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Drawing on critical realism, complexity theory, and emergence, this chapter supports the call to re-imagine doctoral writing by arguing that academic writing in general is a complex open and emergent social system that can change. Several reasons to re-imagine doctoral writing are discussed. The first reason is that academic writings already exhibit considerable diversity. This suggests that the conditions of possibility for re-imagining them are already in place and provide a conceptual space from which to further imagine. Second, there are\ud epistemic reasons for re-thinking how we write, as evidenced by research on socio-semiotics. Several examples of doctoral writers\ud who have re-imagined their writing for epistemic reasons are given. To explain how change in social phenomena is possible and how it can continue to be justified, I draw on the theory of complex permeable open systems. These systems are emergent and, as such, allow us to think of social phenomena, such as writing, as non-reductive organic unities whose characteristics emerge from but cannot be reduced to any single constituent feature (such as grammar or lexis). By re-thinking academic writings in this way, we can provide a rationale to explain how they can continue to change. The chapter concludes by sharing the work of scholars engaged in re-imagining doctoral writings. The significance for writing studies is that critical realism offers a systematic and critical space within which to explain change\ud in social phenomena and provides a theoretical foundation for continuing to re-imagine conditions of possibility.

Part 12: Workshops; International audience; The manipulation of information and the dissemination of “fake news” are practices that trace back to the early records of human history. Significant changes in the technological environment enabling ubiquity, immediacy and considerable anonymity, have facilitated the spreading of misinformation in unforeseen ways, raising concerns around people’s (mis)perception of social issues worldwide. As a wicked problem, limiting the harm caused by misinformation goes beyond technical solutions, requiring also regulatory and behavioural changes. This workshop proposes to unpack the challenge at hand by bringing together diverse perspectives to the problem. Based on participatory design principles, it will challenge participants to critically reflect the limits of existing socio-technical approaches and co-create scenarios in which digital platforms support misinformation resilience.

We present a logic for reasoning about state transition systems (LOTOS behaviours) which allows properties involving repeated patterns over actions and data to be expressed. The state transition systems are derived from LOTOS behaviours; however, the logic is applicable to any similar formalism. The semantics of the logic is given with respect to symbolic transition systems, allowing reasoning about data to be separated from reasoning about flow of control. Several motivational examples are included.

Martian gullies were initially hypothesized to be carved by liquid water, due to their resemblance to gullies on Earth. Recent observations have highlighted significant sediment transport events occurring in Martian gullies at times and places where CO2 ice should be actively sublimating. Here we explore the role of CO2 sublimation in mobilizing sediment through laboratory simulation. In our previous experimental work, we reported the first observations of sediment slope movement triggered by the sublimation of CO2 frost. We used a Mars regolith simulant near the angle of repose. The current study extends our previous work by including two additional substrates, fine and coarse sand, and by testing slope angles down to 10°. We find that the Mars regolith simulant is active down to 17°, the fine sand is active only near the angle of repose and the coarse sand shows negligible movement. Using an analytical model, we show that under Martian gravity motion should be possible at even lower slope angles. We conclude that these mass-wasting processes could be involved in shaping Martian gullies at the present day and intriguingly the newly reported CO2-creep process could provide an alternative explanation for putative solifluction lobes on Mars.

In this chapter we explore the future for innovation in two related, but distinct, sectors. We consider the linkages between medical technology(MedTech) and agricultural technology (Agri-Tech) innovation in the UK. We ask and discuss questions: Who are the key actors in the innovation systems of Medtech and Agri-Tech in the UK? What are the core technologies driving the current waves of innovation in these two sectors? Can one industry learn from the other? Where is the scope for cooperation and synergies? We notice that both sectors are technologically linked through foundational technologies underpinning the majority of the observed innovation e.g. big data, AI, IoT and robotics. The outputs of these technologies rely crucially on digital data for insight and decision support. However, Agri-Tech benefits from less complex stakeholder issues regarding data security and privacy. Both sectors are important to the UK going forwards, and both will be exposed to Brexit and the consequences of the COVID pandemic. Our discussion on the future of innovation should be of particular interest to start-up leaders, entrepreneurs, investors, managers and policy-makers in MedTech, Agri-Tech and cognate sectors.

This chapter presents the research rationale underpinning the book. It addresses the intertwining challenges of food security and surplus food management, discussing recent data and literature. It also presents how social innovation is conceptualized in the book as the theoretical framework to analyse partnerships between business and non-profit organisations in managing food surplus. The methodology of the research is also detailed, along with the book structure.

This chapter examines the meaning of “open” in terms of tools, resources, and education, and goes on to explore the association between open approaches to education and the development of online social learning. It considers why this form of learning is emerging so strongly at this point, what its underlying principles are, and how it can be defined. Openness is identified as one of the motivating rationales for a social media space tuned for learning, called SocialLearn, which is currently being trialed at The Open University in the UK. SocialLearn has been designed to support online social learning by helping users to clarify their intention, ground their learning and engage in learning conversations. The emerging design concept and implementation are described here, with a focus on what personalization means in this context, and on how learning analytics could be used to provide different types of recommendation that support learning.

This paper describes new research into the kinematic structure of autonomous robotic systems, and into the associated design processes. The approach aims to develop novel insights and applicable tools and techniques for designing advanced mechanical architectures for planetary exploration systems. These should provide enhanced functionality for tackling complex autonomous operations, and improved levels of robustness in the face of the inevitable system faults.

This chapter is based on the talk that I gave in August 2018 at the ICM in Rio de Janeiro at the panel on "The Gender Gap in Mathematical and Natural Sciences from a Historical Perspective". It provides some examples of the challenges and prejudices faced by women mathematicians during last two hundred and fifty years. I make no claim for completeness but hope that the examples will help to shed light on some of the problems many women mathematicians still face today.

Firewalls are important perimeter security mechanisms that imple-ment an organisation's network security requirements and can be notoriously difficult to configure correctly. Given their widespread use, it is crucial that network administrators have tools to translate their security requirements into firewall configuration rules and ensure that these rules are consistent with each other. In this paper we propose an approach to firewall policy specification and analysis that uses a formal framework for argumentation based preference reasoning. By allowing administrators to define network abstractions (e.g. subnets, protocols etc) security requirements can be specified in a declarative manner using high-level terms. Also it is possible to specify preferences to express the importance of one requirement over another. The use of a formal framework means that the security requirements defined can be automatically analysed for inconsistencies and firewall configurations can be automatically generated. We demonstrate that the technique allows any inconsistency property, including those identified in previous research, to be specified and automatically checked and the use of an argumentation reasoning framework provides administrators with information regarding the causes of the inconsistency.