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In the early 1980s, mechanical hands were little more than two‐fingered grippers, or quick‐disconnect wrists with different tools for each job. Today, thanks to engineering ingenuity, shrinking components and government funding for space station and other applications, they are becoming much more. One example of such evolving technology is the Salisbury Hand.

This paper describes a series of kinematic and haptic analyses which lead to the design of a particularly simple, yet useful multi‐hand, multi‐finger haptic interface. The proposed device is desktop‐based and has been built with maximizing transparency in mind. By interacting with virtual environments, using two fingers per hand, users are able to grasp and manipulate virtual objects, something that current state‐of‐the‐art commercial desktop haptic devices do not allow. These additional capabilities lend themselves to more complex virtual reality and teleoperation applications such as surgical training, hand rehabilitation and nanomanipulation.

Describes the development and application of the haptic whole arm manipulator (WAM) robotic arm in surgical operations. Discusses the fusion of 2D and 3D body images with the robot which allows the precise positioning of laparoscopic and other surgical tools to assist human surgeons. Benefits attributed to this system include minimally invasive surgery, reduced collateral damage, reduced infection risks and reduced requirements for revision surgery.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential counteracting influence of individual resilience levels on the tendency of role stressors, stress arousal and burnout to reduce job satisfaction and increase turnover intentions.

This study surveys 332 auditors from the offices of nine public accounting firms. The structural equations modeling procedures examine an expanded role stress model to assess the nature and extent of the role that resilience plays in reducing stress, burnout, job dissatisfaction and turnover intentions.

Resilience has a significant direct negative association with stress arousal and burnout, a significant indirect positive association with job satisfaction and a significant indirect negative association with turnover intentions.

As a cross-sectional study that incorporates self-report instruments, no definitive statements can be made about causality. However, the results extend the extant knowledge related of the role of resilience as a coping mechanism within the role stress paradigm in auditor work settings.

This study’s findings suggest the potential value of resilience training programs at public accounting firms to reduce staff burnout. In turn, reduced burnout has an increased likelihood ceteris paribus of increasing job satisfaction and reducing auditor turnover intentions.

This study’s findings suggest that resilience training for public accounting staff to reduce burnout may provide the organizational and personal benefits associated with enhancing job satisfaction and decreasing turnover intentions.

This paper aims to evaluate the efficacy of the Connor–Davidson Resilience Scale 10 (CD-RISC 10) (Campbell-Sills and Stein, 2007) for use in public accounting settings.

The analyses include an examination of possible demographic differences in overall score, the scale’s factor structure, the invariance of its factor structure across gender and age groups, the scale’s reliability and its convergent and divergent validity.

There are significant gender and age group difference in scores, but a common univariate factor structure for the scale. The authors further find that a two-factor solution provides a superior fit to the data compared to the single factor structure used in the most prior research. Spearman–Brown reliability coefficients, item-total correlations and coefficient alphas each support the reliability of the items loading on the scale for the full sample, as well as for each of the above-referenced demographic subsamples.

Limitations are acknowledged related to the use of self-report measures, absence of test-retest score comparisons and convergent and divergent assessments limited to the heterotrait–homomethod approach.

The CD-RISC 10 is an expedient resilience measure, as it can be completed and scored in just a few minutes. Human resource administrators at public accounting firms can use it as an initial screening measure to identify staff who might benefit from resilience training. The paper adds to the appreciation of what not to do in the face of crisis by the government and those in charge of large accounting organizations.

The CD-RISC 10 can be used in research and clinical efforts to reduce voluntary turnover of audit staff and enhance the well-being of auditors in the workplace.

This study provides empirical evidence that the CD-RISC 10 is a valid and reliable measure for future assessments of auditor resilience levels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role stress model originally developed by Fogarty et al. (2000) using more refined measures, a context-specific performance metric and a targeted respondent group. The investigation uses a sample of working professional auditors to investigate the associations between job stressors, burnout and job outcomes using an industry-specific measure of job performance.

The analyses use structural equations modeling procedures to examine a model that postulates that burnout will mediate the relations between job stressors and job outcomes. The data for the study come from 293 survey instruments completed by auditors working at the offices of 11 public accounting firms. A parsimonious job satisfaction scale based on Churchill et al.’s (1985) 27-item scale is developed using classical test-item analysis and is incorporated into the analysis.

The results suggest three significant items of note. First, although prior research has found that burnout partially mediates relations between job stressors and job outcomes, this study shows that burnout fully mediates these associations. Second, the study provides support for the reduced audit quality practices (RAQP) scale as an audit-specific construct for job performance. Finally, results show that the 27-item job satisfaction scale can successfully be reduced to a six-item scale.

While this study is subject to the limitations inherent to all cross-sectional studies that use self-report instruments, the results further the knowledge related to the role stress paradigm in auditor work settings.

This study’s findings provides a cogent argument for human resource managers at public accounting firms to monitor staff burnout levels and implement interventional strategies (Jones III et al., 2010) when these levels become excessive. Efforts to mitigate staff burnout levels may decrease the likelihood of staff engagement in dysfunctional audit practices and the associated costs to the firm and the individual(s) involved.

The findings also demonstrate the superiority of the RAQP scale in terms of explaining variance in auditor performance when compared to the modified performance measures utilized in prior research.

Higher education, government, international agencies, technology and science—these have been the content of papers so far. But the need for information extends downwards as well as upwards and I want now to step down the ladder as it were and look at what is taking place in schools, primary, secondary and middle. Or to be more specific to examine some changes in school librarianship and in particular what is happening in the resource‐providing agencies which have grown up to meet the ever widening demands for recorded information in teaching and learning. These demands are now as much visual as verbal and it is reasonable to expect that the present generation of students will begin to look for the multi media provision they have grown accustomed to at school to be reflected in their local public library or through the organization for which they work.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine the views of Freud in his Civilization and its Discontents and compare his idea of civilization with that of other scholars in order to determine if we will ever be able to create a society which will endure in these days of nuclear power. The dangers to humanity are great, the solution difficult to see. Freud emphasized self‐interest and aggressiveness as the failings in man which would lead to the collapse of civilization, summed up in the Latin tag: homo homine lupus. Freud rejected out of hand religion as a remedy for man’s aggressiveness. This view of civilization is compared with that of Albert Schweitzer in his The Philosophy of Civilization. Schweitzer sees the enduring society as one in which man has become ethical and thereby dedicated himself to the good of society and in so doing shows a reverence for life. This study then examines the view of Ortega y Gasset, who finds in The Revolt of the Masses the success of society to lie in the efforts of men of talent, select men who have dedicated themselves to the advancement of society in accordance with the old adage, noblesse oblige. Finally we examine the Civilisation of Kenneth Clark, which is concerned with man’s development in the arts as he removes himself farther and farther from the state of the savage. The views of Arnold Toynbee on civilization are examined. Toynbee finds that our civilization, Western Christendom, will play an ever decreasing role in the global society. Toynbee also fears the coming of a nuclear holocaust but is confident there will be survivors. The possibility of a nuclear war attests the aggressiveness of man. Finally, to illustrate the evil effects of nuclear power, a brief glance is taken at the horrors that overtook the citizens of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they were the targets of the atomic bomb in 1945. The only feasible solution to this grave problem appears to be a nuclear‐weapon‐free world. Even then the world is not safe from the aggressive nature of some rogue nation which seeks to take advantage of such a situation and dominate the world. This contingency is commonly referred to as the genie is out of the bottle. The number of genies increased when North Korea, India and Pakistan claimed the addition of nuclear weapons to their arsenal. Man has to control his fellow man’s urge to advance his self‐interest at any cost, if we are to endure. As Freud in his perspicacity put it: homo homine lupus.

The news last December that the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration had banned at central level about eleven million pounds of chicken for human food because minute quantities of the synthetic oestrogen, stilboestrol, had been found in them was bound before very long to produce lurid speculation on the possible effects on humans, quite apart from the fact that the substance is considered to be a possible carcinogen. The speculation has arrived. It is in fact more than speculation, since it alleges that because Americans consume so much chicken—more than any other race—they must also be consuming more synthetic oestrogens and that American men are acquiring feminine curves and contours, a direct result of upsetting their oestrogen balance by eating oestrogenised chicken! Without doubt, American men do bulge in various places, as men who eat and sit too much have always done, but the bulges do not have a feminine distribution! All of which is by no means to say that the increasing use of synthetic hormones and similar substances is without risk or that some form of control is not necessary, even though their object is an increase in food production.