Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine quadratic convergence of finite element analysis for hyperelastic material at finite strains via Abaqus‐UMAT as well as classification of the rates of convergence for iterative solutions in regular cases.

Different formulations for stiffness – Hessian form of the free energy functionals – are systematically given for getting the rate‐independent analytical tangent and the numerical tangent as well as rate‐dependent tangents using the objective Jaumann rate of Kirchoff stress tensor as used in Abaqus. The convergence rates for available element types in Abaqus are computed and compared for simple but significant nonlinear elastic problems, such as using the 8‐node linear brick (B‐bar) element – also with hybrid pressure formulation and with incompatible modes – further the 20‐node quadratic brick element with corresponding modifications as well as the 6‐node linear triangular prism element and 4‐node linear tetrahedral element with modifications.

By using the Jaumann rate of Kirchoff stress tensor for both, rate dependent and rate independent problems, quadratic or nearly quadratic convergence is achieved for most of the used elements using Abaqus‐UMAT interface. But in case of using rate independent analytical tangent for rate independent problems, even convergence at all is not assured for all elements and the considered problems.

First time the convergence properties of 3D finite elements available in Abaqus sre systematically treated for elastic material at finite strain via Abaqus‐UMAT.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the indirect effects of nutritional knowledge and attitude toward food label use on food label use through self-efficacy and trust, as well as whether gender moderates this relationship.

A sample of Indian adults with multiple chronic conditions was surveyed about their nutritional knowledge, attitude, self-efficacy and use of food labels. Hypotheses were tested using Hayes’s (2013) PROCESS macro for SPSS.

The results show that nutritional knowledge and attitude toward food label use positively predict food label use through self-efficacy and trust. However, these mediation effects are moderated by gender such that the indirect relationship is stronger among men than women.

Food marketers and government agencies engaged in nutrition education campaigns should aim to increase patients’ confidence in comprehending food label information.

Since food labels can be a valuable tool to help patients with chronic diseases to make informed decisions about their diet and lifestyle, regulators may consider mandating nutritional labels on foods to help them improve their food or dietary choices.

This study uniquely applies Fisher and Fisher’s (1992) information–motivation–behavioral skills model as a theoretical framework to examine the influence of nutrition knowledge and attitude toward food label use on food label usage of Indian patients with multiple chronic diseases.

Recurrent pregnancy losses (RPL), a major contributor of reproductive wastage, affect maternal health both physically and mentally. Folate and B12 (Vitamin B12) deficiency anemia is common in the reproductive age group women in developing countries like India. And due to proven role of folate in various maternal and fetal anomalies, women are routinely prescribed folic acid under various national policies. However, B12 supplementation is rare, despite known deleterious effects of its deficiency. The purpose of this paper is to understand RPL through anemia with special reference to folate and B12 imbalance.

Multiparous women with normal obstetric outcomes (n=135) and women with Idiopathic RPL (n=105) were recruited in the study. All women were non-pregnant and belonged to North Indian population. Hb, serum folate and B12 and plasma homocysteine were measured in all the women. Anemia was classified according to WHO guidelines (Hemoglobin (Hb)<12g/dL).

The incidence of Anemia was more among normal multiparous women (73 percent) as compared to women with RPL (60 percent). However, unlike folate deficiency anemia among controls, B12 deficiency anemia was observed in women with RPL. Moreover, these women, despite being less anemic, with high B12 deficiency and folate sufficiency (presumably due to folate supplementation) had more imbalanced vitamin metabolism, as evident from homocysteine levels. The study suggests that anemic or non-anemic deficiencies of B12 and folate among women with RPL may be combated by screening for both vitamins, rather than supplementing folate indiscriminately to all.

One of the limitations is that ferritin levels for iron deficiency anemia could not be measured in this study.

The present study is the first study, to the best of our knowledge, where we looked for the role of imbalance of folate and B12 in women with RPL.

It is seen that little amount of work on optimization of mechanical properties taking into consideration the combined effect of design variables such as stacking angle, stacking sequence, different resins and thickness of composite laminates has been carried out. The focus of this research work is on the optimization of the design variables like stacking angle, stacking sequence, different resins and thickness of composite laminates which affect the mechanical properties of hybrid composites. For this purpose, the Taguchi technique and the method of gray relational analysis (GRA) are used to identify the optimum combination of design variables. In this case, the effect of the abovementioned design variables, particularly of the newly developed resin (NDR) on mechanical properties of hybrid composites has been investigated.

The Taguchi method is used for design of experiments and with gray relational grade (GRG) approach, the optimization is done.

From the experimental analysis and optimization study, it was seen that the NDR gives excellent bonding strength of fibers resulting in enhanced mechanical properties of hybrid composite laminates. With the GRA method, the initial setting (A3B2C4D2) was having GRG 0.866. It was increased by using a new optimum combination (A2B2C4D1) to 0.878. It means that there is an increment in the grade by 1.366%. Therefore, using the GRA approach of analysis, design variables have been successfully optimized to achieve enhanced mechanical properties of hybrid composite laminates.

This is an original research work.

COVID-19 pandemic is a global health emergency which posed new challenges to the organizations to adjust their ways of working by redefining approach to work culture. The objective of this paper is to study as to how COVID-19 has impacted organizational culture which can be sustained with good leadership style. The aim of the paper is to identify and analyze the change in organizational culture and leadership style flexibility adoption required during the pandemic.

This paper is based on qualitative research that focused on newspaper articles. In the paper, the authors made analysis of newspaper articles on NVIVO software published on culture and leadership from February to December 2021.

Three main themes that emerged across the study include the change in leadership perspective, organizational perspective and employee perspective to reshape the organizational culture. Companies that support on flexible working hours, work from home and virtual gatherings are likely to attract and retain the most talented employees.

The study gave useful insights to establish well-developed standard operating practices to manage the cultural change. The organizations which reinforce their leadership style to provide psychological support to its employees and amend the policies thereof, can best respond to the potentially damaging effects of COVID-19 to enhance the job satisfaction of its people.

The paper is among the very few studies that examined as how to sustain a good culture in an organization during tough times and how a leader should manage the entire team with the help of qualitative analysis through analysis of newspaper articles. The specific contribution of this paper is to align organizational culture with leadership based on democratic values and standards of legitimacy during tough times so that focus can be made on well-being of employees, strong work ethics and thereby increasing work commitment of the employees.

Computer usage has become commonplace and there has been an increasing number of local efforts in organising indigenous information for individual and institutional utility. Access to information online or in CD‐ROM media is now just a matter of money; at the same time access to indigenous information has remained a challenging effort both for the user and the infomediary. Information services/products of all kinds are being generated by various agencies in the government, public and private sectors and are emerging out into the Indian information marketplace. There are a number of abstracting journals, which, in a natural process of migration, are now available in dual formats – print as well as machine readable. Besides bibliographic information, service providers are generating factual information – as directories of all descriptions, financial and commercial data, full texts of case laws, export‐import policy and so on. In this paper an attempt is made to present an overview of some of the important electronic databases developed in India or on Indian topics.

This paper investigates the mediating role of access to finance and entrepreneurial education for small and marginal farmers (SMFs) in the Indian northern state of Punjab. Furthermore, it examines the inter-mediatory role of entrepreneurs and the access to finance in the promotion of innovation, development and consequently poverty alleviation.

To gain a deeper insight, we used a purposive sampling technique, involving in-depth, face-to-face interviews based on a semi-structured questionnaire amongst 185 farmers from the state of the Punjab in India. The combination of open ended and dichotomous questions amenable to the Likert scale, captured responses and the transcribed questionnaires were thematically analysed.

Using the analysis of the quantitative and qualitative responses, we explain the cause and consequences of the finance gap and the impact of poverty on household income and the debt levels of SMFs. The findings suggest that the expanding pool of SMFs is due to land ownership fragmentation that disenfranchises SMFs from accessing adequate finance thus limiting their ability to adapt to technological innovations, and therefore limiting their productivity and growth. This essentially limits their ability to transform their economic and social wellbeing. The findings from the data analysis suggest a lack of access to finance negatively impacts on SMFs' ability to use innovative practices, technologies and productivity. This adversely affects income level, access to education and social goods to propel them out of poverty. The findings advocate that government policy should focus on land reforms, which provide adequate access to finance to enable the adaption of technology and an access to markets to empower marginal farmers.

Land fragmentation resulting with population growth in emerging economies continuously expands SMFs. To improve efficiency, productivity and entrepreneurial traits amongst SMFs, it is a pre-requisite to have an agile economy. However, in emerging economies such as India, the responses of 185 farmers suggest, a bespoke policy to promote the interest of SMFs through enabling them access to finance, technologies, training and education, continues to prove elusive. This novel empirical research provides evidence that demands that policymakers, commercial institutions and donors need to respond to the needs of SMFs to ensure food security and an optimal utilisation of farmland. The limitation of this research is that the sample is from one country, which limits its generalisation. The findings of this study could be enhanced by conducting comparative studies in other regions or economies.

This empirical study examined the barriers to enterprise for SMFs in the Indian Punjab; it examined the causes and consequences and the implications for food security for India. The findings of this study highlight the importance of developing the entrepreneurial capabilities of SMFs through effective education, training and above all through an adequate access to finance to enable them to adapt their technology. Furthermore, the findings make a case as to why SMFs are an integral part of the food chain and why it is necessary to enhance their efficiency, productivity and their access to finance.

There is a lacuna in research work in terms of understanding how Indian IT organizations can become global brands. Benchmarking has not received much attention in marketing literature due to lack of benchmarking framework, and IT organizations are yet to make progress in benchmarking. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of brand strength on global branding by developing a conceptual benchmarking framework for Indian IT organizations.

Semi-structured in-depth interviews are conducted with thirty middle-level managers from two Indian IT organizations, two US-based global IT organizations and one UK-based leading bank, which is a customer of these IT organizations.

Results show a positive relationship between brand strength and global branding, between customer loyalty and global branding, between brand loyalty and competitive advantage and between global branding and competitive advantage. Indian IT organizations can benchmark global IT organizations to improve delivering brand promise, positioning, awareness building and authenticity toward making Indian IT organizations future ready to address the entire breadth of opportunities in the evolving world of cloud and digital.

This research helps managers with a brand strength-based benchmarking framework toward global branding of Indian IT organizations.

IT is instrumental for rapid growth of Indian’s economy. India should optimally utilize its greatest wealth, its human potential, with the latent global demand in IT through building global IT brands.

The originality of the study lies in conducting a qualitative study on global branding of Indian IT organizations and also proposing a conceptual benchmarking framework. The study further validates the model using qualitative analysis.

Multilevel inverters become very popular in medium voltage applications owing to their inherent capability of reconciling stepped voltage waveform with reduced harmonic distortion and electromagnetic interference. They have several disadvantages like more number of switching devices required and devices with high voltage blocking and need additional dc sources count to engender particular voltage. So this paper aims to propose a novel tri-source symmetric cascaded multilevel inverter topology with reduced number of switching components and dc sources.

A novel multilevel inverter has been suggested in this study, offering minimal switch count in the conduction channel for the desired voltage level under symmetric and asymmetric configurations. This novel topology is optimized to prompt enormous output voltage levels by employing constant power switches count and/or dc sources of voltage. The topology claims its advantages in generating higher voltage levels with lesser number of voltage sources, gate drivers and dc voltage sources.

The consummation of the proposed arrangement is verified in Matlab/Simulink R2015b, and an experimental prototype for 7-level, 13-level, 21-level, 29-level, 25-level and 49-level operation modes is constructed to validate the simulation results.

The proposed topology operated with six new algorithms for asymmetrical configuration to propel increased number of voltage levels with reduced power components.

The purpose of this review was to examine Indian research on help-seeking for mental health problems in adults.

Original Indian research studies on help-seeking for mental health, published from the year 2001−2019 were searched on PubMed, EBSCO, ProQuest and OVID using a set of relevant keywords. After applying exclusion criteria, 52 relevant research studies were identified.

The reviewed studies spanned a variety of themes such as barriers and facilitators to help-seeking, sources of help-seeking, causal attributions as well as other correlates of help-seeking, process of help-seeking and interventions to increase help-seeking. The majority of these studies were carried out in general community samples or treatment-seeking samples. Very few studies incorporated non-treatment seeking distressed samples. There is a severe dearth of studies on interventions to improve help-seeking. Studies indicate multiple barriers to seeking professional help and highlight that mere knowledge about illness and availability of professional services may be insufficient to minimize delays in professional help-seeking.

Help-seeking in the Indian context is often a family-based decision-making process. Multi-pronged help-seeking interventions that include components aimed at reducing barriers experienced by non-treatment seeking distressed persons and empowering informal support providers with knowledge and skills for encouraging professional help-seeking in their significant others may be useful.