No / Effective integrated water management is a key component of the World Water Vision and the way in which aspirations for water equity may be realized. Part of the vision includes the promotion of sustainability of water systems and full accountability for their interaction with other urban systems. One major problem is that “sustainability” remains an elusive concept, although those involved with the provision of urban wastewater systems now recognize that decisions involving asset investment should use the “triple bottom line” approach to society, the economy, and the environment. The Sustainable Water Industry Asset Resource Decisions project has devised a flexible and adaptable framework of decision support processes that can be used to include the principles of sustainability more effectively. Decision mapping conducted at the outset of the project has shown that only a narrow range of criteria currently influence the outcome of asset investment decisions. This paper addresses the concepts of sustainability assessment and presents two case studies that illustrate how multicriteria decision support systems can enhance the assessment of the relative sustainability of a range of options when decisions are being made about wastewater asset investment.

No / One of the features of the post-Cold War era has been a remarkable growth in academic and policy attention devoted to the role played by economic actors and economic agendas in the inception and perpetuation of civil conflicts as well as in shaping the prospects for postconflict peacebuilding. This has incorporated a large and diverse range of themes ranging from the trading of specific conflict goods, the conflict dynamics resulting from the interaction of greed, feasibility, and grievance factors at the local level, the broader economic and governance challenges arising from what has been labelled the ‘resource curse’, and the even broader challenges produced by the interaction of local, regional, and global economic structures.

No description available.

We study optimal replacement and abandonment decisions for real assets, when both revenues and costs are uncertain and deteriorate with age. We develop an implicit representation of the renewal boundary as the solution to a set of simultaneous equations. This quasi-analytical method has the merit of computational ease and transparency. We show that the correlation between revenues and operating costs has a significant influence on the renewal boundary, and that the increase in revenue immediately following a renewal has a greater relative influence on the boundary than either operating cost or renewal cost. The quasi-analytical method is sufficiently flexible to deal with other real option models involving 2 variables.

No / This report covers experimental studies and numerical modelling of interfacial instability in the bi-layer coextrusion flow of two low-density polyethylene melts. Melt streams are converged at an angle of 30° to a common die land. Melt stream confluence was observed in two coextrusion die arrangements. In one die design, which we term ‘bifurcated’ the melt stream is split by a divider plate in the die after being delivered from a single extruder. In the other design melt streams are delivered to a die from two separate extruders. In each die design melt flow in the confluent region and die land to the die exit was observed through side windows of a visualization cell. Velocity ratios of the two melt streams were varied and layer thickness ratios producing wave type interfacial instability determined for each melt for a variety of flow conditions. Stress and velocity fields in the coextrusion arrangements were quantified using stress birefringence and particle image velocimetry techniques. Wave type interfacial instability occurred in the processing of the low-density polyethylene melts at specific, repeatable, stream layer ratios. The birefringent pattern in the confluence region and the beginning of the die land appeared stable even when the extrudate exhibited instability. However, disturbances were observed in the flow field near the exit of the die land. The study demonstrates conclusively it is possible for interfacial instability to occur in the coextrusion of the same melt. The study also shows that wave type interfacial instability in the coextrusion process is not caused by process perturbations of extruder screw rotation. Increased melt elasticity appears to promote this type of instability. A modified Leonov model and Flow 2000™ software was used to simulate the LDPE melt flows through these geometries. There was reasonable agreement between modelled at experimentally determined stress fields. Modelling however provided far more detailed stress gradient information than could be resolved from the optical techniques. A total normal stress difference (TNSD) sign criterion was used to predict the critical layer ratio for the onset of the interfacial instability in one die arrangement and good agreement between theory and experiment has been obtained.

No

A resistively loaded bowtie antenna, intended for applications in breast cancer detection, is adaptively modified through modelling and genetic optimization. The required wideband operating characteristic is achieved through manipulation of the resistive loading of the antenna structure, the number of wires, and their angular separation within the equivalent wire assembly. The results show an acceptable impedance bandwidth of 100.75%, with a challenge VSWR <; 2, over the interval from 3.3 GHz to 10.0 GHz. Feasibility studies were made on the antenna sensitivity for operation in a tissue-equivalent dielectric medium. The simulated and measured results are all in close agreement.

No / This article explores the need for a framework that will assist social workers to identify when religion and belief are significant in the lives and circumstances of service users and how to take sufficient account of these issues in specific pieces of practice. It outlines the Furness / Gilligan framework and suggests that such frameworks should be used as a part of any assessment, while also being potentially useful at all stages of intervention. It reports on feedback gathered by the authors from first and final MA Social Work students who were asked to pilot the framework. It analyses their responses, in the context of national and international literature. It concludes that such a framework provides the necessary structure and challenge to assist social workers in acknowledging and engaging with issues arising from religion and belief that otherwise may remain overlooked, ignored or avoided, regardless of how significant they are to service users.

This article reports on the findings of questionnaires completed by fifty-seven social work students studying at four universities in northern England and the English midlands. The questionnaires surveyed students' views about the extent to which issues of religion and belief had been discussed in practice settings over a twelve-month period. A range of factors are identified that either encourage or discourage them from considering or exploring religion and belief in their work, in relation to the attitudes of colleagues and service users, themselves and their agencies. Their responses suggest that individual perspectives on and experiences of religion together with the informal views of colleagues determine whether and how religion and belief are acknowledged as significant and relevant. Students reported that few agencies promoted any opportunity for staff development and training in respect of this area, perhaps because issues of religion and belief are not considered important or are given less priority amongst other issues and responsibilities.

No / A new casting of diasporas, exiles and returnees as potentially transformative agents in post-conflict polities is the topic of this article. ‘Return of Qualified Expatriates’ programmes have recently been launched by international agencies in a number of post-conflict countries in an attempt to promote better capacity-building within post-conflict states institutions. This article argues that the ostensible technical orientation of these programmes is misleading, and they have a political significance which is noted and contested locally. In political terms, they represent attempts to smuggle Western hierarchies of knowledge into post-conflict reconstruction efforts under the cover of ethnic solidarity, to the detriment of local participation and empowerment. The article argues further that this is always contested by interested parties locally, often by mobilising alternative capacities, labelled ‘authentic’, in opposition. As such, strategies that attempt to use ethnic ties to overcome this local contestation are placing a significant burden on ethnic categories that are slippery, malleable and contested in post-conflict contexts. These points are demonstrated with reference to the cases of Cambodia and Timor-Leste.