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This paper aims to describe the development of a knowledge management system (KMS) for the Nadir and Occultation for Mars Discovery (NOMAD) instrument on board the ESA/Roscosmos 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) spacecraft. The KMS collects knowledge acquired during the engineering process that involved over 30 project partners. In addition to the documentation and technical data (explicit knowledge), a dedicated effort was made to collect the gained experience (tacit knowledge) that is crucial for the operational phase of the TGO mission and also for future projects. The system is now in service and provides valuable information for the scientists and engineers working with NOMAD.

The NOMAD KMS was built around six areas: official documentation, technical specifications and test results, lessons learned, management data (proposals, deliverables, progress reports and minutes of meetings), picture files and movie files. Today, the KMS contains 110 GB of data spread over 11,000 documents and more than 13,000 media files. A computer-aided design (CAD) library contains a model of the full instrument as well as exported sub-parts in different formats. A context search engine for both documents and media files was implemented.

The conceived KMS design is basic, flexible and very robust. It can be adapted to future projects of a similar size.

The paper provides practical guidelines on how to retain the knowledge from a larger aerospace project. The KMS tool presented here works offline, requires no maintenance and conforms to data protection standards.

This paper shows how knowledge management requirements for space missions can be fulfilled. The paper demonstrates how to transform the large collection of project data into a useful tool and how to address usability aspects.

Sir Alec is no doubt referring to experiments in the West Riding and elsewhere which, in the words of the Schools Council, “show that provided that the teachers in a group of schools share certain characteristics (viz discrimination and like‐mindedness), there is good reason to think that they can combine effectively to run a system of examining under which each school sets and marks its own examination or assesses its own course or craft work”. The purpose of this article, which is based on experimental work by the Yorkshire Council for Further Education over many years and particularly since 1963, is to show that a devolution of responsibility for the assessment of student performance is at least as necessary in further education as it is in secondary schools. Nothing less than a major operation by central and local government and teachers will be satisfactory, and this operation will not be mounted if the present centralized, costly, and confusing state of affairs is allowed to continue, otherwise, the vested interests referred to by Sir Alec will see to it that there is endless delay and frustration until the momentum for reform has ground to a halt.

Monthly prescribing behaviour is assessed over a 3‐year period, 1 April 1992 to 31 March 1995. Total monthly number of items prescribed and overall net ingredient cost are analysed for 263 general practices, serving the 1 million residents of Birmingham, UK. Patients aged over 65 years play an important role in elevated prescribing activity. Practice composition varies considerably between training and non‐training practices, and between fundholding and non‐fundholding practices. Accounting for these differences, fundholders expend less and prescribe fewer items than their non‐fundholding counterparts. This is observed against a steady increase in prescribing activity over the study period. There are, however, marked downward shifts in both the number of items prescribed and overall monthly expenditure occurring with every new wave of fundholding. The magnitude of these changes raises doubts about the efficacy of the transition to fundholding and the impact of such large changes upon patient care.

Attention was called in the March number of this Journal to the promotion of a Bill for the reconstitution of the Local Government Board, and the opinion was expressed that the renovated Department should contain among its staff “experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.”

The statements which have recently been made in various quarters to the effect that Danish butter is losing its hold on the English market, that its quality is deteriorating, and that the sale is falling off, are not a little astonishing in face of the very strong and direct evidence to the contrary furnished by the official records. As an example of the kind of assertions here alluded to may be instanced an opinion expressed by a correspondent of the British Food Journal, who, in a letter printed in the March number, stated that “My own opinion is that the Danes are steadily losing their good name for quality, owing to not using preservatives and to their new fad of pasteurising… .”

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of two psychometric measures as predictors of end of year outcome for first year university students.

New undergraduates (n=537) were recruited in two contrasting universities: one arts based, and one science, in different cities in the UK. At the start of the academic year, new undergraduates across 30 programmes in the two institutions were invited to complete a survey comprising two psychometric measures: Academic Behavioural Confidence scale and the Performance Expectation Ladder. Outcome data were collected from the examining boards the following summer distinguishing those who were able to progress to the next year of study without further assessment from those who were not.

Two of the four Confidence subscales, Attendance and Studying, had significantly lower scores amongst students who were not able to progress the following June compared to those who did (p < 0.003). The Ladder data showed the less successful group to anticipate a poorer performance at graduation relative to their year group than did the other group (p < 0.05).

The results suggest that these two psychometric measures could be instrumental in predicting those at risk of non-completion; such identification could enable the targeted use of limited resources to improve retention. Given the background of limited resources in which institutions are exhorted to improve retention rates, this approach, facilitating the early identification of those at risk of non-completion, could enable focused use of additional support to reduce attrition.

Reaction to supervision is a neglected area in the study of Educational Administration. In this study the reactions of teachers to inspectorial supervision were determined by asking a sample of the members of the Queensland Teachers Union to list five (if any) of the worst abuses that they personally had suffered under the inspectorial system, to list five (if any) outstanding experiences which had improved their teaching, and, if they desired, to make general comments on the inspectorial system. The results illustrate a finding of many studies of organizations that there are likely to be misperceptions between status levels. It was found that the inspectorial system has demeaned both teachers and inspectors in three senses: relations between them were inauthentic, they were forced to play a game of “cat and mouse” with each other and teachers were under pressure to be deceptive and unhealthily deferent to inspectors. Finally the results suggest that teachers vary in their orientations to inspectorial supervision. The implications of the findings for the nature and the quality of pupil‐teacher interaction are discussed.

It is much easier for an educational visitor from England to feel at home in the world of technical education than in the primary and secondary sectors, though even here there are important differences. Passing through places such as Geelong, Ballarat or Hamilton he cannot fail to note that the Colleges are proud to announce their origins from Mechanics' Institutes, mostly founded in the third quarter of the 19th century. Even a small town like Mount Gambier in S Australia (population 18 000) has a fine new college and the Regional Colleges in the cities and larger towns either have or are due to have buildings in no way inferior to the English Polytechnics.

Some misconception appears to have arisen in respect to the meaning of Section 11 of the Food and Drugs Act, 1899, owing, doubtless, to the faulty punctuation of certain copies of the Act, and the Sanitary Record has done good service by calling attention to the matter. The trouble has clearly been caused by the insertion of a comma after the word “condensed” in certain copies of the Act, and the non‐insertion of this comma in other copies. The words of the section, as printed by the Sanitary Record, are as follows: “Every tin or other receptacle containing condensed, separated or skimmed milk must bear a label clearly visible to the purchaser on which the words ‘Machine‐skimmed Milk,’ or ‘Skimmed Milk,’ as the case may require, are printed in large and legible type.”

It is extraordinary that such an apparently forbidding aspect of education as examinations has become so charged with emotional attitudes and language that, before one even begins to survey any sector of the field, some cautionary words are necessary. It is salutary to remind ourselves that in this, as in all organised human activities, we are not likely to find perfection, but only a serviceable balance of opposing factors: