years, the Open Access Movement has been gaining momentum and many journal publishers are also supporting this cause. With the availability of open source software for creating repositories, many institutes have established institutional repositories in support of open access. Realizing the importance and the benefits of such a repository at the institute level, RRI Library has set up the RRI Digital Repository. In this paper, we describe the growth and evolution of the repository, the problems encountered, the solutions explored, the strategies formulated to add relevant content and finally lessons learnt while executing the project

A Revisit to COVID-19 Challenges and Responses: A Case Study of Kerala

Kerala, a state with high development indices distinguished with its Kerala Model of Development (UN, 1975), is also affected by recent Pandemic COVID'19 as other states and nations worldwide.  The existing socio-economic analysis of the State reveals that the land reforms, promotion of education, and early introduction of participatory governance through Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have contributed to the State's socio-economic and political advancement. These factors played a significant role in the fight against the pandemic. This study is an attempt to answer what are the future economic and health challenges as the State, Kerala Model of Development, is faced with COVID'19? The specific objectives further guide this— to study the economic challenges ahead of the State as the tertiary sector is faced with challenges to contribute to the economy and attempted to study the possible ways to address health issues in the State. The researchers conducted an in-depth interview among 10 social scientists and economists of Kerala using purposive sampling to obtain primary data, which has been supported by secondary resources. The researchers did a thematic analysis of the primary data collected, further corroborated by secondary data. The study reveals that the State's current scenario during the pandemic, the grass-root empowerment in all spheres of life clubbed with administrative guidance, resulted in well-equipped public health care service delivery. The fall in the tertiary sector's income has decisively affected the State's economy, especially in agriculture, health, IT, tourism, labour, and foreign remittance. The State's economic and social equilibrium will face challenges in addressing issues in the post-COVID era. Even though the State suffered some increased Covid-19 cases recently, after expatriates' return, the dimensions mentioned above assisted the State in its fight against COVID'19. To address the challenges to the Kerala Model of Development, especially the post-COVID-19 requirements of the State demands interrogation, introspection, and integration of the current policies that majorly depend on the tertiary sector and initiate policies, plans, and programmes to strike a balance between all sectors, especially providing impetus to the primary sector so that a failure in one sector can be compensated by the other

Effect of natural convection on oscillating flow in a pipe with cryogenic temperature difference across the ends

The effect of natural convection on the oscillatory flow in an open-ended pipe driven by a timewise sinusoidally varying pressure at one end and subjected to an ambient-to-cryogenic temperature difference across the ends, is numerically studied. Conjugate effects arising out of the interaction of oscillatory flow with heat conduction in the pipe wall are taken into account by considering a finite thickness wall with an insulated exterior surface. Two cases, namely, one with natural convection acting downwards and the other, with natural convection acting upwards, are considered. The full set of compressible flow equations with axissymmetry are solved using a pressure correction algorithm. Parametric studies are conducted with frequencies in the range 5–15 Hz for an end-to-end temperature difference of 200 and 50 K. Results are obtained for the variation of velocity, temperature, Nusselt number and the phase relationship between mass flow rate and temperature. It is found that the Rayleigh number has a minimal effect on the time averaged Nusselt number and phase angle. However, it does influence the local variation of velocity and Nusselt number over one cycle. The natural convection and pressure amplitude have influence on the energy flow through the gas and solid

CFD analysis of high frequency miniature pulse tube refrigerators for space applications with thermal non-equilibrium model

High frequency, miniature, pulse tube cryocoolers are extensively used in space applications because of their simplicity. Parametric studies of inertance type pulse tube cooler are performed with different length-to-diameter ratios of the pulse tube with the help of the FLUENT® package. The local thermal non-equilibrium of the gas and the matrix is taken into account for the modeling of porous zones, in addition to the wall thickness of the components. Dynamic characteristics and the actual mechanism of energy transfer in pulse are examined with the help of the pulse tube wall time constant. The heat interaction between pulse tube wall and the oscillating gas, leading to surface heat pumping, is quantified. The axial heat conduction is found to reduce the performance of the pulse tube refrigerator. The thermal non-equilibrium predicts a higher cold heat exchanger temperature compared to thermal equilibrium. The pressure drop through the porous medium has a strong non-linear effect due to the dominating influence of Forchheimer term over that of the linear Darcy term at high operating frequencies. The phase angle relationships among the pressure, temperature and the mass flow rate in the porous zones are also important in determining the performance of pulse tube refrigerator