Community-led resettlement: From a flood-affected slum to a new society in Pune, India

This paper describes the resettlement process of a community devastated by annual floods, to newly constructed housing in Pune, India. The relocation from Kamgar Putala slum to a housing society at Hadapsar was organized by a community-led NGO partnership in 2004. The housing development was coordinated by the local NGO Shelter Associates with significant community participation. The housing has been revisited in 2010 to evaluate the sustainability of the resettlement project's delivery model via stakeholder perception. The process of organizing for resettlement after natural disaster is described along with the implementation and evaluation of the new housing nearly six years after initial occupation. The strong partnership approach overcame a series of political and financial hurdles at various stages of the relocation project. The story of resettling Kamgar Putala is detailed alongside an outline of the current political climate for an alternative slum-upgrading policy in India and Pune. The advantages of an empowered community supported by an influential local NGO demonstrate a commendable team effort which has tackled the threat of floods. The paper highlights the merits of a community-led partnership approach to housing development for achieving sustainable urban development as well as the alleviation of poverty in a developing context. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

A Comparative Picture of Corporate Social Responsibility Approaches by Leading Companies in the United Kingdom and Brazil

Purpose - This paper compares CSR strategy, stakeholder engagement and overseas approaches of six leading companies which have large potential environmental and social impacts, influential stakeholders and notable CSR actions. Design/methodology/approach - It is an exploratory survey based on interviews of senior executives from British and Brazilian companies operating in the steel, petroleum and retail sectors and makes comparisons between and within them. Findings - British companies interviewed are more rule-based, adopt an implicit CSR approach; react to stakeholder’s demands based on moral motives and focus on environmental issues. The Brazilian companies, reviewed in this study, adopt an explicit CSR approach, have relational motives to engage with stakeholders and are more concerned with building a responsible image and narrowing social gaps. Research limitations/implications - The survey is based on perceptions of senior executives interviewed which may or may not correspond to actual practices. The sample size restricts generalization of results and specific firms interviewed may not represent the prevailing CSR business strategy in their respective countries. Practical implications - British companies can learn from the Brazilian experience how to become more innovative in a broader approach to CSR. Brazil should reinforce its legal framework to provide a more systematic and rule-based approach to CSR close to the UK experience. Originality/value - The way CSR is conceived and implemented depends on the ethical, socioeconomic, legal and institutional environment of the country in which the firm operates

Designing and testing an advanced pneumatic braking system for heavy vehicles

Heavy goods vehicles exhibit poor braking performance in emergency situations when compared to other vehicles. Part of the problem is caused by sluggish pneumatic brake actuators, which limit the control bandwidth of their antilock braking systems. In addition, heuristic control algorithms are used that do not achieve the maximum braking force throughout the stop. In this article, a novel braking system is introduced for pneumatically braked heavy goods vehicles. The conventional brake actuators are improved by placing high-bandwidth, binary-actuated valves directly on the brake chambers. A made-for-purpose valve is described. It achieves a switching delay of 3-4 ms in tests, which is an order of magnitude faster than solenoids in conventional anti-lock braking systems. The heuristic braking control algorithms are replaced with a wheel slip regulator based on sliding mode control. The combined actuator and slip controller are shown to reduce stopping distances on smooth and rough, high friction (μ = 0.9) surfaces by 10% and 27% respectively in hardware-in-the-loop tests compared with conventional ABS. On smooth and rough, low friction (μ = 0.2) surfaces, stopping distances are reduced by 23% and 25%, respectively. Moreover, the overall air reservoir size required on a heavy goods vehicle is governed by its air usage during an anti-lock braking stop on a low friction, smooth surface. The 37% reduction in air usage observed in hardware-in-the-loop tests on this surface therefore represents the potential reduction in reservoir size that could be achieved by the new system. © 2012 IMechE.

Annealing study of carrier concentration in gradient-doped GaAs/GaAlAs epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy

We measured the carrier concentration distribution of gradient-doped GaAs/GqAlAs epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy before and after annealing at 600 degrees C, using electrochemical capacitance voltage profiling, to investigate the internal variation of transmission-mode GaAs photocathodes arising from the annealing process. The results show that the carrier concentration increased after annealing. As a result, the total band-bending energy in the gradient-doped GaAs emission layer increased by 25.24% after annealing, which improves the pbotoexcited electron movement toward the surface. On the other hand, the annealing process resulted in a worse carrier concentration discrepancy between the GaAs and the GaAlAs, which causes a lower back interface potential barrier, decreasing the amount of high-energy photoelectrons. (C) 2009 Optical Society of America

Set invariance in control

The properties of positively invariant sets are involved in many different problems in control theory, such as constrained control, robustness analysis, synthesis and optimization. In this paper we provide an overview of the literature concerning positively invariant sets and their application to the analysis and synthesis of control systems.

协同环境中共有资源的细粒度协作访问控制策略

在军事和商业领域中,由多个自治域形成的协作群体对共有资源(如客体、应用程序以及服务等)的访问问题越来越受到重视.协作中的基本事实是:尽管这些自治域有共同的目标,但同时有不同的自身利益.为了有效地保护共有资源,把“信任”的概念引入了协作访问控制中,并在基于量化权限的思想上,提出了细粒度的协作访问控制策略.在该策略里,权限的使用形式是元权限,也就是单位权限,它是访问共有客体权限的一个划分,可为多个域中不同用户所拥有.当访问共有资源时,参与者们所拥有的元权限的值之和以及人数必须达到规定的权限门限值和人数值,并且访问时间是所有参与者的共同许可访问时间段,这使得可以对协作资源进行有效地分布控制.另外,还引入了元权限的使用时间段约束.最后,证明了该细粒度协作访问控制策略关于协作系统的状态转换是保持安全的.

基于安全操作系统的电子证据获取与存储

基于实时取证的思想,提出了一种安全可取证操作系统(security forensics operating system,简称SeFOS)的概念和实现思路.提出了其总体结构,建立了该系统的取证行为模型,对其取证服务和取证机制进行了分析并作了有关形式化描述,阐述了证据数据的采集和安全保护方法,提出把取证机制置于内核,基于进程、系统调用、内核资源分配和网络数据等获取证据的方法,并通过模拟实验验证了SeFOS的可取证性.可取证操作系统的研究对于进一步研究可取证数据库管理系统(forensic database management system,简称FDBMS)和可取证网络系统(forensic network,简称FNetWork)具有重要意义.

长白山维管束植物多样性分布格局及其影响因子的研究

生物多样性的研究极其广泛，生物多样性的形成、维持机制和分布格局也一直是生物学和环境科学等研究的重要内容，植物作为生物总体中的重要组分，其种类组成、各个种的历史和现时分布及数量等历来是分析研究的重要对象。本文以中国长白山区为研究区域，通过植物多样性数据、地理及地形因子、能量因子、水分因子以及采集量和采集频度等其他因子资料，利用ArcGIS 9.2地理信息系统软件和SPSS等统计学软件，将长白山区按照行政区划分为74个小区，搜集各小区的环境因子数据，统计了各小区的生物多样性的数量，包括种子植物科、属、种，蕨类植物种丰富度状况及采集状况，对长白山区维管束植物分布格局与环境因子的关系进行了研究。 通过SPSS软件等统计学软件的分析，研究了中国长白山区植物多样性分布格局及其与环境因子的关系。研究结果表明，维管束植物的分布格局与年均温、年均降水、1月平均温度和温暖指数（WI）呈显著正相关（P<0.01），与经度、纬度和寒冷指数（CI）呈显著负相关（P<0.01），其中，影响植物分布格局的最主要的两个因子是年均降水量和1月温度（P<0.01, t测验），地理地形因子、热量因子和水分因子与植物多样性分布格局相关性非常显著。长白山区是人们已经开展了大量工作并基本完成了维管束植物普遍采集调查的区域，植物本底资料积累很好，有大量植物信息储存于植物标本之中。植物标本本身和标本为载体所记载的标本采集时间、地点、生境、该植物种在当地的丰富度等相关资料是生物多样性研究中丰富的原始数据源。 长白山区维管束植物包括150科729属1747种。其中蕨类植物22科44属100种，裸子植物5科11属33种，被子植物123科674属1614种。在此基础上，分析长白山区域植物标本采集状况，结果显示植物物种丰富度较高的地区有安图、桓仁、本溪县、凤城、抚松、鞍山市、清原、丹东市、尚志等，而丰富度较低的区域有双鸭山市、延寿、宾县、七台河、双阳、图们、木兰、通河等。长白山区维管植物多样性资源丰富，但各个区域的物种采集状况多寡不均，采集工作比较好的多集中在植物多样性资源保护较好的山区和自然保护区内。

基于双边滤波和双树复小波的图像去噪算法

中国科学院