The increasing recognition globally of the difficulties faced by local governments in their attempts to address the complex nature of urban policy has led to engaged scholarship and knowledge ...co-production increasingly being invoked. To better understand how knowledge partnerships are formed, sustained and the (perceived) benefits of such knowledge configurations, this paper draws on the knowledge transfer programme (KTP). The KTP (2012-2015) was a partnership between academic researchers at the University of Cape Town and city practitioners at the City of Cape Town, based on the assumption that a single knowledge base is not sufficient to respond to the changing nature of urban and environmental change. The benefit of partnerships and the collaborative approach used in the KTP are detailed. Using qualitative research methods, it is argued that more engaged interactions, including knowledge co-production approaches between the researchers and the practitioners generates multiple benefits. Whilst the engagement for both institutions lies in the knowledge produced during the interaction, the process of embedding in alternate institutional spaces for sustained periods resulted in building trust, deepening partnerships and surfacing of tacit knowledge. Furthermore, individual benefits accrued by participants including support available to researchers and officials through fostered relationships, access to data and knowledge, improved understanding of urban issues, broadened networks via new partnerships, conceptual reflection and wider knowledge bases through collaboration and embedded research were found to be significant.
Titanium dioxide is widely used in a lot of applications. The properties of TiO2 strongly depend on its phase composition. The transformation temperature between phases is influenced by a lot of ...factors. One of them is a type of substrate under the TiO2 film. In presented work, thin films of TiO2 were deposited by the sol–gel method on silicon, stainless steel (304L) and Co–Cr–Mo alloy (Vitallium). The process of anatase–rutile phase transformation was investigated by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) studies of deposited coatings. The results were compared with anatase–rutile transformations temperature of TiO2 powders obtained by analogous sol–gel process. The temperature of anatase–rutile phase transformation changed in the range of 700–1000°C and strongly depends on a kind of substrate. It was found that anatase–rutile transformation of TiO2 coating proceeded at a higher temperature than rutilization of titania powders.
In this work, we compare the protective properties, morphology, and adhesion of unary and composite, sandwich Al
2
O
3
–TiO
2
coatings deposited on X5CrNi18-9 austenitic stainless steel using the ...sol-gel method. It is found that the type and sequence of the films in investigated composite sandwich coatings have essential influence on their properties. The best protective properties exhibit coatings in which Al
2
O
3
film is directly on the substrate surface. The best adhesion is revealed in coatings in which TiO
2
film is directly on the steel surface. It is found that composite oxide sol-gel coatings improve the resistance of stainless steel better then unary coatings both in the range of electrochemical and high-temperature corrosion. This improvement can result from mutual influence of titania and alumina films by delay of their crystallization process.
Iron doped titanium dioxide coatings were synthesized with the help of RF plasma enhanced CVD technique. As a source of titanium, titanium chloride (IV) TiCl4 was used while iron pentacarbonyl (0) ...Fe(CO)5 served as iron supply. The coatings were diagnosed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Their elemental and chemical composition was studied with the help of X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, respectively. For the determination of their optical properties, variable angle spectroscopic ellipsometry (VASE) and ultraviolet-visible (UV-Vis) spectroscopy techniques were used. Iron content in the range of 0.07–11.5 at% was found in the films. Apart from oxygen, titanium and iron, a presence of trace amounts of chlorine, very likely originating from the titanium precursor, was recorded. FTIR studies showed that iron was built-in in the structure of TiO2 matrix. Surface roughness, assessed using SEM and AFM techniques, increases with an increasing content of this element. VASE measurements revealed an increase of the coatings refractive index with a growing iron concentration, with the extinction coefficient remaining low and independent of that parameter. Trace amounts of iron resulted in a lowering of an absorption threshold of the films as well as their optical gap, but the tendency was reversed for high concentrations of that element.
The new plasma enhanced aerosol–gel technique has been used for alumina films preparation, in this work. This process integrates aerosol–gel deposition of films and their plasma treatment in one ...reactor. The alumina films deposited by aerosol–gel method on Si substrate were plasma or thermally treated. The influence of deposition and condensation conditions on properties of the films was studied. Produced coatings were characterized in terms of surface morphology (SEM, AFM) as well as crystalline and chemical structure (FTIR, XRD). Plasma discharge used for modification of the substrates prior to the deposition process improved homogeneity of produced coatings. Coatings obtained at room temperature exhibit boehmite structure which was transformed into γ-Al2O3 after annealing. A similar transformation was induced by low temperature oxide plasma discharge treatment for sufficiently thin coatings.
A “STRATEGIC COMPASS” OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. STRENGTHENED SECURITY AND MORE EFFECTIVE DEFENSE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION – THE PLAN OF ACTION UNTIL 2030 The article focuses on the analysis of A Strategic ...Compass for Security and Defence of European Union adopted on March 2022 with the perspective of its implementation over the next 5-10 years. The return of war in Europe due to Russia’s aggression against the sovereign Ukrainian state accelerated the start of an intense debate in the EU on building common military defense capabilities of the EU member states and strengthening the issue of defending its interests. The EU must develop it to act independently and must draw conclusions from recent crises by reducing “critical dependencies.” Can the Strategic Compass become a response to threats in the new constellation of forces in the international order and thus a real project for building its own strategic power projection in international relations? The expansion of military component of the implementation of security policy should achieve an equivalent level of intervention in relation to the economic and civilian activities implemented so far as a comprehensive EU approach to responding to external conflicts and crisis challenges of the modern world. Should the EU be a global military power? The EU’s four main priority activities within its “strategic compass” were analyzed in detail: acting, securing, investing, partnership with NATO and the UN and with the countries of the global South; the EU’s security in the context of China and Russia; the “Strategic Compass”; and the EU’s taking greater responsibility for its own security and defense on a regional and global scale.
We present IntU package for Mathematica computer algebra system. The presented package performs a symbolic integration of polynomial functions over the unitary group with respect to unique normalized ...Haar measure. We describe a number of special cases which can be used to optimize the calculation speed for some classes of integrals. We also provide some examples of usage of the presented package.
The inequality in capital or resource distribution is among the important phenomena observed in populations. The sources of inequality and methods for controlling it are of practical interest. To ...study this phenomenon, we introduce a model of interaction between agents in the network designed for the purpose of reducing the inequality in the distribution of capital. To achieve the effect of inequality reduction we interpret the outcome of the elementary game played in the network such that the wining the game is translated into the reduction of the inequality. We study different interpretations of the introduced scheme and their impact on the behaviour of agents in the terms of the capital distribution and we provide examples based on the capital dependent Parrondo’s paradox. The results presented in this study provide insight into the mechanics of the inequality formation in the society.
•Flexible model for inequality reduction in the population.•Symmetric and asymmetric interpretations of the wining enabling the policy selection.•Analysis of the relation between Parrondo’s paradox in terms of capital and in terms of inequality.
Abstract
The variational quantum algorithms are crucial for the application of NISQ computers. Such algorithms require short quantum circuits, which are more amenable to implementation on near-term ...hardware, and many such methods have been developed. One of particular interest is the so-called variational quantum state diagonalization method, which constitutes an important algorithmic subroutine and can be used directly to work with data encoded in quantum states. In particular, it can be applied to discern the features of quantum states, such as entanglement properties of a system, or in quantum machine learning algorithms. In this work, we tackle the problem of designing a very shallow quantum circuit, required in the quantum state diagonalization task, by utilizing reinforcement learning (RL). We use a novel encoding method for the RL-state, a dense reward function, and an
ε
-greedy policy to achieve this. We demonstrate that the circuits proposed by the RL methods are shallower than the standard variational quantum state diagonalization algorithm and thus can be used in situations where hardware capabilities limit the depth of quantum circuits. The methods we propose in the paper can be readily adapted to address a wide range of variational quantum algorithms.
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