Business of Fashion, Textiles & Technology: Summary Report: Mapping the UK Fashion, Textiles and Technology Ecosystem

The UK fashion, apparel and textiles industry is a globally competitive growth sector. The 2015 Value of Fashion report by Oxford Economics, commissioned by the British Fashion Council, found that the direct economic value of a flourishing sector including retail, manufacturing and textiles was £28.1 billion – and calculated its indirect impact at a further £22.6 billion, making a total contribution to gross domestic product of over £50 billion[3]. However, it is less well understood than other creative industries. The final product is generally perceived as catwalk-related in some way. In order to shift that perception, the Business of Fashion, Textiles and Technology (BFTT) report considers the fashion, textiles and technology industry as a wide range of intersecting sectors, spanning – quite literally – from agriculture to advertising. To date, the industry has been constrained by lack of innovation in business strategy and the late adoption of technology. These structural factors have severely limited investment in research, development and knowledge exchange within the broader Fashion, Textiles and Technology (FTT) ecosystem. Currently, the industry lacks robust data and compelling evidence compared to other creative industries regarding research and development (R&D) opportunities, business growth options, job creation and investment. Official data sources on the fashion industry are limited to ‘designer fashion’, which is conflated with ‘other design’ activity, and focuses on established brands and large retailers, and unrelated textiles manufacturers. In response to this deficit and to concerns around R&D, identified through the development of the BFTT creative R&D partnership proposal (2017), the BFTT’s first task was to launch a UK-wide survey of the FTT ecosystem (2019). Approximately one year later, the survey consultation (the launch of which preceded Covid-19 and Britain’s exit from the EU) had engaged over 2,400 small, medium and micro businesses (SMEs) and over 100 stakeholders and intermediaries, including industry specialists, trade bodies and workspace providers. The consultation received 814 survey responses and led to 65 stakeholder interviews, making it one of the most extensive baseline studies to date on FTT SMEs. BFTT surveyed and interviewed across the entire UK fashion and wider apparel value chain. Therefore, this report for the first time positions the UK sector as not weighted toward fashion only. It illustrates the textile, materials and technology elements as key parts of this ecosystem and shows the industry is highly heterogeneous, made up of intersecting textiles and technology companies that inform an array of multiple sectors

NGC 602 Environment, Kinematics and Origins

The young star cluster NGC 602 and its associated HII region, N90, formed in a relatively isolated and diffuse environment in the Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud. Its isolation from other regions of massive star formation and the relatively simple surrounding HI shell structure allows us to constrain the processes that may have led to its formation and to study conditions leading to massive star formation. We use images from Hubble Space Telescope and high resolution echelle spectrographic data from the Anglo-Australian Telescope along with 21-cm neutral hydrogen (HI) spectrum survey data and the shell catalogue derived from it to establish a likely evolutionary scenario leading to the formation of NGC 602. We identify a distinct HI cloud component that is likely the progenitor cloud of the cluster and HII region which probably formed in blister fashion from the cloud's periphery. We also find that the past interaction of HI shells can explain the current location and radial velocity of the nebula. The surrounding Interstellar Medium is diffuse and dust-poor as demonstrated by a low visual optical depth throughout the nebula and an average HI density of the progenitor cloud estimated at 1 cm^-3. These conditions suggest that the NGC 602 star formation event was produced by compression and turbulence associated with HI shell interactions. It therefore represents a single star forming event in a low gas density region.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASP. 25 pages, 10 figure

Magnetic field driven dynamics in twisted bilayer artificial spin ice at superlattice angles

Geometrical designs of interacting nanomagnets have been studied extensively in the form of two dimensional arrays called artificial spin ice. These systems are usually designed to create geometrical frustration and are of interest for the unusual and often surprising phenomena that can emerge. Advanced lithographic and element growth techniques have enabled the realization of complex designs that can involve elements arranged in three dimensions. Using numerical simulations employing the dumbbell approximation, we examine possible magnetic behaviours for bilayer artificial spin ice (BASI) in which the individual layers are rotated with respect to one another. The goal is to understand how magnetization dynamics are affected by long-range dipolar coupling that can be modified by varying the layer separation and layer alignment through rotation. We consider bilayers where the layers are both either square or pinwheel arrangements of islands. Magnetic reversal processes are studied and discussed in terms of domain and domain wall configurations of the magnetic islands. Unusual magnetic ordering is predicted for special angles which define lateral spin superlattices for the bilayer systems

PAS: A Sampling Based Similarity Identification Algorithm for compression of Unicode data content

Generally, Users perform searches to satisfy their information needs. Now a day’s lots of people are using search engine to satisfy information need. Server search is one of the techniques of searching the information. the Growth of data brings new changes in Server. The data usually proposed in timely fashion in server. If there is increase in latency then it may cause a massive loss to the enterprises. The similarity detection plays very important role in data. while there are many algorithms are used for similarity detection such as Shingle, Simhas TSA and Position Aware sampling algorithm. The Shingle Simhash and Traits read entire files to calculate similar values. It requires the long delay in growth of data set value. instead of reading entire Files PAS sample some data in the form of Unicode to calculate similarity characteristic value.PAS is the advance technique of TSA. However slight modification of file will trigger the position of file content .Therefore the failure of similarity identification is there due to some modifications.. This paper proposes an Enhanced Position-Aware Sampling algorithm (EPAS) to identify file similarity for the Server. EPAS concurrently samples data blocks from the modulated file to avoid the position shift by the modifications. While there is an metric is proposed to measure the similarity between different files and make the possible detection probability close to the actual probability. In this paper describes a PAS algorithm to reduce the time overhead of similarity detection. Using PAS algorithm we can reduce the complication and time for identifying the similarity. Our result demonstrate that the EPAS significantly outperforms the existing well known algorithms in terms of time. Therefore, it is an effective approach of similarity identification for the Server

Distributed secondary voltage regulation for autonomous microgrid

© 2017 IEEE. This research addresses the control problem of microgrids and presents a robust distributed secondary control system for voltage regulation of an islanded microgrid with droop-controlled and inverter-based distributed generators (DGs). A consensus-based distributed control approach is proposed to restore the voltage and frequency of the islanded microgrid to the reference values for all DGs within a very short time. The proposed method is flexible to system topology variations which AIDS the plug-and-play operation of microgrid. An autonomous micogrid test system consisting of four DGs is constructed in MATLAB using SimPowerSystem Toolbox to test the proposed design method, and the simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. The performance of the proposed controller is shown through several test case studies

State-Space Modeling and Stability Analysis for Microgrids with Distributed Secondary Control

© 2018 IEEE. High penetration of renewable energies in power systems leads to the necessity of comprehensive modelling of a microgrid (MG) for its appropriate control. The distributed secondary control in the MG can be used for complementing the role of primary droop-based control. This paper presents a systematic way of developing a linearized small signal state space model with distributed secondary control as well as stability analysis of an islanded AC MG. The MG considered here, consists of three distributed generations (DGs) represented in the synchronous (DQ) reference frame. To show the effect of controller parameters on system stability, the eigenvalue analysis is presented here. The MATLAB/Simulink model of islanded MG with both primary and secondary control strategies is also developed to verify the outcomes of small-signal analysis. The simulation results show that the voltage controller simultaneously achieves the critical voltage restoration and accurate reactive power sharing

Ground Water-Bottom Soil-Water Interactions in Tropical Carp Nursery Ponds.

There was no significant combined effect (P > 0.05) of the physico-chemical properties of the underground deep tube well water on increasing the nutrient contents of the nursery ponds' bottom soil. But the combined effect of seven chemical properties of bottom soil showed significant (P < 0.05) influence on increasing the amount of chemical constituents of pond water except pH and exchangeable K. Electric conductivity, pH and exchangeable Ca of deep tube well water had inverse correlations with chemical properties of pond bottom soil but only dissolved O2 was directly correlated with all the properties of pond bottom soil. All the correlation values between pH and chemical properties of bottom soil of nursery ponds were inversely significant (P < 0.05) in nature. Dissolved O2 and phosphate P of water had almost direct correlations with bottom soil properties of nursery ponds where dissolved O2 had significant (P < 0.05) correlation with pH of bottom soil

Co-Administration of Iron and Bioavailable Curcumin Reduces Levels of Systemic Markers of Inflammation and Oxidative Stress in a Placebo-Controlled Randomised Study

Ferrous sulphate (FS) is widely used as an iron supplement to treat iron deficiency (ID), but is known to induce inflammation causing gastric side-effects resulting in poor adherence to supplement regimens. Curcumin, a potent antioxidant, has been reported to suppress inflammation via down regulation of NF-κB. The aim of the present double blind, placebo-controlled randomised trial was to assess whether co-administration of FS with a formulated, bioavailable form of curcumin (HydroCurc™) could reduce systemic inflammation and/or gastrointestinal side-effects. This study recruited 155 healthy participants (79 males; 26.42 years ± 0.55 and 76 females; 25.82 years ± 0.54), randomly allocated to one of five different treatment groups: iron and curcumin placebo (FS0_Plac), low dose (18 mg) iron and curcumin placebo (FS18_Plac), low dose iron and curcumin (FS18_Curc), high dose (65 mg) iron and curcumin placebo (FS65_Plac), and high dose iron and curcumin (FS65_Curc). Completed questionnaires and blood samples were collected from all participants at baseline (day 1), mid-point (day 21), and at end-point (day 42). Results showed a significant reduction in IL-6 in the FS65_Curc group (0.06 pg/mL ± 0.02, p = 0.0073) between the mid-point and end-point. There was also a significant reduction in mean plasma TNF levels in the FS65_Curc (0.65 pg/mL ± 0.17, p = 0.0018), FS65_Plac (0.39 pg/mL ± 0.15, p = 0.0363), and FS18_Curc (0.35 pg/mL ± 0.13, p = 0.0288) groups from mid-point to end-point. A significant increase was observed in mean plasma TBARS levels (0.10 µM ± 0.04, p = 0.0283) in the F18_Plac group from baseline to end-point. There was a significant association with darker stools between FS0_Plac vs. FS65_Plac (p = 0.002, Fisher’s exact test) suggesting that high iron dose in the absence of curcumin leads to darker stools. A reduction in inflammation-related markers in response to co-administering supplemental iron alongside formulated curcumin suggests a reduction in systemic inflammation. This supplementation approach may therefore be a more cost effective and convenient alternative to current oral iron-related treatments, with further research to be conducted