Business-NGO Collaboration in a Conflict Setting: Partnership Activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo

While business-NGO partnerships have received much attention in recent years, insights have been obtained from research in ‘stable’ contexts, not from conflict-ridden countries where such collaboration may be even more crucial in building trust and capacity and in addressing governance problems given the absence of a reliable state. This paper aims to shed light on business-NGOs collaboration in a conflict setting, exploring partnership activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most partnerships found are philanthropic, and deal with ‘traditional’ issues such as health and education in a donor-recipient mode with limited community involvement. There are only a few real transformative partnerships, which address aspects directly related to the conflict from a wider community focus; these involve extractive companies most exposed via mineral development/production. We also found so-called ‘engagement’ collaboration which can be divided into activities including the transfer of funds (and characterised by service delivery), and those without funds, focusing on knowledge exchange that furthers companies’ awareness of conflict-sensitive issues into their operations. Peculiarities of the different types of partnerships are discussed as well as implications for research and practice

Pavlov's dog associative learning demonstrated on synaptic-like organic transistors

In this letter, we present an original demonstration of an associative learning neural network inspired by the famous Pavlov's dogs experiment. A single nanoparticle organic memory field effect transistor (NOMFET) is used to implement each synapse. We show how the physical properties of this dynamic memristive device can be used to perform low power write operations for the learning and implement short-term association using temporal coding and spike timing dependent plasticity based learning. An electronic circuit was built to validate the proposed learning scheme with packaged devices, with good reproducibility despite the complex synaptic-like dynamic of the NOMFET in pulse regime

Multinationals, CSR and Partnerships in Central African Conflict Countries

Attention has increased for the potential role of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in helping address conflict issues and/or furthering peace and reconciliation as part of their corporate social responsibility policies. However, while existing literature emphasises the importance for MNEs to collaborate with various stakeholders, including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), research on the scope, peculiarities and impact of such cooperation has been limited, particularly in those countries in Central Africa with a fragile state and weak governance structures. Furthermore, until recently, MNEs and NGOs in conflict countries had antagonistic relationships, which has created impediments for positive engagement. This article examines MNEs and conflict issues, including interactions with NGOs, and sheds light on possible MNE contributions to peaceful societies by highlighting a few innovative partnerships of MNEs and non-business partners in Central Africa. Innovative partnerships take the conflict context into account, have a learning or capacity-building component, are part of a more comprehensive development plan yet are embedded at the community level, and tackle issues directly related to the conflict, such as governance, human rights, artisanal mining and transparency. The article also discusses implications of such activities for the role of the state in fragile contexts

Electron transport through rectifying self-assembled monolayer diodes on silicon: Fermi level pinning at the molecule-metal interface

We report the synthesis and characterization of molecular rectifying diodes on silicon using sequential grafting of self-assembled monolayers of alkyl chains bearing a pi group at their outer end (Si/sigma-pi/metal junctions). We investigate the structure-performance relationships of these molecular devices and we examine to what extent the nature of the pi end-group (change in the energy position of their molecular orbitals) drives the properties of these molecular diodes. For all the pi-groups investigated here, we observe rectification behavior. These results extend our preliminary work using phenyl and thiophene groups (S. Lenfant et al., Nano Letters 3, 741 (2003)).The experimental current-voltage curves are analyzed with a simple analytical model, from which we extract the energy position of the molecular orbital of the pi-group in resonance with the Fermi energy of the electrodes. We report the experimental studies of the band lineup in these silicon/alkyl-pi conjugated molecule/metal junctions. We conclude that Fermi level pinning at the pi-group/metal interface is mainly responsible for the observed absence of dependence of the rectification effect on the nature of the pi-groups, even though they were chosen to have significant variations in their electronic molecular orbitalsComment: To be published in J. Phys. Chem.

Negative Differential Resistance, Memory and Reconfigurable Logic Functions based on Monolayer Devices derived from Gold Nanoparticles Functionalized with Electro-polymerizable Thiophene-EDOT Units

We report on hybrid memristive devices made of a network of gold nanoparticles (10 nm diameter) functionalized by tailored 3,4(ethylenedioxy)thiophene (TEDOT) molecules, deposited between two planar electrodes with nanometer and micrometer gaps (100 nm to 10 um apart), and electropolymerized in situ to form a monolayer film of conjugated polymer with embedded gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Electrical properties of these films exhibit two interesting behaviors: (i) a NDR (negative differential resistance) behavior with a peak/valley ratio up to 17, and (ii) a memory behavior with an ON/OFF current ratio of about 1E3 to 1E4. A careful study of the switching dynamics and programming voltage window is conducted demonstrating a non-volatile memory. The data retention of the ON and OFF states is stable (tested up to 24h), well controlled by the voltage and preserved when repeating the switching cycles (800 in this study). We demonstrate reconfigurable Boolean functions in multiterminal connected NP molecule devices.Comment: Full manuscript, figures and supporting information, J. Phys. Chem. C, on line, asap (2017

Brazil-Africa: Booming business across the Atlantic

ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde