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This piece explores an early example of transphobic algorithmic bias in an electronic computing system in the UK government, which was designed to collect taxes and apportion welfare state benefits. It argues that the logic of computation has long been used to obfuscate political decisions and launder government disdain for the rights and needs of marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Identification of surgical populations at high risk for negative outcomes is needed for clinical and research purposes. We hypothesized that combining two classification systems, ASA (American Society of Anesthesiology physical status) and surgical severity, we could identify a high‐risk population before surgery. We aimed to describe postoperative outcomes in a population selected by these two classifications system. Methods: Data were collected in a Swedish multicentre, time‐interrupted prospective, consecutive cohort study. Eligibility criteria were age ≥18 years, ASA ≥3, elective or emergent, major to Xmajor/complex (Specialist Procedure Codes used in United Kingdom), gastrointestinal, urogenital or orthopaedic procedures. Postoperative morbidity was identified by the Postoperative Morbidity Survey on postoperative days 3 ± 1, 7 ± 1, 10 + 5 and graded for severity by the Clavien‐Dindo system. Mortality was assessed at 30, 180 and 360 days. Results: Postoperative morbidity was 78/48/47 per cent on postoperative days 3/7/10. Majority of morbidities (67.5 per cent) were graded as >1 by Clavien‐Dindo. Any type of postoperative morbidity graded >1 was associated with increased risk for death up to one year. The mortality was 5.7 per cent (61/1063) at 30 days, 13.3 per cent (142/1063) at 6 months and 19.1 per cent (160/1063) at 12 months. Conclusion: Severity classification as major to Xmajor/complex and ASA ≥3 could be used to identify a high‐risk surgical population concerning postoperative morbidity and mortality before surgery. Combining the two systems future electronic data extraction is possible of a high‐risk population in tertiary hospitals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Successful implementation of digital health systems requires contextually sensitive solutions. Working directly with system users and drawing on implementation science frameworks are both recommended. We sought to combine Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) with participatory co-design methods, to work with healthcare stakeholders to generate implementation support recommendations for a new electronic patient reported outcome measure (ePRO) in renal services. ePROs collect data on patient-reported symptom burden and illness experience overtime, requiring sustained engagement and integration into existing systems.Methods: We identified co-design methods that could be mapped to NPT constructs to generate relevant qualitative data. Patients and staff from three renal units in England participated in empathy and process mapping activities to understand 'coherence' (why the ePRO should be completed) and 'cognitive participation' (who would be involved in collecting the ePRO). Observation of routine unit activity was completed to understand 'collective action' (how the collection of ePRO could integrate with service routines).Results: The mapping activities and observation enabled the research team to become more aware of the key needs of both staff and patients. Working within sites enabled us to consider local resources and barriers. This produced 'core and custom' recommendations specifying core needs that could be met with customised local solutions. We identified two over-arching themes which need to be considered when introducing new digital systems (1) That data collection is physical (electronic systems need to fit into physical spaces and routines), and (2) That data collection is intentional (system users must be convinced of the value of collecting the data).Conclusions: We demonstrate that NPT constructs can be operationalised through participatory co-design to work with stakeholders and within settings to collaboratively produce implementation support recommendations. This enables production of contextually sensitive implementation recommendations, informed by qualitative evidence, theory, and stakeholder input. Further longitudinal evaluation is necessary to determine how successful the recommendations are in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: The epidemiology of acute kidney injury (AKI) diagnosed in the emergency department (ED) is poorly described. This study describes the incidence, demographics and outcomes of patients diagnosed with AKI in the ED (ED‐AKI). Methods: A prospective cohort study was completed in a University Teaching Hospital, (UK) between April and August 2016. In total, 20 421 adult patients attended the ED and had a serum creatinine measurement. The incident ED‐AKI patient episodes were compared with a randomly selected cohort of non‐AKI ED patients. Results: A total of 572 patients had confirmed eAlert ED‐AKI (548 incident cases), incidence 2.8% (of all ED attendances). ED‐AKI was associated with a 24.4% in‐patient mortality (non‐AKI 3.2%, P <.001) of which 22.3% of deaths occurred within 24 hours and 58% within 7 days. Progression of the admission AKI stage to a higher AKI stage was associated with a 38.8% mortality compared with a 21.4% mortality in those who did not progress (P <.001). In multivariate analysis, ED‐AKI was an independent risk for mortality (hazard ratio, 6.293; 95% confidence interval, 1.887‐20.790, P =.003). For those discharged from hospital, 20.4% of ED‐AKI patients re‐attend for acute assessment within 30‐days post‐discharge (non‐AKI 7.6%, P <.001). At 90‐days post‐discharge, 10.0% of ED‐AKI patients died (non‐AKI 1.4%, P <.001). Twelve months post‐discharge 17.8% of ED‐AKI patients developed CKD progression or de‐novo CKD (non‐AKI 6.0%). Conclusion: The ED‐AKI is an independent predictor of death. Mortality is predominantly in the early stages of hospital admission, but for those who survive to discharge have significant long‐term morbidity and mortality. SUMMARY AT A GLANCE: This prospective study, using an electronic alert system to identify acute kidney injury in the emergency department (ED‐AKI), identified an incident rate of 2.8%. ED‐AKI was associated with a 24.4% mortality rate, with most events occurring within 7 days of admission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Errors in hospital transfusion may cause wrong (blood) components to be transfused. This study assessed the value of electronic identification systems (EISs) in reducing wrong component transfusions (WCTs).Methods: UK hospitals reporting to Serious Hazards of Transfusion were invited to complete an electronic survey about transfusion including the use of EISs. Further information was requested for WCTs and near-miss WCTs.Results: A response rate of 93 of 222 (42%) hospitals accounted for 38% of UK blood component issues in 2015 and 2016. Thirty-three of 93 (35%) hospitals employ manual procedures and 16 (17%) use EISs throughout the transfusion process; most of the remainder use EISs for blood collection only. Fifty-seven WCTs were identified in approximately two million blood components. The primary error was at blood draw and sample labeling (3), blood collection (15), and administration (2); the remainder were mostly blood bank errors. No WCTs occurred with blood draw and sample labeling or administration with use of EISs. Three WCTs occurred with EISs for blood collection due to incorrect processes for emergency transfusions of group O blood without any adverse effects. Seventeen WCTs occurred with manual processes; one was an ABO-incompatible red blood cell transfusion resulting in renal impairment. Near-miss WCTs were also more frequent with manual procedures than EISs at blood draw and sample labeling and blood collection.Conclusions: This is the first multicenter study to demonstrate a lower incidence of WCTs and near-miss WCTs with EISs compared to manual processes, and highlights some limitations of both manual and EIS procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the developments on the rocket and satellite research in Great Britain. The research in the country is led by President Sydney Chapman of International Geographical Year, which focused on earth's magnetism along with its surface and properties. The rocket, known as Skylark, has been designed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment, which used solid instead of the more usual liquid fuel. It was also planned to make observations of satellite orbits by reception of radio signals and by optical and radar methods.

Background Errors occur at all stages of the hospital transfusion process and the resulting morbidity and mortality are well documented. Recent initiatives in the UK and elsewhere to reduce transfusion errors have focussed on implementing recommended manual procedures for good practice, but have only been partially effective. Aims Our approach was to 're-engineer' bedside and laboratory transfusion procedures. Materials and Methods We implemented barcode patient identification, bedside handheld computers and electronically controlled blood fridges to simplify transfusion procedures and improve practice. Results There was an improvement from 11.8% to 100% of staff following the process for correct pre-transfusion bedside patient identification; no ABO incompatible red cell transfusions in 5 years; a reduction in wrong blood component transfused events from 1 in 27,523 to 1 in 67,935; reduced nursing (one nurse rather than 2 and half the time to administer blood) and laboratory workload; and more rapid delivery of urgently required red cell units to patients (from a median of 18 minutes to 45 seconds). The electronic system provided a simple mechanism for compliance with UK/EU regulatory requirements for the traceability of blood, and the documentation of transfusion and training. Feedback from both staff and patients was positive. Discussion The project was taken through pilot stages between 2001 and 2006 through to its full implementation across the acute hospitals in Oxfordshire in 2006/07. Our group wrote a national specification for the electronic transfusion process, but the implementation elsewhere in the UK has been slow. There is the potential to introduce an additional module into the electronic transfusion process to provide 'decision support' for doctors ordering blood to minimise inappropriate use of blood as part of a patient blood management programme, and use the same 'end-to-end electronic' approach for other clinical procedures such as drug administration. Conclusion The implementation of a hospital electronic transfusion management system was shown to provide improvement in transfusion practice and in the efficiency of the service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Public and private organisations are investing increasing amounts into the development of healthcare software. These applications are perceived to offer numerous benefits. Software systems can improve the exchange of information between healthcare facilities. They support standardized procedures that can help to increase consistency between different service providers. Electronic patient records ensure minimum standards across the trajectory of care when patients move between different specializations. Healthcare information systems also offer economic benefits through efficiency savings; for example by providing the data that helps to identify potential bottlenecks in the provision and administration of care. However, a number of high-profile failures reveal the safety concerns that arise when staff must cope with the loss of these applications. In particular, teams have to retrieve paper based records that often lack the detail of electronic systems. Individuals who have only used electronic information systems face particular problems in learning how to apply paper-based fallbacks. The following pages compare two different failures of healthcare information systems in the UK and North America. The intention is to ensure that future initiatives to extend the integration of electronic patient records will build on the ‘lessons learned’ from previous systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This article examines the two most influential international initiatives on electronic signatures (UNCITRAL’s 1996 Model Law on Electronic Commerce and the 1999 EU Electronic Signature Directive). It considers whether the legislative approaches in Australia and the United Kingdom based on these initiatives are helpful in deciding whether lower level signature methods such as simple email messages are likely to satisfy a legal requirement for a signature. The conclusion reached is that they are unhelpful. The article goes on to consider whether legislative amendments based on UNCITRAL’s 2001 Model Law on Electronic Signatures or the 2005 UN Convention on the Use of Electronic Communications in International Contracts would improve the identified weaknesses. It concludes that such an update would clarify some issues, but that overall it will not solve the difficulties. The article ends with a brief speculation on the likely attributes of a more helpful approach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The production of a large-scale monitoring system for a high-speed network leads to a number of challenges. These challenges are not purely technical but also socio-political and legal. The number of stakeholders in such monitoring activity is large including the network operators, the users, the equipment manufacturers and, of course, the monitoring researchers. The MASTS project (measurement at all scales in time and space) was created to instrument the high-speed JANET Lightpath network and has been extended to incorporate other paths supported by JANET(UK). Challenges the project has faced included: simple access to the network; legal issues involved in the storage and dissemination of the captured information, which may be personal; the volume of data captured and the rate at which these data appear at store. To this end, the MASTS system will have established four monitoring points each capturing packets on a high-speed link. Traffic header data will be continuously collected, anonymised, indexed, stored and made available to the research community. A legal framework for the capture and storage of network measurement data has been developed which allows the anonymised IP traces to be used for research purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common Assessment Framework (CAF) is an electronic system for assessing children and sharing information between child welfare professionals, which is at various stages of pilot and implementation in England and Wales. Research by the authors in England (Peckover et al., 2008a, 2008b; White et al., 2008) and in Wales (Pithouse et al., 2004; Pithouse, 2006) informs this paper in order to compare CAF as implicating a number of policy 'goods', with CAF as a set of worker and organizational accomplishments. Our interest here is that in the course of implementation, policy aims have become submerged in day-to-day practice and that, analytically, there are differences between the 'CAF of policy' and the 'CAF of practice'; in brief, there are, conceptually, two CAFs, the formal construct of policy and the applied CAF as constructed by multiple organizations across Wales and England, wherein there is no singular model. Indeed, we demonstrate that there are all manner of common assessment designs operating in the world of practice. Rather than rehearsing our research findings (the above sources offer an abundance), we use this opportunity to develop and synthesize our arguments about key assumptions and conceptual properties that underpin the CAF of policy and practice and which may have wider provenance in respect of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in child welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of flood management in urban areas in the UK, the Gaussian displacement spatial-temporal model (GDSTM) is used to generate a continuous rainfall field. The model makes the assumption that storms arrive according to a Poisson process in space and time, triggering another Poisson process of cell arrivals over the storm duration. These cells are displaced from the storm centre according to a normal distribution. Historic rainfall events are identified from a 3.5-year record of Met Office weather radar data from three different radars and the characteristics of the interior of each event are represented by 11 parameters. The process of event arrival is described by six additional parameters. For each month within the radar data record, a library of model parameters is obtained and used to develop simulations of 100 years of continuous, spatially varying rainfall at 5 min intervals and 1 km spatial resolution over three regions: London, Bradford and Glasgow. The objective is to use the synthetic data as input to existing urban drainage models to examine system performance. It is possible to reproduce standard statistics over the London region but the extreme values are underestimated when compared with statistics from the Flood Estimation Handbook (FEH). The mean rainfall is overestimated at the other sites but more agreement in simulating the extremes is observed when compared with the FEH. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of precipitation estimates from weather radar for hydrological applications has been limited by the quantitative accuracy, reliability and resolution. The adoption of a more centralised approach to radar data processing, upgrades to telecommunications links and the installation of additional radars in the UK weather radar network have enabled some of these limitations to be addressed. The development of more flexible product generation software, which more fully exploits the resolution of the radar measured reflectivity, now provides for the mapping of precipitation on scales of 1 km and even below, thus approaching the resolution requirements for applications in urban hydrology. This paper describes the methods by which these high-resolution precipitation products are now generated. Illustrations of the products are given and their use in predicting flow using an urban drainage model is demonstrated. Issues affecting data quality, and the advantages and disadvantages of using radar products at high resolution are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a longitudinal study on the evolution of the retail banking sector in the UK following the adoption of automated payments in the 1970s. The analysis is cast in the context of innovation studies and articulates how changing configurations of the knowledge base combined with the emergence and adaptation of institutional structures stirred a paradigm of service innovation in an information-intensive industry like banking. The cases of the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) and of the Electronic Fund Transfer at Point of Sale (EFTPOS) provide evidence on the subtleties of a dual evolutionary process underpinning the development of a system of innovation: the growing ecology of actors and the emergence of new forms of coordination across them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A simple measure of the uncertainty associated with using radar-derived rainfall estimates as "truth" has been introduced to the Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) verification process to assess the effect on forecast skill and errors. Deterministic precipitation forecasts from the mesoscale version of the UK Met Office Unified Model for a two-day high-impact event and for a month were verified at the daily and six-hourly time scale using a spatially-based intensity-scale method and various traditional skill scores such as the Equitable Threat Score (ETS) and log-odds ratio. Radar-rainfall accumulations from the UK Nimrod radar-composite were used. The results show that the inclusion of uncertainty has some effect, shifting the forecast errors and skill. The study also allowed for the comparison of results from the intensity-scale method and traditional skill scores. It showed that the two methods complement each other, one detailing the scale and rainfall accumulation thresholds where the errors occur, the other showing how skillful the forecast is. It was also found that for the six-hourly forecasts the error distributions remain similar with forecast lead time but skill decreases. This highlights the difference between forecast error and forecast skill, and that they are not necessarily the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of our research project, described in this paper, was to develop a purpose-built clinical trials support system [CTSS], which would be sufficiently comprehensive, integrated and flexible, so as to support the vast majority of research studies that were to be managed and conducted by one UK-based health authority. Whilst at the start of this project, it was reasonably clear what major clinical activities the system would need to be able to support, it was less clear what benefits the system should be expected to deliver, nor how these benefits were related to specific aspects of the system's functionality. Moreover, whilst it was recognised that the introduction of the CTSS would engender fairly significant organisational changes, it was less easy to articulate the nature of the changes, nor how they might ultimately relate to the realisation of benefits. Consequently, it was agreed at the project's outset that an explicit benefits' realisation approach should be integrated into the system's development activity. The aims of this paper are threefold: 1] to describe the CTSS project, paying particular attention to why it justified the inclusion of a benefits realisation approach; 2] to provide a description of, and justification for, the benefits management approach adopted; 3] to provide a provisional assessment of the effectiveness of this approach. In addressing these objectives, it was envisaged that our paper would make an important contribution to the literature by providing one of the few first-hand accounts of the conduct of benefits' management practices, and certainly the first in the context of clinical trials support systems. Moreover, the paper provides new insights into the integration of benefits realisation and structured development tools and practices: we describe how the benefits dependency network has been successfully related to use case diagrams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Knowledge Exchange initiative was founded in 2005 by four European organizations active in promoting and funding developments in information and communication technology (ICT) in the higher education and research sector of their respective countries: Denmark's Electronic Research Library (DEFF), the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft: DFG) in Germany, the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom, and the Dutch SURFfoundation.The partner organizations share a common goal to make a layer of scholarly and scientific content openly available on the Internet. Within the Knowledge Exchange, the partners recently embarked on a collaborative project procuring digital content in a multi-national framework. This article sketches the process and weighs the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen procedure. It also presents a discussion on whether this joint effort is worth repeating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is already known about this subject • Electronic prescribing has been shown to reduce prescribing errors in US hospitals. • However we know little about its effect on prescribing quality, or its effectiveness in UK hospitals where systems for medication prescribing and supply are very different. • Hospital pharmacists already review prescriptions to both detect errors and improve prescription quality. What this study adds • Electronic prescribing significantly increased prescribing quality in a UK hospital, as shown by fewer pharmacists' interventions and fewer prescribing errors. • However, some new types of error were introduced. • There was relatively little overlap between prescribing errors and pharmacists' interventions, signifying their different contributions to prescribing quality. • Electronic prescribing and pharmacists' interventions should be viewed as an integrated system. Aims To investigate the effects of electronic prescribing (EP) on prescribing quality, as indicated by prescribing errors and pharmacists' clinical interventions, in a UK hospital. Methods Prescribing errors and pharmacists' interventions were recorded by the ward pharmacist during a 4 week period both pre- and post-EP, with a second check by the principal investigator. The percentage of new medication orders with a prescribing error and/or pharmacist's intervention was calculated for each study period. Results Following the introduction of EP, there was a significant reduction in both pharmacists' interventions and prescribing errors. Interventions reduced from 73 (3.0% of all medication orders) to 45 (1.9%) (95% confidence interval (CI) for the absolute reduction 0.2, 2.0%), and errors from 94 (3.8%) to 48 (2.0%) (95% CI 0.9, 2.7%). Ten EP-specific prescribing errors were identified. Only 52% of pharmacists' interventions related to a prescribing error pre-EP, and 60% post-EP; only 40% and 56% of prescribing errors resulted in an intervention pre- and post-EP, respectively. Conclusions EP improved the quality of prescribing by reducing both prescribing errors and pharmacists' clinical interventions. Prescribers and pharmacists need to be aware of new types of error with EP, so that they can best target their activities to reduce clinical risk. Pharmacists may need to change the way they work to complement, rather than duplicate, the benefits of EP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spatio-temporal variation of rain fields is a key input into the development of radio systems which operate at frequencies above 10 GHz in a spectrally efficient fashion. Fractal methods have been proven helpful in the analysis and synthesis of rain fields. A fractal model is presented for the simulation of meteorologically representative rain fields, using an additive iterative process in the logarithmic domain. The resulting simulated rain fields are monofractal fields that have appropriate spectral density exponent, fractal dimension and behaviour that is consistent with radar analyses of convective or stratiform types of events. Justification to use a monofractal method of simulation is presented through the analysis of the moment scaling function for fields of rain rate and log rain rate values recorded by the Chilbolton Advanced Meteorological Radar, based in the south of England. The results of the analysis indicate that log rain fields can be analysed and simulated by using monofractal techniques with sufficient accuracy for the purposes of synthesising rain fields for communication systems design and operation. Cumulative distributions of rain rate exceedance derived from the simulated fields are compared with the measured rain gauge data and curves calculated from the ITU-R rain models, with promising results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Programme for Information Technology is implementing standard electronic healthcare systems across the National Health Service Trusts in England. This paper reports the responses of the Trusts and their healthcare teams to the applications in the programme as they are being implemented. It concludes that, on the basis of the data available, it is likely that the emergent behaviour of healthcare staff will serve to minimise the impact of the systems. The paper looks at the opportunities within the programme to undertake local sociotechnical system design to help staff exploit the opportunities of the new electronic systems. It concludes that there are opportunities and offers one case study example in a Mental Health Trust. However, it concludes that there are many aspects of the technical systems themselves and also of the approach to implementation, that limit the opportunities for local sociotechnical systems design work.Journal of Information Technology (2007) 22, 257–264; doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000101 Published online 26 June 2007 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Integration of health information is critical to the provision of effective, quality care in today's fragmented health care system. The increasing prevalence of chronic conditions and the demand for a comprehensive understanding of patient health on the part of providers are driving the need for the integration of health information through electronic health information systems. Two distinct health information systems currently utilized in the health care field include electronic medical records (EMR) and chronic disease management systems (CDMS). The integration of these systems is likely to enable the efficient management of health information and improve the quality of health care as it would provide real-time patient information in a coordinated manner. The lack of real-time information may result in delayed treatment, uninformed decisions, inefficient resource use, and medical errors. Despite their importance and widespread support, these systems have slow provider adoption rates. Our understanding of how health information technology may be used to improve health care is limited by the relative paucity of research on the adoption, integration, and implementation of these 2 types of systems. This paper documents the use of an EMR at Marshfield Clinic, a multidisciplinary group practice in the United States. We review the concomitant use of an EMR for clinical data capture and the implementation of a proprietary CDMS, InformaCare®, for care management of chronic diseases. These 2 systems allow providers to deliver health care using evidence-based guidelines that meet the Institute of Medicine's aim of providing safe, efficient, patient-centered, and timely care. ( Disease Management 2007;10:208–215) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the UK, there is great concern about the perceived increase in plagiarized work being submitted by students in higher educations. Although there is much debate, the reasons for the perceived change are not completely clear. Here we present the results of a 2-year trial of the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service (PDS) involving hundreds of students. The effectiveness of the service in detecting plagiarized material and in acting as a deterrent are discussed. Although an increased number of cases of plagiarism were detected during the trial, the relative contributions of the electronic detection system and increased staff awareness remain unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: With the advent of new legislation in the United Kingdom – as well as several high-profile criminal cases – the issue of Internet grooming has been the subject of much recent focus. Of particular interest to the forensic examiner is the ability to trace back from a known suspect''s computer system to identify contact with his alleged victims. Specifically, when an allegation of grooming is made, one of the first things the examiner should do is determine that the suspect''s computer system was used to contact the informant''s account in the first place. This a strong evidential link between victim and suspect and clearly demonstrates that the suspect was responsible for that contact rather than a third party who may have taken control of the suspect''s chat account. This article illustrates some methods of proving such a link where the suspect and victim have been in contact on the Yahoo Messenger chat service. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article focuses on the impact of Internet or computers to people with learning disabilities in Great Britain. Computers and the accessibility of Internet play an important role to the lives of disabled person because it give them information for their learning. In contrary, disabled person faced problems in using modern technology because of impairment in motor skills, sight, cognition and hearing.

We recommend an electronic donor card system, which can not only optimise the blood donation procedure, but also enhance the satisfaction of blood donors. Firstly, such system facilitates information acquisition and production during donor registration. An additional benefit is that, in this age of information technology, blood donors usually prefer to use electronic donor cards. Therefore, the QoS of a blood centre will definitely be enhanced with the introduction of an electronic donor card system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the acceptance of small firm industry for e-commerce business in Great Britain. It centered commercialism, which provides opportunity for increasing capabilities of retail microenterprise. It also highlighted the acceptance of electronic system buying that involves stages of initiation, decision, and implementation. Morever, the situation increases the adoption of duality of the activity that analyzes the different components that brought the impact to transaction.

The article focuses on the origin and the impact of electronic democracy in the political system in Great Britain. The idea of enhancing democratic processes with information technology through the use of Internet has developed since the end of the Second World War and the advent of computers. However, the Internet as the third stage has not been more radically transformative of democracy.

The article highlights the issues being faced by teachers when accommodating the onset of electronic assessment (e-assessment) procedures based on some of the developments at Edexcel in Great Britain. The developments will have an impact on local teaching and learning programs. Accurate feedback is included in the flexibility of e-assessment. Technology and cheating are some of the risks associated with the introduction of eAssessment according to a research in 2005.

Background: The on call service for health protection in most parts of the UK is provided by general public health consultants, registrars and nurses as the first tier of response backed up by medical consultants in health protection. The first tier responder usually carries a large bag of papers containing both local and national guidance on the management of common cases/incidents. An electronic on call pack may provide a suitable practical alternative to large paper based systems and help professionals deliver out of hours health protection advice and response to incidents. Methods: We developed and piloted an electronic on call pack in Hertfordshire for use at the health protection unit level containing key local and national guidelines, contact information and useful references. The on-call pack was initially piloted using a laptop and more recently using a personal digital assistant (PDA). The use of the on-call pack was evaluated. Results: Key advantages of the electronic system include reduced size, faster access to information that is clearly indexed and the relative ease of updating information. As part of the pilot, the electronic on call pack was presented to a local and regional training meeting with good response from participants using qualitative and quantitative methods. Conclusion: It is anticipated that with suitable evaluation this system can be adapted and utilised by other health protection practitioners. This system provides a fast, reliable and easily maintained source of information for the public health on-call team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) project is a six-year, 7.5 million Great Britain pound effort in which five universities hope to operationalize the knowledge management mantra, 'Getting the right content to the right place, at the right time and in the right form.' From the outset of the AKT in October 2000, it has been investigating how to realize the potential of the extraordinary information repository that humankind is building-the World Wide Web. A significant result from the research is CS AKTive Space, a Semantic Web application that won the 2003 Semantic Web Challenge.

This Article sets out in detail the authorisation regime introduced to regulate electronic communications networks and services under the Communications Act 2003, with Part I setting out the general conditions of entitlement as at 1 September 2003.11All URLs and hyperlinks contained in this paper where accessible on this date. The Act also provides for the regulation of spectrum use, including the introduction of a power to develop new mechanisms to enable spectrum to be traded and a scheme of recognised spectrum access. These matters will be covered in Part II. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Provides the first exploratory analysis of the use of NHS touch-screen information kiosks located throughout the UK. It examines, through a one month snapshot of the transactional logs of the kiosks, their use and makes comparisons between the types of organisation in which the kiosks are housed. Details of over 120 kiosks and nearly 47,000 user sessions and 310,000 page views were used for the comparison. The kiosks are proving popular, although some use appears to be of a cursory and seemingly unproductive kind. Surprisingly significant differences between kiosk locations were found. This early research reported here is part of an ongoing study of how users obtain health information by interacting with different digital platforms: kiosks, the Internet, and digital television. Comparisons are made between the results of this study and a similar study conducted by the authors on commercial health kiosks, those of InTouch With Health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the summer of 1987, a study was made of the use of Prestel and The Times Network for Schools (TTNS) as electronic communications systems in British schools. The results discussed here provide information on school use of networks and on the activities in schools where good practice has been identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses optimized production technology (OPT) software and its use. Since its development in the late 1970s, OPT has provoked the interest of both practitioners and academicians. Although interest in OPT in North America dimmed during the late 1980s, the OPT software continues to be aggressively marketed in Great Britain and Western Europe. In fact, over 60 installations of the OPT software were implemented in the United Kingdom and Western Europe during 1989, 1990, and the first 6 months of 1991. What is little known about the software is that it combines a finite scheduler for factory bottlenecks with a backward scheduler for non-bottlenecks. The article describes the software in detail, including the batch, sizing, procedure and user interfaces, and presents results of the journal's survey of all North American companies that used or are using the OPT software. The OPT software is comprised of four main execution modules: BUILDNET, SPLIT, OPT, and SERVE. Several files created by management are input at various stages of execution and are the major link for communicating management preferences to the software.

This case study demonstrates how simple changes in the way maintenance is managed can result in significant benefits, improving productivity and performance. it describes the work carried out by a major U.K. services organization and was contracted to provide support and maintenance services for one of their key business systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic point of sale (EPOS) systems based on article numbering and scanning are in the forefront of the applications of micro electronic technology within retailing. This article outlines the characteristics and the origins of article numbering and retail scanning and examines their spread within Europe and the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on Prestel. Prestel is an electronic information system, for home and business use, developed at the Post Office Research Centre, which links information held in a network of Post Office-owned computers through the public telephone system to receivers which are modified television sets. It is simple to operate, being controlled by the user through a twelve-button keypad carrying the numerals 0-9 plus buttons marked * and # which control special Prestel functions. The keypad also controls facilities in the receiver for automatic dialing to reach the computer and for clearing the telephone line when the call is completed. Some business users have receivers fitted with a full alphanumeric keyboard and can thus take advantage of message-sending and other more complex response facilities. The system is to a limited extent, interactive, enabling the user to choose a variety of routes through the information provided and for example, to order and pay for goods or services advertised.

This article discusses the problem of radio-location and air defence. Once the sound of an approaching aircraft is registered, the sound-locator equipment brought the searchlight to bear in the general direction of the target and the beam of light began to probe the night sky. Some two years later the British air defence exercises brought home these same doleful lessons though on a wider scale. The British interest in and development of radar has received very adequate coverage in both memoir and monograpbic literature. As for Germany, it fell to the German Navy to promote an interest between 1934-5 in work on radar for use in connection with gun ranging and also air surveillance.

The foregoing points are tentative, owing partly to gaps in the available information, but the policy implications are reasonably consistent and clear. The overall profit targets need to be derived with more caution and detail, and they need to be applied to individual services with particular care. The present targets are probably (though not certainly) significantly too high. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the success of the experimentation of atomic explosion in Monte Bello, Great Britain on October 1, 1952. The success manifested in the complete set of scientific records collected during the experiment that met the original requirement based on the plan. In addition, electronic gadgets and devices which are the bases for all measurements made during the experimentation contributed to the success. Sir William Penny, a scientist involved in the experiment agreed on the idea that the atomic weapon program should be beneficial to public safety. However, despite of the success of the experiment, there were still comments particularly on the shape of the clouds during the explosion that appeared like mushroom.

If people queuing upto produce standards is any indication, system-level design has finally penetrated mainstream chip development. It is more than ten years since engineers at UK mainframe maker ICL tried to popularized the idea of modeling hardware at the level of abstractions rather than logic levels. Now the technique is being embraced around the world with a number of companies trying to kick-start standardization efforts around system level modeling. Modeling hardware using virtual platforms is becoming mainstream - so now attention is turning to the speed of simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on the special issue about the current perspective in health informatics in Great Britain. He states that the review on the impact of electronic health records on clinical work suggest to deliver usable findings. He added, that the use of artficial intelligence brings evidence based medicine a step closer to make individual difference. He was disappointed on the aspect regarding the technological developments if whether the present people has progressed correspondingly.

Britain''s 10-year project to create an electronic patient record system for some 50 million people registered on the National Health System is one of the biggest, and at £6.1 billion, one of the most expensive IT projects the world has seen. It is also one of the most controversial, due mainly to perceptions about the vulnerability of patient records to unauthorised access and abuse. The UK''s National Audit Office has announced that it will investigate the National Programme for IT in the National Health Service, and publish its findings next summer. Infosecurity Today posed a number of questions about how the NHS plans to capture, clean and safeguard patients'' data, and asked a critic of the project, Cambridge University''s Ross Anderson, to give his views on the NHS''s answers. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]