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After boom days in the Industrial Revolution and 1920's West Cumberland hit hard times. Now this special development area looks for a much brighter future, with improved roads, new industrial estates and keen, reliable workers Report by Richard Brooks; photographs by Colin Porter.

With the coming of the Data Protection Act, we as computer professionals are interested in the following three activities:

The next ten years will see Plymouth, devastated by bombing, finally rebuilt Vastly improved communications will open it up to industries that could not have considered the city before, and they will bring jobs to stop the young men going East.

The CEGB pays half the wages of bird warden Bob Scott who patrols the Dungeness power complex—just one of the ways much‐maligned industry is positively helping nature. Report by Ian Mandle: pictures by Eddie Ryle‐Hodges.

ALTHOUGH the active European and Asiatic land war has not begun so far as the bulk of the English are concerned and there are no visible signs of war's ending, advantage has been taken by many bodies to outline their after‐war proposals. Stale as we know that simple statement to be, we want to insist again that no one should be deflected for long from this reconstruction problem on the grounds that the decisive phases of war are still before us. Improbable as it seems, peace might “break out” at any time and might be catastrophic if food, clothing, homes and employment were not available on a scale at present scarcely dreamed. All the reports on reconstruction we have seen—of the Labour Party, N.A.L.G.O., the Educationists, as well as the more national ones, the Beveridge, the Uthwatt and those, so far as they exist, of the political parties, have common factors. The imperative of the moment is to relate these and to admit without party bias, the grounds of agreement so that some sort of work may begin. If this is not done—and who is to do it?—the whole of reform may be suffocated in a mass of indigestible verbiage. Libraries are vital, we say and believe, but in the general welter of words the many words of the excellent McColvin Report will not have fair consideration we fear. Our readers know that a strong committee of the Library Association has been giving assiduous study to the much shorter statement which is to embody library aspirations. We hope that it may not be long delayed, although we recognize that undue haste might lead to prolonged repentance.

This article, a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal, aims to impart the combined technological, business, and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned entrepreneur regarding the evolution, commercialization, and challenges of bringing a technological invention to market.

The interviewee is Dr Rodney Brooks, the Panasonic Professor of Robotics (emeritus), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab; Founder, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) and Chairman of Rethink Robotics. Dr Brooks shares some of his underlying principles in technology, academia and business, as well as past and future challenges.

Dr Brooks received degrees in pure mathematics from the Flinders University of South Australia and a PhD in computer science from Stanford University in 1981. He held research positions at Carnegie Mellon University and MIT, and a faculty position at Stanford before joining the faculty of MIT in 1984. He is also a Founder, Board Member and former CTO (1991-2008) of iRobot Corp (Nasdaq: IRBT). Dr Brooks is the former Director (1997-2007) of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and then the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He founded Rethink Robotics (formerly Heartland Robotics) in 2008.

While at MIT, in 1988, Dr Brooks built Genghis, a hexapodal walker, designed for space exploration (which was on display for ten years in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.). Genghis was one of the first robots that utilized Brooks’ pioneering subsumption architecture. Dr Brooks’ revolutionary behavior-based approach underlies the autonomous robots of iRobot, which has sold more than 12 million home robots worldwide, and has deployed more than 5,000 defense and security robots; and Rethink Robotics’ Baxter, the world’s first interactive production robot. Dr Brooks has won the Computers and Thought Award at the 1991 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, the 2008 IEEE Inaba Technical Award for Innovation Leading to Production, the 2014 Robotics Industry Association’s Engelberger Robotics Award for Leadership and the 2015 IEEE Robotics and Automation Award.

Once the third largest port in the country, the London ‘overspill’ town of King's Lynn has been revitalized in the last decade. Richard Brooks examines this once rather sleepy market town, which now has one eye on Europe and the other on the Midlands and South‐East. Photographs by Colin Porter.

This paper aims to explore perceptions and provides insights, from students who volunteer in policing whilst also studying the college of policing licenced professional policing degree (PPD) in Wales. It examines issues that act as enablers and blockers to volunteering in this public service, which also provides opportunities to develop their employability towards the careers to which they aspire. The paper provides insights from students and makes recommendations of interest to multiple stakeholders locally, regionally, nationally and internationally regarding attracting and recruiting volunteers.

Focus groups were conducted with students at three separate universities in the South and West of Wales. These undergraduate students were volunteers in different police forces and agreed to take part in connection with their experiences. The results were analysed using NVivo to establish commonalities.

The paper provides empirical insights concerning the issues surrounding the way those undergoing the process for recruitment as volunteers within policing are either hindered (blocked) or assisted (enabled). It identifies specific problematic areas as well as areas which have been of assistance. Policy makers, educators and recruiters should be aware of such blockers and enablers when considering adopting volunteering as an opportunity to enhance student employability. It also has resonance for other forms of volunteering in alternate public services.

This research is limited to those volunteers who are undertaking the licenced PPD at three separate universities in Wales. Although the research adds to the broader evidence-base with regards to volunteering and its use to enhance employability.

The paper includes practical implications for multiple stakeholders including university programme educators, administrators and decision makers in policing with regards to volunteering, employability, programme structures and process management.

The research is based upon the experiences and perceptions of those individuals who are actually engaged in volunteering.

The English sector is characterised by an expanding and increasingly differentiated set of higher education providers (HEPs) and an ever-more diverse student body. As a consequence, HEPs are as differentiated in their widening participation (WP) approaches as they are in every other aspect of the business of HE, and this has led to tensions between why and how they should go about the business of WP. Are HEPs driven by the desire to enhance social justice or merely responding to regulatory pressure? This chapter discusses how changing market regulatory regimes have interreacted with, and often conflicted with, institutional missions as they try to respond to the dual policy imperatives discussed in earlier chapters: the economic, human capital expansionary dynamic and the desire to enhance social justice through access to the HE system.