3,507 research outputs found
LifeWatch – A European e-Science and observatory infrastructure supporting access and use of biodiversity and ecosystem data
There are many promising earth and biodiversity-monitoring projects underway across the globe, but they often operate in information islands, unable easily to share data with others. This is not convenient: It is a barrier to scientists collaborating on complex, cross-disciplinary projects which is an essential nature of biodiversity research. 

LifeWatch (www.lifewatch.eu) is an ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) initiative which has just entered its construction phase. It is aiming at new ways of collaboration, in an open-access research environment to solve complex societal and scientific questions on biodiversity and ecosystems. It installs a range of new services and tools to help the researchers communicate, share data, create models, analyze results, manage projects and organize the community. The power of LifeWatch comes from linking all kinds of biodiversity related databases (e.g. collections, long-term monitoring data) to tools for analysis and modeling, opening entirely new avenues for research with the potential for new targeted data generation. At this level the interface with national data repositories becomes most important, as this opens the opportunity for users to gain advantage from data availability on the European level. LifeWatch will provide common methods to discover, access, and develop available and new data, analytical capabilities, and to catalog everything, to track citation and re-use of data, to annotate, and to keep the system secure. This includes computing tool-kits for researchers: for instance, an interoperable computing environment for statistical analysis, cutting-edge software to manage the workflow in scientific projects, and access to new or existing computing resources. The result: ‘e-laboratories’ or virtual labs, through which researchers distributed across countries, time zones and disciplines can collaborate. With emphasis on the open sharing of data and workflows (and associated provenance information) the infrastructure allows scientists to create e-laboratories across multiple organizations, controlling access where necessary
Using Intelligent Agents to understand organisational behaviour
This paper introduces two ongoing research projects which seek to apply
computer modelling techniques in order to simulate human behaviour within
organisations. Previous research in other disciplines has suggested that
complex social behaviours are governed by relatively simple rules which, when
identified, can be used to accurately model such processes using computer
technology. The broad objective of our research is to develop a similar
capability within organisational psychology
Using entrepreneurial innovation to stabilize Europe: Introducing EDIE
Entrepreneurship is vital to growing markets. And across most of Europe, entrepreneurship is lacking. In 2013, the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor found that early stage entrepreneurial activity was less than 6% of the population between the working ages of 18-64 in Greece as well as in the four largest economies in Europe—Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. By contrast, BRIC countries and the United States each ranged between 10%-17% in early state entrepreneurial activity. Early stage activity is defined as either actively setting up a new business or owning and managing a new business for less than 42 months. The paucity of entrepreneurship and substantial investment in innovation among countries in Europe highlights the urgent need for European businesses and governments to work together to develop a new entrepreneurial innovation model to tackle financial deficits, create financial stability, and pull Europe through future crises. This new system can be thought of as an “Entrepreneur-Driven Innovation Ecosystem (EDIE).
Smectic-\u3cem\u3eA\u3c/em\u3e Elastomers with Weak Director Anchoring
Experimentally it is possible to manipulate the director in a (chiral) smectic-A elastomer using an electric field. This suggests that the director is not necessarily locked to the layer normal, as described in earlier papers that extended rubber elasticity theory to smectics. Here, we consider the case that the director is weakly anchored to the layer normal assuming that there is a free energy penalty associated with relative tilt between the two. We use a recently developed weak-anchoring generalization of rubber elastic approaches to smectic elastomers and study shearing in the plane of the layers, stretching in the plane of the layers, and compression and elongation parallel to the layer normal. We calculate, inter alia, the engineering stress and the tilt angle between director and layer normal as functions of the applied deformation. For the latter three deformations, our results predict the existence of an instability towards the development of shear accompanied by smectic-C-like order
Smectic-\u3cem\u3eC\u3c/em\u3e Tilt Under Shear in Smectic-\u3cem\u3eA\u3c/em\u3e Elastomers
Stenull and Lubensky [Phys. Rev. E 76, 011706 (2007)] have argued that shear strain and tilt of the director relative to the layer normal are coupled in smectic elastomers and that the imposition of one necessarily leads to the development of the other. This means, in particular, that a smectic-A elastomer subjected to a simple shear will develop smectic-C-like tilt of the director. Recently, Kramer and Finkelmann [e-print arXiv:0708.2024; Phys. Rev. E 78, 021704 (2008)], performed shear experiments on smectic-A elastomers using two different shear geometries. One of the experiments, which implements simple shear, produces clear evidence for the development of smectic-C-like tilt. Here, we generalize a model for smectic elastomers introduced by Adams and Warner [Phys. Rev. E 71, 021708 (2005)] and use it to study the magnitude of SmC-like tilt under shear for the two geometries investigated by Kramer and Finkelmann. Using reasonable estimates of model parameters, we estimate the tilt angle for both geometries, and we compare our estimates to the experimental results. The other shear geometry is problematic since it introduces additional in-plane compressions in a sheetlike sample, thus inducing instabilities that we discuss
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Grazing incidence X-ray reflectivity - a Round Robin test : Report of the International Commission on Glass (ICG) Technical Committee 19 "Glass Surface Diagnostics"
Densities and thicknesses of films of five different layer systems were determined in a grazing incidence X-ray analysis (GIXA) Round Robin test carried out by three industrial laboratories. The influence of both the experimental setup and the simulation software on these results is compared for the identical set of samples. Two approaches are adopted; firstly each laboratory measuring and simulating its own data and secondly each laboratory simulating the data that had been measured by another laboratory. The measured data from the three laboratories are analyzed and reasons proposed to explain the relatively minor differences between them. Comparisons are also made between the simulations produced from the two approaches to determine variations and any systematic bias between the three laboratories. Overall, good agreement in film densities and film thicknesses is found, demonstrating the high levels of accuracy that can be obtained from coating analysis using the GIXA technique
Smectic-C tilt under shear in Smectic-A elastomers
Stenull and Lubensky [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 76}, 011706 (2007)] have argued that
shear strain and tilt of the director relative to the layer normal are coupled
in smectic elastomers and that the imposition of one necessarily leads to the
development of the other. This means, in particular, that a Smectic-A elastomer
subjected to a simple shear will develop Smectic-C-like tilt of the director.
Recently, Kramer and Finkelmann [arXiv:0708.2024, Phys. Rev. E {\bf 78}, 021704
(2008)] performed shear experiments on Smectic-A elastomers using two different
shear geometries. One of the experiments, which implements simple shear,
produces clear evidence for the development of Smectic-C-like tilt. Here, we
generalize a model for smectic elastomers introduced by Adams and Warner [Phys.
Rev. E {\bf 71}, 021708 (2005)] and use it to study the magnitude of
Smectic-C-like tilt under shear for the two geometries investigated by Kramer
and Finkelmann. Using reasonable estimates of model parameters, we estimate the
tilt angle for both geometries, and we compare our estimates to the
experimental results. The other shear geometry is problematic since it
introduces additional in-plane compressions in a sheet-like sample, thus
inducing instabilities that we discuss.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure
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