5,407 research outputs found
Social enterprises and their ecosystems in Europe
Social enterprises present an alternative to business-as-usual with their combination of core social and environmental objectives being addressed through commercial approaches. In this way they present an alternative avenue for a sustainable prosperity that is not driven by profit but rather focused on flourishing and living within ecological limits. In the UK, there has been particular interest and support for the creation of start-ups and the scaling of existing social enterprises. The term social enterprise has been in use in the UK since the 1970s, and the current approaches are shaped by the philanthropic traditions of charities, the cooperative traditions of democratic governance, and cultures of socially responsible business. The UK social enterprise movement was given a boost by the pioneering public policies and approaches in the 1990s, including various support programmes, the introduction of a new legal form and investment funds. Since 2010 there has been a focus of policy on encouraging social investment funds and mutual social enterprise ‘spin-outs’ from the public sector. However, the context of public sector austerity has seen a considerable decline in overall spending across the UK in recent years, with the exception of Scotlan
Electrical activation and electron spin coherence of ultra low dose antimony implants in silicon
We implanted ultra low doses (2x10^11 cm-2) of 121Sb ions into isotopically
enriched 28Si and find high degrees of electrical activation and low levels of
dopant diffusion after rapid thermal annealing. Pulsed Electron Spin Resonance
shows that spin echo decay is sensitive to the dopant depths, and the interface
quality. At 5.2 K, a spin decoherence time, T2, of 0.3 ms is found for profiles
peaking 50 nm below a Si/SiO2 interface, increasing to 0.75 ms when the surface
is passivated with hydrogen. These measurements provide benchmark data for the
development of devices in which quantum information is encoded in donor
electron spins
Regulating CCTV? : We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them
Peer reviewedPostprin
Energetics of Propellant Options for High-Power Hall Thrusters
Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/76265/1/AIAA-16376-173.pd
Efficient Passive ICS Device Discovery and Identification by MAC Address Correlation
Owing to a growing number of attacks, the assessment of Industrial Control
Systems (ICSs) has gained in importance. An integral part of an assessment is
the creation of a detailed inventory of all connected devices, enabling
vulnerability evaluations. For this purpose, scans of networks are crucial.
Active scanning, which generates irregular traffic, is a method to get an
overview of connected and active devices. Since such additional traffic may
lead to an unexpected behavior of devices, active scanning methods should be
avoided in critical infrastructure networks. In such cases, passive network
monitoring offers an alternative, which is often used in conjunction with
complex deep-packet inspection techniques. There are very few publications on
lightweight passive scanning methodologies for industrial networks. In this
paper, we propose a lightweight passive network monitoring technique using an
efficient Media Access Control (MAC) address-based identification of industrial
devices. Based on an incomplete set of known MAC address to device
associations, the presented method can guess correct device and vendor
information. Proving the feasibility of the method, an implementation is also
introduced and evaluated regarding its efficiency. The feasibility of
predicting a specific device/vendor combination is demonstrated by having
similar devices in the database. In our ICS testbed, we reached a host
discovery rate of 100% at an identification rate of more than 66%,
outperforming the results of existing tools.Comment: http://dx.doi.org/10.14236/ewic/ICS2018.
Continental threat: How many common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are there in Australia?
Common carp (Cyprinus carpio) are one of the world's most destructive vertebrate pests. In Australia, they dominate many aquatic ecosystems causing a severe threat to aquatic plants, invertebrates, water quality, native fish and social amenity. The Australian Government is considering release of cyprinid herpesvirus-3 (CyHV-3) as a control measure and consequently a robust, continental-scale estimate of the carp population and biomass is essential to inform planning and risk management. Here, we pioneer a novel model-based approach to provide the first estimate of carp density (no/ha) and biomass density (kg/ha) at river reach/waterbody, basin and continental scales. We built a spatial layer of rivers and waterbodies, classified aquatic habitats and calculated the area of each throughout the range of carp in Australia. We then developed a database of fishery-independent electrofishing catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) for habitat types, containing catch information for 574,145 carp caught at 4831 sites. Eastern Australia accounted for 96% of carp biomass and 92% of the total available wetted habitat area (16,686 km2) was occupied. To correct these data for variable detection efficiencies, we used existing electrofishing data and undertook additional field experiments to establish relationships between relative and absolute abundances. We then scaled-up site-based estimates to habitat types to generate continental estimates. The number of carp was estimated at 199.2 M (95%Crl: 106 M to 357.6 M) for an ‘average’ hydrological scenario and 357.5 M (95%Crl: 178.9 M to 685.1 M) for a ‘wet’ hydrological scenario. In eastern Australia, these numbers correspond with biomasses of 205,774 t (95%Crl: 117,532–356,482 t) (average scenario) and 368,357 t (95%Crl: 184,234–705,630 t) (wet scenario). At a continental scale the total biomass was estimated at 215,456 t for an ‘average’ hydrological scenario. Perennial lowland rivers had the highest CPUE and greatest biomass density (up to 826 kg/ha) and the modelled biomass exceeded a density-impact threshold of 80–100 kg/ha in 54% of wetlands and 97% of stream area in large lowland rivers. The continental-scale biomass estimates provide a baseline for focusing national conservation strategies to reduce carp populations below thresholds needed to restore aquatic ecosystems at a range of spatial scales
K-shell photoionization of ground-state Li-like carbon ions [C]: experiment, theory and comparison with time-reversed photorecombination
Absolute cross sections for the K-shell photoionization of ground-state
Li-like carbon [C(1s2s S)] ions were measured by employing the
ion-photon merged-beams technique at the Advanced Light Source. The energy
ranges 299.8--300.15 eV, 303.29--303.58 eV and 335.61--337.57 eV of the
[1s(2s2p)P]P, [1s(2s2p)P]P and [(1s2s)S 3p]P
resonances, respectively, were investigated using resolving powers of up to
6000. The autoionization linewidth of the [1s(2s2p)P]P resonance was
measured to be meV and compares favourably with a theoretical result
of 26 meV obtained from the intermediate coupling R-Matrix method. The present
photoionization cross section results are compared with the outcome from
photorecombination measurements by employing the principle of detailed balance.Comment: 3 figures and 2 table
Electron spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine interaction with nuclei
We review and summarize recent theoretical and experimental work on electron
spin dynamics in quantum dots and related nanostructures due to hyperfine
interaction with surrounding nuclear spins. This topic is of particular
interest with respect to several proposals for quantum information processing
in solid state systems. Specifically, we investigate the hyperfine interaction
of an electron spin confined in a quantum dot in an s-type conduction band with
the nuclear spins in the dot. This interaction is proportional to the square
modulus of the electron wave function at the location of each nucleus leading
to an inhomogeneous coupling, i.e. nuclei in different locations are coupled
with different strength. In the case of an initially fully polarized nuclear
spin system an exact analytical solution for the spin dynamics can be found.
For not completely polarized nuclei, approximation-free results can only be
obtained numerically in sufficiently small systems. We compare these exact
results with findings from several approximation strategies.Comment: 26 pages, 9 figures. Topical Review to appear in J. Phys.: Condens.
Matte
Variance of transmitted power in multichannel dissipative ergodic structures invariant under time reversal
We use random matrix theory (RMT) to study the first two moments of the wave
power transmitted in time reversal invariant systems having ergodic motion.
Dissipation is modeled by a number of loss channels of variable coupling
strength. To make a connection with ultrasonic experiments on ergodic
elastodynamic billiards, the channels injecting and collecting the waves are
assumed to be negligibly coupled to the medium, and to contribute essentially
no dissipation. Within the RMT model we calculate the quantities of interest
exactly, employing the supersymmetry technique. This approach is found to be
more accurate than another method based on simplifying naive assumptions for
the statistics of the eigenfrequencies and the eigenfunctions. The results of
the supersymmetric method are confirmed by Monte Carlo numerical simulation and
are used to reveal a possible source of the disagreement between the
predictions of the naive theory and ultrasonic measurements.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Comparative analysis of sequence characteristics of imprinted genes in human, mouse, and cattle
Genomic imprinting is an epigenetic mechanism that results in monoallelic expression of genes depending on parent-of-origin of the allele. Although the conservation of genomic imprinting among mammalian species has been widely reported for many genes, there is accumulating evidence that some genes escape this conservation. Most known imprinted genes have been identified in the mouse and human, with few imprinted genes reported in cattle. Comparative analysis of genomic imprinting across mammalian species would provide a powerful tool for elucidating the mechanisms regulating the unique expression of imprinted genes. In this study we analyzed the imprinting of 22 genes in human, mouse, and cattle and found that in only 11 was imprinting conserved across the three species. In addition, we analyzed the occurrence of the sequence elements CpG islands, C + G content, tandem repeats, and retrotransposable elements in imprinted and in nonimprinted (control) cattle genes. We found that imprinted genes have a higher G + C content and more CpG islands and tandem repeats. Short interspersed nuclear elements (SINEs) were notably fewer in number in imprinted cattle genes compared to control genes, which is in agreement with previous reports for human and mouse imprinted regions. Long interspersed nuclear elements (LINEs) and long terminal repeats (LTRs) were found to be significantly underrepresented in imprinted genes compared to control genes, contrary to reports on human and mouse. Of considerable significance was the finding of highly conserved tandem repeats in nine of the genes imprinted in all three species
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