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Series elastic actuators provide many benefits in force control of robots in unconstrained environments. These benefits include high force fidelity, extremely low impedance, low friction, and good force control bandwidth. Series elastic actuators employ a novel mechanical design architecture which goes against the common machine design principal of “stiffer is better”. A compliant element is placed between the gear train and driven load to intentionally reduce the stiffness of the actuator. A position sensor measures the deflection, and the force output is accurately calculated using Hooke’s Law (F = Kx). A control loop then servos the actuator to the desired output force. The resulting actuator has inherent shock tolerance, high force fidelity and extremely low impedance. These characteristics are desirable in many applications including legged robots, exoskeletons for human performance amplification, robotic arms, haptic interfaces, and adaptive suspensions.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

BY one of those strange coincidences that really happen occasionally there appears in two different places and by two different writers in the current issue of State Service (the official journal of the Institution of Professional Civil Servants) almost the same wording, certainly the same line of reasoning. Says the General Secretary William McCall, “The size of the Civil Service depends on the work that Parliament and the Government asks it to do.” Elsewhere (and to be fair, his article is a reprint of views he published else‐where and some time before the other) Press Officer Jimmy O'Dea is quoted: “… the number of civil servants is directly determined by the amount of work Parliament decrees must be done…”

Our research is about the trade in material goods from Asia to Europe over this period, and its impact on Europe’s consumer and industrial cultures. It entails a comparative study of Europe’s East India Companies and the private trade from Asia over the period. The commodities trade was heavily dependent on private trade. The historiography to date has left a blind spot in this area, concentrating instead on corruption and malfeasance. Taking a global history approach we investigate the trade in specific consumer goods in many qualities and varieties that linked merchant communities and stimulated information flows. We set out how private trade functioned alongside and in connection with the various European East India companies; we investigate how this changed over time, how it drew on the Company infrastructure, and how it took the risks and developed new and niche markets for specific Asian commodities that the Companies could not sustain.

This study aims to investigate the impact of the Brexit referendum on feelings of belonging and home among secondary migrant Somali families in the city of Birmingham. Here, the Brexit referendum is understood through the analytical framework of the politics of belonging in that it functioned as a political mechanism that demarcated who was able to belong and who was not.

This research was qualitatively designed, comprising 25 in-depth, semi-structured interviews that used a whole family methodological approach. In doing so, this paper considers how the referendum challenged notions of citizenship as well as community and individual identities.

For the families engaged, they experienced the referendum as a mechanism that immediately conveyed notions of “otherness” and “foreign-ness” onto them, thereby creating anxiety, uncertainty and instability. This paper argues that the emotional components of belonging were also challenged to the extent that feelings of security, safety and “home” became rendered meaningless through the disempowering impact of the referendum via the removal of autonomy and choice in the bonds that exist between people and places.

This paper generates new knowledge about the impact of the Brexit referendum. As “one-off” event, this research provides new insights into the political, social and cultural impacts of the vote. It considers a minority group that is seen to be hard to reach and thereby under-researched.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical research study which took a novel examination of the relationship between risk and transparency with regards to a company's intellectual capital assets. The objective of this study is to evaluate how the systematic and idiosyncratic risk of publicly traded companies correlates with the degree of available information regarding their intellectual capital statements.

Intellectual capital is measured within the framework of a rating system that includes 44 parameters within eight focus areas. These data were collected from key informants at eight publicly traded IT companies in Sweden.

The results show a negative correlation between idiosyncratic risk and transparency and a positive correlation between market risk and transparency. However, the correlation between risk and transparency may partly be explained by organization size.

This study was based on a small set of firms within one country so generalizability is limited.

The suggested methodology of intellectual capital measurement has since been used by over 400 organizations across four different continents.

This methodology consists of both qualitatively metrics as well as quantitative metrics that are then triangulated together to test various hypotheses.

Professional learning networks (PLNs) involve teachers’ collaboration with others outside of their school to improve teaching and learning. PLNs can facilitate teachers’ professional growth and school improvement. This study aims to explore the drivers for participation within PLNs, the enactment process and the impact of PLN participation on teachers, students and schools in Greece.

A descriptive phenomenological study was conducted to explore the lived experience of primary school teachers participating in PLNs.

The findings showed that individuals who were open to change were driving innovation to address a need or a lack in their daily practice that was not satisfied within their usual community of practice. The key element of the participation was peer collaboration with openness of communication without attendant accountability pressures. The change was mainly identified in teacher skills and the school climate. An individual could bring change only if the school is already open to change. In some cases, resistance to change in schools was identified before enactment or during enactment. The transformation of teachers’ and leaders’ stances is discussed, enabling the opportunity to maximise school improvement.

The study examines PLNs as European Union-funded initiatives that are developed by teachers in centralised education systems under the phenomenological research paradigm. It explores the PLNs in a different setting compared to the existing conceptual theory of change for PLNs.

Background: The ideas-informed society represents a desired situation in which: (1) citizens see value in staying up to date, and; (2) citizens regularly keep themselves up to date by actively, openly and critically engaging with new ideas, developments and claims to truth. As a result, it is hoped citizens become increasingly knowledgeable, better able to make good decisions, and better positioned to support new progressive norms and beliefs. Yet despite these potential benefits, a substantive proportion of the population do not value staying up to date, nor attempt to do so.

Methods: With this research project we seek to identify whether the theoretical lens of anomie can account for why “ideas refusers” do not engage with ideas, as well as provide clues as to how they might be encouraged to do so. To explore the possible impacts of anomie on ideas-engagement we conducted four online focus groups, interviewing a purposive sample of ten individuals who previously indicated they were ideas refusers.

Results: Our findings identify eleven themes which seemingly account for why ideas refusers do not currently engage with ideas. Of these, ten are related to anomie, including themes which encapsulate feelings of frustration, anxiety, confusion and powerlessness regarding the complexities of modern society.

Conclusions: We also identify three areas of future focus that might help the ongoing development of the ideas-informed society. These are: (1) the more positive and relevant reporting of ideas; (2) supporting “healthy” face-to-face engagement with ideas; and (3) supporting effective ideas engagement through social media.