Dynamically mechanical and nano-impact (fatigue) analysis of touch screen thin films deposited on polyethylene terephthalate substrate

Nano-scale touch screen thin film have not been thoroughly investigated in terms of dynamic impact analysis under various strain rates. This research is focused on two different thin films, Zinc Oxide (ZnO) film and Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) film, deposited on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) substrate for the standard touch screen panels. Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA) was performed on the ZnO film coated PET substrates. Nano-impact (fatigue) testing was performed on ITO film coated PET substrates. Other analysis includes hardness and the elastic modulus measurements, atomic force microscopy (AFM), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) and the Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) of the film surface.
Ten delta of DMA is described as the ratio of loss modulus (viscous properties) and storage modulus (elastic properties) of the material and its peak against time identifies the glass transition temperature (Tg). Thus, in essence the Tg recognizes changes from glassy to rubber state of the material and for our sample ZnO film, Tg was found as 388.3 K. The DMA results also showed that the Ten delta curve for Tg increases monotonically in the viscoelastic state (before Tg) and decreases sharply in the rubber state (after Tg) until recrystallization of ZnO takes place. This led to an interpretation that enhanced ductility can be achieved by negating the strength of the material.
For the nano-impact testing using the ITO coated PET, the damage started with the crack initiation and propagation. The interpretation of the nano-impact results depended on the characteristics of the loading history. Under the nano-impact loading, the surface structure of ITO film suffered from several forms of failure damages that range from deformation to catastrophic failures. It is concluded that in such type of application, the films should have low residual stress to prevent deformation, good adhesive strength, durable and good resistance to wear.

Progress and Research in Cybersecurity - Supporting a resilient and trustworthy system for the UK

Executive summary
Digital systems have transformed, and will continue to transform, our world. Supportive government policy, a strong research base and a history of industrial success make the UK particularly well-placed to realise the benefits of the emerging digital society. These benefits have already been substantial, but they remain at risk. Protecting the benefits and minimising the risks requires reliable and robust cybersecurity, underpinned by a strong research and translation system.
Trust is essential for growing and maintaining participation in the digital society. Organisations earn trust by acting in a trustworthy manner: building systems that are reliable and secure, treating people, their privacy and their data with respect, and providing credible and comprehensible information to help people understand how secure they are.
Resilience, the ability to function, adapt, grow, learn and transform under stress or in the face of shocks, will help organisations deliver systems that are reliable and secure. Resilient organisations can better protect their customers, provide more useful products and services, and earn people’s trust.
Research and innovation in industry and academia will continue to make important contributions to creating this resilient and trusted digital environment. Research can illuminate how best to build, assess and improve digital systems, integrating insights from different disciplines, sectors and around the globe. It can also generate advances to help cybersecurity keep up with the continued evolution of cyber risks.
Translation of innovative ideas and approaches from research will create a strong supply of reliable, proven solutions to difficult to predict cybersecurity risks. This is best achieved by maximising the diversity and number of innovations that see the light of day as products.
Policy, practice and research will all need to adapt. The recommendations made in this report seek to set up a trustworthy, self-improving and resilient digital environment that can thrive in the face of unanticipated threats, and earn the trust people place in it.
Innovation and research will be particularly important to the UK’s economy as it establishes a new relationship with the EU. Cybersecurity delivers important economic benefits, both by underpinning the digital foundations of UK business and trade and also through innovation that feeds directly into growth. The findings of this report will be relevant regardless of how the UK’s relationship to the EU changes.
Headline recommendations
● Trust: Governments must commit to preserving the robustness of encryption, including end-to-end encryption, and promoting its widespread use. Encryption is a foundational security technology that is needed to build user trust, improve security standards and fully realise the benefits of digital systems.
● Resilience: Government should commission an independent review of the UK’s future cybersecurity needs, focused on the institutional structures needed to support resilient and trustworthy digital systems in the medium and longer term. A self-improving, resilient digital environment will need to be guided and governed by institutions that are transparent, expert and have a clear and widely-understood remit.
● Research: A step change in cybersecurity research and practice should be pursued; it will require a new approach to research, focused on identifying ambitious high-level goals and enabling excellent researchers to pursue those ambitions. This would build on the UK's existing strengths in many aspects of cybersecurity research and ultimately help build a resilient and trusted digital sector based on excellent research and world-class expertise.
● Translation: The UK should promote a free and unencumbered flow of cybersecurity ideas from research to practical use and support approaches that have public benefits beyond their short term financial return. The unanticipated nature of future cyber threats means that a diverse set of cybersecurity ideas and approaches will be needed to build resilience and adaptivity. Many of the most valuable ideas will have broad security benefits for the public, beyond any direct financial returns.

The making of professionals: Embedded civil society development in a transition country

The paper addresses the development of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in transition settings. Caught in the balance of knowledge exchange and translation of ideas from abroad, organisations in turbulent setting legitimise their existence by learning through professional networks. By association, organisational actors gain acknowledgement by their sector by traversing the corridors of influence provided by international partnerships. What they learn is how to conduct themselves as agents of change in society, and how to deliver on stated missions and goals, therefore, legitimising their presence in a budding civil society at home. The paper presents a knowledge production and learning practices framework which indicates a presence of dual identity of NGOs - their “embeddedness” locally and internationally. Selected framework dimensions and qualitative case study themes are discussed with respect to the level of independence of organisational actors in the East from their partners in the West in a post-socialist context. A professional global civil society as organisations are increasingly managed in similar, professional ways (Anheier & Themudo 2002). Here knowledge “handling” and knowledge “translation” take place through partnership exchanges fostering capable and/or competitive change-inducing institutions (Czarniawska & Sevon 2005; Hwang & Suarez 2005). How professional identity presents itself in the third sector, as well as the sector’s claim to expertise, need further attention, adding to ongoing discussions on professions in institutional theory (Hwang & Powell 2005; Scott 2008; Noordegraaf 2011). A conceptual framework on the dynamic involved for the construction professional fields follows: • Multiple case analysis provides a taxonomy for understanding what is happening in knowledge transition, adaptation, and organisational learning capacity for NGOs with respect to their role in a networked civil society. With the model we can observe the types of knowledge produced and learning employed by organisations. • There are elements of professionalisation in third sector work organisational activity with respect to its accreditation, sources and routines of learning, knowledge claims, interaction with the statutory sector, recognition in cross-sector partnerships etc. • It signals that there is a dual embeddedness in the development of the sector at the core to the shaping the sector’s professional status. This is instrumental in the NGOs’ goal to gain influence as institutions, as they are only one part of a cross-sector mission to address complex societal problems The case study material highlights nuances of knowledge production and learning practices in partnerships, with dual embeddedness a main feature of the findings. This provides some clues to how professionalisation as expert-making takes shape in organisations: • Depending on the type of organisations’ purpose, over its course of development there is an increase in participation in multiple networks, as opposed to reliance on a single strategic partner for knowledge artefacts and practices; • Some types of organisations are better connected within international and national networks than others and there seem to be preferences for each depending on the area of work; • The level of interpretation or adaptation of the knowledge artefacts is related to an organisation’s embeddedness locally, in turn giving it more influence within the network of key institutions; An overreaching theme across taxonomy categories (Table 1)is “professionalisation” or developing organisational “expertise”, embodied at the individual, organisational, and sector levels. Questions relevant to the exercise of power arise: Is competence in managing a dual embeddedness signals the development of a dual identity in professionalisation? Is professionalisation in this sense a sign of organisations maturing into more capable partners to the arguably more experienced (Western) institutions, shifting the power balance? Or is becoming more professional a sign of domestication to the agenda of certain powerful stakeholders, who define the boundaries of the profession? Which dominant dynamics can be observed in a broadly-defined transition country civil society, where individual participation in the form of activism may be overtaking the traditional forms of organised development work, especially with the spread of social media?