Finding the far right online: an exploratory study of white supremacist websites

White supremacists and the Far Right political movement in the UK have, had considerable success in spreading their messages through Web sites. Some of these Web sites clearly contribute to an enabling environment for racially motivated violence in our towns and cities and possibly help to underpin also the rise of, and support for, the Far Right in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. From a position that acknowledges the enduring issue of white hegemony in Western societies, this paper provides a number of research-based recommendations for further research and future policy and practice in tackling white supremacist racial hatred on the Net

Enrico Fermi’s IEEE Milestone in Florence. For his Major Contribution to Semiconductor Statistics, 1924-1926

Enrico Fermi, Nobel Laureate in Physics in 1938, taught at the University of Florence just for two academic years (1924-25 and 1925-26). His research activity in these two years saw the publication of the statistics bearing his name (the two original 1926 papers by E. Fermi are reproduced in full in this book), which is at the basis of semiconductors, and hence of modern electronics. This volume is printed for the placement, at the School of Engineering in Florence, of an IEEE Milestone, within the ‘IEEE Global History Network program’, commemorating the event. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers) is the largest professional association in the world devoted to advancing technological innovation in electrical, electronic engineering, and related fields

New Trends in Development of Services in the Modern Economy

The services sector strategic development unites a multitude of economic and managerial aspects and is one of the most important problems of economic management. Many researches devoted to this industry study are available. Most of them are performed in the traditional aspect of the voluminous calendar approach to strategic management, characteristic of the national scientific school. Such an approach seems archaic, forming false strategic benchmarks. The services sector is of special scientific interest in this context due to the fact that the social production structure to the services development model attraction in many countries suggests transition to postindustrial economy type where the services sector is a system-supporting sector of the economy. Actively influencing the economy, the services sector in the developed countries dominates in the GDP formation, primary capital accumulation, labor, households final consumption and, finally, citizens comfort of living. However, a clear understanding of the services sector as a hyper-sector permeating all spheres of human activity has not yet been fully developed, although interest in this issue continues to grow among many authors. Target of strategic management of the industry development setting requires substantive content and the services sector target value assessment

The readiness of the South African private and public sector for the fourth industrial revolution

The exponential growth of technology over the past few years led to it being given prime slot at the World Economic Forum held in Davos in January 2016, with Forum founder and executive chairman Klaus Schwab coining this potentially disruptive phenomenon as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’. Since then, the term Fourth Industrial Revolution (FIR) has gained ever increasing relevance and importance. Schwab (2016) emphasised that the world is on the edge of “a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work and relate to one another”; and that in the pure “scale, scope and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before”. What is certain is that the FIR is predicted by many to impact significantly on jobs in the world as robotics; automation and artificial intelligence become more prolific. This shift will have a direct bearing on South Africa as well. With the challenges facing the country, such as infrastructure constraints, frequent industrial actions, rising costs and shortages of skills, the loss of further jobs should be of concern for government and the private sector alike. The outcomes of the in-depth analysis of future studies practice and theory in this research study give credence to the argument that the manner in which planning for the future of the FIR in the South African context is taking place requires profound adjustments. The development of fresh insight through the application of futures studies is essential to this planning process, as is progressively evidenced in the tendency for present day business to make collaborative decisions and strategies that are founded on and informed by futures studies. This research has tried to gain insight into the possible future of the FIR in South Africa through the creation of four scenarios towards 2035. These are outlined as follows: The Fifth Element, which is the ‘best case’ scenario, to which the country aspires; Terminator, the ‘worst case’ scenario, in which everything goes bad; The Matrix, the outlier future based on a surprising, disruptive, emerging issue; and The Day the Earth Stood Still, in which no change takes place, making it ‘business as usual’. The research furthermore endeavoured to discover the preferred future for the FIR in a South African context, as a basis for the Future Vision of the FIR in South Africa towards 2035. All through this study, Inayatullah’s (2008) pillars of futures studies were applied as a guide in mapping the present and future, further deepening and broadening the future through the development of scenarios, and, finally, transforming the future by narrowing it down to the preferred. It is up to the South African public and private sectors to determine which path is to be followed in the decisions surrounding the embrace and acceptance of the FIR as the country moves towards progress and sustainable development. Through a novel and innovative methodology, the creation of an atmosphere of trust, and the sharing of purpose, values and benefits, a national Future Vision of the FIR in South Africa towards 2035 is attainable. All stakeholders have to commit to working in co-operative partnerships, with government, society, local communities and labour striding boldly together into a world of technological, commercial, environmental and social innovation

Sistemas de comunicação quânticos baseados em Qubits codificados na polarização

We are now facing a second quantum revolution, that started in the early 21st century, bringing significant technological advances to science, industry and society based on advances on quantum information. The eminent emergence of a quantum computer has boosted concerns about the security of current classical public-key cryptography systems. One important topic in the research field of quantum information is the way we distribute keys in order to allow secure communication between distant parties. QKD systems are already in a pre-commercial stage attracting companies and government heavy investment in researching for quantum information technologies. However, there still are a lot of research to be done in this field, specially regarding high rate transmission, achievable distance reach, and obviously the practical implementation cost. In this thesis, we start by experimentally implement a polarization-encoded discrete variables based quantum communication system which allowed us to identify issues that must be solved in order to make it suitable for QKD protocols practical implementation. In this way, we propose a non-intrusive heuristic method to automatically compensate polarization random drift in standard opticalfiber channels due birefringence effects, and that induces errors during qubit transmission. The compensation of polarization drifts induced by the quantum channel is fundamental to enable the deployment of polarization encoded single-photons transmission over the current optical fiber networks. Furthermore, in this thesis we also propose and validated though numerical simulations a novel polarization-based DV-QKD system that combines the use of phase-modulators for state of polarization (SOP) generation and basis switching with a polarization diversity coherent detection scheme. This enables a full implementation of DV-QKD systems using only classical hardware, which low the cost of QKD systems based on polarization encoded single-photons at the same time that increases the transmission rate. Our results open the door to very high baud-rate polarization qubits transmission in access and metro networks. We report continuous qubit transmission, even in environments subjected to high polarization drift, without consuming extra-bandwidth with a maximum Quantum Bit Error Rate (QBER) of 2%.Estamos perante a segunda revolução quântica, a qual começou no início do século 21 trazendo avanços significativos na ciência, na indústria e na sociedade baseados nos avanços da teoria da informação. A emergência eminente de um computador quântico tem despoletado preocupações relativamente à segurança dos atuais sistemas de criptografia pública clássica. Um tópico importante no campo da investigação de informação quântica diz respeito à forma de distribuição de chaves criptográficas de forma a garantir comunicações seguras entre partes distantes. Os sistemas de distribuição de chaves quânticas estão já num estágio comercial, o que tem atraído investimento de empresas e governos para a investigação nas tecnologias de informação quântica. Contudo, existe ainda muita investigação a ser feita neste campo, especialmente no que diz respeito a elevadas taxas de transmissão, distância atingida, e obviamente o custo duma implantação prática. Neste trabalho de doutoramento, começamos por implementar experimentalmente um sistema de comunicações quânticas que usa variáveis discretas com codificação na polarização, o que nos permite identificar os problemas a serem resolvidos de forma a tornar possível a implementação prática de protocolos de distribuição de chave quântica. Desta forma, propomos um método heurístico não intrusivo para compensar automaticamente a deriva aleatória de polarização em canais padrão de fibra ótica devido a efeitos de birrefringência, e que induzem erros durante a transmissão de Qubits. A compensação da deriva de polarização induzida pelo canal quântico é fundamental para permitir a implementação prática generalizada da transmissão de fotões únicos com codificação na polarização nas redes atuais de fibra ótica. Neste trabalho de doutoramento propomos ainda e validamos através de simulações numéricas um novo sistema de DV-QKD baseado na polarização que combina o uso de moduladores de fase para gerar quatro estados de polarização e mudança de base com um esquema de deteção coerente. Este sistema permite a implementação de sistemas de DV-QKD usando unicamente equipamento clássico, o que garante um custo reduzido da implementação de sistemas Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) baseados em fotões únicos codificados na polarização e ao mesmo tempo um aumento da taxa de transmissão. Os nossos resultados abrem a porta a sistemas de transmissão de qubits a débitos elevados aquando da sua implementação nas redes instaladas de fibra ótica. Reportamos transmissões continuas de qubits mesmo em ambientes sujeitos a elevada deriva da polarização, sem a necessidade de consumir largura de banda extra com uma taxa de erro quântico máxima de 2%.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Eletrotécnic

The 4IR and teacher education in South Africa:

The 4IR has become an overarching framework within which education systems, including teacher education, are operating. Contingent upon the ideology of neo-liberalism, the 4IR seeks to transform societies in ways which respond to the relentless developments in technology, the Internet and digital capacities which, by design and intent, are purposed at increasing both productivity and the associated quality while at the same time reducing human intervention in the same processes. In teacher education, how we teach and train student teachers will be substantially influenced by the imperatives of the 4IR. There are multiple unresolved questions as the 4IR takes centre stage. For example, what will it mean for teaching and learning in schools that have severe technological and digital deficits; for teachers and students who have minimal technological literacies; for delivering high-quality teaching and learning; for transforming both the content and pedagogies of teacher education and, above all, for delivering socially just educational experiences for all our learners, regardless of class, race, and privilege. The discourse of the 4IR is contemporary and requires multiple perspectives to explore what it means in different contexts and settings, the understandings it engenders in people, what it implies across a wide range of educational decision-making levels, and that its fundamental assumptions cohere with national and societal assumptions about equality, equity and social justice. Multiple methodological approaches were utilised in the interrogation of the idea of the 4IR in teacher education in South Africa, including theoretical, empirical, and small-scale case studies, amongst others. The data these approaches provide are equally valued based on the purposes for which they have been derived