FICMES＇ Delegation Attended the 68th WFC

The 68th World Foundry Congress, sponsored by the World Foundrymen Organization （WFO）, and hosted by the Institute of Indian Foundrymen, was held on February 7-11, 2008 in Chennai, a southern city of India. A nine-member delegation of the Foundry Institution of Chinese Mechanical Engineering Society （FICMES）, led by the President Li Rongde, attended the congress.     

包装和保鲜剂改善袋装榨菜保鲜效果的研究进展

目的针对方便食用的袋装榨菜相比于坛装榨菜面临着更多的保鲜困境,这里对有潜力改善其贮藏性能的包装和保鲜技术进行总结。方法就榨菜在贮藏中存在的色变、脆性丧失、腐烂、胀袋、营养物质流失等问题和改善袋装榨菜耐贮藏性的有效手段进行探讨,综述包装技术和保鲜剂在袋装榨菜中的应用。结果使用巴氏杀菌结合真空或气调包装能够有效抑制微生物生长,选择合理的包装材料能够控制榨菜的外观变化;这些包装技术和工艺各有特点;多种保鲜剂在袋装榨菜中具有抑菌、改善质构、抑制色变等功效,其中包括工业界广泛接受的苯甲酸钠,前景广阔但鲜有成功案例的天然保鲜剂等。此外,还指出了新型保鲜剂缺乏推广等现状,以及对保鲜技术的发展进行了展望。结论通过改进包装技术和添加保鲜剂来改善袋装榨菜的耐贮藏性,在工业生产中得到了广泛应用,但这些技术需要进一步的研究和改进。     

Review of Self and identity in modern psychology and Indian thought.

Reviews the book, Self and identity in modern psychology and Indian thought by Anand C. Paranjpe (see record 1998-08117-000). This book is an exemplary philosophical-psychological achievement, the result of extensive, sophisticated, and enlightened research. Paranjpe analyzes and compares, based on knowledge of the epistemological, ontological, and ethical foundations of psychology in both the West and India, the problem of person, self, and identity. This is a significant book, not only for the field of the history and theory of psychology but also for psychology in general. Paranjpe, who provides a wealth of knowledge unknown to most Western psychologists, demonstrates that the presumption that Western and Indian psychologies are basically incommensurable is wrong. Psychologists who are genuinely concerned with a science that goes beyond the connection of variables, who believe that incorporating a multicultural perspective into psychology will strengthen the discipline, and who talk about globalization but are interested in the generic meaning of this concept, cannot ignore this masterpiece. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The ‘Background’ in Bangalore; Architecture and Critical Resistance in a New Modernity

As the centre of India's new information and biotechnology industries, Bangalore has been at the forefront of the country's globalisation. As Prem Chandavarkar explains, the city's architectural culture continues at the leading edge to be one of ‘intellectualism’, valuing ‘the background’, a sense of place and contextualism over the more brash facadism of other cities. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Mathew & Ghosh Architects

The work of Mathew & Ghosh Architects (Nisha Mathew-Ghosh and Soumitro Ghosh) boldly extends an abstract Modernist language and at the same time draws from the vitality of places. While the firm's early works were small in scale, mostly residential in nature and based on a reappraisal of the early Corbusian idiom, recent projects include large-scale urban and landscape interventions with diverse conceptual and metaphorical imperatives. They have moved from a more reticent stance to the urban exuberance of their more recent projects (for example, their own office building), something akin to a ‘savage architecture’ as posited by Kazuo Shinohara in the context of the unsynchronised nature of the modern city. The architects' object of contemplation is the urban ‘box’, whether a private residence, office or part of a church. The box is first fractured and reconstructed as a bricolage of tectonic fragments, memories and events, all tenuously related as if unity in a contemporary culture is for ever denied. Like the Japanese notion of ‘ma’, the moment between fragments - a slit or an emptiness between two hovering planes - is telling. Mathew & Ghosh participate in the continuity of a historical narrative yet mark out the fissures and disjunctions; sometimes negotiations with the continuity emerge from unintended interstices. While these configurations of the contemporary urban ‘box’ are both contextual and abstract, they are also phenomenologically rich. There is a sustained dialect to the architecture of Mathew & Ghosh that includes consummate materiality and fine crafting, light as a medium, and always, as Nisha Mathew-Ghosh states, ‘good spatial possibilities’. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimum sizing of photovoltaic battery systems incorporating uncertainty through design space approach

Photovoltaic-battery system is an option for decentralized power generation for isolated locations receiving abundant sunshine. A methodology for the optimum sizing of photovoltaic-battery system for remote electrification incorporating the uncertainty associated with solar insolation is proposed in this paper. The proposed methodology is based on the design space approach involving a time series simulation of the entire system. The design space approach was originally proposed for sizing of the system with deterministic resource and demand. In the present paper, chance constrained programming approach has been utilized for incorporating the resource uncertainty in the system sizing and the concept of design space is extended to incorporate resource uncertainty. The set of all feasible design configurations is represented by a sizing curve. The sizing curve for a given confidence level, connects the combinations of the photovoltaic array ratings and the corresponding minimum battery capacities capable of meeting the specified load, plotted on an array rating vs. battery capacity diagram.The methodology is validated using a sequential Monte Carlo simulation approach with illustrative examples. It is shown that for the case of constant coefficient of variation of solar insolation, the set of sizing curves for different confidence levels may be represented by a generalized curve. Selection of optimum system configuration for different reliability levels based on the minimum cost of energy is also presented. The effect of ambient temperature on sizing a stand-alone photovoltaic-battery system is also illustrated through a representative example.     

Slow and stunted: Plutonium accounting and the growth of fast breeder reactors in India

The Indian Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) has projected a large growth of nuclear power in the country predominantly based on breeder reactors. These projections use a simplistic methodology that does not carefully account for the availability of plutonium that is required to fuel breeder reactors. In this paper, we demonstrate that this methodology is problematic, in particular that it would result in negative balances of plutonium if the DAE's projections were to come true. The DAE's projections also ignore constraints coming from reprocessing capacity in the country. As an alternative, we project the possible growth of nuclear power based on breeder reactors using a methodology consistent with plutonium constraints. The resulting breeder reactor capacity will be only between 17% and 40% of the DAE's projections, and will likely never constitute a major source of electricity in India for several decades at the very least.     

Entrepreneurial Innovation: Beyond Schumpeter

Entrepreneurial innovation is generally understood as product innovation not only by the layman but by entrepreneurs themselves, even though in practice the latter are innovative in several other areas. Researchers and scholars have attempted to capture the essence of the concept of entrepreneurial innovation. In a study of 138 Indian entrepreneurs, the author found that entrepreneurs acquire competitive advantage for their ventures through innovations in other areas also such as finance, personnel, organization structure, culture, R&D management, and government relations. A factor analysis of these different types of innovation brought out four major categories of innovation, namely (i) operations innovation, (ii) market/marketing innovation, (iii) organizational innovation and (iv) boundary management innovation. This broader perspective compares with, and extends a view of innovation originally suggested by Schumpeter.     

Management of the Indian space programme

A brief survey of some salient aspects of the management of the Indian Space Programme is made, with special stress on the period 1972–1984. In view of the complexity of the subject matter, some major elements are addressed without necessarily offering conclusions on all the issues or the questions posed. Some major policy initiatives during the period 1972–1984 are also described. This paper has been published in the author’s personal capacity and the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the Organisation.