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This paper presents the concept and design of a strain gauge sensor, which is a part of a pipe crawling robot and can be used for the purpose of detecting the shape of a collapsed pipe or tunnels like voids within rubble. The paper illustrates the sensor's working principle. The sensor uses a spline interpolation algorithm combined with a looking‐up table method to estimate the void shape. The paper also presents the software interface and the laboratory experiment of the sensor. Discussions about the experimental results are given in the later part of the paper.

This study aims to investigate locomotion mechanisms of different urban search and rescue (USAR) robots currently being researched or commercially available on the market.

USAR robots are categorized by the type of their mobility. Detailed illustration and analysis have been given for each USAR robot in the paper.

The paper finds that none of current USAR robots can practically and autonomously carry out rescue work in a complex and unstructured environment. Hence, responding to the practical requirements of highly challenging USAR tasks, a team of USAR robots based on different locomotion mechanisms may be a good solution to undertake rescue activities.

The paper provides guidance in the design of future USAR robots.

The paper investigates locomotion mechanisms of different USAR robots in detail.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.

Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.

This paper explores four works of contemporary fiction to illuminate formal and informal regulation of sex. The paper’s co-authors frame analysis with the story of their creation of a transdisciplinary course, entitled “Regulating Sex: Historical and Cultural Encounters,” in which students mined literature for social critique, became immersed in the study of law and its limits, and developed increased sensitivity to power, its uses, and abuses. The paper demonstrates the value theoretically and pedagogically of third-wave feminisms, wild zones, and contact zones as analytic constructs and contends that including sex and sexualities in conversations transforms personal experience, education, society, and culture, including law.

The purpose of this study is to establish household‐level food security risks associated with climate variation, and how households respond to these risks in a patriarchal society such as in Northern Cameroon where subsistence women producers have less control over resources required to support the food production sector which depends entirely on the quality of the rainy season.

Primary data from 116 female‐headed households (FHHs) and 184 male‐headed households (MHHs) is examined for the three Northern provinces of Cameroon. The survey generated information on the response and coping strategies to climatic variation; and the socioeconomic impacts of climate on households. The multinomial logit model is employed to establish the determinants of the choice selection for climate risk coping options by households.

Both FHHs and MHHs are exposed to stresses related to food production and availability, low incomes and food accessibility and utilization of food supplies, heightened by the real and perceived effects of the variability of current climate. Short‐term coping choices include diversification of livelihood which in turn impacts food accessibility and consumption choices.

A seasonal pattern is revealed in household expenditure with households spending more than 70 percent of their income on food in spring. The lowest food expenditures are in summer. Market and income manipulation choices for food supply stability include a range of non‐farm income generation strategies to cope with expected shortages induced by climatic variability. The current climate variation, household demography, and farming conditions via access to credit, tenure, and extension service delivery are significant determinants of coping choices for households perceiving change in climatic patterns.

Significant seasonal patterns in household food availability, accessibility and utilization are observed with important implications for both household welfare and as precursor to long‐term adaptation to climate change.

BOURNEMOUTH fulfilled some of the high expectations of those who attended it. The welcome was cordial, the local arrangements good, as we were entitled to expect from so proved an organizer as Mr. Charles Riddle and from his committee and staff, and, when fine, the town was most attractive. The weather, however, was bad, and too warm at the same time for most of us. One thing that certainly emerged from this experience was the real need to change the time of the conference. Only librarians among similar bodies appear to meet in the summer season. The accountants, engineers and other professional people confer in late May or in June, when they do not compete with holiday‐makers for accommodation and attention. The Council might well consider the re‐arrangement of its year with such a change in view.

The following classified, descriptive list of titles is intended to provide reference librarians with a current checklist of new reference books, and is designed to supplement the RSR review column, “Recent Reference Books,” by Frances Neel Cheney. “Reference Books in Print” includes all additional books received prior to the inclusion deadline established for this issue. Appearance in this column does not preclude a later review in RSR. Publishers are urged to send a copy of all new reference books directly to RSR as soon as published, for immediate listing in “Reference Books in Print.” The prevailing policy of including all reference books received has temporarily allowed the listing of titles with imprints older than two years; with increased receipt of more current titles from a longer list of publishers, this policy will soon be discontinued (with the exception of reprints or older books newly acquired for distribution by another publisher). The column shall also occasionally include library science or other library related publications of other than a reference character.