Identification of common factors of innovation in a SMME

Small, Medium and Micro Enterprise (SMME) businesses in manufacturing contribute significantly to the economic growth of a nation, yet most of the research on innovation management in manufacturing industries has been focused on big firms. The current study identifies factors in SMME’s that are common between the external and internal systems of innovation that supports firms in their management of innovation. The study gathered data through qualitative and quantitative interviews of 20 companies out of which 5 manufacturing firms in Western Cape, South Africa selected for this research. The study found that SMMEs acquire new knowledge from the external ecosystem to supplement their limited internal system based on the product or process development. This study identifies the common factors that the SMMEs can use as a guiding framework to pursue new innovative opportunities for development of product or process

Effect of Storage Temperature on Bio efficacy of Aqueous Extract of Ganoderma lucidum

Stability testing is key requirement in the drug development process along with storage temperature which may deteriorate bio-constituents and efficacy of natural products. Aqueous extract of Ganoderma lucidum has revealed pharmacological effects against high altitude stressors and has potential for mitigating high altitude maladies. In the present study, the extract of Ganoderma lucidum was stored at different storage conditions such as room temperature, 4 °C and -20 °C for two year and qualitative and quantitative analysis of bio-constituents and bio-efficacy was carried out. No significant change was observed in any extract kept in different temperature conditions in terms of its polysaccharide, phenolic and flavonoids content. The extract kept at room temperature absorbed slight moisture in few samples but no change in overall polysaccharide, phenolic and flavonoids content was recorded. The moisture absorption problem was not observed in extracts stored at 4 °C and -20 °C. The bio-efficacy of the extract at room temperature, 4 °C or -20 °C were comparable to the freshly prepared extract and the data from the studies suggest that extract has good shelf life up to two year without loss of bio-efficacy. Overall, the extract retained its bio-efficacy for two years at different temperature storage conditions

A Bibliometric Analysis of the Intellectual Landscape of Mobile Technology and Higher Education Research

Technology has become a crucial part of higher education. Higher education institutions have adapted to embrace technology-enabled classroom practices to meet the rising expectations of a varied student population while continually enhancing their learning experience. Mobile technology in higher education, in particular, has the opportunity to provide access to or improve education at a low cost with a less demanding infrastructure configuration. In the current study, the researchers aimed to better understand the intellectual landscape of mobile technology and higher education through bibliometric analysis of research articles published in the Scopus database. This research included a study of 277 papers published in Scopus-indexed peer-reviewed journals between 2006 and 2023. The citation network, co-citation analysis, and publication patterns were examined to discover influential work in this domain. Bibliometric analysis was used to identify the most notable journals, authors, nations, articles, and topics, followed by thoroughly examining the content of 277 papers in the identified clusters. The four major themes enumerated are—Rise of mobile learning, E-learning—the blended and collaborative way, Mobile Technologies in higher education, and Student Engagement in the times of mobile learning. The paper provides interesting insights into these emerging themes, the study will assist regulators, policymakers, and academic scholars in understanding the fundamentals of mobile technology and higher education and identifying pertinent topics for further research

Towards deep generation of guided wave representations for composite materials

Laminated composite materials are widely used in most fields of engineering. Wave propagation analysis plays an essential role in understanding the short-duration transient response of composite structures. The forward physics-based models are utilized to map from elastic properties space to wave propagation behavior in a laminated composite material. Due to the high-frequency, multi-modal, and dispersive nature of the guided waves, the physics-based simulations are computationally demanding. It makes property prediction, generation, and material design problems more challenging. In this work, a forward physics-based simulator such as the stiffness matrix method is utilized to collect group velocities of guided waves for a set of composite materials. A variational autoencoder (VAE)-based deep generative model is proposed for the generation of new and realistic polar group velocity representations. It is observed that the deep generator is able to reconstruct unseen representations with very low mean square reconstruction error. Global Monte Carlo and directional equally-spaced samplers are used to sample the continuous, complete and organized low-dimensional latent space of VAE. The sampled point is fed into the trained decoder to generate new polar representations. The network has shown exceptional generation capabilities. It is also seen that the latent space forms a conceptual space where different directions and regions show inherent patterns related to the generated representations and their corresponding material properties

Unravelling physics through simple experiments

A great deal of science can be explained through simple experiments, performed at home, using locally available and low-cost material. Similarly, science can also be discovered by questioning a phenomenon or incident. This article presents a few simple but exciting experiments that can be used to understand some foundational principles in physic

Morphological, cultural and pathogenic variability in Alternaria brassicae, the causing agent of black spot of rapeseed and mustard

The study on pathogenic diversity of twenty isolates of Alternaria brassicae collected from different locations of Uttarakhand and Central Uttar Pradesh infecting Brassica species (Brassica rapa, Brassica juncea and Eruca sativa) revealed that there was a distinct difference among isolates in terms of mycelial growth, spore length, width, spore beak length and width. The average spore length varied from 21.23?m to 38.13?m with minimum of isolate AUA-19, AUA-43 i.e 21.23?m and maximum of AUA-47 i.e. 38.13?m . The isolates tested on Brassica juncea var.Varuna in green house conditions revealed that all the twenty isolates behaved differently. Among all the isolates, Brassica juncea isolates i.e. AUA-25, AUA-39, AUA-41, AUA-47, AUA-19, AUA-24, AUA-22, AUA-21, AUA-31, AUA-43 and AUA-45 from Uttarakhand, and AUP-29 from Central Uttar Pradesh can be grouped into highly pathogenic with range of Alternaria spot size i.e. 5.03-8.30mm in diameter, while isolate of Eruca sativa i.e. AUA-38 was found least pathogenic with 1.63mm in dia. and eight isolates AUA-18, AUA-20, AUA-23, AUP-28, AUA-32, AUA-33 and AUA-36 were found moderately pathogenic. This study will be useful in developing integrated management strategies of Alternaria leaf spot and breeding programs of oilseed crops (Brassica sp.)

Smoking and alcoholism among adult population and its association with outlet density in a hilly area of North India.

Background: The rising burden of non-communicable diseases is a threat to India. The behavioural risk factors having largest contribution to NCDs. Neighbourhood retailing of tobacco products, and alcohol are important risk factors. The objectives of the present study was to determine the prevalence of smoking and alcoholism among adult of Srikot, Uttarakhand, and to determine its relationship with tobacco, and alcohol retail outlet density.Materials and Methods: The study design was a community based cross sectional study, which was done in Srikot, Uttarakhand among adults aged above 20 years, selected by systematic sampling. A semi-structured questionnaire was used. The outlet density was measured mapped using android application.Results: A total of 155 were enrolled in the study of which 61.3% were females. A total of 11.6% of the study participants were smokers. On multivariate analysis male gender, and alcohol use was significantly associated with increased risk of smoking (p<0.05). A total of 16.8% of the study participants were alcohol user. On multivariate analysis it was found male gender, and smoking was significantly associated with increased risk of alcohol use (p<0.05).         On mapping the study area, it was found that total tobacco selling outlets were 40. There was no alcohol-selling outlet in the study area.Conclusion: The community is in an early stage of urbanization as evident from the burden of smoking, and alcohol use.  This burden of smoking might be worsened by outlet density of tobacco seller