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Falling participation, which involves less and less legitimacy leads to increased dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy. New communication technologies in the area of policy by many was considered a remedy for the problems. Pirate parties present in dozens of countries postulate to return democracy to the citizens. One of the instruments is the Liquid Democracy, which can be found in their political agenda. This solution is not merely a theoretical construct, because for two years it was implemented in one of the German counties. Although Liquid Friesland met with massive public interest in the county of Friesland, the level of participation did not differ from other projects to participate in a digital democracy. ; Wykorzystanie nowych technologii komunikacyjnych w obszarze polityki przez wielu uważane było za remedium na jej problemy. Spadająca partycypacja, która pociąga coraz mniejszą legitymację ugrupowań zasiadających w parlamentach prowadzi do wzrostu niezadowolenia z funkcjonowania demokracji. Partie Piratów obecne w kilkudziesięciu państwach postulują, by demokrację zwrócić obywatelom. Jednym z instrumentów, które temu mają służyć jest płynna demokracja, którą znaleźć można w ich programach politycznych. Rozwiązanie to nie jest jedynie teoretycznym konstruktem, bowiem przez dwa lata wdrażano je w jednym z niemieckich powiatów. Choć Liquid Freisland nie spotkał się z masowym zainteresowaniem obywateli powiatu, to jednak poziom uczestnictwa nie odbiegał od udziału w innych projektach cyfrowej demokracji.

Wykorzystanie nowych technologii komunikacyjnych w obszarze polityki przez wielu uważane było za remedium na jej problemy. Spadająca partycypacja, która pociąga coraz mniejszą legitymację ugrupowań zasiadających w parlamentach prowadzi do wzrostu niezadowolenia z funkcjonowania demokracji. Partie Piratów obecne w kilkudziesięciu państwach postulują, by demokrację zwrócić obywatelom. Jednym z instrumentów, które temu mają służyć jest płynna demokracja, którą znaleźć można w ich programach politycznych. Rozwiązanie to nie jest jedynie teoretycznym konstruktem, bowiem przez dwa lata wdrażano je w jednym z niemieckich powiatów. Choć LiquidFreisland nie spotkał się z masowym zainteresowaniem obywateli powiatu, to jednak poziom uczestnictwa nie odbiegał od udziału w innych projektach cyfrowej demokracji. ; Falling participation, which involves less and less legitimacy leads to increased dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy. New communication technologies in the area of policy by many was considered a remedy for the problems. Pirate parties present in dozens of countries postulate to return democracy to the citizens. One of the instruments is the Liquid Democracy, which can be found in their political agenda. This solution is not merely a theoretical construct, because for two years it was implemented in one of the German counties. Although LiquidFriesland met with massive public interest in the county of Friesland, the level of participation did not differ from other projects to participate in a digital democracy.

The Pirate Party's 2009 election success has clearly demonstrated the increased importance of the internet as a communication space and forum for participation and collaboration. The buzzword Liquid Democracy connotes hopes for more political participation. In her contribution, Anja Adler moves away from the focus on the Pirate Party and looks at Liquid Democracy as a concept of democracy theory, as (political) participation software and as concrete application. In this, she compares the two software solutions Adhocracy and Liquid Feedback and examines possible links between Liquid Democracy and social media. From the perspective of party and participation research, she then analyses possibilities and limits of technology-based participation forms and concludes that despite all challenges, Liquid Democracy, understood as social software, has the potential of enhancing parties' political communication internally as well as externally. Adapted from the source document

We introduce drive-amplitude-modulation atomic force microscopy as a dynamic mode with outstanding performance in all environments from vacuum to liquids. As with frequency modulation, the new mode follows a feedback scheme with two nested loops: The first keeps the cantilever oscillation amplitude constant by regulating the driving force, and the second uses the driving force as the feedback variable for topography. Additionally, a phase-locked loop can be used as a parallel feedback allowing separation of the conservative and nonconservative interactions. We describe the basis of this mode and present some examples of its performance in three different environments. Drive-amplutide modulation is a very stable, intuitive and easy to use mode that is free of the feedback instability associated with the noncontact-to-contact transition that occurs in the frequency-modulation mode ; Funding by the Spanish government grants MAT2010-20843-C02-02, PLE2009-0065, Consolider CSD2010-00024 and CAM project and the Comunidad de Madrid No. 2009/MAT-1467. M. J. gives thanks for the JdC contract

Translating visual representations of real environments into auditory feedback is one of the key challenges in the design of an electronic travel aid for visually impaired persons. Although the solutions currently available in the literature can lead to effective sensory substitution, high commitment to an extensive training program involving repetitive sonic patterns is typically required, undermining their use in everyday life. The current study explores a novel sensory substitution algorithm that extracts information from raw depth maps and continuously converts it into parameters of a naturally sounding, physically based liquid sound model describing a population of bubbles. This approach is tested in a simplified wayfinding experiment with 14 blindfolded sighted participants and compared against the most popular sensory substitution algorithm available in the literature – the vOICe (Meijer, 1992) – following a short-time training program. The results indicate a superior performance of the proposed sensory substitution algorithm in terms of navigation accuracy, intuitiveness and pleasantness of the delivered sounds compared to the vOICe algorithm. These results should be applied to the visually impaired population with caution. ; This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 643636. ; Peer Reviewed

Distributed feedback (DFB) laser sensors with active films consisting of a highly efficient and photostable perylenediimide dye (perylene orange, PDI-O) dispersed in polysytrene (PS), used as passive matrix, are reported. PDIdoped- PS DFB lasers show an excellent operational durability under ambient conditions, superior to those of previously reported DFBs used for sensing purposes. Their bulk refractive index sensing capabilities, under exposure to liquids of different refractive index, have been determined from changes in their emission wavelength. The role of the active film thickness on both, the laser and the sensing performance, has been explored. The use of a thick active film (850 nm) allows obtaining the lowest possible threshold and highest operational lifetime for this type of device although the sensor sensitivity is lower than that achievable with a thin film (160 nm). It is also shown that the inclusion of a high refractive index TiO2 layer on top of the sensor structure allows improving the sensor sensitivity by around two times. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Government (MINECO) and the European Community (FEDER) through grant no. MAT-2011–28167-C02. M.M-V. has been partly supported by a MINECO FPI fellowship (no. BES-2009-020747).

The Pirate Party is characterised by the typical weaknesses of a small non-established party: lack of structures, precarious finances and erratic participants' motivation. However, its 2009 and 2011 electoral successes force the party to professionalise if they want to establish themselves in the long run. Its strong participation focus is an impediment in this regard. In their article, Alexander Hensel and Stephan Klecha illuminate the chaotic interlinkages between the Pirate Party's online and offline structures and analyse their participation software Liquid Feedback. It becomes clear that the software itself has fundamental democracy theory deficits, including in the delegation of votes or the contrast between freedom from manipulation and data protection. The authors point to the lack of a continuously working party structure, the cacophony of innumerable parallel communication channels and decision procedures lacking in bindingness and legitimacy as greatest obstacles to further professionalization. Adapted from the source document

[EN] This work presents an approach based on multi-task, non-conventional sliding mode control and admittance control for human-robot collaboration aimed at handling applications using force feedback. The proposed robot controller is based on three tasks with different priority levels in order to cooperatively perform the safe transportation of an object with a human operator. In particular, a high-priority task is developed using non-conventional sliding mode control to guarantee safe reference parameters imposed by the task, e.g., keeping a load at a desired orientation (to prevent spill out in the case of liquids, or to reduce undue stresses that may compromise fragile items). Moreover, a second task based on a hybrid admittance control algorithm is used for the human operator to guide the robot by means of a force sensor located at the robot tool. Finally, a third low-priority task is considered for redundant robots in order to use the remaining degrees of freedom of the robot to achieve a pre-set secondary goal (e.g., singularity avoidance, remaining close to a homing configuration for increased safety, etc.) by means of the gradient projection method. The main advantages of the proposed method are robustness and low computational cost. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are substantiated by experimental results using a redundant 7R manipulator: the Sawyer collaborative robot. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ; This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government under Project DPI2017-87656-C2-1-R, and the Generalitat Valenciana under Grants VALi+d APOSTD/2016/044 and BEST/2017/029. ; Solanes Galbis, JE.; Gracia Calandin, LI.; Muñoz-Benavent, P.; Valls Miro, J.; Carmichael, MG.; Tornero Montserrat, J. (2018). Human-robot collaboration for safe object transportation using force feedback. Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 107:196-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2018.06.003 ; S ; 196 ; 208 ; 107

196 208 107 ; S ; [EN] This work presents an approach based on multi-task, non-conventional sliding mode control and admittance control for human-robot collaboration aimed at handling applications using force feedback. The proposed robot controller is based on three tasks with different priority levels in order to cooperatively perform the safe transportation of an object with a human operator. In particular, a high-priority task is developed using non-conventional sliding mode control to guarantee safe reference parameters imposed by the task, e.g., keeping a load at a desired orientation (to prevent spill out in the case of liquids, or to reduce undue stresses that may compromise fragile items). Moreover, a second task based on a hybrid admittance control algorithm is used for the human operator to guide the robot by means of a force sensor located at the robot tool. Finally, a third low-priority task is considered for redundant robots in order to use the remaining degrees of freedom of the robot to achieve a pre-set secondary goal (e.g., singularity avoidance, remaining close to a homing configuration for increased safety, etc.) by means of the gradient projection method. The main advantages of the proposed method are robustness and low computational cost. The applicability and effectiveness of the proposed approach are substantiated by experimental results using a redundant 7R manipulator: the Sawyer collaborative robot. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government under Project DPI2017-87656-C2-1-R, and the Generalitat Valenciana under Grants VALi+d APOSTD/2016/044 and BEST/2017/029. Solanes Galbis, JE.; Gracia Calandin, LI.; Muñoz-Benavent, P.; Valls Miro, J.; Carmichael, MG.; Tornero Montserrat, J. (2018). Human-robot collaboration for safe object transportation using force feedback. Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 107:196-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.robot.2018.06.003

Fil: Martino, Antonio Anselmo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Derecho. Cátedra Introducción al Derecho. Buenos Aires, Argentina ; Fil: Martino, Antonio Anselmo. Universidad de Belgrano. Cátedra Filosofía del Derecho. Buenos Aires, Argentina ; Fil: Martino, Antonio Anselmo. Universidad de Pisa. Cátedra Derecho Informático. Pisa, Italia ; Fil: Martino, Antonio Anselmo. Universidad de Pisa. Facultad de Ciencias Políticas. Cátedra Ciencias Políticas. Pisa, Italia ; Tema: Los Derechos Electorales y la Representación Política / Alberto Dalla Vía, coord. --

The refractive index sensing capabilitity of distributed feedback (DFB) lasers based on highly photostable (under ambient conditions) perylenediimide-based active films, are reported. The sensor bulk sensitivity is determined from changes in the laser emission wavelength upon exposure to different liquids. The role of the active film thickness (hf) on the sensor sensitivity and on the laser parameters is studied. Sensors based on very thin films (hf = 160 nm) show the highest sensitivities, but their laser thresholds are relatively high and their operational durabilities moderate. The use of thicker films (hf = 850 nm) allows reducing the laser threshold and increasing the durability by two orders of magnitude. In this case, a higher sensitivity is achieved when the sensor operates at the wavelength corresponding to the first-order TE1 mode, instead of at the TE0 one. Finally, it is also shown that the inclusion of a high refractive index TiO2 layer on top of the sensor structure improves the sensitivity by around two times. ; This work was supported by the Spanish Government (MINECO) and the European Community (FEDER) through grant no. MAT-2011–28167-C02. This work was partially funded by the Basque Government within the framework of the Etortek Program (Grant No. IE13-360). M. Morales-Vidal has been partly supported by a MINECO FPI fellowship (no. BES-2009-020747).

The authors acknowledge financial support from the European Research Council (ERC StG ABLASE, 640012), the Scottish Funding Council (via SUPA) and the European Union Marie Curie Career Integration Grant (PCIG12-GA-2012-334407). M.K. and G.L.W. acknowledge funding from the EPSRC DTG (EP/M506631/1 and EP/K503162/1). M.S. acknowledges funding from the European Commission for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (659213). I.D.W.S. acknowledges funding from a Royal Society Wolfson research merit award. The research data supporting this publication can be accessed at http://dx.doi.org/10.17630/0ed7dad7-75e1-4ab9-9845-c455d1a7c6a4. ; We demonstrate an evanescently pumped water-based optofluidic DFB laser with a record low pump threshold of ETH = 520 nJ. The low threshold results from an optimized mode shape, which is achieved by a low refractive index substrate, and from the use of a mixed-order DFB grating. Investigating the photonic band structure via angular dispersion analysis both above and below lasing threshold allows us to measure the refractive index of the liquid gain layer and to determine device parameters such as the waveguide core layer thickness. We show that it is possible to tailor the divergence of the lasing emission by varying the number of second order grating periods used for outcoupling. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

The extraction of sucrose in a sugarcane diffuser depends on the percolation rate of juice through the cane bed. High percolation rates promote mass transfer and increase the wetness of the cane bed (i.e. liquid hold-up within the bed) thereby improving sucrose extraction. However, increasing the rate of juice applied to the surface of the cane bed above the maximum percolation rate results in flooding, causing uncontrolled mixing of juice, destruction of the dry substance content profile and reduced extraction. Flooding in the diffuser can be avoided by installing feedback control of adjustable sprays that alter the application area of juice onto the bed surface and automatically keeping the percolation rate optimised. Electrical conductivity of the cane bed, measured between the bed surface and the bottom screen of the diffuser, has been investigated as a possible online indicator of juice hold-up within the cane bed to provide the necessary measurement for implementing feedback control that can optimise percolation rates. Full scale tests were conducted on the Tongaat Hulett cane diffuser at the Maidstone factory. Reproducibility tests were done to confirm that there is a relationship between conductance and liquid hold-up.