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Cambridge Consultants' optical and signal processing work has produced one of the most efficacious monitoring systems yet developed: a sensor system that measures railway track deflection in situ as Dr Bob Jones explains.

Focuses on the JL Automation Company of Sunderland, a major supplier of both turnkey and OEM solutions for the quality control of components for the automotive industry. The company is relatively unique in that it develops both its own hardware and software for the machine vision applications. This allows JL to design low‐cost solutions for OEM markets and advanced high technology turnkey systems as one‐off projects for high‐volume products. Describes some of their core machine vision products and applications.

The dynamic evolution and new direction of nonprint media in the information professions continually change the emphasis and character of activities, services and equipment. It is essential for libraries and other information agencies to keep abreast with the latest developments in the field.

This article presents empirical data on such questions as, will the business person of tomorrow be more honest than the business person of today? Are women more ethical than men? Will the increasing entry of women into business and managerial respon‐sibility have any impact on ethical behaviour in business?

WHAT is this thing called… accountability?

Argues that residential training programmes and distance learning, currently the most popular methods used to provide and maintain changes in organizational structure, both have their drawbacks. Instead, it may be better to view training programmes as critical boosters in the search for continuous improvement. Provides a new model overcoming the shortcomings of both approaches and a short case history to illustrate.

Population, community, and public health notions are addressed separately in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), have different foci and stakeholders, build on different frameworks to achieve their aims, and apply different measures to determine the long-term impact of interventions. This paper attempts to clarify each concept and proposes a method of evaluating each of these sets of health-related activities based on the benefits that accrue to the respective stakeholders.

In addition to indicating how to affect change and improvements in health, the ecological model of health also provides insight into how the benefits from health-related activities may or may not flow back to the entities sponsoring health interventions. By clearly defining each of the concepts and examining the methods and metrics being used to select activities and measure benefits, a valuation model is developed that measures the financial impact on the targeted population as well as the sponsoring institution.

Defining, measuring, and evaluating are important to bring clarity to how individual organizations can contribute to the overall health of the population, as well as the limits of any single organization in doing so. Collective and upstream action will be required to improve the population’s health, but identifying and justifying the role of each participating organization is a challenge that still lacks an overarching vision that can be explained and measured to the satisfaction of all stakeholders.

Decision makers must justify how resources are committed in an era of scarcity and limited financial means. Moreover, methods must be in place to measure the impact of potential collaborations. The proposed valuation framework lays out the natural incentives, the responses to those incentives, and how to select initiatives that maximize value from the perspective of the various stakeholders.

FOLLOWING our repeated denunciation of the Bullock Report proposals, there were some readers who expresed their belief that we were against it not from conviction but because ‘we were on the employers' side’.

Alan Hobby has recently been appointed Applications Engineer at DEK Printing Machines Ltd, Weymouth. In 1968 he joined Ferranti at Bracknell and became one of the small team setting up the thick film production unit. Four years later he joined EMI at Hayes as the Production Engineer, where he gained experience in the manufacture of high volume but relatively simple hybrids. In 1975 Alan moved to Marconi Electronic Devices Ltd at Portsmouth, where he was one of the engineers responsible for the company's programme of qualification as a hybrid manufacturer for the European Space Agency and for their BS 9450 approval programme. Since then he has been concerned with the development of printing and firing techniques both at Portsmouth and at Marconi's high volume production unit at Swindon.

Discusses five common myths about perception, management and implementation of consumer satisfaction programs. Intends to debunk the more popular myths so that managers can avoid making classic service delivery mistakes. Integrates current research on customer satisfaction and consumer complaints. Makes a number of recommendations.