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India's manufacturing exports are heavily tilted toward primary and resource-based products, while its Asian peers have a significant proportion of high and mid-tech products in their export baskets. An attempt is thus made to understand the hurdles faced by technology-intensive exports by India, using gravity panel estimates on its high, mid, and low-tech exports, using data across 130 countries from 2001 to 2019. In line with the Knowledge Theories of trade, which postulate that technical and scientific knowledge and innovation provide trade advantages, this chapter also tries to understand how India fares on this front. We use Principal Component Analysis to construct an index which provides a relative understanding of India's technical and scientific knowledge base.

We conclude that nontariff measures (NTMs) are a stringent hurdle faced by Indian exports, especially in the European Union. Tariffs have the most debilitating effect on its mid-tech exports and the least on high-tech exports. Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are most effective in creating trade for mid-tech exports and least in case of low-tech exports. The index for ascertaining India's relative knowledge base shows that while India ranked 6th in 2017, much higher than its Asian peers, its high and mid-tech exports lagged behind these countries. This puzzle is explained by the fact that scientific research in India has very little industry collaboration and thus is out of sync with market needs. Hence, the prevalent scientific and technical knowledge in India does not have the expected favorable impact on its technology-intensive exports.

The purpose of this study is to explore the potential contribution of the metaverse to improve training and development as a function of human resource development (HRD) perspective. The authors explore the benefits and challenges of the metaverse and introduce cases of companies using the metaverse in training.

A narrative literature review was conducted to collect information on the metaverse in training. The authors reviewed peer- and non-peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, white papers, corporate websites and blogs and business magazines.

A total of 75 articles were reviewed, including 14 cases, which were summarized to demonstrate how companies are applying metaverse technology in training contexts. For a more in-depth review, three cases were selected and summarized in terms of context, process and outcomes.

The metaverse is an emergent topic in HRD. It has the potential to revolutionize the functions of training and development through the combination of advanced technologies, including virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality. This article is the foundational attempt to provide a comprehensive summary of existing literature and case studies that highlight the potential of the metaverse in training within the context of HRD.

This paper aims to develop a specific type of mobile nonrigid support friction stir welding (FSW) robot, which can adapt to aluminum alloy trucks for rapid online repair.

The friction stir welding robot is designed to complete online repair according to the surface damage of large aluminum alloy trucks. A rotatable telescopic arm unit and a structure for a cutting board in the shape of a petal that was optimized by finite element analysis are designed to give enough top forging force for welding to address the issues of inadequate support and significant deformation in the repair process.

The experimental results indicate that the welding robot is capable of performing online surface repairs for large aluminum alloy trucks without rigid support on the backside, and the welding joint exhibits satisfactory performance.

Compared with other heavy-duty robotic arms and gantry-type friction stir welding robots, this robot can achieve online welding without disassembling the vehicle body, and it requires less axial force. This lays the foundation for the future promotion of lightweight equipment.

The designed friction stir welding robot is capable of performing online repairs without dismantling the aluminum alloy truck body, even in situations where sufficient upset force is unavailable. It ensures welding quality and exhibits high efficiency. This approach is considered novel in the field of lightweight online welding repairs, both domestically and internationally.

Polyurethane (PUR) foam parts are traditionally manufactured using metallic molds, an unsuitable approach for prototyping purposes. Thus, rapid tooling of disposable molds using fused filament fabrication (FFF) with polylactic acid (PLA) and glycol-modified polyethylene terephthalate (PETG) is proposed as an economical, simpler and faster solution compared to traditional metallic molds or three-dimensional (3D) printing with other difficult-to-print thermoplastics, which are prone to shrinkage and delamination (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, polypropilene-PP) or high-cost due to both material and printing equipment expenses (PEEK, polyamides or polycarbonate-PC). The purpose of this study has been to evaluate the ease of release of PUR foam on these materials in combination with release agents to facilitate the mulding/demoulding process.

PETG, PLA and hardenable polylactic acid (PLA 3D870) have been evaluated as mold materials in combination with aqueous and solvent-based release agents within a full design of experiments by three consecutive molding/demolding cycles.

PLA 3D870 has shown the best demoldability. A mold expressly designed to manufacture a foam cushion has been printed and the prototyping has been successfully achieved. The demolding of the part has been easier using a solvent-based release agent, meanwhile the quality has been better when using a water-based one.

The combination of PLA 3D870 and FFF, along with solvent-free water-based release agents, presents a compelling low-cost and eco-friendly alternative to traditional metallic molds and other 3D printing thermoplastics. This innovative approach serves as a viable option for rapid tooling in PUR foam molding.

This paper aims to discuss the adequacy of restrictive measures. Providing a synopsis of a global movement toward the imposition of target restrictive measures. Questioning the success of targeted restrictive measures in obtaining behavioural change. Identifying a reversion to the implementation of wide ranging sectoral restrictive measures in an attempt to encourage immediate behavioural change. Accessing the success of using restrictive measures to encourage democratic regimes in Africa.

This study is a desktop research that examines European Parliament and Council issued Regulations for the jurisdictions of Iran, Russia and Belarus. Academic research is also used in identifying a pendulum swing by global legislatures with respect to the imposition of targeted measures to requiring the imposition of additional wide ranging sectoral measures.

Targeted measures can be circumvented using non-hostile third countries. Academic research identifies that wide reaching sectoral sanctions encourage regime change. Therefore, where targeted measures fail to give rise to their desired persuasive objectives. The legislator moves to introduce additional measures, also comprising of sectoral sanctions. Sectoral sanctions have been applied by the European Union in Iran, Russia and Belarus. The USA has taken measures to limit Russia ability to use Turkey as a transshipment hub. The African continent case study identifies the importance of creating an architecture founded on upholding positive governance and human rights standards. Failure to do so leads to a revolving system of authoritarian regimes, sanctioned by restrictive measures.

This paper is a desktop review composed by the author.

The changing roles of the United Nations (UN) and national institutions have made addressing climate change a critical concern for many multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) survival and growth. This chapter discusses how such institutions, which vary in their nature and characteristics, shape firm strategies for climate change adaptation. Exploring different versions of institutional theory, the chapter demonstrates how and why institutional characteristics affect typical patterns of firm ownership, governance, and capabilities. These, in turn, influence companies’ internationalisation and climate-change strategies. Climate change poses challenges to how we understand firms’ strategic decisions from both an international business (IB) (HQ–subsidiary relations) and global value chains (GVC) (buyer–supplier relations) perspective. However, climate change also provides opportunities for companies to gain competitive advantages – if firms can reconfigure and adapt faster than their competitors. Existing IB and GVC research tends to downplay the importance of climate change strategies and the ways in which coherent or dysfunctional institutions affect firms’ reconfiguration and adaptation strategies in a globally dispersed network of value creation. This chapter presents a perspective on the institutional conditions that affect firms’ climate change strategies regarding ownership, location, and internalisation (OLI), and GVCs, with ‘investment’ and ‘emerging standards’ playing a significant role. The authors illustrate the discussion using several examples from the Global South (i.e. Bangladesh) and the Global North (i.e. Denmark, Sweden, and Germany) with a special emphasis on the garment industry. The aim is to encourage future research to examine how a ‘business systems’, or varieties of capitalism, institutional perspective can complement the analysis of sustainability and climate change strategies in IB and GVC studies.

Selective jet electrodeposition (SJED) is an emerging additive manufacturing (AM) technology for realizing metallic components of nano and micro sizes. The deposited parts on the substrate form metallurgical bonding, so separating them from the substrate is an unsolved issue. Therefore, this paper aims to propose a method for separating the deposited micro parts from a sacrificial substrate. Furthermore, single and multi-bead optimization is performed to fabricate microparts with varying density.

A typical SJED process consists of a nozzle (to establish a column of electrolytes) retrofitted on a machine tool (to provide relative motion between substrate and nozzle) that deposits material atom-by-atom on a conductive substrate.

A comprehensive study of process parameters affecting the layer height, layer width and morphology of the deposited micro-parts has been provided. The uniformity in the deposited parts can be achieved with the help of low applied voltage and high scanning speed. Multi-bead analysis for the flat surface condition is experimentally performed, and the flat surface condition is achieved when the centre distance between two adjacent beads is kept at half of the width of a single bead.

Although several literatures have demonstrated that the SJED process can be used for the fabrication of parts; however, part fabrication through multi-bead optimization is limited. Moreover, the removal of the fabricated part from the substrate is the novelty of the current work.

The purpose of this work is to optimize the monitoring of vibrations on dynamometric test rigs for railway brakes. This is a quite demanding application considering the continuous increase of performances of high-speed trains that involve higher testing specifications for brake pads and disks.

In this work, authors propose a mixed approach in which relatively simple finite element models are used to support the optimization of a diagnostic system that is used to monitor vibration levels and rotor-dynamical behavior of the machine. The model is calibrated with experimental data recorded on the same rig that must be identified and monitored. The whole process is optimized to not interfere with normal operations of the rig, using common inertial sensor and tools and are available as standard instrumentation for this kind of applications. So at the end all the calibration activities can be performed normally without interrupting the activities of the rig introducing additional costs due to system unavailability.

Proposed approach was able to identify in a very simple and fast way the vibrational behavior of the investigated rig, also giving precious information concerning the anisotropic behavior of supports and their damping. All these data are quite difficult to be found in technical literature because they are quite sensitive to assembly tolerances and to many other factors. Dynamometric test rigs are an important application widely diffused for both road and rail vehicles. Also proposed procedure can be easily extended and generalized to a wide value of machine with horizontal rotors.

Most of the studies in literature are referred to electrical motors or turbomachines operating with relatively slow transients and constant inertial properties. For investigated machines both these conditions are not verified, making the proposed application quite unusual and original with respect to current application. At the same time, there is a wide variety of special machines that are usually marginally covered by standard testing methodologies to which the proposed approach can be successfully extended.