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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the doctoral seminar in the history of marketing thought and theory taught by Donald F. Dixon.

The approach is an historical narrative based on the author's personal recollections of the historical context of the seminar, how it was organized and conducted, along with a sample class discussion of the first lesson in marketing systems.

Dixon was indisputably a maverick who worked far outside the marketing mainstream. Consequently, he had a truly unique historical systems framework for understanding and teaching the history of marketing thought.

Because of its uniqueness, the Dixon seminar offers novel insights into teaching the history of marketing thought and the development of marketing theory.

The Government has recognised the significance of exposures in houses to the natural radioactive gas radon and has over the past decade initiated various campaigns in conjunction with NRPB, BRE and local authorities to mitigate its effects. This article explains the principal features of the programme to reduce radon exposures in existing housing, which is based on encouraging occupiers to measure radon levels in their homes and publicising the availability of cheap and effective remedies. The important role is noted of professional groups such as surveyors in the housing market and detailed descriptions provided of the main methods of reducing radon levels and their suitability for particular buildings. The importance of raising radon awareness amongst professionals is noted and sources of further information are provided including technical reports on remedial measures.

In 1967 Aslib Research and Development Department published a note describing experimental work on computer‐aided typesetting, and announcing that further research was planned. The proposed programme of work was carried out by the authors of the present paper, during their sojourns as members of the Department. The results are here reported.

An integration algorithm for effective and accurate integration of the Fourier—Bessel integral temperature solution of a five‐layer structure with a circular embedded source is reported. The circular source solution has the form of a single integration rather than the double integration of a solution for the structure with a rectangular source. Using the circular source solution, the computation time for temperature calculation is reduced by a factor of 10 compared with the rectangular source solution. To reduce the computation time further, this integration algorithm transforms the single integration into a fast‐converging simple summation. The effectiveness of this algorithm is most evident when the point of calculation is far from the source. Based on the solution and algorithm, a software program PAMICE has been written. An important application for the solution and integration algorithm is the use of a circular source instead of a square one as unit source to produce the unit thermal profile for real‐time thermal design of integrated circuits having large number of sources. The solution is also valuable for the thermal study and analysis of devices having circular sources such as power transistors and light emitting diodes. The algorithm can be applied to other similar solutions arising from structures with circular sources.

Discusses the radioactive gas radon and its effects on the legal obligations of surveyors and other professionals concerned with the designing, refurbishment and appraisal of dwellings. Presents an overview of the problem of radon, concentrating on health issues and summarizing both its measurement and the way in which it enters dwellings. Outlines the protective measures needed to prevent radon entering new homes and existing dwellings, mentioning NRPB guidances. Details the legal implications for surveyors in these two separate situations, discussing suing in respect of physical injuries or death, the event of the property becoming unsaleable and for pure economic loss. Explores the surveyor′s duty in respect to radon and the implications of the Defective Premises Act 1972.

Considering the complexity of dynamic and friction modeling, this paper aims to develop an adaptive trajectory tracking control scheme for robot manipulators in a universal unmodeled method, avoiding complicated modeling processes.

An augmented neural network (NN) constituted of radial basis function neural networks (RBFNNs) and additional sigmoid-jump activation function (SJF) neurons is introduced to approximate complicated dynamics of the system: the RBFNNs estimate the continuous dynamic term and SJF neurons handle the discontinuous friction torques. Moreover, the control algorithm is designed based on Barrier Lyapunov Function (BLF) to constrain output error.

Lyapunov stability analysis demonstrates the exponential stability of the closed-loop system and guarantees the tracking errors within predefined boundaries. The introduction of SJFs alleviates the limitation of RBFNNs on discontinuous function approximation. Owing to the fast learning speed of RBFNNs and jump response of SJFs, this modified NN approximator can reconstruct the system model accurately at a low compute cost, and thereby better tracking performance can be obtained. Experiments conducted on a manipulator verify the improvement and superiority of the proposed scheme in tracking performance and uncertainty compensation compared to a standard NN control scheme.

An enhanced NN approximator constituted of RBFNN and additional SJF neurons is presented which can compensate the continuous dynamic and discontinuous friction simultaneously. This control algorithm has potential usages in high-performance robots with unknown dynamic and variable friction. Furthermore, it is the first time to combine the augmented NN approximator with BLF. After more exact model compensation, a smaller tracking error is realized and a more stringent constraint of output error can be implemented. The proposed control scheme is applicable to some constraint occasion like an exoskeleton and surgical robot.

Many multinational firms attempt to cope with trade policy uncertainties by developing the option of manufacturing their goods in multiple production facilities in different countries. In this chapter, we explore how such “production switching” options affect the vulnerability of a country’s exports to foreign protectionism. We present a theoretical model of such behavior and show that production switching increases the elasticity of a country’s export with respect to tariffs. The magnitude of the elasticity depends on a country’s position in the value chain. We use the model’s predictions to provide new insights into the vulnerability of China’s exports during the current Sino–US trade war.