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This chapter is an exploratory study of women’s football in Goa during two defining periods in its history: 1975–1991 and 2017–present. Anchoring the analysis within the intersection of sport, gender, and decolonisation, the chapter aims to address the peripheralisation of women’s sport in academic work on sport in India. Examining the evolution of women’s football in Goa and the multifarious factors that stilted its advancement, this research demonstrates how the systemic challenges that have historically plagued women’s sport continue to hamper its progress. The chapter argues that the professionalisation of women’s sport is indispensable to unlocking its potential and doing justice to the players and other stakeholders who continue to pursue it despite manifold challenges.

The sporting body in Indian sports studies has been studied in the context of changing power relations in society, and this essay continues in a similar vein. The significance of sport in India evolved from being used as a means of control by the coloniser to becoming a point of resistance and then a tool for nation-building for the colonised peoples. Post-liberalisation wrought significant changes to the social and cultural landscape and brought with it a singular focus upon the individual, as the idea of the nation receded to the background and the link between sport and self-making became prominent. In the context of the changing cultures of sport and the body from colonial to post-liberalisation India and the growing prominence of sport in popular culture, this chapter turns a critical eye towards the representation of sport in three Nike advertisements between 2007 and 2016 with the understanding that these representations are shaped by the workings of power and ideology in society and therefore provide a window to access the evolution of sports discourse over time. Through this examination, it explores the complex dynamic between the liberation of the postcolonial sporting body from discursive shackles and its evolution – and possible entrapment – into becoming a placard of the neoliberal vision and what this means in terms of the decoloniality discourse.

The body has been one of the central tools in analysing connections between sport and postcolonialism in India, given how sport was an essential part of the colonial ‘civilising’ mission, which involved disciplining and controlling Indian bodies. Any discursive understanding of sport and postcolonialism in India must consider how it relates to existing concepts of the body and shapes the experiences of the people involved in it – acknowledging not just the power of colonialism in moulding sporting experiences but also the force of internal hierarchies that exist in Indian society. This chapter explores the experiences of students who studied in higher educational institutions in Kerala under the ‘sports quota’, a system that reserves seats in colleges/universities for high-performing sportspersons in India. Through their interviews, the sustained exclusion of the sporting body in contemporary Indian pedagogy is illustrated here. Specifically, the continuing prevalence of the colonial emphasis on the sporting body, as one whose strength and instrumentality are paramount, as well as its corollary postcolonial position, which treats this sporting body as inferior to the ‘refined mind’ of studious pupils, can be observed. Approaching the sports quota with a decolonising lens would require re-examining the disembodied nature of pedagogy in India’s higher educational institutions, acknowledging sporting students’ lived experiences, and a seamless integration – as opposed to separation/exclusion – of the sportsperson into higher education.

The purpose of this study is to further investigate the potential benefits brought about by the development of modern technology in the steel construction industry. Specifically, the study focuses on the optimization of tapered members for pre-engineered steel structures, aligning with Eurocode 3 standards. By emphasizing the effectiveness of material utilization in construction, this research aims to enhance the structural performance and safety of buildings. Moreover, it recognizes the pivotal role played by such advancements in promoting economic growth through the reduction of material waste, optimization of cost-efficiency and support for sustainable construction practices.

Structural performance at initial analysis and final analysis of the selected critical frame were carried out using Dlubal RSTAB 8.18. The structural frame stability and sway imperfections were checked based on MS EN1993-1-1:2005 (EC3). To assess the structural stability of the portal frame using MS EN 1993-1-1:2005 (EC3), cross-sectional resistance and member buckling resistance were verified based on Clause 6.2.4 – Compression, Clause 6.2.5 – Bending Moment, Clause 6.2.6 – Shear, Clause 6.2.8 – Bending and Shear, Clause 6.2.9 – Bending and Axial Force and Clause 6.3.4 – General Method for Lateral and Lateral Torsional Buckling of Structural Components.

In this study, the cross sections of the web-tapered rafter and column were classified under Class 4. These involved the consideration of elastic shear resistance and effective area on the critical steel sections. The application of the General Method on the verification of the resistance to lateral and lateral torsional buckling for structural components required the extraction of some parameters using structural analysis software. From the results, there was only 5.90% of mass difference compared with the previous case study.

By classifying the web-tapered cross sections of the rafter and column under Class 4, the study accounts for important factors such as elastic shear resistance and effective area on critical steel sections.

This paper aims to explore how graphene can improve the mechanical and anti-corrosion properties of TiO₂-SiO₂ sol-gel coating. This sol-gel coating has been prepared on aluminum alloy substrate using graphene as both nano-filler and corrosion inhibitor.

To examine the effect of graphene on mechanical properties of sol-gel coating, the abrasion resistance, adhesion strength and scratch resistance of coating have been evaluated. To reveal the effect of graphene on the anti-corrosion property of coating for aluminum alloy, the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) has been conducted in 3.5 Wt.% NaCl medium.

Scanning electron microscopy images indicate that graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) have been homogeneously dispersed into the sol-gel coating matrices (at the contents from 0.1 to 0.5 Wt.%). Mechanical tests of coatings indicate that the graphene content of 0.5 Wt.% provides highest values of adhesion strength (1.48 MPa), scratch resistance (850 N) and abrasion strength (812 L./mil.) for the sol-gel coating. The EIS data show that the higher content of GNPs improve both R₁ (coating) and R₂ (coating/Al interface) resistances. In addition to enhancing the coating barrier performance (graphene acts as nanofiller/nano-reinforcer for coating matrix), other mechanism can be at work to account for the role of the graphene inhibitor in improving the anticorrosive performance at the coating/Al interface.

Application of graphene-based sol-gel coating for protection of aluminum and its alloy is very promising.

This paper brings attention to the role of hybrid middle managers. In particular it explores the relationship of organisational purpose and role requirements.

The primary research question for the original research was: What does it mean to hybrid managers to lead and deal with imposed changes (restructuring) to services? A novel narrative approach based on a synthesis of Czarniawska, Gabriel and Boje was applied. Accounts from interviews were condensed into narratives by initially using the categories defined by Gabriel (2000) as epic, tragic, comic and romantic and then further categorised into stories, themes and a serial (Czarniawska, 1997). The final stage of the three-way synthesised narrative approach incorporated Boje’s (2001) notion of “antenarrative” to include pre-emplotment elements.

Four narratives are provided that give insight to the nature of the struggles the hybrid middle managers were in the midst of. A struggle to address incongruent demands being placed on them that cause tension with their sense of purpose, organisational goals and their hybrid clinical roles and management roles. In the midst of these struggles the narratives illustrate the dynamic of ethical resistance that seeks a way forward. However, this appears to come at a health and well-being cost to the middle managers.

The paper offers up the notion of an added third bind to the traditional double, that of “ethical resistance”, a struggle to align organisational purpose with clinical and management role requirements. Theorising this third bind provides a new insight into understanding the context and dynamics of the hybrid middle manager role and behaviour. Indeed, the idea of ethical resistance may cause a revision of how resistance is understood.

Limiting the use of antibiotics in food animals is a cornerstone of contemporary EU policy. Despite that marketing of antibiotics for growth promotion and nutrition has been banned since 2006, the use is still high and varied. This paper aims to investigate the forces behind the different usage patterns in Italy, with one of the EU’s most extensive use of antibiotics in animals, versus Sweden, with the union’s most restricted use, including how these usage patterns are related to EU and national policies.

The industrial network approach/the 4R resources interaction model is adopted to investigate the major forces behind the different antibiotic usage patterns. Furthermore, the study relies on the notion of three main characteristics related to the use of a resource activated in several user settings (Håkansson and Waluszewski, 2008, pp. 20–22). The paper investigates the Swedish and the Italian using settings, with a minimised, respectively, extensive usage of antibiotics. The study is exploratory in nature and based on qualitative data collected through a combination of primary and secondary sources.

The paper underlines the importance of integrating forces for policy to succeed in attempts to reduce the use of a particular resource. It reveals that Sweden’s radically reduced use was based on great awareness, close interactions between animal-based food producers and policy – and that integrating forces were supported by an era of state-protected food production, with promising ability to distribute the cost of change. The Italian characteristics hindering the integration of forces mounting for reduced use were restricted awareness, top-down business and policy interactions – and a great awareness about the difficulties of distributing the cost of change.

The study deals with the analysis of forces affecting the different usage of antibiotics within two EU settings. The investigation, based on the industrial network approach’s notion of connectivity of economic resources, that is, of exchange having a content and substance beyond discrete transactions, reveals how indirect related contextual forces, neglected by policy, have an important influence on the ability to achieve change, in this case of antibiotics usage patterns.

Basically, connections are used to transfer the force supported by structural members to other parts of the structure. The flush end-plate bolted beam to column connection is one type that has been widely used because of its simplicity in fabrication and rapid site erection. The purpose of this study is to determine the moment-rotation curve, moment of resistance (MR) and mode of failure, and the results were compared with existing results for normal flat web connections.

In this study, the connection modeled was the flush end-plate welded with triangular web profile (TriWP) steel beam section and then bolted to a UKC column flange. The bolted flush end-plate semi-rigid beam to column connection was modeled using finite element software. The specimen was modeled using LUSAS 14.3 finite element software, with dimensions and parameters of the finite element model sizes being 200 × 200 × 49.9 UKC, 200 × 100 × 17.8 UKB and 200 × 100 with a thickness of 20 mm for the endplate.

It can be concluded that the MR obtained from the TriWP steel beam section is different from that of the normal flat web steel beam by 28%. The value of MR for the TriWP beam section is lower than that of the normal flat web beam section, but the moment ultimate is higher by 21% than the normal flat web. Therefore, it can be concluded that the TriWP section can resist more acting force than the normal flat web section and is suitable to be used as a new proposed shape to replace the normal flat web section for a certain steel structure based on the end-plate connection behavior.

As a result, the TriWP section has better performance than the flat web section in resisting MR behavior.

This chapter argues that football is central to specific regional, hegemonic masculinities within colonial histories and continuities in South India. Through ethnographic narratives of a prominent football figure associated with the Malabar Special Police, this chapter shows how different performances of a particular mode of masculinity draw power from multiple sites such as regional class networks, colonial legacies, and postcolonial sport. This work demonstrates how a (post) colonial space shores up the powers associated with a male sporting figure. The regional format of a sport is as important as the global format in producing regional, hegemonic masculinity. Analysing the powers and aura associated with this sporting figure helps one to understand the specific meanings of desire and aspirations for status and stability among a section of men in a South Indian context.