Consumerist Predators"? Emerging lifestyles between McDonaldization and sustainability perspectives: the case of highly qualified employees (HQEs) in India

In industrializing countries new groups of consumers with remarkable purchasing power are emerging. Representing a ?new middle class? they are seen as a carrier and promoter of a so-called ?western way of life? beyond the OECD countries. They are presented as having a consumerist predator lifestyle which stands in conflict with the requirements for a sustainable future. Furthermore, they are imputed a profound lack of a sense of responsibility towards society. However, such a ?civil society spirit? is a core prerequisite for coping with the challenge of changing existing lifestyles to insure a more sustainable future....

Perspectives on Titanium Science and Technology

The basic framework and - conceptual understanding of the metallurgy of Ti alloys is strong and this has enabled the use of titanium and its alloys in safety-critical structures such as those in aircraft and aircraft engines. Nevertheless, a focus on cost-effectiveness and the compression of product development time by effectively integrating design with manufacturing in these applications, as well as those emerging in bioengineering, has driven research in recent decades towards a greater predictive capability through the use of computational materials engineering tools. Therefore this paper focuses on the complexity and variety of fundamental phenomena in this material system with a focus on phase transformations and mechanical behaviour in order to delineate the challenges that lie ahead in achieving these goals. (C) 2012 Acta Materialia Inc. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The problem of clear air turbulence: Changing perspectives in the understanding of the phenomenon

Due to rapid improvements in on-board instrumentation and atmospheric observation systems, in most cases, aircraft are able to steer clear of regions of adverse weather. However, they still encounter unexpected bumpy flight conditions in regions away from storms and clouds. This is the phenomenon of clear air turbulence (CAT), which has been a challenge to our understanding as well as efforts at prediction. While most of such cases result in mild discomfort, a few cases can be violent leading to serious injuries to passengers and damage to the aircraft. The underlying physical mechanisms have been sought to be explained in terms of fluid dynamic instabilities and waves in the atmosphere. The main mechanisms which have been proposed are: (i) Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of shear layers, (ii) waves generated from flow over mountains, (iii) inertia-gravity waves from clouds and other sources, (iv) spontaneous imbalance theory and (v) horizontal vortex tubes. This has also undergone a change over the years. We present an overview of the mechanisms proposed and their implications for prediction.

Studies on an improved indigenous pressure wave generator and its testing with a pulse tube cooler

Earlier version of an indigenously developed Pressure Wave Generator (PWG) could not develop the necessary pressure ratio to satisfactorily operate a pulse tube cooler, largely due to high blow by losses in the piston cylinder seal gap and due to a few design deficiencies. Effect of different parameters like seal gap, piston diameter, piston stroke, moving mass and the piston back volume on the performance is studied analytically. Modifications were done to the PWG based on analysis and the performance is experimentally measured. A significant improvement in PWG performance is seen as a result of the modifications. The improved PWG is tested with the same pulse tube cooler but with different inertance tube configurations. A no load temperature of 130 K is achieved with an inertance tube configuration designed using Sage software. The delivered PV power is estimated to be 28.4 W which can produce a refrigeration of about 1 W at 80 K.

Indigenous Development of an Imaging Flow Cytometer for Clinical and Biological Applications

Flow cytometry is a benchmark technique used for basic research and clinical diagnosis of various diseases. Despite being a high-throughput technique, it fails in capturing the morphology of cells being analyzed. Imaging flow cytometry is a combination of flow-cytometry and digital microscopy, which offers advantages of both the techniques. In this paper, we report on the development of an indigenous Imaging Flow Cytometer, realized with the combination of Optics, Microfluidics, and High-speed imaging. A custom-made bright-field transmission microscope is used to capture images of cells flowing across the microfluidic device. High-throughput morphological analysis on suspension of yeast cells is presented.

State Transition Based Embedding in Cepstrum Domain for Audio Copyright Protection

In this paper, we propose a new state transition based embedding (STBE) technique for audio watermarking with high fidelity. Furthermore, we propose a new correlation based encoding (CBE) scheme for binary logo image in order to enhance the payload capacity. The result of CBE is also compared with standard run-length encoding (RLE) compression and Huffman schemes. Most of the watermarking algorithms are based on modulating selected transform domain feature of an audio segment in order to embed given watermark bit. In the proposed STBE method instead of modulating feature of each and every segment to embed data, our aim is to retain the default value of this feature for most of the segments. Thus, a high quality of watermarked audio is maintained. Here, the difference between the mean values (Mdiff) of insignificant complex cepstrum transform (CCT) coefficients of down-sampled subsets is selected as a robust feature for embedding. Mdiff values of the frames are changed only when certain conditions are met. Hence, almost 50% of the times, segments are not changed and still STBE can convey watermark information at receiver side. STBE also exhibits a partial restoration feature by which the watermarked audio can be restored partially after extraction of the watermark at detector side. The psychoacoustic model analysis showed that the noise-masking ratio (NMR) of our system is less than -10dB. As amplitude scaling in time domain does not affect selected insignificant CCT coefficients, strong invariance towards amplitude scaling attacks is also proved theoretically. Experimental results reveal that the proposed watermarking scheme maintains high audio quality and are simultaneously robust to general attacks like MP3 compression, amplitude scaling, additive noise, re-quantization, etc.

Revenue management in remanufacturing: perspectives, review of current literature and research directions

The pace of development in the world has increased over the years and with it, the use of hi-tech gadgets, consumer durables, automobiles, etc. has also gone up. In this context, as resources become more and more scarce, there are multiple challenges that emerge both from a sustainable development perspective, and from the perspective of meeting profitability objectives of a firm. Remanufacturing has come up in a big way as an answer to these challenges, but firms are struggling with respect to revenue management of this nascent area. We assess the current literature and distil the key factors that firms need to consider as they assimilate remanufacturing in their operations and revenue management strategy. We provide an assessment of white spaces in research in this area and also outline the directions for future research.