Modeling Digital Penetration of the Industrialized Society and its Ensuing Transfiguration

The Fourth Industrial Revolution, ushered by the deeper integration of digital technologies into professional and social spaces, provides an opportunity to meaningfully serve society. Humans have tremendous capability to innovatively improve social well-being when the situation is clear. Which was not the case during the first three revolutions. Thus, society has been accepting lifestyle changes willingly and several negative consequences unwillingly. Since the fourth one is still in its infancy, we can control it better. This paper presents a unified model of the industrialized ecosystem covering value creation, value consumption, enabling infrastructure, required skills, and additional governance. This design thinking viewpoint, which includes the consumer side of digital transformation, sets the stage for the next major lifestyle change, termed Digital Transfiguration. For validation and ease of comprehension, the model draws upon the well-understood automobile industry. This model unifies the digital penetration of both industrial creation and social consumption, in a manner that aligns several stakeholders on their transformation journey.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figures, 2 table

Enabling Ethanol Use as a Renewable Transportation Fuel: A Micro- and Macro-scale Perspective

The transportation sector remains the most challenging area to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels. A successful transition away from fossil fuels is possible through the use of ethanol as an alternative fuel. Ethanol has considerable promise to reduce the carbon intensity of passenger vehicles, but a better understanding of the promise and limitations of ethanol as a renewable energy carrier is required, particularly using non-food feedstocks. Blending ethanol with gasoline has been demonstrated at a significant scale in the United States and Brazil. Currently, ethanol is blended with gasoline in the U.S. as an octane booster to a maximum blend level (E10 – 10% by volume); which is indistinguishable from gasoline to the engine application and the fueling infrastructure. However, optimum blend levels have not been determined from an engine application perspective. Also, current production of ethanol from primary food crops presents challenges like competition with food sources; thus, alternative feedstocks for ethanol production are required. This dissertation takes a novel approach which presents micro and macro-scale perspectives to enable ethanol as a transportation fuel. First at the micro or device scale, physical experiments were used to determine the optimum blend level of ethanol and gasoline for production spark ignition engines. Engine operating strategies which provide the most benefit, in terms of improving efficiency and lowering emissions, with the use of these blends were identified. Mid-level blends (30%) of ethanol by volume with gasoline show the most benefit in terms of several engine performance metrics. An improvement of 2% in thermodynamic efficiency on an absolute basis, and more than 90% reduction in particulate emissions was observed by combining use of such a blend with a triple-injection per cycle fueling strategy. Second at the macro scale of the transportation fuel production and distribution level, analytical methods were applied to determine the feasibility of producing cellulosic ethanol based on high-fidelity geographically-resolved data on agricultural waste for the regional districts of Ghana. Biorefinery locations and fuel blending infrastructure recommendations are made, by minimizing transportation costs involved in the biomass residue feedstock collection and distribution of the ethanol produced by the biorefinery. Previous studies have shown significant potential of biofuel production in Ghana, but there were no previous studies that focused on development of geographic infrastructure for 2nd generation transportation biofuels (i.e. based on non-food feedstocks). This study was the first attempt in this direction. Both the process used and the outcomes of this study provide valuable input for the development of sustainable biofuels infrastructure in Ghana. This work demonstrates considerable benefit of ethanol blending for modern engine architecture, with identification of strategies which leverage the thermo-physical fuel properties of ethanol and translate across engine hardware architectures. The thesis outcomes also offer an unprecedented attempt towards development of a geographic infrastructure for producing and distributing 2nd generation transportation biofuels in Ghana based on minimizing the costs of collecting crop residue and distributing ethanol from biorefineries. The application-scale and system scale perspectives enable transitions to lower carbon emissions from the transportation sector using sound engineering principles and provide foundations for future work at both the micro- and macro-scale and for integration of the methods.PHDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/149831/1/singhrd_1.pd

Regional disparities in the post reform India

Regional disparities in the levels of development have once again ignited the debate on the existing inequalities between the developed and underdeveloped countries in general and between different regions within these countries in particular. In case of a developing country like India, it becomes more important to study these disparities as the new economic policies have further widened the gap between the rich and the poor states. The present study intends to analyse the patterns of the regional disparities in the levels of development in India. Considering this, four indicators have been selected to identify the spatial patterns of regional disparities in India. The Human Development Report technique is used to work out the deprivations score of each district and to convert it into a development score. The development scores of each district on four indicators have been summed up to arrive at the district’s composite development index

Analysis Of Infographics Usage In Leading Indian Newspapers

Infographics or the visual representation of data is a method to explain the written content in fast and effective way. It is more enriched means of communication. The newspapers in India use infographics to effectively deliver information along with providing design aesthetics to its readers. Use of infographics in Indian newspapers is increasing but nothing can be said assuredly without a scientific study. This study aims to scrutinize the usage pattern of infographics in leading Indian newspapers. For this study six leading newspapers according to Indian readership survey 2019 Quarter 4 have been selected. Three Hindi and English newspapers each have been selected and their usage of infographics has been analyzed. Results of this study points to usage of simple text-based infographics on the front page of most newspapers. When we compare English newspapers with Hindi newspapers on usage of infographics English newspapers take the lead. Hindi newspapers are slowly adapting to the demands of the present age media designs

An evaluation of risk factors of leprosy and how it affects treatment outcome in a low endemic state of India

Background: Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. India achieved elimination at the national level in 2005. But it still had world’s leprosy burden in 2015 and currently has a prevalence rate of 0.81 per 10,000. The aim of our study was thus to identify the risk factors associated with the development of leprosy and assess their effect on the treatment outcome of the disease, especially in a low endemic state like Punjab.Methods: A retrospective study conducted across Punjab by assessing the medical records of 55 leprosy admissions that were diagnosed, treated, and monitored at a tertiary hospital and those living in leprosy homes, from a time period of 2015 to 2018. Data was analysed using SPSS 25 software and presented in the form of figures and percentages.Results: Maximum number of leprosy patients under study belonged to upper lower socioeconomic class (46.2%) according to The Modified Kuppuswamy Scale. 48.7% of the patients were migrants to the state of Punjab. Overall, 24 patients (61.5%) were successfully treated. 20.5% were relapse cases while 7.7% default and 2.6% failure cases were seen.Conclusions: This study shows the current status of disease in an otherwise low endemic state. Leprosy is associated with a lower socioeconomic status due to lesser access to health services and lower levels of education. The high rate of disease, lower case reporting and treatment outcomes, as compared to the national averages is a cause for alarm thus more health seeking practices need to be encouraged

Informal settlements and the care of children 0–3 years of age: a qualitative study

BackgroundThere is a rapid increase in urbanization with a high percentage of people living in poverty in urban informal settlements. These families, including single parents, are requiring accessible and affordable childcare. In Mlolongo, an informal settlement in Machakos County in Nairobi metropolitan area, Kenya, childcare centres, referred to as ‘babycares’ are increasing in number. They are being provided by local community members without attention to standards or quality control. The study objective was to understand parents’, caregivers’ and community elders’ experiences and perceptions in terms of the quality of babycares in Mlolongo to inform the design and implementation of improved early childcare services.MethodsUsing a community-based participatory research philosophy, a qualitative study including focus group discussions with parents, community elders and babycare centre employees/owners (referred to as caregivers) was conducted in Mlolongo.ResultsA total of 13 caregivers, 13 parents of children attending babycares, and eight community elders participated in the focus groups. Overall, community elders, parents and caregivers felt that the babycares were not providing an appropriate quality of childcare. The reported issues included lack of training and resources for caregivers, miscommunication between parents and caregivers on expectations and inappropriate child to caregiver ratio.ConclusionThe deficiencies identified by respondents indicate a need for improved quality of affordable childcare to support early child development in these settings. Efforts need to be invested in defining effective models of early childcare that can meet the expectations and needs of parents and caregivers and address the major challenges in childcare quality identified in this study

Residual life and strength estimates of aircraft structural components with MSD/MED

Economic and safe operation of the flight vehicles flying beyond their initial design life calls for an in-depth structural integrity evaluation of all components with potential for catastrophic damages. Fuselage panels with cracked skin and/or stiffening elements is one such example. A three level analytical approach is developed to analyze the pressurized fuselage stiffened shell panels with damaged skin or stiffening elements. A global finite element analysis is first carried out to obtain the load flow pattern through the damaged panel. As an intermediate step, the damaged zone is treated as a spatially three-dimensional structure modeled by plate and shell finite elements, with all the neighboring elements that can alter the stress state at the crack tip. This is followed by the Schwartz-Neumann alternating method for local analysis to obtain the relevant crack tip parameters that govern the onset of fracture and the crack growth. The methodology developed is generic in nature and aims at handling a large fraction of problem areas identified by the Industry Committee on Wide-Spread Fatigue Damage