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This article, based on a presentation given at the First National Personality Disorder Congress, provides a brief descriptive overview of the occupation‐based intervention group programme, the Journey day service, with contributions from a former group member, Rachel, of her experience of participating in and completing the programme.

The aim of this study was to determine whether customer satisfaction can be used as a reliable measure of the performance of the management of a research and development (R&D) department. A study of a research and development department of an Australian manufacturing company was undertaken in 1995. R&D performance and external customer satisfaction were measured using seven dimensions of technical performance and seven dimensions of service quality. Expectations of external customer satisfaction were measured from the internal (staff of R&D department) and external customers’ (production, sales and administration) points of view. This was to highlight the gap between the staffs’ perceptions and the external customers’ perceptions of service provided. The study provides research and development managers with an additional tool for measuring their management performance.

The governance of our towns and cities requires an approach that connects people with nature and places. Digital technology can be the glue that does this, if it serves the needs of the various stakeholders, including urban communities. It means identifying the potential connections across people, digital, and place themes, examining successful approaches, and exploring some of the current practice (or lack of it) in spatial planning and smart cities. This can be considered using a range of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies with other methodologies which combine the use of socioeconomic and environmental data about the urban environment. This ambient domain sensing can provide the ecological and other data to show how digital connectivity is addressing the placemaking challenges alongside providing implications for urban governance and communities.

Reports the findings of a study which aimed to identify the strategic capabilities which lead to management consulting success. The study also aimed to find out what management consultants consider to be performance indicators of consulting success and whether these were related to the strategic capabilities. The research design for this study was a modified generative strategy. Several data collection methods, namely, interviews, content analysis and questionnaire surveys, were used to generate both quantitative and qualitative data. Twenty‐one strategic capabilities were identified. These were subsumed under the broad categories of (1) functions and (2) skills and values. The three most critical functions identified, in descending order, were quality of service, setting objectives and solving problems. The three most crucial skills/values were integrity and honesty, client‐consultant communication and credibility. Ten performance indicators were identified. Of these, the three most critical, as identified by the respondents, were, customer satisfaction, profitability and repeat business.

Following a brief history of cataloguing and the MARC format this paper describes current challenges in developing suitable international formats and cataloguing rules for dealing with electronic resources. Extensive references to the past and current literature provide an overview of the problems faced.

We are growing accustomed to shock tactics of the US Administration in dealing with toxic residues in food or additives which are a hazard to man, as well as the daily press infusing sensation, even melodrama, into them, but the recent action of the FDA in calling in from the food market several million cans of tuna and other deep sea fish because of the presence of mercury has had the worthwhile effect of drawing world attention to the growing menace of environmental pollution. The level of mercury in the fish is immaterial; it should never have been there at all, but it stresses the importance of the food chain in the danger to man and animal life generally, including fish beneath the sea. Without underestimating risks of pollution in the atmosphere from nuclear fission products, from particulate matter carried in the air by inhalation or even skin absorption, food and drink, which includes aqua naturale would seem to be the greatest danger to life. What these recent events illustrate in a dramatic manner, however, is the extent of pollution.