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Sustainable pathways to energy utilisation: Improving the environmental governance of coal mines in India through a unified authority. Vol.1 (NIAS/NSE/EEP/U/RR/06/2021)
No full textAn approach towards comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for surface transport automotive fuels
Get PDFLife Cycle Assessment (LCA) of fuel is commonly known as ‘Well to Wheel’ (WTW) analysis, which is divided into two stages, viz. the ‘Well to Tank’ (WTT) or fuel stage, and the ‘Tank to Wheel’ (TTW) or vehicle stage. In both these stages, the physico-chemical of the fuel as well as the technical attributes of the vehicle are taken into consideration to assess the environmental impacts of an automotive fuel. There are also several factors that are exclusive of the internal fuel characteristics and the vehicle propulsion system that influence the emissions. These factors can be either natural or environmental (e.g., local topography, wind parameters, average ambient temperature, etc.) or man-made (health of the road network, traffic density and traffic management system, customer attitude, etc.). These factors along with the vehicle design-based attributes impact the rolling resistance, the aerodynamic drag resistance, and the inertial resistance. The power supplied to the wheels needs to be manifested into the distance covered by a wheel depending upon these independent external factors. Therefore, the WTW approach has been extended to have the complete LCA of a fuel and this extension is named ‘Wheel to Miles’ (WHTM). In the TTW part, the quantity of the fuel consumed is assessed, whereas, in the WHTM part, the quality of the consumed fuel is analyzed in terms of the mileage realized. All three major resistances (rolling, air drag, and inertial) are impacted by natural, man-made, and vehicle design-based factors, and in turn, they impact the vehicle fuel economy. A change in rolling resistance has a high impact on the fuel economy among all the three resistances analyzed. The fuel economy of a freight vehicle is majorly impacted by a change in the coefficient of rolling resistance, while that of a passenger vehicle is more sensitive towards a change in the drag coefficient
Growing up Karanth
No full textKaranth, Kuvempu, Bendre—the trinity of modern Kannada literature; the pride of Kannadigas; … It was Shivarama Karanth who took the culture of Karnataka beyond the shores of India with his dance and music. After Rabindranath Tagore, no one had mastered as many art forms as Shivarama Karanth.-From the Foreword by Dr. Chiranjiv Singh, former Indian ambassador to UNESCOKota Shivarama Karanth was the ultimate Renaissance Man. A giant of world literature, he produced dozens of novels, plays, children’s works, autobiographies, popular science books, translations and much else. In 1977, he was awarded the Bharatiya Jnanpith Award for the novel Mookajjiya Kanasugalu. But Karanth was more than a writer. He also dabbled in journalism and movie-making, ran a publishing house, and campaigned for environmental and political causes. He was instrumental in transforming the ancient dance-drama form of Yakshagana for a modern audience.While a great deal has been written about the man and his genius, there is little material about the intimate details of his life. Through much of his creative career, for instance, Karanth was unflinchingly supported by his wife, Leela. The Karanths had four children. The eldest, Harsha, died in 1961. The other three, Malavika, Ullas and Kshama, came together to present this uniquely personal account of what it was like to be the children of a creative genius. Growing Up Karanth documents their ‘rare privilege’, while also detailing the world of Shivarama Karanth through their eyes.Multi-layered and nuanced, critical and affectionate, and filled with revelations that open up new facets of their father’s life, Malavika, Ullas and Kshama reveal Karanth and his times like no one else can
City of Shadows: Slums and Informal Work in Bangalore
No full textAlongside debates over rising inequalities, the stubbornness of urban poverty, globally, has emerged as a major academic and policy concern. Urban poverty policy positions are typically framed by paradigms of basic services and welfare. In the backdrop of Bangalore's evolution into India's silicon valley, the book presents research spanning old, inner city slums, new migrant settlements in urban peripheries, slum development projects, and garment export and construction workers, highlighting that intergenerationally, the urban poor remain tied to traditional low paying occupations, or, get incorporated into new urban growth channels (export industries, low end services) under highly unfavourable terms and conditions. Using the concepts of the old and the new poor, to explore channels of inclusion and exclusion, the book underscores that the poor's vulnerabilities are defined by different regimes of informality. Debates on the urban poor's political agency are used to problematize informality's complex relationship to contemporary theories of class
Changing livelihoods at India’s rural–urban transition
Get PDFIn India, the past couple of decades witnessed, simultaneously, a massive shift of employment out of agriculture, substantial urban growth in heretofore rural regions, and rapid increases in the rates of labor migration. But very little is known about new livelihoods being forged or the whereabouts of these livelihoods. We draw on extensive primary data collected at two sites in West Bengal and Bihar, along with a comprehensive analysis of population census and GIS data, to investigate livelihood transformations and household well-being. We observe large-scale change, exceeding common perceptions of academics and policy makers. While the shift out of agriculture is momentous, alternative local livelihoods are scarce and, more than ever, labor migration offers a way out for many households. Traditional seasonal migration has made way for more permanent forms of circular labor migration. Our comparative study shows that the timing and nature of this transformation varies to some extent across India as the decline in agricultural employment occurred at different times. We also observe significantly different impacts of domestic versus international labor migration. There is a pressing need for pro-active government policies that stimulate local economic restructuring and livelihood opportunities and, as long as these local economies are insufficiently developed, that facilitate circular labor migration
Regulation Boundaries for Preservation of Cultural Heritage Sites (NIAS/HUM/HSS/U/PB/09/2021)
Get PDFComparative evaluation of circular truncated-cone and paraboloid shapes for thermal energy storage tanks based on thermal stratification performance
No full textIn solar water heating systems, geometrical configurations of thermal energy storage (TES) play a crucial role in the enhancement of system performances. Upon conducting a thorough study on the influence of different shapes and aspect ratios of TES tanks, the present study focuses on the choice of suitable TES tank geometry based on the key performance parameters, viz. Richardson number, stratification number, storage efficiency and the initial thermocline thickness. Thermal stratification characteristics are investigated and analyzed in detail for three chosen shapes of TES, namely truncated-cone, paraboloid, and cylinder, using a two-dimensional unsteady numerical model. Results of the numerical model on cylindrical TES is found to have good agreement with the findings of the in-house experiments. With increasing aspect ratio (AR) of the paraboloid and truncated cone TES tanks, initial thermocline thickness and the energy losses increase, whereas, Richardson number and average stratification number decrease, indicating better stratification performance in storage tanks with lower AR. However, there is a limit on reducing the AR. At every AR investigated for the two shapes of TES, Richardson number for the paraboloid TES is greater than that of the truncated-cone TES, qualitatively suggesting a better temperature stratification in the paraboloid TES. The effect of flow rate on the thermal stratification characteristics is also studied, which suggests that increasing the flow rate enhances mixing and deteriorates stratification. The findings can be used as guidelines for designing TES with improved thermal performance
Theoretical and Experimental Investigations into Causality, its Measures and Applications
Get PDFA major part of human scientific endeavour aims at making causal inferences of observed phenomena. While some of the studies conducted are experimental, others are observational, the latter often making use of recorded data. Since temporal data can be easily acquired and stored in today’s world, time-series causality estimation measures have come into wide use across a range of disciplines such as neuroscience, earth science and econometrics. In this context, model-free/data-driven methods for causality estimation are extremely useful, as the underlying model generating the data is often unknown. However, existing data-driven measures such as Granger Causality and Transfer Entropy impose strong statistical assumptions on the data and can only estimate causality by associational means. Associational causality, being the most rudimentary level of causality has several limitations. In this thesis, we propose a novel Interventional Complexity Causality scheme for time-series measurements so as to capture a higher level of causality based on intervention which until now could be inferred only through model-based measures. Based on this interventional scheme, we formulate a Compression-Complexity Causality (CCC) measure that is rigorously tested on simulations of stochastic and deterministic systems and shown to overcome the limitations of existing measures. CCC is then applied to infer causal relations from real data mainly in the domain of neuroscience. These include the study of brain connectivity in human subjects performing a motor task and a study to distinguish between awake and anaesthesia states in monkeys using electrophysiological brain recordings. Through theoretical and empirical advances in causality testing, the thesis also makes contributions to a number of allied disciplines. A causal perspective is given for the ubiquitous phenomenon of chaotic synchronization. One of the major contributions in this regard is the introduction of the notion of Causal Stability and formulation (with proof) of a novel Causal Stability Synchronization Theorem which gives a condition for complete synchronization of coupled chaotic systems. Further, we propose and test for techniques to analyse causality between sparse signals using compressed sensing. A real application is demonstrated for the case of sparse neuronal spike trains recorded from rat prefrontal cortex. The area of temporal-reversibility detection of time-series is also closely linked to the domain of causality testing. We develop and test a new method to check for time-reversibility of processes and explore the behaviour of causality measures on coupled time-reversed processes