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This chapter is based on the work of Professor Charles Engel who, sadly, passed away early in 2019. Some 20 years ago, Professor Engel was advocating that higher education should take a lead in remediating global challenges, particularly those of sustainability. He took a broad view of the concept of “sustainability,” based largely on the Brundtland (1987) view of global challenges. Engel proposed that successful approaches to address the complex problems of sustainability should be explored across disciplinary boundaries. The University of Manchester developed a series of course modules focusing on these major challenges, largely run on interdisciplinary lines. Initially the concept was explored across science and engineering, with the support of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Charles Engel, a leading authority on its use, advised using Problem-Based Learning as a means of addressing the wicked problems in interdisciplinary groups. The pilot modules were extensively evaluated and reported. Since then the course units have developed and diversified, with extension to other schools, universities, countries, and to postgraduate courses. This transformative concept has also been explored in hybrid online format. The current chapter will re-introduce some of the original ideas and bring together the many threads that have emerged.

The mathematical model and computer algorithm reported in a previous issue of this journal have been tested on 21 normal heart moulds by comparing the true volume value, measured by Archimedes' principle, with the predicted theoretical volume.

Proposes a modified Hill model for the oxyhaemoglobin dissociation curve. The model fits normal oxyhaemoglobin dissociation experimental data quite accurately, and can easily be adapted to experimental data of subjects suffering haemoglobinopathies when available. Discusses the Adair equation, as well as correcting factors for varying temperature and pH.

Selective laser sintering (SLS) is a solid freeform fabrication process whereby a part is built layerwise by scanning a powder bed. The processability of metal powder varies depending on the state of the powder prior to SLS. A powder thermal pre‐treatment was developed which involved degassing the powder at an elevated temperature in a vacuum. Without powder thermal pre‐treatment, the powder may flow poorly and may “ball” or form molten clumps during the laser exposure rather than wetting into the present and previous layer. These effects result in SLS parts with poor surface finish, mechanical properties and density. The purpose of this study was to identify for titanium alloy powder the mechanisms responsible for the improvements obtained after powder thermal pre‐treatment and to optimize the thermal excursion.

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the Russian family went through some institutional transformations. Peasant migrations (from European Russia to more distant destinations, and more importantly, from the countryside to the cities), World War I, the upheavals of the revolutionary period and the Civil War years all changed the country’s demographic situation. This led to more women (at least in the cities) being employed outside their households. Their sub-standard living conditions and legal vulnerability attracted the attention of intellectuals (Engel, 1991) and helped reformulate the women’s question, which had by then become one of the central issues of the political and intellectual life of the country. Alongside the quest for equality from upper and middle-class women, which was manifested in the burgeoning public and literary life of the Fin-de-Siécle Russia (Engelstein, 1992), emerged “Marxist feminism.” This movement assumed the task of promoting the rights of working women and the destruction of (bourgeois) gender inequality. It also played a decisive role in shaping scholarly discourse on the family and state policies towards it. Despite the dramatic social changes, they did not readily bring about alterations in popular mentality, particularly in popular attitudes towards the roles played by men and women within the family. Barbara Engel (1991, p. 147) has observed that: Revolutionary transformation did not end most women’s loyalty to the family and especially to their children. However, food shortages, poor housing, lack of job opportunities, and especially family instability made women’s traditional responsibilities considerably harder to fulfill. The deserting husbands and short-term unions that led some women to seek abortion prompted others to demand more conservative family policy to ensure their ability to provide for their children. Instead of unions easily contracted and dissolved they wanted strong and stable marriages.Meanwhile, during the first post-revolutionary decade, some representatives of the new elite regarded the family as holding the most strength within the ancien régime, which was doomed to collapse as new relations between the sexes and among generations were getting stronger.¹ A great deal of writing produced in the 1920s by Communist theoreticians discussed questions related to the pace, social context and forms in which the withering away of the family might manifest itself (Preobrazhenskii, 1923; Trotsky, 1923). It also examined the problems of sexual ethics and the upbringing of genuinely collectivist-minded people (Kollontai, 2003a–c; Lunacharsky, 1927; Zalkind, 1923 (reprinted in 2001)). “There are reasons to believe,” argued Bukharin (1921, p. 170) “that in the Communist society, as the private property vanishes for good, the family and prostitution will follow suit.” He also stated his opposition to the family’s rearing of the younger generation: “The future lies with the communal upbringing. The communal upbringing will enable the Communist society to bring up the young in the way it deems appropriate, minimizing efforts and expenses” (Bukharin, 1920, p. 197).

The area of artificial neural networks, which dates back to the early twentieth century, could only offer positive contributions to technology after the back‐propagation algorithm was proposed in 1986. In this note an alternative algorithm to the gradient descent used in back‐propagation is proposed. This algorithm is based on the discrete central difference. This procedure, as opposed to the back‐propagation algorithm, offers the possibility of true parallel computation.

Parking policy in the United States is dominated by zoning codes with minimum parking requirements stipulated for a variety of uses. Some cities have realized that this approach has not yielded the desired policy outcomes; instead, it may be causing unintended consequences including added auto-travel, dispersed development, congestion, and air pollution that cities now wish to mitigate.

This paper identifies historic and contemporary trends in United States’ parking policy as cities gain additional insight and embrace new priorities.

Three emerging trends in the U.S. context are identified: Rethinking zoning codes that require parking with development; introducing pricing to better manage curb resources thereby cutting down curb-space competition; and looking for urban design solutions to parking access, location and on-site placement which can lead to more efficient mode use decisions.

The chapter provides an analysis of cases showing how cities are now seeking alternative approaches.

After many years of policy intervention focused on the alleviation of parking shortages by requiring additional off-street parking, cities are now seeking alternative approaches.

Cities can learn from each other’s experiences. New paradigms in parking policy will lead to different social outcomes: they could increase the cost of auto use (disadvantaging the poor) but decrease auto dependence (favoring the poor).

The originality of this chapter is in the juxtaposition and analysis of trends that have, heretofore, had little exposure.

This paper aims to investigate the changes in living standard among families with different socio-economic status in China with the use of Engel's Coefficient. The authors develop a decomposition methodology to figure out the driving forces behind changes in Engel's Coefficient, and investigate how dramatic economic growth, volatile food price and rapid nutrition transition affect living standard among different families.

The authors propose a statistical method to decompose the changes in living standard measured by Engel's Coefficient into structure effect, price effect, quantity effect and income effect. Using the China Health and Nutrition Survey data between 2000 and 2011, the authors estimate these four effects by employing a decomposition method.

Results show that Engel's Coefficient in China decreased by 8.7 percentage points (hereafter “pp”) during 2000–2011, where structure effect leads to 0.2 pp increase, price effect results in 17.7 pp increase, quantity effect brings about 12.4 pp decline and income effect contributes to 14.2 pp decline. Results indicate that rising food prices are the main obstacle to improve households' living standard. Typically, poor and rural families' living standard is more vulnerable to the rise in food prices, and they benefit less from income growth.

This study proposes a decomposition method to investigate the determinants of change in Engel's Coefficient, which provides a deeper understanding of how economic growth, food price change and nutrition transition affect people's living standard in different socio-economic groups in developing countries. This study also provides valuable insights on how to achieve common prosperity from the perspective of consumption upgrading.

Process mining (PM) has emerged as a leading technology for gaining data-based insights into organizations’ business processes. As processes increasingly cross-organizational boundaries, firms need to conduct PM jointly with multiple organizations to optimize their operations. However, current knowledge on cross-organizational process mining (coPM) is widely dispersed. Therefore, we synthesize current knowledge on coPM, identify challenges and enablers of coPM, and build a socio-technical framework and agenda for future research.

We conducted a literature review of 66 articles and summarized the findings according to the framework for Information Technology (IT)-enabled inter-organizational coordination (IOC) and the refined PM framework. The former states that within inter-organizational relationships, uncertainty sources determine information processing needs and coordination mechanisms determine information processing capabilities, while the fit between needs and capabilities determines the relationships’ performance. The latter distinguishes three categories of PM activities: cartography, auditing and navigation.

Past literature focused on coPM techniques, for example, algorithms for ensuring privacy and PM for cartography. Future research should focus on socio-technical aspects and follow four steps: First, determine uncertainty sources within coPM. Second, design, develop and evaluate coordination mechanisms. Third, investigate how the mechanisms assist with handling uncertainty. Fourth, analyze the impact on coPM performance. In addition, we present 18 challenges (e.g. integrating distributed data) and 9 enablers (e.g. aligning different strategies) for coPM application.

This is the first article to systematically investigate the status quo of coPM research and lay out a socio-technical research agenda building upon the well-established framework for IT-enabled IOC.