Search results

The first group focuses on climate change science. In the opening chapter of this section, Jerry Mahlman (Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Atmospheric Research) describes what he terms the “global warming dilemma.” According to Mahlman, the scientific community has reached an effective consensus that immediate and quite aggressive steps would be required to avoid climatic changes that are large in comparison with those observed in the Earth's geological record. Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, for example, would require permanent emissions reductions of roughly 60–80%. Moreover, the long lags in the Earth's response to changes in the composition of the atmosphere suggests that even this stringent scenario would be insufficient to prevent moderate temperature increases in the coming decades. Based on his reading of the scientific literature, Mahlman concludes that deferring action until climate change has broadly recognized deleterious effects would most likely “lock in” quite profound environmental impacts with effects lasting for centuries and even millennia. In terms of mechanisms, this argument appeals to the view that today's greenhouse gas emissions might use up the Earth's assimilative capacity, thus increasing the length of time that greenhouse gases remain in the atmosphere. On top of this, Mahlman notes that most scientific studies have emphasized time scales of one century or less in evaluating climate impacts. But impacts such as sea-level rise, which would be strongly affected by the melting and breakup of glacial formations such as the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, occur over much longer time horizons with a high degree of irreversibility. This makes climate change an issue of intergenerational fairness that pits present society's willingness to bear significant economic costs against the goal of protecting future generations from environmental harms that are hypothetical and yet potentially catastrophic.

With the context of changing global and local populations and, for example, their composition and distribution, this paper offers insight to food shopping in later life with a focus on Nottingham and Nottinghamshire in the East Midlands. The work is relevant and important due to the specific population makeup of this area and the challenges in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as a result of population changes/challenges.

The work takes an interdisciplinary view and draws on literature from both social policy and social care and business and marketing. Using this work as a grounding, and insights to primary research from a wider study in this area, the paper offers discussion and comment on:

• the importance of food and food shopping in later life;

• issues of, and concerns for, health, well-being, identity and community maintenance and resilience (as a direct result of the challenge to SDG achievement); and

• the role(s) and responsibility of business from a core business and wider business/corporate responsibility perspective as a reflection of the above and findings of the work.

the importance of food and food shopping in later life;

issues of, and concerns for, health, well-being, identity and community maintenance and resilience (as a direct result of the challenge to SDG achievement); and

the role(s) and responsibility of business from a core business and wider business/corporate responsibility perspective as a reflection of the above and findings of the work.

Using primary research undertaken by the authors, the paper supports findings from existing work from across social policy and care and business and management – related to the practicalities, challenges and the role of and approaches to food shopping in later life. It specifically offers insight to the efforts made by older food shoppers to maintain their independence and support their choices in a context of interdependence (e.g. within a family, community and environment). The importance social aspects of food shopping (as a counter to isolation and loneliness for example) are also identified and how, for example, the actions of business(es) may undermine the efforts (and resilience) of individuals and communities. “Better” understanding of food shoppers by business and other stakeholders is promoted.

In 1899 the medical practitioners of Dublin were confronted with an outbreak of a peculiar and obscure illness, characterised by symptoms which were very unusual. For want of a better explanation, the disorder, which seemed to be epidemic, was explained by the simple expedient of finding a name for it. It was labelled as “beri‐beri,” a tropical disease with very much the same clinical and pathological features as those observed at Dublin. Papers were read before certain societies, and then as the cases gradually diminished in number, the subject lost interest and was dropped.

Whilst at the Department of Computer Science at Columbia University, US, Michael Lebowitz, currently at the Analytical Proprietary Trading Unit of Morgan Stanley and Company, New York, researched into a variety of areas in natural language processing and machine learning. In particular his UNIMEM learning program has been applied to a wide range of domains including census data, software evaluation and congressional voting records. In a recent research contribution, “The Use of Memory in Text Processing”, Communications of the ACM, Vol. 31 No. 12, 1988, pp. 1483–1505, he describes how RESEARCHER, a program that reads, remembers and generalises from patent abstracts, makes use of its automatically generated memory to assist low‐level text processing. This, he says, involves disambiguation that could be accomplished in no other way.

As UK and American hospitality firms seek to extend their operations across Europe, this article focuses on some of the key concerns which are currently occupying the time and attention of executives at Forte, Holiday Inn Worldwide and Hyatt International Corporation. Each of these companies has revealed plans for international development and examples are given to illustrate their respective approaches.

At a meeting of the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington on the 9th May, Councillor R. DUDLEY BAXTER, Chairman of the Law and General Purposes Committee of the Council, brought up a Report as follows:—

One feature of Utilitarianism that provides its link to rational decision making is that the basic principle of utility demands that one maximize the good. One can disagree about what exactly the good is – perhaps it is pleasure, autonomy, beauty, or some set of items on a list mixing a variety of intrinsic goods. However, whatever the good turns out to be, we ought – morally – to maximize it. A failure to maximize the good is seen as not only a moral failure but also a rational one. So, for example, suppose that a friend of yours offers you a choice between $100 and $10. Most would hold that the rational thing to do is maximize the good and take the $100, all other things being equal. The person who took the $10 option would be considered irrational and imprudent. Maximizing or optimizing one's finances, all other things being equal, would be prudent, but the general point about maximizing carries over to the moral area. What one ought to do, morally, is maximize the good. In the moral area, this means maximizing human well-being, impartially considered. The above illustration is an artificial one, and real life introduces all sorts of complexities such as how to weigh disparate goods and how to deal with risk and uncertainty. However, the basic point that one ought to maximize the good, or do the best one can, stands.

A distinction must be drawn between a dismissal on the one hand, and on the other a repudiation of a contract of employment as a result of a breach of a fundamental term of that contract. When such a repudiation has been accepted by the innocent party then a termination of employment takes place. Such termination does not constitute dismissal (see London v. James Laidlaw & Sons Ltd (1974) IRLR 136 and Gannon v. J. C. Firth (1976) IRLR 415 EAT).