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The Conference on Anodised Aluminium, organised by the Aluminium Development Association and held in the new Cripps Hall at Nottingham University from September 12–14, was probably the first of its kind in the world and attracted nearly 300 delegates. Eighteen papers were discussed. In the following pages abstracts and conclusions from most of the papers are given, emphasis being placed on the corrosion aspects of the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize trends, issues, and policies related to development using a database of Searchlight reports. The paper seeks to utilize three techniques – conceptual tree visualizations to uncover patterns impacting regional development; network analysis to compare and contrast urbanization in South Asia and Southern Africa; and sentiment analysis to assess various sectors of development that elicit positive and negative reactions.

The paper presents a synthesis based on a unique database that was developed using a novel scoring scheme to quantify the development concepts presented in 312 Searchlight articles in a period between September 2009 and December 2010.

Primary and secondary concepts define an ontology that can be visualized to provide an overall synthesis of a subset of the Searchlight database. Social issues were significant in Asia, climate change narrative in Africa, and governance in Latin America. In terms of sentiments, negative sentiments tended to overshadow optimism. However, technology and knowledge was seen as a panacea along with social entrepreneurship in some regions of Asia. There is also a realization that newer issues related to climate change, resource and energy depletion, food insecurity and the current financial crisis will exacerbate present difficult conditions.

The paper suggests that qualitative data presented in various articles could be synthesized and visualized using data mining techniques. This methodology provides a comprehensive way to capture knowledge and insights provided by development experts to coherently share and discuss the multitude of common global challenges of the twenty‐first century.

The visualizations and data mining techniques are developed for this study context. The approach can add value by tracking and monitoring current and emerging trends relevant to the Foundation's strategic framework, operational initiatives, and areas of work. Parts of this paper have been presented in a previous publication (see www.bu.edu/pardee/publications‐library/connecting‐the‐dots/).

The Rockefeller Foundation has developed the first‐of‐its‐kind trend monitoring effort in the philanthropic and broader social sector, conceptualizing and operationalizing an approach that surfaces cutting‐edge intelligence with a distinctly on‐the‐ground perspective from individuals and institutions living and working throughout the developing world, known as the Searchlight function. The Searchlight function consists of a network of forward‐looking, regionally focused horizon scanning and trend monitoring organizations that conduct regular, ongoing scanning for novel ideas, research results, and “clues” as to where the world is evolving. This article aims to focus on the Searchlight function and to introduce the Special Issue.

The article describes the goals and evolution of the Searchlight function, an important set of lessons learned, and an overview of the synthesis and visualization efforts that have been applied to the Searchlight outputs.

The insights demonstrate that multiple, complementary synthesis and visualization methods can be applied to pull together the findings from a diverse range of horizon scanning activities. These cover a broad spectrum of approaches, ranging from the qualitative to the quantitative, from automated to non‐automated, from local to global, and from top‐down to bottom‐up. They show how different audiences can be reached effectively, from engaging the interested lay public to producing materials for experts in the field.

The articles outlined help to advance methodological thinking and provide benchmarks for horizon scanning, trend synthesis, and visualization that the foresight field can learn from and adopt over time.

Organizations across a range of sectors face the common challenge of how to monitor the current context in which they operate. While governments and businesses have developed novel ways of generating, processing, and acting on timely information that has long‐term relevance and significance, the development and philanthropic sectors have generally been slow to adopt these foresight practices. The Searchlight function is beginning to fill this gap in the social sector.

The Searchlight function demonstrates how the practice of anticipating and tracking trends and envisioning different alternatives for how global issues might evolve can be harnessed to shape the future of human development and to improve the lives of poor and vulnerable populations. Creating such a global endeavor on this scale requires an iterative process linking together talented and committed individuals and institutions dedicated to a common goal.

The Searchlight function demonstrates one way that the philanthropic and broader social sector can take steps to think and act with the long‐term future more explicitly in mind by anticipating the most challenging problems and opportunities that might impact the lives of poor or vulnerable populations over the long‐term future. It shows how an organization can use trend monitoring and horizon scanning to better understand how the dynamic issues facing poor and vulnerable populations intertwine to create the complex realities of today and how they might fit together to illuminate the new realities of tomorrow.

The novel structures and properties of nanostructure and nanomaterials give people perfect artistic expression of feeling and sense, then the nanoart discipline is developed and is closely related on the nanotechniques. The many achieved novel nanostructures with strong anti-corrosion prepared by the anodization have been reviewed. The paper would raise public awareness of nanotechnology, nanomaterial and their impact on our lives.

Anodization is a very effective and simple technique to form various nanostructures of metal oxide. It includes hard anodization, mild anodization and pulse anodization. Many measures have been introduced anodization process to improve the quality of formed nanostructure and enhance its properties, such as anti-corrosion.

The formation mechanism of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) by using the mild, hard and pulse anodization has been discussed. The pretexture process and many other measures have been taken in mild and hard anodization to improve the regularity of pore array and greatly accelerate the formation rate of AAO. The pulse anodization has been used to prepare the multilayer Y-branched AAO film, which exhibits steady rich and vivid structure colors and gives a very good artistic expression. Furthermore, many other metal oxide nanostructures such as TiO₂ and CuO have also been fabricated using the anodization techniques.

Various nanostructures of metal oxide prepared by anodization have been reviewed and are itself a perfect artwork in mesoscale. Also, many nanostructures have exhibited steady, rich and vivid structure colors and give people a very good artistic expression.

In this chapter, we explore genre-blurring writing, where fiction meets theory, following the argument that texts in management and organisation studies suffer from the ‘textbook syndrome’. The stories that we tell through textbooks not only influence, but also set boundaries for, the way understandings are developed through the eyes of the reader. Often textbooks are written in a way that lead the reader into an idealised linear understanding of an organisation – far from the problems, dilemmas and messy everyday life that managers experience. Our discussion builds on previous literature on writing differently and our own experiences of writing a textbook by involving a professional novelist. Engaging in genre-blurring writing opens up how we think not only about writing, fiction and facts but also in our role as scientists. By situating ourselves, as researchers, at the intersection of fiction and the scientific work, not only new ways of writing, but also of thinking emerge. We discuss three aspects through which fiction challenge and develop our writing and thinking, namely to write with voice, resonance and an open end. Through genre-blurring writing, we create opportunities both to learn and to engage students in learning.

Publicly-held companies collectively allocate tens of millions of dollars each year to investor relations, yet little research has been conducted into how investor relations officers (IROs) try to determine the effectiveness of this investment. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the above issues.

This exploratory study is based on a survey (n=384) of IROs who are members of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), the world's largest professional investor relations association.

Respondents strongly rebuked using share price as a valid measure of investor relations performance. A factor analysis revealed that IROs use four factors to measure program success (listed in order of stated importance): first, international C-suite assessment; second, relationship assessment; third, outreach assessment; and fourth, external assessment. IROs at large-cap companies place significantly more importance on both C-suite assessment and relationship assessment than their peers at small-caps.

These results may not be generalizable to IROs who are non-NIRI members or investor relations consultants. Cross-cultural studies on this topic are needed.

The evaluative factors that emerged in this study may be used by IROs to develop and refine their evaluation metrics relative to their peers.

This is one of the first and largest studies to specifically examine program measurement and evaluation in the context of investor relations. These findings help set the stage for future work in this area.

Let us consider that light, when viewed as a particle, forms a conic arc segment inscribed within the space viewed. The space (or frame) viewed is considered to exhibit a gravitational potential, and it is thus this potential that deforms the light path from a Euclidean/Newtonian derivation of a straight line to that of a relativistic curvilinear nature. Given a distance over this conic arc segment (assumed to form a parabolic arc segment) and a given time (considering the given distance involved), one derives a constancy of the speed of light of c, where c is considered as a constant regardless of the gravitational potential exhibited by the frame viewed. If we further consider that the Special Theory requires that light propagate on a linear measure as the velocity v (of necessity v being less than c on a comparable linear measure) between the axes concerned; then a displacement (in linear measure equal to c−v) occurs. The displacement evolved is then assumed to agree with the form of Maxwell. We assume that this linear displacement of c−v occurs upon the y‐axis of the frame viewed. Of necessity, a relative displacement must occur upon the x‐axis of the frame viewed. From the calculus, the dot products derived must vary in concept, in order to derive the totality of relative coordinate shifts occurring within any three‐dimensional space. One displacement is linear in nature, while the other is trigonometric in nature. We consider the displacement of Maxwell, Lorentz, Compton, and de Broglie to be linear in nature. Based on the principle of the Special Theory (and the other forms as mentioned), we consider the total displacement to be mechanically derivable. That derivation, once allowed, results the physics to agree with the observations complete to this moment in time. The paper concludes that the error in coordinate positioning shown by the global positioning satellite system (GPS satellite platform) is resolvable.

Balance Theory has accumulated an impressive record of empirical confirmation at both the micro- and macro-levels. Yet, it is unclear why humans consistently prefer balanced relations when imbalance offers the opportunity to reap material rewards. We argue that balance is preferred because it functions as a “compression heuristic,” allowing networks to be more easily encoded in, and recalled from, memory.

We present the results of a novel randomized laboratory experiment using nearly 300 subjects. We evaluate the independent and joint effects of degree of balance/imbalance and presence/absence of kin compression heuristics on network recall.

We find that memory for relationship valence is more accurate for balanced, rather than imbalanced, networks and that relationship existence and relationship valence are separable cognitive elements. We also use comparisons between kin and non-kin networks to suggest that humans are implicitly aware of the conditions under which imbalanced networks will be most durable.

We show that the tension/strain postulated to generate mental and behavioral responses to increase balance likely stems from cognitive limitations. More broadly, this connects balance theory to models of human cognition and evolution and suggests that human general processing ability may have evolved in response to social, rather than physical, challenges.

Due to discontent arising from the application of Modernism's totalitarian and homogenising logic to house design, recent research has concentrated on differences between cultures, societies and ethnic groups to the extent that today's students of architecture have difficulty finding sources which point to any universally valid values and preferences adopted by contemporary populations. In this study seventeen major design principles stemming from man-environment relationships, such as privacy, territoriality, personal space, backstage behaviour, orientation, and so on, as deduced from Turkish traditional houses, are investigated in terms of similarities among cultures. Samples of contemporary houses are selected from Turkey and elsewhere. Between local and international house designs full matches are depicted and verified by way of statistical analyses across fourteen items, such as living space subdivisions for guests and family, indirect access to the house (modulation), multi-purpose living space subdivisions (hierarchical living space), individualized bathrooms in bedrooms, independent family rooms, semi-closed spaces on the first floor, larger fenestration on upper floors as opposed to opacity of ground floors, segregated garden space, powerful demarcation of the garden space, orientation toward the house's own territory, bathrooms being situated in night time domains, differentiated status of spaces, multiple uses for stair landings (such as for hiding places for goods). Only three items showed some variance: closed balconies on upper floors were local, and semi-open spaces on ground floors were international tendencies. The practice of allowing direct access from the main entrance to a vertical circulation area was also predominantly a local choice.

This chapter explores how “discourse,” as a process concerned with the production and consumption of talk and text, has been embraced within the field of organizational change and development (OCD). We present six ways of thinking about the role of discourse in OCD (namely: “discourse as component,” “discourse as process,” “discourse as analysis,” “discourse as method,” “discourse as mindset,” and “discourse as style”). Although the advent of dialogic OD has raised awareness of discourse, we demonstrate that it remains a marginal and under-utilized area of interest. We conclude by making a case for a more expansive role for discursive modes of analysis and engagement within OCD.