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Community outreach is generally stated to be a strategic combination of resources and talents that will exceed the capabilities of individuals working alone. Describes the Medical University of South Carolina's projects which target largely rural, minority populations.

Programs and partnerships include niche groups and state‐wide populations, with sponsors including government agencies, the Duke Endowment and local cities. Librarians are familiar with and are already successful at reaching out to the community of health professionals; however, reaching out to the lay community is more complex. Academics are used to being in charge and often have a narrow point‐of‐focus. Together with the community an attempt was made to identify difficulties and pitfalls, as well as outcomes that are important for the long term.

Although librarians are improving their ability to work in any capacity within community outreach projects, universities and libraries do not naturally support this work. However, for some librarians participation provides an exhilarating experience.

The paper indicates the value of having a librarian as part of the community outreach team. Librarians are often of great value to the team. Very often the work done by the librarian would not have been done at all.

A multidimensional understanding of human nature based on biology can provide a very useful framework of analysis and bring some understanding and coherence to the very fragmented perspectives within moral, political, and legal philosophy. A useful four-part framework of analysis can be based on the evolution of the brain as described by Paul MacLean (1973, 1990) and Sir John Eccles (1989). A similar pattern of development of our mental and moral capacities through experience in childhood was also described by Jean Piaget (Inhelder & Piaget, 1958) and Lawrence Kohlberg (1981). This multidimensional understanding of human nature considers the individual, social, rational, and metaphysical perspectives. Because this four-part multidimensional understanding of human nature is based on a naturalized epistemology related to the development of our mental capacities in both evolution and through experience, this pattern can be seen across a wide variety of disciplines. Medical ethics, US constitutional democracy, and legal philosophy will be used as examples of the usefulness of this multidimensional understanding of human nature.

Marketing‐manufacturing interface is becoming an increasingly important research area, as the firms unable to reduce inter‐departmental conflict find their global competitiveness compromised. Due to inevitable interaction of marketing and manufacturing with design engineering in conflict and resolution, there is a need to increase the scope of the research area of manufacturing‐marketing interface to include design (engineering) and establish appropriate interfaces between each pair of these domains. Some firms are practising concurrent engineering to minimise the conflict between design and manufacturing departments. Several interface variables can be used to resolve inter‐departmental conflict. A firm’s decision to pursue a particular interface requires commitment, investment and change in culture. What type of interface should a firm choose? This paper introduces a conceptual framework to resolve this dilemma. Specifically, the contribution of this paper is at least threefold. First, it characterises the possible conflicts that can arise due to interaction between the three functional areas – marketing, manufacturing, and design. Design is recognised as a separate function in its own right. Second, it identifies and describes possible variables that can be utilised as interfaces to resolve conflicts. Third, it establishes a methodology to develop a framework to assess inter‐departmental conflict and identify an optimal mix of interface variables to resolve all possible conflicts. The paper concludes with an actual case study involving a global marketing‐manufacturing company and provides an application of this framework and methodology.

In his apocalyptic book on the environment and public policy, Timothy C. Weiskel warned of the consequences of humanity's intrusion into the biological and geo‐chemical processes of the natural world. He said that our intrusions have been massive and thorough; that they now threaten to transform ecosystemic parameters; and that unless responsible public policy directs itself toward moderating our current destructive impact on the environment, we will face ecosystemic collapse and human catastrophe “on a vastly greater scale than has ever been recorded in human history.”

Introduction It is the purpose of this paper to examine the issue of federal deficits from a general, and thus, a broader perspective than is traditionally employed. It is maintained in this paper that the deficit is not simply a “government” problem — because a representative government can do little to balance the budget if the people are doing all they can, not only to reduce their tax liabilities but also to demand a continuous increase of benefits from government. The deficit should thus be considered as a problem of the entire society and analysed accordingly. Also, it is not merely an economic problem, but also a moral problem. More specifically, from a general equilibrium viewpoint (i.e. both the public and the private sectors are considered), the federal budget deficit can be regarded as a consequence of a society that places a high value on individual economic freedom, economic efficiency, as well as on competition for economic success. This is the case because economic freedom and competition tend to create economic insecurity and immorality, both of which incline to cause government expenditures to increase, taxes to decrease, or both. Hence, a long term solution for budget shortfalls would depend upon the possibility of whether the society as a whole can be made more economically secure and moral without the unnecessary encroachment upon individual liberty and upon the opportunity for competitive success.

HAS the librarian responsibility for what is in the books he provides for the use of readers; if so, docs he, indeed can he, recognize it or do anything useful about it? We do not mean, as the most important thing, his fear, reasonable or otherwise, of books which have too much sexuality. It is a major problem upon which no authoritative statement for our guidance has ever been made except perhaps the police inhibitions and the Roman Catholic indexes in the subject just mentioned. That we can dispose of in the favourite saying of Stanley Jast “The Bovril of today is the Mellin's Food of tomorrow”, and refer to the general shift of public opinion towards toleration, or a more easy regard for sex in literature. To deny sex is to deny life. The problem is one that does not affect any but public adult libraries, where the reader need not read any book which offends his code but is not privileged to interfere with the choice of others who alone can be responsible for their own reading. Thus the argument goes, but public men are concerned for the unlettered reader who chooses a book in innocence. These can cause much trouble. One of the annual reports before us puts another difficult angle of the question: the readers who invariably demand these books at the public expense and question the librarian's assumption that he can refuse to purchase them. The schoolgirl is also a great concern to many: she is likely to know as much, if she is damaged by any book, as does her gratuitous protector. It would have been unthinkable twenty years ago for a national newspaper to publish the substance of a recent teacher's assertion that after an address on the facts of life to a form of senior girls, one of the girls told her it was interesting but had come too late: all the girls in her form had experienced sex and “would be thought odd if they had not.” This seems an extreme case but it has a definite warning that the trouble does not originate in the library.

This chapter does three things. First, it estimates regional gross domestic product (GDP) for three different geographical levels in Switzerland (97 micro regions, 16 labor market basins, and 3 large regions). Second, it analyzes the evolution of regional inequality relying on a heuristic model inspired by Williamson (1965), which features an initial growth impulse in one or several core regions and subsequent diffusion. Third, it uses index number theory to decompose regional inequality into three different effects: sectoral structure, productivity, and comparative advantage.

The results can be summarized as follows: As a consequence of the existence of multiple core regions, Swiss regional inequality has been comparatively low at higher geographical levels. Spatial diffusion of economic growth occurred across different parts of the country and within different labor market regions. This resulted in a bell-shaped evolution of regional inequality at the micro regional level and convergence at higher geographical levels. In early and in late stages of the development process, productivity differentials were the main drivers of inequality, whereas economic structure was determinant between 1888 and 1941. The poorest regions suffered from comparative disadvantage, that is, they were specialized in the vary sector (agriculture), where their relative productivity was comparatively lowest.

The increasing importance of health food sales and the growing number of consumers purchasing health foods necessitates that marketers develop enhanced understanding of health food consumers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretical extension to the health belief model (HBM) that integrates personal stress and environmental cues (visible health problems) with its constructs.

Data were collected through a quantitative face-to-face survey of 384 health food consumers in Taiwan, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The results show that the perceived benefits and barriers of health foods are critical antecedents of continued-consumption intention. Personal stress and visible health problems substantially influence consumers’ perceived susceptibility to and severity of health problems, and perceived susceptibility consequently leads to consumer continued consumption. However, the results indicate an irrelevant relationship between perceived severity of health problems and continued-consumption intentions.

Based on the HBM, the authors integrated perceived stress and visible health problems into the health food consumer research. The findings can improve the understanding of managers in the health food market regarding the role that stress and visibility play in consumer decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a monocular visual measurement system for autonomous aerial refueling (AAR) for unmanned aerial vehicle, which can process images from an infrared camera to estimate the pose of the drogue in the tanker with high accuracy and real-time performance.

Methods and techniques for marker detection, feature matching and pose estimation have been designed and implemented in the visual measurement system.

The simple blob detection (SBD) method is adopted, which outperforms the Laplacian of Gaussian method. And a novel noise-elimination algorithm is proposed for excluding the noise points. Besides, a novel feature matching algorithm based on perspective transformation is proposed. Comparative experimental results indicated the rapidity and effectiveness of the proposed methods.

The visual measurement system developed in this paper can be applied to estimate the pose of the drogue with a fast speed and high accuracy and it is a feasible measurement strategy which will considerably increase the autonomy and reliability for AAR.

The SBD method is used to detect the features and a novel noise-elimination algorithm is proposed. Besides, a novel feature matching algorithm based on perspective transformation is proposed which is robust and accurate.

The purpose of this paper is to design and develop 14-degree of freedom (DOF) robotic micromanipulator with which LIGA devices and axle hole part can be both manipulated and assembled.

The in-house robotic microassembly system is composed of a 6-DOF large motion serial robot with microgrippers, a hexapod six-DOF precision alignment worktable and a vision system whose optical axis of the microscope is parallel with the horizontal plane. A prism with special coating is fixed in front of the objective lens, thus, two-part figures can be acquired simultaneously by the microscope with 1.67 to 9.26 micron optical resolution. The relative discrepancy between the two parts can be calculated from image plane coordinate instead of calculating the space transformation matrix. A modified microgripper was designed to clamp meso-scale parts and its effectiveness was confirmed experimentally. Through the use of the other vision system, the insert action can be successfully manipulated. A laser ranger finder was integrated in this micro-assembly system to measure the assembly result.

A new 14-DOF robotic micromanipulator, including eight axes automatically and six axes manually, has been developed for the assembly of LIGA meso-scale flat parts and axle hole parts. The microassembly system with coaxial alignment function (MSCA) system is able to concurrently manipulate all eight axes automatically and six axes manually.

The robotic microassembly is applied in the assembly of meso-scale parts. The new capabilities of the MSCA will allow for the assembly of microsystems more efficiently and more precisely.