Light‐emitting polymers for full‐color display applications

The latest developments in light‐emitting‐polymer (LEP) technology at CDT continue to show steady progress. Device performance for blue, green, and red systems as well as a high‐performance yellow system in terms of device efficiency and stability will be described. Some of the issues associated with the commercialization of LEP technology including the development of direct‐patterning techniques enabling full‐color passive‐ and active‐matrix display will be discussed.     

Understanding e-Government project trajectories from an actor-network perspective

A number of models have been offered to help explain the trajectories of e-Government projects: their frequent failures and their rarer successes. Most, though, lack a sense of the political interaction of stakeholders that is fundamental to understanding the public sector. This paper draws on actor-network theory to provide a perspective that is used to explain the trajectory of an e-Government case study. This perspective is found to provide a valuable insight into the local and global actor-networks that surround e-Government projects. The mobilisation, interaction and disintegration of these networks underpins the course of such projects, and can itself be understood in relation to network actor power: not through a static conception of ‘power over’ others but through the dynamic-enacted concept of ‘power to’. As well as providing a research tool for analysis of e-Government project trajectories, the local/global networks approach also offers insights into e-Government leadership as a process of network formation and maintenance; and into the tensions between network stabilisation and design stabilisation.     

Conceptualising the link between information systems and resilience: A developing country field study

Resilience—the ability of systems to cope with external shocks and trends—is a topic of increasing interest to research and practice. That growing interest is reflected within information systems (IS), but a structured review of IS literature shows a number of knowledge gaps around the conceptual and empirical application of resilience. This paper investigates what the subdiscipline of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) can contribute; finding that it offers the IS discipline fresh insights that can be built into a new framework of resilience, and an arena within which this new framework can appropriately be field tested. Application of the resilience framework was undertaken through interviews and a survey in an urban community in Costa Rica; benchmarking both community resilience and “e‐resilience” (understood here as the contribution of ICTs to community resilience), and developing from these a set of action priorities. The paper reflects on what can be learned generally from this conceptualisation and operationalisation of resilience. It also reflects on what ICTs contribute to resilience in developing countries and on what this ICT4D‐based research specifically contributes to the identified IS knowledge gaps. This includes identification of a future research agenda on information systems and resilience.     

ICT4D 2.0: The Next Phase of Applying ICT for International Development

Use of information and communication technologies for international development is moving to its next phase. This will require new technologies, new approaches to innovation, new intellectual integration, and, above all, a new view of the world's poor.     

Transient changes in material conductivity due to impact ionisation in a Gunn-effect domain

An interesting phenomenon is reported which occurs when a long sample of GaAs containing a high-field domain is subjected to an increased level of drive during part of it first cycle. Under such conditions there is produced locally, at the position where the domain is situated when the overdrive is applied, an increase in the free-carrier concentration, which then decays relatively slowly (approximately 1 ?s). The effect is very similar to that first observed by Owens and Kino and ascribed by them to the generation of a second stable domain while the first is in transit through the device.     

Optimum loading for relaxation l.s.a. diode

In the relaxation l.s.a. mode, the r.f. waveform across the loaded diode reaches very high voltages and then approaches, in part, the first cycle of a damped oscillation. The degree of damping depends on the loading of the circuit. It is shown theoretically that, for typical drive voltages, if the load is greater than G0/120 where G0 is the low-field device conductance, the voltage will not ultimately fall below threshold, accumulated space charge will not be dispersed and the diode will suffer avalanche breakdown owing to domain formation. Conversely, the loading must approach G0/120 to obtain maximum efficiency. These effects have been demonstrated in a pseudolumped circuit, using vapour-epitaxial metal-contacted devices. 400 W of peak power with 13.6% efficiency at 6.1 GHz has been obtained.     

Synching or sinking: global software outsourcing relationships

Global software outsourcing is the outsourcing of software development to subcontractors outside the client organization's home country, India is the leading GSO subcontractor, registering average annual growth of more than 40 percent over the last decade and developing nearly US$4 billion in software for foreign clients in FY 1999. Indian firms now develop software for nearly one-third of the Fortune 5002. The authors investigate the strategies that differentiate successful and unsuccessful value chain moves     

Relaxation l.s.a. mode in InP

What are believed to be the first convincing observations of relaxation l.s.a.-mode operation in InP are reported. Devices fabricated from vapour-phase epitaxial material have shown the characteristic `signatures? of the mode in oscillators operated in S- and X-bands. So far, conversion efficiencies have not exceeded those for comparable samples in GaAs, almost certainly owing to remaining material limitations in the relatively thick active layers. The significance of the results lies, in practical terms, in the promise of high-peak-power sources with acceptable efficiencies, and, in diagnostic terms, in the derived information on the magnitude of the fundamental transferred-electron characteristic peak/valley ratio in InP and in achievable material quality factors for thick epitaxial layers.