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IN modern machining practice, precision grinding (the operation known in France as “rectification” is carried out on a limited number of parts and the use of the term immediately suggests the type of component usually subjected to this method of working—the gear wheel.

Over the period, the role of finance has emerged significant in the socio-economic development of the women. There are two major types of finances, i.e. formal and informal ones. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate first the determinants of the demand for credit and then the demand for these credit sources by women especially in urban slums.

In this study, a primary survey was conducted with the help of a structured questionnaire in slums of two major urban cities in India, i.e. Delhi and Mumbai. In total, 450 individuals were interviewed in each city.

This paper presents a range of significant socio-economic factors affecting the demand for credit and source of credit by women borrower in Delhi and Mumbai. Despite, the greater emphasis by the government to increase the formal credit utilization, the informal credit is still preferred.

The outcomes of the study are expectedly useful to various policymakers and banks in encouraging women to opt more for the formal credit. The government can follow the research outcomes to scale up the programmes and schemes targeted for women empowerment in urban slums.

The study is unique of its kind in doing a comparative analysis in slums of two differently located urban cities with large slum population.

IN the paper of which we publish a translation in this issue HERR RITTER, the chief engineer of the JUNKERS company, lays particular stress on what may be called the “human element” in the desirable co‐ordination to be achieved between the design and production departments of an aircraft factory.

This paper aims to numerically study the compositional flow of two- and three-phase fluids in one-dimensional porous media and to make a comparison between several upwind and central numerical schemes.

Implicit pressure explicit composition (IMPEC) procedure is used for discretization of governing equations. The pressure equation is solved implicitly, whereas the mass conservation equations are solved explicitly using different upwind (UPW) and central (CEN) numerical schemes. These include classical upwind (UPW-CLS), flux-based decomposition upwind (UPW-FLX), variable-based decomposition upwind (UPW-VAR), Roe’s upwind (UPW-ROE), local Lax–Friedrichs (CEN-LLF), dominant wave (CEN-DW), Harten–Lax–van Leer (HLL) and newly proposed modified dominant wave (CEN-MDW) schemes. To achieve higher resolution, high-order data generated by either monotone upstream-centered schemes for conservation laws (MUSCL) or weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) reconstructions are used.

It was found that the new CEN-MDW scheme can accurately solve multiphase compositional flow equations. This scheme uses most of the information in flux function while it has a moderate computational cost as a consequence of using simple algebraic formula for the wave speed approximation. Moreover, numerically calculated wave structure is shown to be used as a tool for a priori estimation of problematic regions, i.e. degenerate, umbilic and elliptic points, which require applying correction procedures to produce physically acceptable (entropy) solutions.

This paper is concerned with one-dimensional study of compositional two- and three-phase flows in porous media. Temperature is assumed constant and the physical model accounts for miscibility and compressibility of fluids, whereas gravity and capillary effects are neglected.

The proposed numerical scheme can be efficiently used for solving two- and three-phase compositional flows in porous media with a low computational cost which is especially useful when the number of chemical species increases.

A new central scheme is proposed that leads to improved accuracy and computational efficiency. Moreover, to the best of authors knowledge, this is the first time that the wave structure of compositional model is investigated numerically to determine the problematic situations during numerical solution and adopt appropriate correction techniques.

Women empowerment becomes an important policy discussion in development economics and modernization theory. The empowerment of women can lead to an increase in the quality viz-a-viz the capacity of human resources accessible for economic development. The purpose of this study is to evidence the impact of social and economic dimensions on women empowerment through financial inclusion in rural India.

To reveal the research objective, the study has utilized a primary survey of women respondents from the Gujarat state of India by a simple random sampling method and applied a logistic regression approach to identify the relationship between the need of a bank account (determinant of financial inclusion) as a dependent variable and social and economic dimensions of women empowerment such as earning status, participation in financial decision-making, recipient of social welfare schemes and perception towards the safety of saving as independent variables.

The results of this study show that earning status, participation in financial decision-making at household level and recipient of social welfare schemes by women have a significant impact on women empowerment through financial inclusion; however, safety of their savings is observed as an insignificant variable, yet the odd value is very high (2.437) in the present study.

The present study is the first of its kind to examine the social and economic status of women and its impact on their requirement of a formal bank account for the overall empowerment of women in rural India.

The literature review explores how multidisciplinary approaches based on critical pedagogy and participatory research can provide frameworks for equitable partnerships and genuine participation in educational design and research practices. Additionally, the essay aims to expand understandings of equitable engagement within educational research and design based on principles from critical pedagogy.

The essay draws from diverse literature in the learning sciences, health informatics, industrial design, disability studies, ethnic studies, rehabilitation science, and to a lesser extent HCI research to understand how critical pedagogy and participatory research methods can provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples' equitable engagement and genuine participation in educational research and design. The literature reviewed in the paper concern topics such as participatory approaches to community development with disabled adults, the implementation of university-initiated community partnerships, participatory research with students and disabled people, and the importance of culturally-responsive research practices. The design literature in this review explores various arenas such as the co-design of assistive technologies with disabled children and adults and the design of curricula for students with and without disabilities. This review focuses on research practices that engender disabled peoples' participation in educational research and design, with focus on developing multidisciplinary frameworks for such research.

The literature review concludes that participatory research methods and critical pedagogy provide useful frameworks for disabled peoples’ participation in educational design and research practices. Critical pedagogy and participatory design allow for the genuine participation of disabled people in the research process.

Emphases on collaboration and collective knowledge-building in social transformation are present in scholarship concerning critical pedagogy, participatory research, and disability studies. However, these connections have been routinely underexplored in the literature. This paper aims to underscore these integral connections as a means to build solidarity between disabled and other marginalized people.

The connections between participatory research methods, critical pedagogy, and disability studies have been previously underexplored. The literature review proposes a combined approach, which has the potential to radically transform multiple realms of research beyond the learning and information sciences.

Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make optimal use of communicative behaviors that enhance relational outcomes. The purpose of this paper is to identify which human-like communicative behaviors used by conversational agents have positive effects on relational outcomes and which additional behaviors could be investigated in future research.

This paper presents a systematic review of 61 articles that investigated the effects of communicative behaviors used by conversational agents on relational outcomes. A taxonomy is created of all behaviors investigated in these studies, and a research agenda is constructed on the basis of an analysis of their effects and a comparison with the literature on human-to-human service encounters.

The communicative behaviors can be classified along two dimensions: modality (verbal, nonverbal, appearance) and footing (similarity, responsiveness). Regarding the research agenda, it is noteworthy that some categories of behaviors show mixed results and some behaviors that are effective in human-to-human interactions have not yet been investigated in conversational agents.

By identifying potentially effective communicative behaviors in conversational agents, this study assists managers in optimizing encounters between conversational agents and customers.

This is the first study that develops a taxonomy of communicative behaviors in conversational agents and uses it to identify avenues for future research.

This study describes preparedness of emergency physicians and general practitioners following chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents.

Five emergency physicians and six general practitioners were interviewed individually, and data was analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The study results showed that physicians' preparedness for chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents is linked to one main category: to be an expert and to seek expertise and two categories: preparations before receiving CRN patients, and physical examination and treatment of CRN patients with subcategories.

The results have implications for further research on the complexity of generalist vs specialist competence and knowledge when responding to chemical, radiological and nuclear incidents.

This study provides insights regarding chemical, radiological and nuclear preparedness among physicians at emergency departments and primary healthcare centres.

Enhancing the initiative and enthusiasm of emergency preparedness behaviors among Medical and Health Organization (MHO) staff is an effective measure to prevent and reduce losses from emergencies. In this study, emergency preparedness behavioral intentions were divided into noncooperative behavioral intentions (EPNCBI) and cooperative behavioral intentions (EPCBI) to discuss the impact brought by quality of life (QoL). The mediating effects of psychological capital (PsyCap) and perceived organizational support (POS) were also considered.

A web-based questionnaire was used for MHO staff in China, and a structural equation analysis of the data collected from 243 participants was conducted to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results reveal that: (1) QoL had a positive effect on EPNCBI, PsyCap and POS; (2) PsyCap had a positive effect on EPNCBI and EPCBI; (3) POS had a positive effect on PsyCap and EPCBI; (4) PsyCap mediated the relationship between QoL and EPNCBI, and the relationship between POS and EPNCBI; (5) PsyCap and POS mediated the relationship between QoL and EPCBI.

Improving MHO staff’s QoL is an effective way to enhance positive behavioral outcomes. Furthermore, these findings could provide managers with valuable insight focusing their limited resources on enhancing the emergency preparedness of MHO staff by reinforcing the level of PsyCap and POS.

This study provides important updated considerations for the application of positive psychology in the field of emergency preparedness.

This study aims to investigate and propose guidelines to enhance the accessibility of virtual reality (VR) interfaces for all users within professional learning environments. Motivated by a lack of comprehensive accessibility guidelines for VR learning, the study delves into a case study of Edstutia’s VR campus.

This case study examines the intersection of VR platform development and learning experience design through the lens of accessibility in human-computer interaction. It elaborates on how user experience feedback from differently-abled learners who were unable to fully participate in the VR experience due to disability shaped the 2.0 version development of a VR platform.

The outcomes of this case study are (1) a description of an inclusive and empathetic design application to increase multi-learner VR platform accessibility, (2) a sample actionable path from a design/development perspective in ensuring the accessibility design of a VR learning platform, and recommendations to facilitate the design process.

This case is a foundation for further research on improving accessibility in VR. In future work on VR campuses, we recommend scholars undertake research with an inclusive approach that actively involves users with different abilities in shaping guidelines, particularly on how individuals with different abilities should be approached for their input during the design and development process in a sensitive manner.

The authors summarize the steps taken to enhance the accessible interplay between the end users and the interface of VR technology in the emergence of VR accessibility standards. Central to this case’s exploration is the integration of accessibility as a pivotal element into an academic VR campus, i.e. multilearner education platform.

Increasing access to VR has strong social implications in a world where 17% of people report a disability.

This case contributes to the limited research available on increasing access to VR on campuses.