This book describes a participatory case study of a small family farm in Maharashtra, India. It is a dialectical study of cultivating cultivation: how paddy cultivation is learnt and taught, and why it is the way it is. The paddy cultivation that the family is doing at first appears to be ‘traditional’. But by observation and working along with the family, the authors have found that they are engaging in a dynamic process in which they are questioning, investigating, and learning by doing. The authors compare this to the process of doing science, and to the sort of learning that occurs in formal education. The book presents evidence that paddy cultivation has always been varying and evolving through chance and necessity, experimentation, and economic contingencies. Through the example of one farm, the book provides a critique of current attempts to sustain agriculture, and an understanding of the ongoing agricultural crisis.
Home to about 40 percent of the world’s population, rare mineral resources, and vital trade routes, the Indo-Pacific is fast emerging as the most dynamic region of the 21st century. Even as states in the region realise this potential, they remain caught in what are arguably the most important geopolitical shifts in the world since the end of the Cold War—including the rise of China, and the reduced appeal of Western institutions. Consequently, the Indo-Pacific has become the focal point for great-power competition on issues such as connectivity and maritime security. China is well-placed to influence an emerging regional architecture, with its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative and its growing maritime prowess. Faced with this reality, an Indo-US partnership is capable of catalysing the development of democratic norms, strong regional institutions, and a rules-based order that can help shape a peaceful, prosperous and secure Indo-Pacific.
Assessment of professional competence for project managers and the measure of project success is well-trodden ground in the research and professional project management literature. Whilst standards and certifications like PMBOK and the IPMA competence baseline have been developed as a guide for the development of project managers’ competence, the manifestation of these competencies into good performance is neither guaranteed nor always easily ascertainable. This book presents a brand new, comprehensive, and reliable quantitative tool to assess the performance of a construction project manager. Though the performance of a project construction manager may be judged on time and cost criteria of a project, there is still no one conclusive evaluation tool based on the varied criteria or competencies that are usually ascribed to them. This book develops a performance index for construction project professionals which can be indicative of their performance measured over varied attributes over the lifetime of their professional development. This index has the potential to provide all project stakeholders with better control over selecting appropriate resources for managing projects and drive the project professional from within towards improving his/her credentials with every project. This book can be used by aspiring and practising project managers for measuring their own performance and assessing their relative strengths and weaknesses. Organizations can use the tool as a benchmark to select the best of their human resources for their projects, and training institutions can use the tool to set a baseline, highlight areas for intervention, and indicate the readiness of trainees to face real world projects.
This publication assesses India’s fiscal federalism framework and presents recommendations to strengthen the country’s fiscal framework that include a combination of unconditional, specific purpose and performance-based transfers. A mechanism for allocating performance-based grants to Indian states is proposed based on improvements in governance index. The publication also contributes to a deeper understanding of decentralization reforms across Asian countries. It synthesizes learnings from the experiences of Australia, Indonesia, Japan, the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea on the design of intergovernmental fiscal transfer systems and the use of performance-based transfers for promoting subnational governance and outcomes in social sectors such as education and health.
The Rules-Based Order (RBO) underpins the global maritime trading and security system. A subject of growing discussion and debate in strategic studies circles, it is seen by many as a prerequisite for seaborne trade and commerce, and a crucial factor in formulating national security policy. While many Asian powers have a shared understanding of the principles of maritime conduct, regional states have tended to situate the RBO within the framework of “balance of power”, with a focus on countering Chinese aggression in the littorals. This paper examines the Rules-Based Order in Asia from a ‘maritime operations’ lens, evaluating India’s options in the near and extended neighbourhood. It argues that notwithstanding growing discord with Beijing, New Delhi could devise a protocol of maritime engagement to reduce conflict and improve cooperation in the commons. In doing so, the two Asian powers could come to an understanding on the normative principles of interaction in the littorals. Even so, there are likely to be no easy options for New Delhi.
This paper evaluates deficiencies in India’s naval shipbuilding programme, and identifies factors that adversely impact naval warship construction in the country. It argues that despite considerable effort, India’s shipbuilding endeavours continue to suffer from systemic deficits that cannot be addressed through ad hoc policy interventions and short-term solutions. Through an assessment of strengths and weaknesses of India’s defence shipyards, the paper shows why Indian warship construction is in need of sustained attention and policies that would treat shipbuilding as a strategic enterprise.
The fort of Chittorgarh stands elevated over a 180 metre high hillock and covers a massive area of 700 acres. This book attempts to give you a glimpse into the chequered history of Chittorgarh, that has witnessed some of the bloodiest battles ever - three great sakas (sieges) and some of the most heroic, almost super-human deeds of valour. The fort of Chittorgarh stands elevated over a 180 metre high hillock and covers a massive area of 700 acres. The antiquity of Chittorgarh is difficult to trace, but it is believed to have been built by the Maurya rulers in the 7th century
This textbook emphasizes the fundamentals of bone fracture and its fixation, including advanced techniques of osteosynthesis in both small and large animals. Various fracture fixation techniques and devices have been described in simple language with the help of sketches and photographs. The chapter on the basic considerations in fracture fixation narrates bone structure and types, bone development and growth regulation, types of fracture and fracture healing, first aid and emergency treatment, selection of fracture fixation technique, anesthetic management, and fracture fixation implants and instruments. The book highlights principles of different external, internal, and external skeletal fixation techniques. It also presents various basic and advanced techniques used to manage specific fractures in different bones, separately for small and large animal patients. It also includes specific topics like fracture fixation in young, osteoporotic, and avian bones, open fracture management, bone grafts and scaffolds, and fracture fixation complications. Towards the end, the book elucidates miscellaneous but essential topics in veterinary orthopedics such as metabolic bone diseases, antebrachial bone deformities, joint luxations, arthritis, common tendon, and ligament injuries, bone tumors, and physiotherapy and rehabilitation of patients. This textbook is essential reading for veterinary students, practitioners, and researchers working in veterinary orthopedic surgery.
Students entering the food processing stream need to acquire knowledge of concepts and analytical skills together with the knowledge of their applications. Food Engineering: Principles and Practices explains the different unit operations in food processing with an emphasis on the principles of food engineering as well as the different types of equipment used for the purpose. An approach in which propounding concepts and theory is immediately followed by numerical examples makes this book unique among food engineering textbooks. The examples, which are thoroughly explicated, have been taken, in general, from different competitive examinations and have been selected with practical applications for a better appreciation and understanding by the students. In the case of equipment, the constructional and operational features are discussed along with the specialty features of these types of equipment for better understanding their applications. Key Features: Merges a presentation of food engineering fundamentals with a discussion of unit operations and food processing equipment; Reviews concepts comprehensively with suitable illustrations and problems; Provides an adequate number of examples with different levels of difficulty to give ample practice to students; Explains equipment units in three broad subheadings: construction and operation, salient features, and applications This book is written as a textbook for students of food processing and food technology. Therefore, the book is meant for undergraduate and graduate students pursuing food processing and food technology courses. It also serves as a reference book for shop floor professionals and food processing consultants.
Nanoporous materials are critical to various fields of research, including ion exchange, separation, catalysis, sensor applications, biological molecular isolation, and purification. In addition, they offer new opportunities in such areas as inclusion chemistry, guest-host synthesis, and molecular manipulations and reactions at the nanoscale. In St
Cooperative Control of Multi-Agent Systems extends optimal control and adaptive control design methods to multi-agent systems on communication graphs. It develops Riccati design techniques for general linear dynamics for cooperative state feedback design, cooperative observer design, and cooperative dynamic output feedback design. Both continuous-time and discrete-time dynamical multi-agent systems are treated. Optimal cooperative control is introduced and neural adaptive design techniques for multi-agent nonlinear systems with unknown dynamics, which are rarely treated in literature are developed. Results spanning systems with first-, second- and on up to general high-order nonlinear dynamics are presented. Each control methodology proposed is developed by rigorous proofs. All algorithms are justified by simulation examples. The text is self-contained and will serve as an excellent comprehensive source of information for researchers and graduate students working with multi-agent systems.
This book covers several innovative alternative livelihoods based on mangrove floral resources with their respective SWOT analysis. True mangrove flora and their associates in Indian Sundarbans are noted for their wide spectrum of ecosystem services in which livelihoods of the region are one of the most important components. Many alternative mangrove-centric livelihoods are in the pipeline of startup. However, due to difficulty in marketing and lack of clarity over ownership of natural resources, the values of the mangrove-based products have not been fully realized. Natural resources of several categories in Indian Sundarbans like oysters, seaweeds, medicinal mangrove flora, vitamin-rich mangrove fruits, etc. are still lying untapped. These untapped resources have been spun with the livelihood sectors of the Sundarban people backed up with sound business models to make the venture sustainable. The carbon foot prints associated with each of these livelihoods have been studied in details and steps have been suggested for net zero carbon livelihood programmes along with their sustainability. The book provides the readers about several mangrove-based cutting-edge researches and technologies in the domain of climate resilient livelihood, which if implemented can lead to food and economic security of the region.
The present-day power grid is basically a complex power transmission network with risks of failure due to unplanned attacks and contingencies, and therefore, assessment of vulnerability of transmission network is important and the process is based on contingency approach. This book deals with the methods of assessment of the grid network vulnerability and addresses the grid collapse problem due to cascaded failures of the transmission network following an attack or an unplanned contingency. Basic mitigation aspects for the network has been explored and the immunity of such a power transmission network against vulnerable collapse has been described using mathematical models.
Simulation-Based Optimization: Parametric Optimization Techniques and Reinforcement Learning introduce the evolving area of static and dynamic simulation-based optimization. Covered in detail are model-free optimization techniques – especially designed for those discrete-event, stochastic systems which can be simulated but whose analytical models are difficult to find in closed mathematical forms. Key features of this revised and improved Second Edition include: · Extensive coverage, via step-by-step recipes, of powerful new algorithms for static simulation optimization, including simultaneous perturbation, backtracking adaptive search and nested partitions, in addition to traditional methods, such as response surfaces, Nelder-Mead search and meta-heuristics (simulated annealing, tabu search, and genetic algorithms) · Detailed coverage of the Bellman equation framework for Markov Decision Processes (MDPs), along with dynamic programming (value and policy iteration) for discounted, average, and total reward performance metrics · An in-depth consideration of dynamic simulation optimization via temporal differences and Reinforcement Learning: Q-Learning, SARSA, and R-SMART algorithms, and policy search, via API, Q-P-Learning, actor-critics, and learning automata · A special examination of neural-network-based function approximation for Reinforcement Learning, semi-Markov decision processes (SMDPs), finite-horizon problems, two time scales, case studies for industrial tasks, computer codes (placed online) and convergence proofs, via Banach fixed point theory and Ordinary Differential Equations Themed around three areas in separate sets of chapters – Static Simulation Optimization, Reinforcement Learning and Convergence Analysis – this book is written for researchers and students in the fields of engineering (industrial, systems, electrical and computer), operations research, computer science and applied mathematics.
This book deals with complex fluid characterization of oil and gas reservoirs, emphasizing the importance of PVT parameters for practical application in reservoir simulation and management. It covers modeling of PVT parameters, QA/QC of PVT data from lab studies, EOS modeling, PVT simulation and compositional grading and variation. It describes generation of data for reservoir engineering calculations in view of limited and unreliable data and techniques like downhole fluid analysis and photophysics of reservoir fluids. It discusses behavior of unconventional reservoirs, particularly for difficult resources like shale gas, shale oil, coalbed methane, reservoirs, heavy and extra heavy oils.
This comprehensive textbook on Power System Analysis, now in its Fourth Edition, includes performance and operation of the system during steady-state and transient state besides the analytical modelling, planning and control aspects. With an emphasis on fundamental topics, the text attempts to illustrate the basic concepts in the practical field through numerical problems. Computer simulations have been added at suitable places. The treatments presented are exhaustive and elaborate. This book is designed to cover the power system courses in the senior undergraduate curriculum of electrical engineering. In the new edition, the chapters and corresponding examples are arranged to align with the up-to-date syllabus in the power system across the Institutes and Universities in India. Care is taken so that the model curriculum of AICTE is followed in the reconfigured presentations. Suitable problems/illustrations are included to prepare the students for the competitive examinations. TARGET AUDIENCE B.Tech (Electrical Engineering)
We are running on & on around everywhere, now & then for winning something in life. Even after success in the desired area, we move to another target & so on which is defined as the life of today. No one is ready to stop for a while with a fear that we will lose something in life. COVID-19 stopped the world for a moment. Everyone got time to introspect themselves within them. Many of them are now correcting their own direction & priorities of life i.e. safety, health, happiness, peace, love, relationships. Here we won’t find & quote about money, fame, winning & race anywhere. The book is all about such small things & real-simple applicable practices of life, wherein one can get big achievement, success, good health, long life, peace of mind, better relationships without extra efforts & cost. We live happy lives, maintaining the innocence of childhood throughout life. We need to focus on ourselves in 360 days of the year & 360 degrees of our periphery. Ultimately what all we want from our own life is given in every small step of Self-Article 360. Then our heart says, "Yes! I want to say the same thing!
With easily accessible oil reserves dwindling, petroleum engineers must have a sound understanding of how to access technically challenging resources, especially in the deepwater environment. These technically challenging resources bring with them complexities around fluid flow not normally associated with conventional production systems, and engineers must be knowledgeable about navigating these complexities. Practical Aspects of Flow Assurance in the Petroleum Industry aims to provide practical guidance on all aspects of flow assurance to offer readers a ready reference on how to ensure uninterrupted transport of processed fluids throughout the flow infrastructure by covering all practical aspects of flow assurance, being written in such a way that any engineer dealing with the oil and gas industry will be able to understand the material, containing solved examples on most topics, placing equal emphasis on experimental techniques and modeling methods, and devoting an entire chapter to the analysis and interpretation of published case studies. With its balance of theory and practical applications, this work provides petroleum engineers from a variety of backgrounds with the information needed to maintain and enhance productivity.
This book provides a cross-sectoral, multi-scale assessment of different environmental problems via in-depth studies of the Indian subcontinent. Data collected from different ecosystems forms a strong foundation to explore the topics discussed in this book. The book investigates how mankind is presently under the appalling shadow of pollution, climate change, overpopulation and poverty. The continuing problem of pollution, loss of forests, disposal of solid waste, deterioration of environment, global warming and loss of biodiversity have made nations aware of environmental issues. Many countries are desperately trying to move away from this adverse situation through technological development and policy level approaches. Through a number of case studies the authors provide details of ground level observations of the most environmentally stressed regions in the Indian subcontinent and beyond.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.