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Reports on the 31st International Symposium on Robotics, May 14‐17, 2000, Montreal, Canada. Teleoperation and automated remote operation dominated a high technology conference which included many new developments for the application of robotic technology.

Man has been seeking an ideal existence for a very long time. In this existence, justice, love, and peace are no longer words, but actual experiences. How ever, with the American preemptive invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq and the subsequent prisoner abuse, such an existence seems to be farther and farther away from reality. The purpose of this work is to stop this dangerous trend by promoting justice, love, and peace through a change of the paradigm that is inconsistent with justice, love, and peace. The strong paradigm that created the strong nation like the U.S. and the strong man like George W. Bush have been the culprit, rather than the contributor, of the above three universal ideals. Thus, rather than justice, love, and peace, the strong paradigm resulted in in justice, hatred, and violence. In order to remove these three and related evils, what the world needs in the beginning of the third millenium is the weak paradigm. Through the acceptance of the latter paradigm, the golden mean or middle paradigm can be formulated, which is a synergy of the weak and the strong paradigm. In order to understand properly the meaning of these paradigms, however, some digression appears necessary.

We discuss the connections between epidemiology models and the search and matching (SAM) approach and draw conclusions about modeling the trade-offs between lockdowns and disease spread. We review the pre-COVID epidemics literature, which was mainly by epidemiologists, and the post-COVID surge in economics papers that use meeting technologies to model the trade-offs. We argue that modeling the decentralized equilibrium with economic trade-offs gives rise to substantially different results from the earlier epidemics literature, but policy action is still welfare-improving because of several externalities.

A growing movement toward public access to the federal government via the Internet has created increased interest in establishing network communications and information services, especially among national officeholders. However, little empirical study of the use and users of such services exists to guide their efforts This paper reports results of a two‐part study of the use and users of US Representative Sam Coppersmith′s (D – Arizona 1) Gopher and distribution list services during the first quarter of 1994. The first part analyzes Gopher usage data gathered during the study period. The second part detials with a user survey distributed to fifty‐seven Gopher server guest registrants and eighty listserv subscribers just after the end of the study period. The research shows that (1) use of the Gopher subdirectory dwarfs that of the listserv, (2) services like Coppersmith′s should provide basic information, as well as unique and timely information and issue position statements, (3) assessment of such services is methodologically challenging, and (4) Coppersmith′s services are effective information media that promote observability of distant officeholders, a function that helps promote increased participation in government.

Presents a special issue, enlisting the help of the author’s students and colleagues, focusing on age, sex, colour and disability discrimination in America. Breaks the evidence down into manageable chunks, covering: age discrimination in the workplace; discrimination against African‐Americans; sex discrimination in the workplace; same sex sexual harassment; how to investigate and prove disability discrimination; sexual harassment in the military; when the main US job‐discrimination law applies to small companies; how to investigate and prove racial discrimination; developments concerning race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; developments concerning discrimination against workers with HIV or AIDS; developments concerning discrimination based on refusal of family care leave; developments concerning discrimination against gay or lesbian employees; developments concerning discrimination based on colour; how to investigate and prove discrimination concerning based on colour; developments concerning the Equal Pay Act; using statistics in employment discrimination cases; race discrimination in the workplace; developments concerning gender discrimination in the workplace; discrimination in Japanese organizations in America; discrimination in the entertainment industry; discrimination in the utility industry; understanding and effectively managing national origin discrimination; how to investigate and prove hiring discrimination based on colour; and, finally, how to investigate sexual harassment in the workplace.

This paper aims to review the potential application of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in diagnosis of dengue virus (DENV-2) E-protein and the development of SPR to become an alternative DENV sensor.

In this review, the existing standard laboratory techniques to diagnosis of DENV are discussed, together with their drawbacks. To overcome these drawbacks, SPR has been aimed to be a valuable optical biosensor for identification of antibodies to the DENV antigen. The review also includes the future studies on three-dimensional poly(amidoamine) (PAMAM) dendrimer-surface-assembled monolayer (SAM)-Au multilayer thin films, which are envisaged to have high potential sensitive and selective detection ability toward target E-proteins.

Application of SPR in diagnosis of DENV emerged over recent years. A wide range of immobilized biorecognition molecules have been developed to combine with SPR as an effective sensor. The detection limit, sensitivity and selectivity of SPR sensing in DENV have been enhanced from time to time, until the present.

The main purpose of this review is to provide authors with up-to-date and useful information on sensing DENV using SPR and to introduce a novel three-dimensional PAMAM-SAM-Au multilayer thin films for future research on SPR sensing applications.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the underlying reasons for the recent slow‐down in the rate of sales growth for the world's largest retailer, its implications for the economic valuation of this enterprise, and its future as a cohesive organization.

Wal‐Mart's comparative or same store sales growth over the last five years are contrasted with two of its key rivals Target and Costco, and the source and momentum of its core US growth record are examined over the last decade.

The results of the investigation indicate that Wal‐Mart has entered a new phase in its evolution as an enterprise, and the future rates of its growth will be limited to 3‐4 percent per annum in comp, and 10‐12 percent in total sales, excluding any acquisitions. This “new normal” is in part due to the extreme market share of Wal‐Mart in many of its trading areas, and the changing competitive landscape that was in no small part “created” in reaction to Wal‐Mart's own market power.

The analysis and its conclusions are of interest to retailing students and scholars who have been following the Wal‐Mart enterprise throughout the years, as well as retailing and merchandising analysts who have been struggling to define a new valuation model for the world's largest retail company. The paper is also of interest to retail market strategist as it illustrates that there are potential and natural limits to growth in all competitive arenas, and sources of new growth will always have to be sought in new product‐market spaces.

The success or failure of a consultant's report is not determined by its ability to present data and solve problems but by its persuasiveness, its acceptability to the dominant organisational culture, its value for money as a performance and its ability to generate present and future agreement.

In the midst of the Watergate revelations, Congressional support for President Nixon's Trade Bill—which would give him unprecedented executive powers—appears to be on the wane.