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Growing interest in food quality and traceability by regulators as well as consumers demands advances in more rapid, versatile and cost-effective analytical methods. Milk, as most food matrices, is a heterogeneous mixture composed of metabolites, lipids and proteins. One of the major challenges is to have simultaneous, quantitative detection (profiling) of this panel of biomolecules to gather valuable information for assessing food quality, traceability and safety. Here, for milk analysis, atmospheric pressure matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization employing homogenous liquid sample droplets was used on a Q-TOF mass analyzer. This method has the capability to produce multiply charged proteinaceous ions as well as highly informative profiles of singly charged lipids/metabolites. In two examples, this method is coupled with user-friendly machine-learning software. First, rapid speciation of milk (cow, goat, sheep and camel) is demonstrated with 100% classification accuracy. Second, the detection of cow milk as adulterant in goat milk is shown at concentrations as low as 5% with 92.5% sensitivity and 94.5% specificity.

As the internet is increasingly embedded in the everyday things in our homes, we notice a need for greater focus on the role care plays in those relationships—and therefore an opportunity to realize un- seen potential in reimagining home Internet of Things (IoT). In this paper we report on our inquiry of home dwellers’ relationships to caring for their everyday things and homes (referred to as thing- care). Findings from our design ethnography reveal four thematic qualities of their relationships to thingcare: Care Spectacle, Care Liminality, Ontological Binding, and Care Condition. Using these themes as touchstones, we co-speculated to produce four specula- tive IoT concepts to explore what care as a design ethic might look like for IoT and reflect on nascent opportunities and challenges for domestic IoT design. We conclude by considering structures of power and privilege embedded within care practices that critically open new design imaginaries for IoT.

Lack of critical competencies are generally acknowledged as a major setback among Small and medium-sized enterprises, more so in their marketing operations. From an entrepreneurial marketing (EM) perspective, business models are about mainly process of innovation, particularly when firms focus on developing a unique business model. In the context of the EM module, students experience features of learning like entrepreneurial marketing theory, group working and negotiation, project management, and opportunity scanning, all of which they reflect on and build into their own knowledge base. Claes M. Hultman and G. E. Hills point out that mainstream marketing neglects the entrepreneur’s methods, impoverishing student learning. In the debate about the value of marketing education, a recurrent issue is the extent to which programmes adequately prepare young marketers for the demands of a modern work environment. In the Lincoln’s International Business School module, students learn that EM implementation can be based on approaches to thinking that stand outside the traditional marketing textbook.

The benefits associated with modeling Box-Cox transformed realised variance data are assessed. In particular, the quality of realised variance forecasts with and without this transformation applied are examined in an out-of-sample forecasting competition. Using various realised variance measures, data transformations, volatility models and assessment methods, and controlling for data mining issues, the results indicate that data transformations can be economically and statistically significant. Moreover, the quartic transformation appears to be the most effective in this regard. The conditions under which the effectiveness of using transformed data varies are identified.

Global food insecurity levels remain stubbornly high. One of the surest ways to grasp the scale and consequence of global inequality is through a food systems lens. In a predominantly urban world, urban food systems present a useful lens to engage a wide variety of urban (and global) challenges&mdash, so called &lsquo, wicked problems.&rsquo, This paper describes a collaborative research project between four urban food system research units, two European and two African. The project purpose was to seek out solutions to what lay between, across and within the different approaches applied in the understanding of each city&rsquo, s food system challenges. Contextual differences and immediate (perceived) needs resulted in very different views on the nature of the challenge and the solutions required. Value positions of individuals and their disciplinary &ldquo, enclaves&rdquo, presented further boundaries. The paper argues that finding consensus provides false solutions. Rather the identification of novel approaches to such wicked problems is contingent of these differences being brought to the fore, being part of the conversation, as devices through which common positions can be discovered, where spaces are created for the realisation of new perspectives, but also, where difference is celebrated as opposed to censored.

This chapter argues for the existence of three kinds of knowledge required for good teaching – disciplinary or content knowledge (CK), pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) and curriculum knowledge; further, that the first of these, while it may be insufficient on its own to support excellent teaching, is the foundation on which all other types of knowledge needed for effective pedagogy rest. It then proceeds to describe the weak disciplinary knowledge resources held by the majority of South African teachers, and the inequitable distribution of this, the lifeblood of schooling, across the system. The inequitable distribution of disciplinary knowledge resources is one of the primary sources of the significantly weaker outcomes exhibited by South African children from poor homes. The chapter concludes that, without significantly improving teacher disciplinary knowledge, and pedagogic proficiency, all other efforts aimed at improving the quality of South African schooling are likely to come up against low ceiling effects. Furthermore, the responsibility for building these competencies must rest primarily with university-based teacher educators they face no small task, caught between matriculants with the lowest literacy and maths skills of their cohort, on one hand, and schools unable to provide adequate teaching practice, on the other. However, pre-service teacher education does seem to provide the optimal point at which to break not only South Africa’s vicious cycle of general school mediocrity, but also to begin to mitigate the massive inequality gap which plagues the country.

This paper explores methodological insights from a mixed methods study that aims to understand how school leaders promote literacy development in their schools. The study findings consider both the complementarities and the challenges of the qualitative and quantitative approaches to measuring leadership practices and their linkages with learning across schools. We begin by identifying a conundrum in school leadership and management (SLM) research – strong effects found in qualitative studies and weaker effects in quantitative studies. From the literature we identify some of the central challenges that account for these differences. We then show how these challenges were and were not addressed in the mixed method research we conducted in an SLM study of South African primary schools in challenging contexts. We consider why the central aim of the study – to develop a scalable instrument for measuring SLM – remains elusive.

This case reports on research into small manufacturing businesses in the UK. This sector is vital for growth. Over the years, governments have established different types of policies to support this sector. One policy has been the provision of business advice. Our research aim was focused on finding out if the perceptions of SME owner managers was that their firm’s performance was improved by using advisers. This involved establishing an understanding of SME decisions making. This is complex and a survey method would have made it difficult to comprehend the contextualized worlds of owner managers. Alternatively, the phenomenological interview was utilised to access the experiences of a small number of expert respondents. The phenomenological method seeks to unravel the meaning of events as lived by others. Consequently, in phenomenological research, the primary source of evidence is respondent’s perceptions of an object, in this case, business advice. Subsequently, we examine our research approach to planning, conducting and analysing the phenomenological interview. Sometimes mistaken as an umbrella term for all qualitative research, we also highlight some problematic issues when undertaking the phenomenological interview. Through these interviews, owner manager ‘decision stories’ were successfully generated about their perceptions of business advisers. From the owner manager’s accounts, we extracted a number of key themes. The resulting discussion of these themes or meaning units, subsequently enabled us to meet the aims of the original study, which are also outlined here.

The technological vision of smart urbanism has been promoted as a silver bullet for urban problems and a major market opportunity. The search is on for firms and governments to find effective and transferable demonstrations of advanced urban technology. This paper examines initiatives by the UK national government to facilitate urban technological innovation through a range of strategies, particularly the TSB Future Cities Demonstrator Competition. This case study is used to explore opportunities and tensions in the practical realisation of the smart city imaginary. Tensions are shown to be partly about the conjectural nature of the smart city debate. Attention is also drawn to weakened capacity of urban governments to control their infrastructural destiny and also constraints on the ability of the public and private sectors to innovate. The paper contributes to smart city debates by providing further evidence of the difficulties in substantiating the smart city imaginary.

The European Union supported programmes for rabies control in Kosovo between 2010 and 2015, including spring and autumn biannual oral vaccination campaigns targeting foxes. Throughout the programmes foxes were obtained to provide samples for monitoring the campaigns. This paper explores the seasonal pattern of bait uptake and seropositivity in the fox population. Bait uptake varied by season and by the phase of the project supporting the programme (the main differences between phases being the number of baits distributed and flight line separation). Seropositivity varied by season and by titre of the vaccine used in the preceding campaign. The analyses also suggested a negative effect of higher daytime temperature on bait uptake, and possible association between geographic location of sampling and concordance between bait uptake and seropositivity, but the dataset was too unbalanced to support robust conclusions on these detailed aspects. Descriptive summaries of the data and the multilevel analyses showed that the proportion of sampled foxes that were positive for bait uptake and the proportion seropositive were both high through winter, following the autumn campaigns, and declined through spring and summer, with a low point in samples collected during the time when juvenile foxes are typically dispersing from their birth dens. The percentage of foxes positive for bait uptake was below 30 % (first project phase) and 40 % (second project phase) from mid-July to mid-October following a spring campaign, compared with around 70 % (first project phase) and 80 % (second project phase) in the periods between autumn and the following spring campaigns. As could be expected, the percent of samples that were seropositive followed a similar seasonal pattern, with some additional variation associated with the titre of vaccine used. This seasonal pattern is likely because the population sampled in the late summer months includes increasing numbers of young foxes that could not have been effectively exposed to the spring vaccination campaign, and would have lost any possible maternal immunity by late summer. The main finding of high levels of bait uptake and seroprevalence through winter, following the autumn campaigns, declining through summer despite the implementation of spring campaigns, supports advice that countries lacking financial resources to support biannual campaigns should focus resources on once per year vaccination in late autumn or early winter. This pattern also indicates that a fox population may rapidly become naïve after cessation of vaccination programmes, therefore strongly coordinated regional programmes and good surveillance will be needed.

Even though the volatility spillover effects in global equity markets have been documented extensively, the transmission of illiquidity across national borders has not. In this paper, we propose a multiplicative error model (MEM) for the dynamics of illiquidity. We empirically study the illiquidity and volatility spillover effects in eight developed equity markets during and after the recent financial crisis. We find that equity markets are interdependent, both in terms of volatility and illiquidity. Most markets show an increase in volatility and illiquidity spillover effects during the crisis. Furthermore, we find volatility and illiquidity transmission are highly relevant. Illiquidity is a more important channel than volatility in propagating the shocks in equity markets. Our results show an overall crucial role for illiquidity in US markets in influencing other equity markets' illiquidity and volatility. These findings are of importance for policy makers as well as institutional and private investors.

The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 signals both the importance of forms of surveillance as techniques of policing and also the human rights apprehensions which those strategies engender. The Act is explained and analysed according to rights-based standards as well as its fit with the development of an “information society”.

This paper describes a series of Inventor Days designed to catalyse sustainable relationships between communities and makers to support grassroots innovation. By appropriating core properties of hackathons, the Inventor Days brought together residents in a community and makers from across the city. Over three events, makers and community members worked together to learn about the local area, design novel ideas that addressed local issues and build prototypes. We show evidence that these events created enthusiasm around use of technology to support the community, while developing ongoing relationships that enabled members of the community to continue building on their experiences beyond the events. We propose this as a new means of enabling innovation in communities.

The influence of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights on domestic law has ensured that the state’s use of technical covert surveillance equipment has become legally regulated over the past twenty years, albeit in a somewhat piecemeal fashion. The passage of the Human Rights Act 1998 will see the development of the "right to respect for private life"; in UK law. This paper seeks to reflect upon the impact that the European Convention has had on the regulation of covert surveillance, and whether there is a theoretical justification for developing the "right to respect for private life"; beyond traditional private spheres and into the public arena. It is argued that overt surveillance in the form of closed circuit television cameras (CCTV) should thus be legally regulated according to the principles established by the European Convention, and that such an extension of the "right to respect for private life"; need not be detrimental to the common good.

SUMMARYAnimal health surveillance enables the detection and control of animal diseases including zoonoses. Under the EU-FP7 project RISKSUR, a survey was conducted in 11 EU Member States and Switzerland to describe active surveillance components in 2011 managed by the public or private sector and identify gaps and opportunities. Information was collected about hazard, target population, geographical focus, legal obligation, management, surveillance design, risk-based sampling, and multi-hazard surveillance. Two countries were excluded due to incompleteness of data. Most of the 664 components targeted cattle (26·7%), pigs (17·5%) or poultry (16·0%). The most common surveillance objectives were demonstrating freedom from disease (43·8%) and case detection (26·8%). Over half of components applied risk-based sampling (57·1%), but mainly focused on a single population stratum (targeted risk-based) rather than differentiating between risk levels of different strata (stratified risk-based). About a third of components were multi-hazard (37·3%). Both risk-based sampling and multi-hazard surveillance were used more frequently in privately funded components. The study identified several gaps (e.g. lack of systematic documentation, inconsistent application of terminology) and opportunities (e.g. stratified risk-based sampling). The greater flexibility provided by the new EU Animal Health Law means that systematic evaluation of surveillance alternatives will be required to optimize cost-effectiveness.

The European Union has used instrument for pre-accession (IPA) funds to provide technical assistance and supplies for the eradication, monitoring and control of rabies in several pre-accession countries. As a result, since 2010, multi-annual oral rabies vaccination (ORV) programmes for eliminating fox rabies have been launched in six Western Balkan countries. Here the implementation of the ORV programme in Kosovo, the smallest of the West Balkan countries, is described. Associated challenges under difficult political conditions, potential biases, and the results of rabies surveillance and monitoring of ORV campaigns (bait uptake and immunisation rates) since 2010 are reported.

The debate surrounding the utility of trial by jury is as relevant as ever. Much criticism of the ability of jurors to carry out their task was brought to the fore following the highly publicised Pryce trial and the comments from Sweeney J indicating a fundamental problem in jurors' understanding of their role. Furthermore, media attention surrounding a steady stream of cases involving juror misconduct has called into question whether jury trial can survive in its current form. This article recognises that although juries are not a normative part of a fair trial, they do have considerable value in enhancing public confidence in the fairness of the criminal process, particularly through the perception of impartiality. If public support is lost, then the value of jury might be lost with it. Whilst the Law Commission is rightly considering how jurors might be more prepared in advance to carry out their role effectively, this article considers the current judicial approach to dealing with the practical issue of juror impropriety once it has occurred. Through looking at a series of trial and appeal cases it can be seen that a framework has developed which seeks to ensure that trials are derailed rarely whilst the impartiality of the jury is safeguarded. It is maintained that in emphasising both actual and apparent impartiality the vital element of public confidence in the existing process can be preserved.

Revelations concerning global surveillance of mass communications data have clearly illustrated the paucity of legal regulation in this area. Surveillance almost inevitably engages the right to privacy but such is the notoriously nebulous nature of privacy, particularly on an international scale, that it fails to provide sufficient safeguards against state abuses of surveillance capacity. In the face of national security concerns privacy appears to be routinely relegated to being an inconvenient obstacle. The capacity of the United States and the United Kingdom to carry out surveillance on an enormous scale has highlighted not only the inadequacies of their own domestic regulatory frameworks but also the ease with which, through modern communications technology, unfettered global surveillance can take place. This article analyses these issues and further considers the normative international regulatory framework that should apply to surveillance if it is to take place according to the rule of law and demo...

This paper investigates the impact of the timeliness of information releases and data vintage variation on economic forecast quality. Specifically, using a set of 63 key US economic series, we provide a concise measure of the forecast accuracy associated with use of economic activity indices with different publication lags. A forecasting model based on an economic activity index that is subject to a short publication lag (viz. the Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti index) is more efficient than competing models. Moreover, if this publication lag advantage is removed (by artificially imposing a publication lag restriction comparable to that of a competing indicator) this efficiency largely disappears. The final part of the analysis employs a novel (simulation-based) method of assessing the impact of data vintage variation on forecast accuracy, and finds that the results are somewhat sensitive to such variation.

Purpose This paper aims to examine the perceptions of small business entrepreneurs regarding the efficacy of external business advisers in delivering sustainable strategic and operational guidance. Design/methodology/approach The research is interpretivist, exploring the narratives of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) owner/managers in manufacturing. Five in-depth interviews were carried out, revealing a range of decision stories about the use of external business advisers. Findings While there was some scepticism towards the use of advisers in certain situations, the research revealed that levels of trust, relationship building and the credibility of the consultant are substantial factors in determining whether the engagement is successful. Research limitations/implications As a small-scale study, it would be worthwhile to examine the perceptions of additional entrepreneurs to business advisers to compare research findings. Practical implications Policy regarding advice to small businesses should be framed in terms of the local context of the firm and its owner, rather than on broad and generalisable systems of business knowledge. Time and effort is required to build a sustainable relationship between advisers and owners, and it is recommended that particular attention be paid to the process. Social implications The research suggests that potentially, industrial policy regarding current delivery of small business advice requires readjustments towards more of a relationship focus. Originality/value Little established research appears to exist in relation to the tendency or otherwise, for SME decision makers to pursue and use external advice. This paper helps to fill an important gap in the literature while offering some significant and nuanced insights into the perceptions of SME owner managers.

In recent years there has been an increased focus upon developing platforms for community decision-making, and an awareness of the importance of handing over civic platforms to community organisations to oversee the process of decision-making at a local level. In this paper, we detail fieldwork from working with two community organisations who used our distributed situated devices as part of consultation processes. We focus on some of the mundane and often-untold aspects of this type of work: how questions for consultations were formed, how locations for devices were determined, and the ways in which the data collected fed into decision-making processes. We highlight a number of challenges for HCI and civic technology research going forward, related to the role of the researcher, the messiness of decision making in communities, and the ability of community organisations to influence how citizens participate in democratic processes.

Issues pertaining to the investor decision to sell a security and buy another (of the same type and with the same terms) with a longer period until the expiration date (the roll forward decision) are examined. In particular, a framework is developed in which it is possible to test the trade execution quality efficiency of a roll strategy against a mean–variance optimal roll strategy characterized by multiple-day roll. Applying this framework to five leading US grain futures markets (corn, wheat, soybean, soybean meal and soybean oil) demonstrates that commonly used single-day and multiple-day roll strategies (including the Goldman roll strategy) exhibit considerable inefficiencies. These are consistent over the markets and over the time of the day in which trading occurs, and vary with execution quality risk-aversion in a predictable way. A practical multiple-day roll strategy is proposed that reduces these inefficiencies.

Data on husbandry practices, performance, disease and drug use were collected during a cross-sectional survey of 89 poultry meat farms in England and Wales to provide information on possible risk factors for the occurrence of fluoroquinolone (FQ) resistant bacteria. Faeces samples were used to classify farms as ‘affected’ or ‘not affected’ by FQ-resistant E. coli or Campylobacter spp. Risk factor analysis identified the use of FQ on the farms as having by far the strongest association, among the factors considered, with the occurrence of FQ-resistant bacteria. Resistant E. coli and/or Campylobacter spp. were found on 86% of the farms with a history of FQ use. However, a substantial proportion of farms with no history of FQ use also yielded FQ-resistant organisms, suggesting that resistant bacteria may transfer between farms. Further analysis suggested that for Campylobacter spp., onfarm hygiene, cleaning and disinfection between batches of birds and wildlife control were of most significance. By contrast, for E. coli biosecurity from external contamination was of particular importance, although the modelling indicated that other factors were likely to be involved. Detailed studies on a small number of sites showed that FQ-resistant E. coli can survive routine cleaning and disinfection. It appears difficult to avoid the occurrence of resistant bacteria when FQ are used on a farm, but the present findings provide evidence to support recommendations to reduce the substantial risk of the incidental acquisition of such resistance by farms where FQ are not used.

Quality Assurance of UK Higher Education, the wider regulation of the sector and of those who teach and research within it has experienced significant change within recent years. The scale of these changes looks set to intensify as the Higher Education and Research Bill makes its way through Parliament. Core themes under-pinning these changes are a Government desire to generate further competition within the sector through the arrival of new providers alongside more detailed sets of information to inform consumer (student) choice. Similar challenges can be witnessed within the legal education sector as one of the key regulators of the legal profession is currently consulting on far-reaching reforms, designed to diversify the routes towards professional qualification. Although the UK does not have a state certification process for academic staff, increasing attention has been brought to bear on institutions to demonstrate that their staff hold teaching qualifications. Quality assurance activities and processes have taken an increasingly central place within the UK HE landscape over the last 25 years or so. However, the future balance between highly developed quality assurance mechanisms, state-regulation and a competitive open market appears uncertain. Law exemplifies many of the challenges facing the sector as a whole.

A new method of assessing the comparative quality of forecasting models is introduced. This method focuses on the quality of forecasting models over a set of series (cf. the traditionally adopted series-by-series approach)–with a forecasting model that produces good forecasts over a series set described as versatile.

In this paper we investigate the impact of publication lags on forecast quality. Specifically, using a set of 285 economic series, we provide a concise measure of the forecast inefficiencies associated with series that are subject to a delay in their publication. This inefficiency is measured with respect to a variety of models and found to be statistically significant under certain conditions. These conditions include the persistence of the series, and the model used to generate the forecasts. Regarding the latter, we provide some evidence to suggest that recently proposed models based on real-time predictor variables tend to deliver lower levels of forecast inefficiency.

The United Kingdom uses visual surveillnace techniques on a huge scale, but its rewgulation of those techniques has been sadly lacking. This paper seeks to consider the extent to which the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) provides an overarching framework for the regulation of visual surveillance practices, both overt and covert, thereby bringing about the conditions for accountability and transparency, and to critically analyse the extent to which UK law operates within that framework so far as it applies to video surveillance.

Aimed at architecture and urban design students, this huge book is densely packed with colour images, making it a pleasure to leaf through. Each chapter is written as an introductory ‘module’ to po...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of a group of undergraduate students undertaking marketing research consultancy projects for employers. The projects are informed by action learning. The intention is to demonstrate that this method of learning facilitates a level of student skill development that more traditional marketing courses find difficult to achieve.Design/methodology/approachThe study is underpinned by an interpretivist approach. Research involved students taking part in two focus groups during the consultancy and the completion of pre‐ and post‐consultancy open‐ended questionnaires.FindingsFindings suggest that the marketing consultancy project represents a way to help develop the general skills required by novice marketers. Students show an understanding of the importance of acquiring communicative, interpersonal, creative and team‐based skills. These assist them in developing a practical knowledge neglected by much existing marketing teaching.Research limitations/implicationsThe findings although based on a small sample, indicate that marketing education if based on action learning, positively engages learners. The emphasis on practice suggests that experience, work place socialisation and tacit knowledge, are essential components of learning about marketing that often get overlooked in more traditional marketing courses.Originality/valueThis paper suggests that much established marketing education does not take sufficient account of experiential based learning and instead, is wedded to a model of teaching that sees marketing as being mainly about the transmission of administratively based knowledge. This paper argues that relying overly on the latter will not provide tomorrow's marketers with an appropriate skill set for employment.

This paper investigates the relationship between forecast accuracy and effort, where effort is defined as the number of times the model used to generate forecasts is recursively estimated over the full sample period. More specifically, within a framework of costly effort, optimal effort strategies are derived under the assumption that the dynamics of the variable of interest follow an autoregressive-type process. Results indicate that the strategies are fairly robust over a wide range of linear and nonlinear processes (including structural break processes), and deliver forecasts of transitory, core and total inflation that require less effort to generate and are as accurate as (that is, are insignificantly different from) those produced with maximum effort.

This paper examines the determinants of future U.S. monetary policy by studying the relationship between a predictor of the future direction of monetary policy and a pertinent information set. Specifically, we investigate the impact of the surprise component of an array of macro-economic announcements upon federal funds futures rates. This investigation is conducted using high-frequency intraday data in order to examine the exact timing of rate reactions to announcements. In doing this, we find that Non-farm Payrolls and Civilian Unemployment announcements play a dominant role in determining future monetary policy. Moreover, we document evidence that shows that the release of such information is rapidly incorporated into rates, particularly when considering federal funds futures contracts traded via an electronic trading platform (as opposed to an open-auction trading platform).

A dataset of 1,846,990 completed lactation record,; was created Using milk recording data from 8,967 commercial dairy farms in the United Kingdom over a five year period. Herd-specific lactation curves describing levels of milk, Cat and protein by lactation number and month of calving were generated for each farm. The actual yield of milk and protein proportion at the first milk recording of individual cow lactations were compared with the levels taken from the lactation curves. Logistic regression analysis showed that cows production milk with a lower percentage of protein than average had a significantly lower probability of being in-calf at 100 days post calving and it significantly higher probability of being culled at the end of lactation. The culling rates derived from the studied database demonstrate the current high wastage rate of commercial dairy cows. Well of this wastage is due to involuntary culling as a result of reproductive failure.

Alternative systems ranging from self-organized skill sharing to alternative micro-economies have been critical channels of community engagement and bonding. Technology is increasingly playing a role in the way people connect to these services at the (hyper)local level. While there has been considerable research on designing technology to support conventional, established systems of community organization and governance; mobile and ubiquitous technologies offer strong potential for alternative systems to be established in the local level. Do It Yourself (DIY) and maker movements are enabling grassroots activist groups to develop their own technologies or to hack existing tools to support bottom-up systems of self-organization, democracy and commerce. Based on these trends and the recent worldwide economic, political and societal crisis, this workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners and activists to re-envision how HCI tools can support alternative systems of local civic engagement.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to report on a full‐scale testing of the role of marketing and its relevance in small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The objective is to present the results of a rigorous assessment of a new model of marketing in SMEs.Design/methodology/approach– A positivist approach relied on the use of the hypothetico‐deductive method to produce the theoretical model. Both quantitative and qualitative research methods were applied to investigate the model. This paper reports on a large‐scale questionnaire survey, follow‐up interviews with SMEs owner‐managers and the use of published accounts to show how companies have performed during this study.Findings– The role and relevance model of marketing in SMEs has been thoroughly investigated and tested. The model offers a straightforward way of diagnosing the situation within an SME. The simplicity of the model allows for a clearer understanding of what is often a complex and messy situation within these companies and their business environment. Some findings suggest a positive link between a company's financial performance and its approach to marketing within the model.Practical implications– The paper concludes that the model goes a long way to explaining the behaviour of SMEs with regard to marketing. The model appears to be viable and could be used to analyse and diagnose the situation regarding marketing within SMEs.Originality/value– The paper offers a unique theoretical and practical insight into the issue of marketing in SMEs.

This paper provides an account of a questionnaire-based study of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their responses to the current requirements of environmental best practice. The study was based within South Yorkshire. We aim to explore the current relationship between SMEs and the environment and how this affects their concept of ‘sustainable business’. The main finding reported is that most manufacturing and service organisations surveyed believe environmental issues affect their business. However, meeting environmental requirements is seen as a business cost that is not transferable to customers in terms of added benefits and few organisations could show that it led to a competitive advantage. SMEs have only a generalist awareness of environmental legislation, and information provided by most local support services is not presented in a format that is efficient or effective. Our recommendations are that the assistance provided by local support agencies with regards to environmental best practice should be critically reviewed, and this review should seek to understand the reluctance and real difficulties faced by SMEs in comprehension and implementation of environmental legislation. This paper should therefore be used in conjunction with associated information when considering the best way to help prepare SMEs for greater involvement in environmental best practice and the achievement of sustainable business. • Received February 5, 2002. • Revision received June 21, 2002.

Digital voting is used to support group decision-making in a variety of contexts ranging from politics to mundane everyday collaboration, and the rise in popularity of digital voting has provided an opportunity to re-envision voting as a social tool that better serves democracy. A key design goal for any group decision-making system is the promotion of participation, yet there is little research that explores how the features of digital voting systems themselves can be shaped to configure participation appropriately. In this paper we propose a framework that explores the design space of digital voting from the perspective of participation. We ground our discussion in the design of a social media polling tool called BallotShare; a first instantiation of our proposed framework designed to facilitate the study of decision-making practices in a workplace environment. Across five weeks, participants created and took part in non-standard polls relating to events and other spontaneous group decisions. Following interviews with participants we identified significant drivers and limitations of individual and collective participation in the voting process: social visibility, social inclusion, commitment and delegation, accountability, influence and privacy.

Online and digital technologies support and extend the action repertoires of localized social movements. In this paper we examine the ways by which digital technologies can support "on-the-ground" activist communities in the development of social movements. After identifying some of the challenges of deploying conventional voting and consultation technologies for activism, we examine situated political action in local communities through the design and deployment of a low-cost community voting prototype, PosterVote. We deploy PosterVote in two case studies with two local community organizations identifying the features that supported or hindered grassroots democratic practices. Through interviews with these communities, we explore the design of situated voting systems to support participation within an ecology of social action.

We detail the design of the Department of Hidden Stories (DoHS), a mobile-based game to support playful digital storytelling among primary school children in public libraries. Through a process of iterative design in collaboration with library staff and children's writers we designed DoHS to support the potential for playful storytelling through interactions with books. A deployment of DoHS with two classes of 8 to 10 years olds as part of their regular library visits revealed insights related to how to balance the expectations of a child-at-play and the requirement to further develop their creative reading and writing skills. Based on our experiences we recommend that designers create playful digitally based activities that encourage children to explore libraries and experience new interactions with physical books.

Supported employment enterprises (SEEs) are commercial enterprises that provide meaningful, gainful employment, training and development opportunities for people with a disability. Hence, SEEs are run specifically to provide employment. SEEs, with the exception of Remploy, represent a unique sector of SMEs owned and run by local authorities and charities. The Supported Employment Procurement and Consultancy Service (SEPACS) provides SEEs with per capita funding for disabled employees, capital grants for premises and equipment, grants for marketing research, business advice and performance monitoring. SEPACS is part of the Department for Education and Employment (DfEE). This paper presents some case studies of SEEs in the Yorkshire area. The work explains the complex dificulties facing these organisations and illustrates the different approaches used to cope with these situations. Many SEEs are under threat of closure or radical change in their function as employers of disabled people. This work investigates these issues through selected illustrative case studies. The general weakness of marketing strategies and plans in these organisations is highlighted and related to the impact of SEPACS and local authority policies and practices. This work establishes the important role that marketing strategies and plans could have in ensuring the future survival and growth of these companies.

In this paper we introduce a new testing procedure for evaluating the rationality of fixed-event forecasts based on a pseudo-maximum likelihood estimator. The procedure is designed to be robust to departures in the normality assumption. A model is introduced to show that such departures are likely when forecasters experience a credibility loss when they make large changes to their forecasts. The test is illustrated using monthly fixed-event forecasts produced by four UK institutions. Use of the robust test leads to the conclusion that certain forecasts are rational while use of the Gaussian-based test implies that certain forecasts are irrational. The difference in the results is due to the nature of the underlying data. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper investigates the role of US inflation-indexed bonds in the portfolios of expected utility maximizing investors. As there does not exist sufficient return data, holding period returns on inflation-indexed bonds are generated using three different assumptions concerning the behaviour of real yields over time. These returns are then allowed to enter the available asset set of risk-averse investors. Using data covering the period, 1927–1996, the results show that inflation-indexed bonds would have formed a large part of the portfolios of such investors. The result holds for various levels of risk-aversion and for holding periods of one month, one year, and five years. However, when this investment in inflation-indexed bonds is subjected to a statistical test the results indicate that investor utility is insignificantly affected by the inflation-indexed bond investment. Finally, sensitivity analysis shows that an unrealistically high real yield of 2.5% is required for inflation-indexed bond investme...

This paper provides evidence in favour of the hypothesis that precious metals (gold, silver, platinum) act as short-run and long-run hedges against inflation. Using robust estimation techniques, this ability to hedge inflation is concentrated in the period before 1939 and around the second OPEC oil shock in 1979. During no other period could precious metals be used to hedge inflation.

Under apartheid South Africa maintained separate, unequal school systems for the four main population groups: Africans, coloreds (people of mixed decent), Indians and whites. Since the advent of democratic government in 1994, financial allocations have not only been equalized, but also skewed towards the historically disadvantaged sector.

In this position paper we outline some of the key themes and background research which may help form a better understanding of the relationship between technology and political activity. The paper is written in an attempt to articulate a better understanding of the relationship between political processes, urban environments and situated technologies. The paper is written from a UK perspective, although the ideas have a broader relevance for relatively developed western democracies. To this end we analyse the political and digital divides which are present in western society focusing on local politics in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK as a case study. Following a brief description of the problem domain we briefly give an outline of an ongoing project Viewpoint which has created a mobile voting system which we are currently deploying in various locations in Newcastle Upon Tyne.

Creating film content for broadcast is a high pressure and complex activity involving multiple experts and highly specialized equipment. Production teams are under continuous pressure to produce ever more creative and groundbreaking content while reducing the budgets and human resources required. While technologies are being developed for digitizing and streamlining sections of the production workflow, a gap remains between creative decisions made on location, and those made during digital editing and post-production. We describe a prototype tangible, tabletop interface to be deployed on a film shoot, which uses a storyboard as a shared data representation to drive team creativity. We define creativity in terms of team production, discuss our implementation and describe a deployment in which the prototype was used by a professional production team during a film shoot. Finally we describe a number of interesting interactions that were observed and consider the implications of our design decisions on the creative process of film making and the benefits of tangible, tabletop collaborative interactive displays in live film production.

This research uses the concept of digital democracy as a framework for designing digital interfaces to improve public and community engagement with local policy-making. The paper describes ‘Viewpoint,’ an aspect of the Bespoke Project (see output 2) which tested design-based applications of digital democracy., Three networked devices were designed, made and then installed in a community in Preston for 8 weeks where housing association managers and local councillors used them to gather community feedback from on local issues and concerns. Over 1500 votes were cast by 250 people. Councillors acknowledged a significant improvement in the levels of community engagement over established opinion-gathering techniques., This research examines the design and use of physically situated interfaces intended to deliver digital content and services that support democratic policy-making processes in a time of rapid technological change. The paper addresses issues concerning accessibility and engagement in hyper-local contexts and explores the potential relevance of these approaches to policy-making on a national scale., The paper was presented at the Association of Computing Machinery conference on ‘Computer Human Interaction’ through the conference’s Design Track (where only 23% of papers are accepted)., This work has been further recognised through the receipt of an EPSRC Impact award of £28,000 by Newcastle University. This follow-on project allowed Taylor & Marshall to develop a second iteration of the devices and test them in two public locations in Newcastle. Examples of iterations one and two have been exhibited at a number of internationally significant venues (see output 2 for details).

Aim: To review the initial experience of blending a variety of online educational techniques with traditional face to face or contact-based teaching methods to deliver final year undergraduate radiology content at a UK Medical School. Materials and methods: The Brighton and Sussex Medical School opened in 2003 and offers a 5-year undergraduate programme, with the final 5 spent in several regional centres. Year 5 involves several core clinical specialities with onsite radiology teaching provided at regional centres in the form of small-group tutorials, imaging seminars and also a one-day course. An online educational module was introduced in 2007 to facilitate equitable delivery of the year 5 curriculum between the regional centres and to support students on placement. This module had a strong radiological emphasis, with a combination of imaging integrated into clinical cases to reflect everyday practice and also dedicated radiology cases. For the second cohort of year 5 students in 2008 two additional online media-rich initiatives were introduced, to complement the online module, comprising imaging tutorials and an online case discussion room. Results: In the first year for the 2007/2008 cohort, 490 cases were written, edited and delivered via the Medical School managed learning environment as part of the online module. 253 cases contained a form of image media, of which 195 cases had a radiological component with a total of 325 radiology images. Important aspects of radiology practice (e. g. consent, patient safety, contrast toxicity, ionising radiation) were also covered. There were 274,000 student hits on cases the first year, with students completing a mean of 169 cases each. High levels of student satisfaction were recorded in relation to the online module and also additional online radiology teaching initiatives. Conclusion: Online educational techniques can be effectively blended with other forms of teaching to allow successful undergraduate delivery of radiology. Efficient IT links and good image quality are essential ingredients for successful student/clinician engagement.

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is generally used in public spaces as one of a number of tools of crime prevention and detection, and has been more recently explicitly referred to as an important domestic defence against terrorist activity. The success of such schemes is mixed and appears to be context specific rather than acting as a more general 'silver bullet' in crime prevention. Nevertheless, its apparent success in, for example, aiding the detection of those responsible for the London subway bombings in 2005 has provided ample evidence for those who advocate the further spread of this surveillance technology. The New York Times has reported recently that three thousand surveillance cameras would be in place in New York by 2008 with the possibility of utilising facial recognition technology. Whilst the argument commonly heard is that if one has nothing to hide one has nothing to fear, it is more appropriate that the state is able to both justify its use of such wide spread surveillance and put in place a transparent form of video surveillance regulation that ensures public confidence in a system with the potential to collect personal data on a huge scale and thereby impinge on individual privacy. The United Kingdom, which is considered by many to be the home of widespread public space video surveillance, has a regulatory system governing the collection and storage of data obtained by CCTV surveillance. This paper outlines the requirements of the legislation in theory before reporting the results of a survey into the adherence to the legislation in practice. It illustrates that the majority of the respondents were ignorant of the requirements of this complex legislation and as a result were potentially breaching individual rights as well as compromising the gathering of strong evidence. In many respects CCTV operators were also ignorant as to what an ethical approach to such surveillance might include. It is suggested that in its current form UK regulation is working in theory but not practice and this raises the question whether such a regime concentrating on data protection is appropriate in other jurisdictions.