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The purpose of this paper is to report thick film environmental and chemical sensor arrays designed for deployment in both subterranean and submerged aqueous applications.

Various choices of materials for reference electrodes employed in these different applications have been evaluated and the responses of the different sensor types are compared and discussed.

Results indicate that the choice of binder materials is critical to the production of sensors capable of medium term deployment (e.g. several days) as the binders not only affect the tradeoff between hydration time and drift but also have a significant bearing on device sensitivity and stability. Sensor calibration is shown to remain an issue with long‐term deployments (e.g. several weeks) but this can be ameliorated in the medium term with the use of novel device fabrication and packaging techniques.

The reported results indicate that is possible through careful choice of materials and fabrication methods to achieve near stable thick film reference electrodes that are suitable for use in solid state chemical sensors in a variety of different application areas.

The purpose of this paper is to show how the fabrication parameters of screen‐printed thick‐film reference electrodes have been experimentally varied and their effect on device characteristics investigated.

The tested devices were fabricated as screen‐printed planar structures consisting of a silver back contact, a silver/silver chloride interfacial layer and a final salt reservoir layer containing potassium chloride. The fabrication parameters varied included deposition method and thickness, salt concentration and binder type used for the final salt reservoir layer. Characterisation was achieved by monitoring the electrode potentials as a function of time following initial immersion in test fluids in order to ascertain initial hydration times, subsequent electrode drift rates and useful lifetime of the electrodes. Additionally, the effect of fabrication parameter variation on electrode stability and their response time in various test media was also investigated.

Results indicate that, although a trade‐off exists between hydration times and drift rate that is dependent on device thickness, the initial salt concentration levels and binder type also have a significant bearing on the practical useful lifetime. Generally speaking, thicker devices take longer to hydrate but have longer useful lifetimes in a given range of chloride environments. However, the electrode stability and response time is also influenced by the type of binder material employed for the final salt reservoir layer.

The reported results help to explain better the behaviour of thick‐film reference electrodes and contribute towards the optimisation of their design and fabrication for use in solid‐state chemical sensors.

In this chapter, we examine the unique and heightened negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through tracing how the preexisting social conditions of exclusion and precarity in which many disabled people live, effected access to safe, affordable, and accessible housing in Canada. We then illustrate the reverberating impacts housing choices have on how people with disabilities lived, lived well, and how they faced barriers to living well during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using an intersectional livelihoods approach, we analyzed semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 32 diverse people with disabilities, 12 key informant semi-structured interviews, as well as academic and community literature and a social media scan of key disability advocacy organizations in Canada.

Pandemic-related policies in Canada often excluded people with disabilities, either overlooking barriers to access and safety, which exacerbated the already precarious livelihoods of people with disabilities or over-emphasized the usefulness of social adaptions such as work from home. These exclusions had more profound consequences for people with disabilities from historically marginalized groups, as they often faced increased barriers to livelihoods pre-pandemic, and disability- or care-specific policies failed to consider intersectional experiences of discrimination. People with disabilities formed communities of care to meet their needs and those of their loved ones.

To achieve a responsive policy response that addresses the cascading impacts of risk and care, it is necessary for governments to engage, early and often, with people with disabilities, disability leaders and organizations in emergency planning and beyond.

An information system is the result of a hierarchy of decisions—Who are the system users? What are their information needs? What formal services will be offered to them? Through what media will services be provided? How will these media be produced? At every point there are alternative answers to these questions.

The main goal of the study is to investigate how same-brand slogans simultaneously in use in two emerging markets, namely Turkey and Russia, differ semantically. The study further examines in what ways the industrial competition structure impacts the semantic slogan design within these two contexts.

The study uses the method of semantic explication that is based on a 19-device taxonomy. This method is applied to 56 slogan pairs in the Turkish and Russian languages launched for the same brands/products across 6 industries.

Results indicate that same-brand slogans differ semantically between Turkey and Russia. Moreover, firms tend to conform to a shared semantic pattern within a given industry, largely depending on the industrial competition structure. While strong local competition (as in the electronics and cleaning products industries in Turkey and in the personal care and beverages industries in Russia) leads firms to use self-reference, international competition (as in the automotive, personal care and beverages industries in Turkey and in the electronics and cleaning products industries in Russia) promotes them to use hyperbole in their slogan design.

Adopting a common semantic pattern within an industry may carry the risk of restricting brand differentiation and consumers' sense of novelty. Furthermore, the inclusion of brand names in slogans may make slogans sound assertive and lead consumers to overreact to the brand.

Unlike many studies exploring different-brand slogans through a syntactic or grammatical lens, this study investigates the semantic features of same-brand slogans launched in two emerging market contexts. It adopts a B2B perspective, unlike many extant studies that often focus on a B2C one.