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Large numbers of vulnerable tenants live in general needs housing. They may be people taking up new tenancies or existing tenants who become vulnerable for one reason or another. This can easily become a problem for the managers of general needs housing. In this example a specialist team is used to give support to a small caseload of tenants.

An expert system has been developed by Cranfield Institute of Technology to assist in the selection of the correct robot for an industrial process

Under the impetus of federal law, each state is required to develop Guidelines by which to determine presumptive child support awards following divorce. The key federal requirement is that during the specified quadrennial reviews of each state’s Guidelines, “a state must consider economic data on the cost of raising children.” Our purpose here is to compare presumptive child support awards provided in typical state Guidelines with the actual monetary costs of raising children.

To this end, we estimate these monetary costs from government data on consumer outlays in households with children as compared with substantially similar childless households. We review and reject current methods for determining child costs: both from income equivalence methods and those offered in annual government surveys; and provide quite different results despite using the same data employed by others.

Our econometric results indicate much lower monetary costs than reported for either of the two alternatives. Since presumptive child support awards in most states rely on current methods, these findings suggest that existing award structures should be re-evaluated.

Current award structures create a financial asset resulting from the gap between presumptive awards and monetary costs for custodial parents. This factor engenders resentment by support payers since it is his or her payments that fund this asset. And this resentment harms relationships between the parents. Increased willingness of non-custodial parents to make their assessed payments is an outcome promoted when payment amounts reflect the actual monetary costs of raising children.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of a structured improvement process that is used in all programmes of work of the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement (NHS Institute).

This paper outlines the background to the development of the improvement process, specifically how learning from the domains of new product development, user centred design and innovation and creativity have been incorporated into the process.

There are key elements of evidence and experience that can be taken from other domains and incorporated into a structured approach to healthcare improvement.

An improvement process is outlined that could be used as a basis for any healthcare improvement effort, and will help to ensure the development of better solutions more quickly.

This paper introduces a process that will help anyone interested in improving healthcare create better solutions to the challenges they face in shorter timescales.

The purpose of this paper is to present contrasting approaches to the descriptive case study of tourism to the buried city of Plymouth, Montserrat, an example of the marketing and burying – the supply and demand – of apocalyptic dark tourism on the island.

A case study mixed-methods methodology is adopted, and findings are derived from tour guiding fieldwork, guide and tourist interviews, and an analysis of travel writing and tourism marketing campaigns.

Dark tourism is viewed as a contentious and problematic concept: it attracts and repels tourism to the former capital Plymouth, Montserrat. After 20 years of the volcano crisis, the islanders, government and Tourist Board are commemorating resilience living with the volcano and regeneration in a disaster scenario. Marketing and consumption approaches to dark tourism elucidate different facets to the case study of “the buried city” of Plymouth, Montserrat, and the Montserrat Springs Hotel overlooking Plymouth. The disjunct between these two types of approach to dark tourism, as well as the different criteria attached to working definitions of dark tourism – and the range of interests in apocalyptic dark tourism into the city and its surrounds – show some of the problems and limitations with theoretical and scalar discussions on dark tourism.

The paper’s implications are that both supply and demand approaches to dark tourism are needed to fully understand a dark tourism destination and to reconcile the disjunct between these two approaches and the perspectives of tourist industry and tourism users.

This is a descriptive dark tourism case study of a former capital city examined from both supply and demand perspectives. It introduces the apocalyptic to dark tourism destination analysis.

We are currently experiencing, in western societies, a new reality in health systems, the emergence of an epidemic of chronic diseases, which test and raise new challenges to the health systems. This exponential increase in chronic diseases has not been accompanied by updated training of health professionals in this area. The chronic illness implies a bilateral relationship, of commitment and compromise for life, in which the involvement of the sick person must be the rule. The scope of therapeutic education (TE) is making the person autonomous and helping them to maintain or improve their quality of life. To treat patients with chronic disease, health professionals need to adapt their knowledge to their new role in the therapeutic relationship. As for the methodology, a participative observational methodology will be carried out with the training of health professionals who work in this area. It is a descriptive work based on studies and works published by the main schools working in this area, with emphasis on the School of Geneve. The purpose is to identify the problem of chronic diseases, the challenges that patients and health professionals face and how to build educational projects, exploring the use of educational tools, including digital technology.

Because of its lower dielectric constant and loss tangent, and its greater surface smoothness, fused silica is very suitable for use in the KU band and above, but its cost is very high. The purpose of this paper is therefore to select a new substrate which competes with fused silica on the grounds of lower cost; to adapt the hybrid technology to this new substrate; to show ,comparing the measured performances of a filter realised on fused silica and on this new substrate, that the latter is suitable for MICs in the wide band, but not in the narrow band; and to describe an application of this substrate in the 22–24 GHz band. Thus, after an investigation of the electrical parameters and of the costs of different substrates, Duroid was selected and compared with silica. This substrate is composed of a non‐woven glass microfibre reinforced by polytetrafluorethylene; its microwave quality is theoretically almost similar to that of the fused silica one but its cost is much lower. The adaptation of hybrid technology on this substrate, notably in order to use beam lead and die semiconductor components with thermocompression bonding as a connection method, involved the use of a copper foil laminated on Duroid. This paper describes the process that has been perfected: selective electroplating of gold on copper, compatibility of etching solutions of gold and copper, attachment and connection methods of semiconductors, substrate attachment in a package, etc. A comparison of the performances of a filter realised on fused silica and on Duroid gives the following conclusion: Duroid is suitable for wide band circuits, but not for narrow band circuits because of its instability under stress test temperatures (−20 to 80°). In this last case, silica will be preferred. A transmitter‐receiver in the 22–24 GHz band for radio links is described.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two significant political advertising campaigns which used the “It’s Time” slogan and to reflect on how these related to official, popular and commercial nationalism in Australia. The paper is primarily concerned with two main issues: identifying and examining the variety of images of Australia in two key television advertisements, and exploring the methods by which advertising agencies created positive images of Australia and Australians in the two campaigns. It specifically highlights the significance of the “It’s Time” campaign, which is relevant for scholars and advertisers seeking to understand effective political communication.

This paper examines television advertisements by using semiotics as the principal methodology. The research methodology devised for the advertisements consists of two main components: a shot combination analysis, also known as a shot-by-shot analysis, and a semiological reading of the visual and acoustic channels of the advertisement.

This paper examines the use of commercial nationalism in television advertising. As one of many social and cultural influences, advertisements assist the individual in understanding their notion of themselves and their relationship with the wider community – be it local, national, regional or global. The primary focus of this research is the phenomenon of commercial nationalism – the adoption of national signifiers in the marketplace. However, by examining the more general discourse on nationalism, particularly the voice of official nationalism – the promotion of nationalism by the nation-state (or those aspiring to power), the symbiotic relationship between these two complementary brands of nationalism is explored.

The methodology adopted for analysing the two political advertising campaigns offers conceptual and practical value. It provides a consistent set of terms and concepts for further research to build upon. The paper provides insights for the marketing or examination of advertising campaigns. The paper demonstrates the power of market research to inform a framing strategy for a political campaign. The paper contributes to the body of knowledge in this area and thus society’s understanding of these important periods in the nation’s history. In particular, the paper provides an exploration into the “It’s Time” campaign and how it mobilised a broader cultural awakening to engineer success at the ballot box in 1972. The two case studies examined in this paper are relevant to political scientists and media and communication scholars.