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The high lift devices are effective at high angle of attack to increase the coefficient of lift by increasing the camber. But it affects the low angle of attack aerodynamic performance by increasing the drag. Hence, they have made as a movable device to deploy only at high angles of attack, which increases the design and installation complexities. This study aims to focus on the comparison of aerodynamic efficiency of different conventional leading edge (LE) slat configurations with simple fixed bioinspired slat design.

This research analyzes the effect of LE slat on aerodynamic performance of CLARK Y airfoil at low and high angles of attack. Different geometrical parameters such as slat chord, cutoff, gap, width and depth of LE slat have been considered for the analysis.

It has been found that the LE slat configuration with slat chord 30% of airfoil chord, forward extension 8% of chord, dip 3% of chord and gap 0.75% of chord gives higher aerodynamic efficiency (C_l/Cd) than other LE slat configurations, but it affects the low angles of attack aerodynamic performance with the deployed condition. Hence, this optimum slat configuration is further modified by closing the gap between LE slat and the main airfoil, which is inspired by the marine mammal’s nose. Thus increases the coefficient of lift at high angles of attack due to better acceleration over the airfoil nose and as well enhances the aerodynamic efficiency at low angles of attack.

The two-dimensional computational analysis has been done for different LE slat’s geometrical parameters at low subsonic speed.

This bio-inspired nose design improves aerodynamic performance and increases the structural strength of aircraft wing compared to the conventional LE slat. This fixed design avoids the complex design and installation difficulties of conventional movable slats.

The findings will have significant impact on the fields of aircraft wing and wind turbine designs, which reduces the design and manufacturing complexities.

Different conventional slat configurations have been analyzed and compared with a simple fixed bioinspired slat nose design at low subsonic speed.

This paper aims to present object or feature segmentation from an ordered 3D point cloud range data obtained from a laser scanner for the purpose of robot navigation.

Rotating multi-beam laser scanners provide ordered 3D range data. Differences between consecutive ranges in radial direction are used to compute a novel measure of terrain unevenness at each data point. Computed over a complete rotation, an unevenness field is formed surrounding the scanner. A part of this field staying below a threshold is recognized as ground and removed. Remaining non-ground points are segmented into objects by region growing with points whose unevenness lies within pre-specified limiting values.

The proposed unevenness attribute is simple and efficient for segmenting distinct objects or features. The fineness of surface features can be regulated by adjusting the threshold value of difference in unevenness between neighbouring points that triggers an onset of new segments.

The angles between neighbouring laser range data are assumed to be known.

Segmented objects or features can be used for scan registration, object tracking and robot navigation.

The method may find use in autonomous robots and driverless cars.

Differences between consecutive range data are used imaginatively to derive a novel measure of terrain unevenness, which in turn, is used for efficient segmentation of objects and features.

The purpose of this paper is to detect traversable regions surrounding a mobile robot by computing terrain unevenness using the range data obtained from a single 3D scan.

The geometry of acquiring range data from a 3D scan is exploited to probe the terrain and extract traversable regions. Nature of terrain under each scan point is quantified in terms of an unevenness value, which is computed from the difference in range of scan point with respect to its neighbours. Both radial and transverse unevenness values are computed and compared with threshold values at every point to determine if the point belongs to a traversable region or an obstacle. A region growing algorithm spreads like a wavefront to join all traversable points into a traversable region.

This simple method clearly distinguishes ground and obstacle points. The method works well even in presence of terrain slopes or when the robot experiences pitch and roll.

The method applies on single 3D scans and not on aggregated point cloud in general.

The method has been tested on a mobile robot in outdoor environment in our research centre.

This method, along with advanced navigation schemes, can reduce human intervention in many mobile robot applications including unmanned ground vehicles.

Range difference between scan points has been used earlier for obstacle detection, but no methodology has been developed around this concept. The authors propose a concrete method based on computation of radial and transverse unevenness at every point and detecting obstacle edges using range-dependent threshold values.

The ultra-thin white topping (UTW) is a cement concrete overlay of the thickness of 50–100 mm on bituminous concrete pavements with surface failures. This is a long-lasting solution without having short-term failures. This paper aims to design an ultra-thin cement concrete overlay using a developed critical stress model with sustainable concrete materials for low-volume roads.

In this research paper, a parametric study was conducted using the ultra-thin concrete overlay finite element model developed with ANSYS software, considering the significant parameters affecting the performance and development. The non-linear regression equation was formed using a damped least-squares method to predict critical stress due to the corner load of 51 kN.

The parametric study results indicate that with a greater elastic modulus of bituminous concrete, granular layer along with 100 mm thickness of concrete layer reduces the critical corner stress, interface shear stress in a significant way responsible for debonding of concrete overlay, elastic strains in the pavement further the concrete overlay can bear infinite load repetitions. From validation, it is understood that the non-linear regression equation developed is acceptable with similar research work done.

From the semi-scale experimental study, it is observed that the quaternary blended sustainable concrete overlay having a high modulus of rupture of 6.34 MPa is competent with conventional cement concrete overlay in terms of failure load. So, concrete overlay with sustainable materials of 100 mm thickness and higher elastic modulus of the layers can perform in a sustainable way meeting the environmental and long-term performance requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to report on the 53rd Annual Meeting of the Indian Library Association (ILA) held during December 13‐16, 2008 in Hyderabad.

This is a descriptive report.

The meeting discussed “Developing library and information resources and services in the internet era”, comprising “Public library as a community information centre/knowledge centre”, “Legislation for libraries in the internet era”, “Library 2.0 and Web 2.0”, “Collection/resource development policies”, “Management and evaluation of collection”, “Print and digital publications issues”, “Knowledge management and knowledge society” and “Open sources”.

Will be of interest to library and information professionals.

This paper aims to examine the impact of social capital and self-efficacy in the performance of producer organizations. It also tests the mediating influence of self-efficacy in the relationship of social capital and performance of producer organizations.

The study used data from a survey of 226 members of farmer producer organizations (FPO) in India. The model was tested through structural equation modeling wherein all hypotheses were tested using “R” studio.

The findings reveal that social capital and self-efficacy play a significant role in predicting the performance of FPO. It was found that in the process of social capital influencing the performance of FPO, self-efficacy plays a significant role as a partial mediator with a mediating effect of approximately 69.28%.

The study considered only one antecedent while identifying the reasons for perceived performance of FPOs. Hence, further studies of the various other constructs such as attitude, subjective norms, etc., may be considered.

No previous work has examined the mediating role of self-efficacy in the relationship between social capital and perceived performance of FPO. This study is possibly the only one that joins two streams of thought – social capital and self-efficacy – to examine the performance of FPO.

The Journal of Consumer Marketing (JCM) has ceaselessly strived toward presenting updated insights on consumer behavior in the marketplace. Blending both theory and practice, it features rigorous consumer-centric research, which addresses pressing managerial concerns. Recently, the JCM completed 35 years of publishing. This study aims to track its evolution from 1984 to 2019.

The application of sophisticated bibliometric techniques offers a deeper insight into the evolving trends of the journal, its core authors and their affiliations. This paper explores the thematic trends for JCM’s articles using principal component analysis (PCA) and through bibliographic couple, the authors expose JCM’s knowledge structure.

The JCM published 1,422 articles by 2019 contributed by 2,247 unique authors. At 34.56 average citations to its articles cited, the academic popularity of the journal reached 41,989 citations in Scopus. Research featured in the JCM has explored approximately 2,225 unique themes. PCA under Varimax rotation constructed three thematic factors for the most popular JCM themes. Simultaneously, bibliographic coupling analysis identified nine clusters of the JCM’s articles.

The study is based on the bibliometric records obtained from Scopus and would be subject to the limitations of the database, apart from being limited by the word length of this paper.

The study conducts the first retrospective analysis of the JCM, which may be useful for global readers, including its editorial board.

Purpose – Purpose of the research is to make a comprehensive study to elucidate the existing landscape of scientific production of disease outbreaks, pandemics and tourism research. In doing so, authors analyzed scientific production of pandemics and tourism-related studies such as year-wise publications, productive authors, institutes, funding sponsors, thematic areas of research and citation analysis.

Design/methodology/approach – Authors analyzed the research papers indexed in the online Scopus database over 50 years of time starting from 1971 to 2020 by using bibliometrics, and the data are visualized by using data visualization tools like VOSviewer and the Tableau.

Findings – The understanding of disease outbreaks and pandemics in tourism has increased over the years in terms of number of papers, citation, networks and collaborative themes of research.

Research limitations/implications – Data for the study were generated from Scopus online database and limited to English-written journal articles that were produced with search strategy of specific keywords associated with tourism, virus, pandemics and disease outbreak.

Practical implications – Findings of the research provide insights into academia and practitioners on the understanding of disease outbreaks, pandemics and tourism research, coherent development of the concept and understanding the research gap and focussed area of research.

Originality/value – As per authors' understanding, this paper would be one of the first attempts to provide greater understanding of disease outbreaks, pandemics and tourism as a research topic by examining the growth and evolution in an academic context through bibliometric analysis.

Paper type – Review paper.

The purpose of the study is to examine the value-based performance of firms in construction sector in India using Tobin's Q and Market Capitalization (MCAP) and then determine their significant financial drivers.

The study is based on data from 87 firms engaged in infrastructure, real estate, industrial construction and allied areas in India over a study period of 10 years. Three distinct forms of panel regression models have been developed using Tobin's Q and MCAP as dependent variables. The models developed are using Baltagi's (1981) Error Component 2SLS, Varadharajan-Krishnakumar's (1987) Generalized 2SLS and Arellano – Bower/Blundell – Bond's (1991) dynamic panel.

The study found that MCAP is a better suited value-based performance measure for construction sector firms in India. The study further reports that the age of the firm, profit after tax, investment in research and development, dividends, leverage and net fixed asset are significant positive drivers, whereas cash flow is a significant negative driver.

The study is limited to a geographic location; therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalized.

As MCAP is a better suited value-based performance measure of a firm in the construction sector, managers should focus on improving profitability, higher research and development activities, higher dividends and higher expenditures on net fixed assets for improvement.

This is an original attempt to examine the value-based performance of firms in the construction sector in India using Tobin's Q and MCAP.