Nature of the normal incomplete cold antibody in human serum

Imperial Users onl

Reading for Distance: Form, Memory, and Space in Contemporary Novels of Migration

This essay proposes a reading ‘posture’ for fictions of migration that focuses on the concept of distance. By ‘posture,’ I mean an awareness of representations and uses of distance, in both form and content, through which the reader will gain a different perspective on socio-political and ethical questions emerging in fictions of migration. After an overview of approaches to the meanings of distance through philosophical, narratological, and mobility studies, I examine distance in contemporary novels of migration. This analysis considers representations of digital and surveillance technologies and reflects on their ability to “compress” distances. It also deals with distance as a temporal concept affecting memories. Two case studies are examined by paying attention to the role of distance in their formal and thematic characteristics. Exit West compresses the distance between countries and problematizes our understanding of borders and states through the literary device of the portals. The autodiegetic narrator in Open City explicitly and often lingers on distance and his understanding of it. As a character he chooses to put distance between himself and his home country, between his past and his present life. As a consequence, distance between the character-narrator and the reader is created and remains unresolved

Multilingual classrooms: opportunities and challenges for English medium instruction in low and middle income contexts

This report is the product of a research collaboration between Education Development Trust, the British Council and The Open University. Its starting point was to consider the complex field of English Medium Instruction (EMI) policies in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Its purpose is to provide insight and support to those responsible for setting policy or enacting it in complex language environments around the world. The work recognises the importance given to English language by governments in the future development of intellectual and economic capital, and to accessing opportunity in an increasingly global world. It also recognises and respects the strong argument calling for education and learning to be conducted in a language spoken by learners and teachers. Navigating these two influences can appear impossible at times as they can be unhelpfully positioned as opposites. This research study set out to do two things: • Look at the global literature and draw on the lessons from existing research. • Focus on illustrating the operational enactment and levels of understanding of EMI polices in schools in two primary school contexts – Ghana and Bihar, India. These very different contexts provide valuable lessons that will help policy makers, educators, teacher trainers and schools to navigate the complexities of multilingual EMI environments

A new meta-module for efficient reconfiguration of hinged-units modular robots

We present a robust and compact meta-module for edge-hinged modular robot units such as M-TRAN, SuperBot, SMORES, UBot, PolyBot and CKBot, as well as for central-point-hinged ones such as Molecubes and Roombots. Thanks to the rotational degrees of freedom of these units, the novel meta-module is able to expand and contract, as to double/halve its length in each dimension. Moreover, for a large class of edge-hinged robots the proposed meta-module also performs the scrunch/relax and transfer operations required by any tunneling-based reconfiguration strategy, such as those designed for Crystalline and Telecube robots. These results make it possible to apply efficient geometric reconfiguration algorithms to this type of robots. We prove the size of this new meta-module to be optimal. Its robustness and performance substantially improve over previous results.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Small farms in Italy between decline and innovative formula: an entrepreneurial model analysis

During the three-year period of our investigation, we found that the weight of family run farms declined and there was an increase in the role of farms integrated in the market and in integrated low-impact farm. This is a partial change which may be an indicator of a greater capacity of the entrepreneurial fabric to come to the market and the ability to capitalise on the relationship between farm and territory. Comparison between the two periods observing the behaviour of common farmers confirmed the substantial stability of the reference framework and offered further scope for interpretation. First, only about 22% changed their strategic profile. Shifts between strategic profiles especially affected family-run farms and light weighted specialised farms (17%). In particular, there was a major shift from the family-run type to the small, specialised farm. By contrast, the shift from the area of specialisation to the family-run type was less marked, and mostly concerned farms situated in marginal areas with less labour employed on the farm. Another element to be taken into consideration is that the second strategic profile, which has a positive balance of some importance, is that of integrated low-impact farms.Farmers strategic profile, enterpreneurial analysis, rural development, Agricultural and Food Policy, Q18, Q58,

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION: FROM A SUPPLY-DRIVEN TO A DEMAND-DRIVEN APPROACH IN THE EXPERIENCE OF CONSIP SPA

In Italy, the transformation of government procurement began in 2000 with the model developed by Consip SpA (a public company owned by the Ministry of Economy and Finance) for all public agencies across the nation. The paper is aimed to reconstruct the path taken by the public procurement reform in Italy gradually evolving from a supply-driven to a demand-driven approach. The Italian procurement transformation has co-existed with two different approaches to reform, which are working in parallel and sometimes at cross-purposes. A supply-driven approach focuses on tightening the controls on spending to tap economies of scale. A demand-driven approach focuses on decentralization and development of Electronic Public Administration MarketPlace (MEPA). The paper discusses the role Consip has played and is still playing to centrally guide the decentralization of public e-procurement, and shows the results of a sample investigation aimed at analysing the level of satisfaction of small/medium firms participating in the MEPA

Design study of special purpose systems for the lunar surface

Design of special purpose systems for lunar surface operation

Un ragionamento e quattro postille sull’Europa dell’euro e sull’ospitalità europea

The essay proposes some reflections upon the figure of the “guest”, a figure that Davide Tarizzo’s theoretical contribution tries to define in order to open a space that could conserve political subjectivity, however weak, for Europe and its institutional structures. Tarizzo seems to be proposing the theme of European hospitality as a political invention to be activated in order to contain the repercussions of the inevitable end of the single currency. The idea is, in general, appreciated and supported in this paper, with the conviction that it follows the main course of the construction of the European Union and that it contains a reason of erosion of the political weight of the single national subjectivities. However, there is reason to doubt that the proposal of defining the juridical profile of the European guest – as separated from national citizenship – is to be linked to the post-euro scenario. In other words, the doubt is that, if this scenario should occur, the proposal could not eventually be put de facto into practice.Il saggio propone qualche riflessione intorno alla figura che il contributo teorico di Davide Tarizzo prova a definire, per aprire uno spazio che possa conservare all’Europa e alla sua trama istituzionale una soggettività politica, per quanto debole: quella dell’ospite. Tarizzo sembra però proporre il tema dell’ospitalità europea come invenzione politica da attivare per parare i contraccolpi dell’inevitabile fine della moneta unica. Nel saggio, si apprezza in generale l’idea e la si sostiene, nella convinzione che essa si collochi lungo la linea principale della costruzione comunitaria, e che contenga un motivo di erosione del peso politico delle soggettività nazionali, ma si avanza un motivo di dubbio: che la proposta di definire il profilo giuridico dell’ospite europeo –in quanto distinto dalla cittadinanza nazionale– debba essere legata allo scenario post-euro. Il dubbio cioè che, qualora questo scenario si verificasse, la proposta possa poi essere effettivamente percorsa

Populism and anti-liberal thought: Lega and M5S in the Italian context

Representation, according to the populist rationale and the way how the relationship between démos and power is established, is the core issue of this article. ~us, it discusses how the populist challenge can a|ect, directly and indirectly, the way the representative and liberal democracy works. ~at is, the focus lies on how the populists build their own audience and on the institutional reshu e they propose to enforce the people’s will.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Conocimiento y virtualidad en la sociedad de la ultramodernidad

En la sociedad de la ultramodernidad no toda información procura conocimiento. Los procesos mecánicos de asunción de las imágenes, sub specie stimuli se presentan con inaudita fuerza en la nueva sociedad virtualizada: aquí los procesos de razonamiento y de interpretación por símbolos se formalizan, anulando o reduciendo la portada efectiva del contenido, del espacio y del tiempo. Esto determina profundos cambios en las relaciones sociales considerado que la aplicación mecánica del poder de administración de la información no logra administrar correctamente contenidos discrepantes. El cambio radical de la nueva sociedad del conocimiento perdido a una sociedad del conocimiento recuperado se hace patente. La sectorialización de los símbolos podría proporcionar conocimientos de categoría capaces de dar contenidos a la forma de la información.In the information society all information not offers knowledge. The mechanical processes of assumption of the images, sub specie stimuli shows up with unheard force in the new virtualized society: here the processes of reasoning and of interpretation for symbols are formalized, annulling or reducing the effective cover of the content, of the space and of the time. This determines deep changes in the social relationships considered that the mechanical application of the power of administration of the information is not able to administer correctly contained differing. The radical change of the new society of the lost knowledge to a society of the recovered knowledge becomes patent. The sectorialization of the symbols could provide knowledge of category able to give contained to the form of the information