Stress corrosion cracking: Characteristics, Mechanisms and Experimental study

Stress corrosion cracking (SCC) is a phenomenon in which the cracking of a metal alloy usually results from the combined action of a corrodent and tensile stress. Stresses that cause cracking can be residual or may be applied during service. A degree of mechanistic understanding of SCC will enable most metallic engineering materials to operate safely though stress corrosion cracking failures still continue to occur unexpectedly in industry. In this paper, the characteristics, mechanisms and methods of SCC prevention are reviewed. The results of experimental studies on alpha brass are also reported of which the failure mode conformed with the film-rupture and anodic dissolution mechanism

Impact of family capital & social capital on youth entrepreneurship – a study of Uttarakhand state, India

The research paper intends to interpret how the three forms of family capital viz. family's financial capital, family's man power capital and family's human capital influences the career choice intention of students of HEI's of Uttarakhand, India. Additionally the study also evaluates the impact of student's individual social capital on his career intent. This is a quantitative study conducted at Uttarakhand state of India on a large sample of students studying in various professional courses of Uttarakhand. The research validates a positive relationship between the family's financial capital and higher education intention of students. The study found no influence of family's financial capital (measured as father's annual income), manpower capital (measured as family size) and human capital (measured as father's occupation) on career intentions of students. The study confirmed that there is a significant impact of students' social capital network span on his career intentions, especially in taking up entrepreneurship as a career choice

Evidence for the Convergence Model: The Emergence of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (H5N1) in Viet Nam

Building on a series of ground breaking reviews that first defined and drew attention to emerging infectious diseases (EID), the 'convergence model' was proposed to explain the multifactorial causality of disease emergence. The model broadly hypothesizes disease emergence is driven by the co-incidence of genetic, physical environmental, ecological, and social factors. We developed and tested a model of the emergence of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 based on suspected convergence factors that are mainly associated with land-use change. Building on previous geospatial statistical studies that identified natural and human risk factors associated with urbanization, we added new factors to test whether causal mechanisms and pathogenic landscapes could be more specifically identified. Our findings suggest that urbanization spatially combines risk factors to produce particular types of peri-urban landscapes with significantly higher HPAI H5N1 emergence risk. The work highlights that peri-urban areas of Viet Nam have higher levels of chicken densities, duck and geese flock size diversities, and fraction of land under rice or aquaculture than rural and urban areas. We also found that land-use diversity, a surrogate measure for potential mixing of host populations and other factors that likely influence viral transmission, significantly improves the model's predictability. Similarly, landscapes where intensive and extensive forms of poultry production overlap were found at greater risk. These results support the convergence hypothesis in general and demonstrate the potential to improve EID prevention and control by combing geospatial monitoring of these factors along with pathogen surveillance programs

Academic entrepreneurship in a resource constrained environment: diversification and synergistic effects

This chapter investigates academic entrepreneurship in a resource-­constrained environment. Sequential mixed methods are adopted in three stages, namely, an initial context-specific data-gathering stage, an on-line survey, and in-depth interviews. It is revealed that entrepreneurial activity is a means of becoming resource-rich in a resource-constrained environment. In order to extract value from their environment, academic entrepreneurs adopt diversification strategies, which generate synergies between multiple academic entrepreneurial activities. Diversifying into a greater number of different activities is found to generate more synergistic effects than diversifying into a limited number of similar activities. Nevertheless, there remain synergies between those who adopt different diversification strategies, which highlight the importance of a university having a team of different academic entrepreneurs, who complement each other. Policy implications and future research avenues are considered in conclusion