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The fundamental friction studies of rubber have generally dealt with single contact sliders or rollers. It has been demonstrated abundantly that the lubricated friction of rubber is mainly the ‘deformation loss’ component of friction. At moderate sliding speeds where thin film lubrication exists and the interface shear drag is small, the friction is the same as in rolling. The rubber substrate is continually deforming ahead of, and recovering behind, the contact in both rolling or sliding cases. Since the deformation of rubber is partially irreversible, energy is lost which is irreversible, energy is lost which is reflected as the ‘deformation loss’ component of friction at the contact. This deformation loss component of friction has been correlated with the “elastic hysteresis” or the “visco‐elastic losses”. The elastic hysteresis consideration alone does not fully explain rubber substrate deformation and friction behaviour. The assumptions used are incompatible. For example, the delayed or incomplete recovery of the rubber substrate behind the contact leads to residual strains which result in the contact area asymmetry as shown in Fig. 1. In contrast, the elastic hysteresis approach assumes Hertzian elastic contact which is symmetric. It may be noted that all ‘lossy’ materials whether plastic or visco‐elastic in nature must involve frictional contact area asymmetry. Various simplified visco‐elastic considerations of the rolling contact have been illustrated, only qualitatively, the contact deformation and frictional loss behaviour. Direct experimental and quantitive verifications have not been attempted, however. Some rigorous visco‐elastic, two dimensional, continuum analyses of the rolling contact are available in the literature and are very complex. It is difficult to use the results of these analyses to the problem of frictional loss evaluation, primarily because linear and simplified visco‐elastic models have been employed. Moreover, for the general friction problem of rubberlike elastomers which are nonlinear visco‐elastic solids of complex descriptions, physical quantification and interpretation of the parameters used in the above analyses are not possible. Employing the method of a visco‐elastic operator, a semi‐analytical technique has been used recently to express the asymmetry of the sliding contact area and the associated deformation loss component of friction. The results of the analyses agree reasonably with the experimental observations. Dynamic material property parameters used in the analyses are obtained from an indentation test arrangement under closely controlled conditions.

The purpose of this study was to examine the health promotion behaviours of Gujarati Asian Indian immigrants in the United States. Although there is an abundance of literature on health promotion behaviours, research on Asian Indian immigrant’s health promotion behaviour remains unexplored. The research was conducted on a national sample of 261 Gujurati immigrants via survey questionnaire. Apath model was utilised to test predictors of health promotion behaviours among the respondents. Findings reveal that health promotion behaviours were positively associated with the respondent’s age, number of work hours and negatively associated with meal change to a more western diet. Implications for social work practitioners are discussed.

Nanotechnology is nowadays very much successful in producing specifically functionalized nano-sized particles. In this work, copper nanoparticles were prepared by reduction method which is greener and environmentally suitable, cheap and best as compared to other conventional methods, particularly in the context of COVID in globalized world. The formation and size of copper nanoparticles was evidenced by the X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. The very high surface area of 35–50 m²/gm and very small crystallite sizes of 5–15 nm of these metal nanoparticles is mainly responsible for their effective involvement in removal of carbon dioxide gas as one of major hazardous pollutants from the environment. This chapter, as its main objective, mainly focuses on utility of nano technology and its beneficiary in creating a sustainable environment in economic world. Apart from laboratory experimental procedure and characterizations for preparation of copper nanoparticles, appropriate research methods such as simple statistical, econometric tools and mathematical tools have been used for economic analysis. However, as major findings of the results, developed countries have been successful in maintaining a sustainable human development, in spite of having higher per capita income (PCI) growth as compared to the role of developing countries with lower PCI in this global world.

This study aims to understand the corporate social responsibility (CSR) perspective of the employees working in manufacturing sector and service sector and further investigates whether there is any significant difference in their opinion on the basis of their gender and their hierarchical position in the organization.

In total, 300 employees of manufacturing and service sector companies have participated in this study. To test the hypotheses, the researcher has used two-way ANOVA, with diagrammatic presentation with the help of SPSS.

The results showed that there was a non-significant effect of gender on the perceived impact of CSR and employees at various level of hierarchy perceived the impact differently by the type of companies in which they work. Specifically, there was significant difference in the perceived impact for officers, managers and assistant managers in manufacturing and service sector, whereas for executives, the perceived impact varied significantly in manufacturing and service sector.

This study has analysed the perception of 300 employees including the employees of the manufacturing and service sectors. Also, the analysis is based on two demographic variables, i.e. gender and hierarchical level which may be considered as the limitation of the study.

The major contribution of this study is the fact that the employees have similar kind of opinion for the efforts and initiatives taken by their companies for CSR practices. The work culture, corporate ethics, managerial support and sectorial priorities do not have much influence on the employees in terms of CSR. However, the employee’s opinion may change after reaching to higher position in organization.

This study is totally unique in nature. As per the researcher’s knowledge, no documented study is available that investigates the CSR perspective of employees from two major sectors, i.e. manufacturing and service sector that validates this study.

Renewable energy (RE) is an important component to the complex portfolio of technologies that have the potential to reduce CO₂ emissions and to enhance the security of energy supplies. Despite RE's potential to reduce CO₂ emissions, the expenditure on renewable energy research, development, and demonstration (RERD&D) as a percentage of total government energy research, development, and demonstration (ERD&D) investment remains low in developed countries. The declining ERD&D expenditure prompted this research to explore the relationship between CO₂ emissions per capita and RERD&D as opposed to ERD&D.

An econometric analysis of annual CO₂ emissions per capita during the period 1990‐2004 for the 15 pre‐2004 European Union (EU15) countries was carried out. It was hypothesized that the impact of RERD&D expenditure on the reduction of CO₂ emissions would be higher than that of ERD&D expenditure, primarily due to several RE technologies being close to carbon neutral. Country‐level gross domestic product per capita and an index of the ratio between industry consumption and industrial production were introduced in the analysis as proxies to control for activities that generate CO₂ emissions. A number of panel data econometric models that are able to take into account both country‐ and time‐specific unobserved effects were explored.

It was found that random effect models were more appropriate to examine the study hypothesis. The results suggest that expenditure on RERD&D is statistically significant and negatively associated with CO₂ emissions per capita in all models, whereas expenditure on ERD&D is statistically insignificant (ceteris paribus).

The findings of this paper provide useful insight into the effectiveness of RERD&D investment in reducing CO₂ emissions and are of value in the development of policies for targeted research, development, and demonstration investment to mitigate the impacts of climate change.

In this Chapter, cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were prepared by co-precipitation method using hydrogen peroxide as the precipitant in slightly alkaline medium which is greener and environmentally suitable, cheap and best as compared to other conventional methods. Here, hydrogen peroxide acts as precipitating, reducing and stabilizing agents. Since studies worldwide reveal a very strong, significant positive association between air pollution and COVID-19 cases, hence, this environment-friendly synthesis process will prove to be most economically effective one to combat the COVID situation. The synthesized cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were initially noted through visual color change from colorless pale yellow cerium (III) to light yellow cerium (IV). Moreover, the formation and size of cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles were evidenced by the X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and UV-VIS spectroscopy studies. The very high surface area and very small average crystallite sizes of these prepared cerium (III) oxide nanoparticles (5–20) nm in size is mainly responsible for their catalytic properties and hence can be effectively used for the removal of hazardous toxic pollutant gases such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide from the environment with a view to combat the pollution within the environment to increase sustainability and also ensure a better, healthy and safe environment, particularly, in context of COVID in globalized world. This chapter, as its main objective, mainly focuses on utility of the nanotechnology and its beneficiary in creating a sustainable environment in economic world, particularly for gender development. Since the gas sensors will detect and reduce gaseous toxic pollutants from the environment, so lower the pollution greater will be sustainable environment development in terms of human development index and hence higher will be overall economic development in favor of Gender Development Index across world. However, as major findings, developing countries have been successful in maintaining a sustainable human development, in spite of higher Per Capita Income (PCI) growth, as compared to the role of least developing countries, with lower PCI in this global world, in favor of their respective gender development.

Considering the growing global significance of intellectual capital, we explore the impact of foreign directors on the effectiveness of intellectual capital.

Using 21,352 firm-year observations of Chinese-listed firms, for 2006–2020, we employ a modified value-added intellectual coefficient model to evaluate intellectual capital efficiency. The author use ordinary least squares regression as the main method, with a variety of methods for endogeneity and ensure robustness, including the fixed-effects method, propensity score matching, Two-step system GMM and Heckman’s two-step model, as well as other techniques.

Our findings indicate that foreign board directors significantly increase aggregate intellectual capital and its components, including capital employed efficiency, human capital efficiency, structural capital efficiency, and relational capital efficiency. Further, foreign directors have more impact on the intellectual capital efficiency of non-state-owned versus state-owned enterprises. We also observe that the impact becomes significantly greater with the presence of three or more foreign directors. Our findings hold up to various measures of board internationalization and a battery of robustness tests.

The research results show that the foreign directors on boards are related to IC efficiency, and IC efficiency is crucial to enterprises' value creation and competitive advantage in the era of the knowledge economy. Our findings are useful for companies and governments that are interested in improving the performance of IC.

This study provides novel evidence by using the MVAIC model to investigate foreign directors on boards and their relationship with IC efficiency among Chinese companies, while most previous studies have linked IC efficiency to financial performance. The findings also suggest that the influence of nationality diversity differs concerning ownership structure and their threshold.

The chapter focuses on the roles of different socio-economic indicators in explaining the convergence or inclusiveness of income across different income groups in the world. Econometric, statistical and mathematical tools have been used as methodology. As major results, overall greater role of socioeconomic factors of social sustainability (SS) than economic sustainability (ES), have been found. This have caused greater income inequality among these various income groups of the world, with income diverging among various groups of countries, mainly, within Principal Country Groups II, together with slight sign of income convergence among the rest Principal Country Groups I and III respectively. However, greater predominance of inclusiveness aspect of socio-economic factors of ES, is also found among the Groups I and III respectively, together with their significant roles in raising CHI. This may have led to the possibility of slight income convergence within these groups.

The paper provides a critical analysis of the relationship between the growth of informal manufacturing activities and environmental sustainability. The research is grounded in the context of global economic trends, focusing specifically on the impact of these activities in India. The study highlights the significant role of unorganized manufacturing enterprises in the Indian economy. These enterprises, while contributing notably to the GDP, also lead to increased material and energy use, raising concerns about environmental sustainability. The paper underscores the trade-off between economic growth and environmental sustainability, particularly in the context of informal sector industrialization. The findings suggest that higher economic growth, driven by the informal manufacturing sector, correlates with greater environmental degradation. This relationship is primarily due to increased energy consumption and carbon intensity. The paper posits that the growth of the informal manufacturing sector, especially in developing countries like India, leads to higher CO₂ emissions and environmental un-sustainability. This is exacerbated by the sector's significant reliance on energy sources like kerosene, contributing to higher carbon emissions. The analysis indicates a significant negative correlation between the growth of informal manufacturing activities and GDP, highlighting the environmental costs of such economic activities. The paper emphasizes the need for policy interventions to address the challenges posed by the informal manufacturing sector. It calls for policies that balance economic growth with environmental sustainability, considering the significant role of the informal sector in countries like India. The research presents a nuanced understanding of the complexities involved in achieving sustainable economic growth in the face of growing environmental concerns.