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While the benefits of the latest mobile devices, smart capabilities or automated processes can't be disputed, the need to be constantly vigilant goes hand-in-hand with them. This is especially true for businesses and banks, pressured by tech-savvy vendors and customers to adopt the latest payment methods. Fraud continues to be a top concern, and dealing with it is a constant battle. However, with the right mix of fraud controls and resources, there is a way to gain the advantage, says James Richardson of Bottomline Technologies. As we embark on the new decade, the growth of technological advancements and innovations continues to accelerate. Not surprisingly, the impact and influence that technology has on our personal and professional lives deepens and expands accordingly. But while the quantitative and qualitative benefits of the latest mobile device, smart capability or automated process can't be disputed, the need to be constantly vigilant goes hand-in-hand.

A presentation of findings from the evaluation of the Future Digital Inclusion programme funded by the UK Government Department of Education. Data show the effectiveness of embedding digital inclusion support within wider social inclusion services at the local level, mediated by institutions and organisations which have established pathways to engage socially excluded people, including disabled people.

The careers of many physicists, particularly those engaged in applied or industrial research, depend on the cerns grow, they are increasingly being asked to help expand their employers' sources of income. In many cases, the most direct link between an organization's scientific research, development and application efforts and its financial objectives is its portfolio of patents. And so it would not be unreasonable to say that the professional success of many physicists is greatly affected by the number and quality of the patents resulting from their efforts.

Purchase-of-service contracting is both new and relatively underdeveloped in the United Kingdom (UK) personal social services system. It already appears likely, however, that POS contracting will become the principal, and possibly sole, form of state funding for voluntary organizations in the social services field within the next few years. Unlike the United States, where contracting has developed on an ad hoc basis, in the UK it is a deliberate aim of government policy (Deakin, 1993).

Little is known about the nature and determinants of downward mobility. It has been suggested that downward movement implies the extension of meritocratic norms of selection and rejection. Alternatively, those who fall are seen as social casualties. A third explanation, that most middle-mass downward mobility represents a two generation process of status consolidation, is proposed here. Data for a sample of downwardly mobile urban British males and their fathers provide strong support for the status consolidation explanation. These data indicate that in the middle-mass there is, in fact, very little genuine downward mobility. Rather, most men who 'fall' come from risen working-class families, those which because of the upward mobility of one or both parents are peripheral rather than core members of the middle class. Sons were encouraged towards what fathers viewed as the less ambivalent status provided by skilled trades. In moving 'downwards' into these occupations sons were, in effect, fulfilling status and occupational aspirations of their fathers.

Following the ecological approach to visual perception, this paper presents a framework that emphasizes the role of vision on referring actions. In particular, affordances are utilized to explain gestures variability in a multimodal human-computer interaction. Such a proposal is consistent with empirical findings obtained in different simulation studies showing how referring gestures are determined by the mutuality of information coming from the target and the set of movements available to the speaker. A prototype that follows anthropomorphic perceptual principles to analyze gestures has been developed and tested in preliminary computational validations.