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This paper comments on the attitude of Banks to the HM Guidelines, for PFI as well as analysing the cost of finance obtained under the Guidelines and comparing it with finance from other sources. This analysis is extended, by way of example, to t he Dalmuir sewage treatment works project, as capital expenditure under EU Directives in Scotland.

This section of the Journal is entitled News and Views. It can include practitioner papers, news, events, conference reports, calls for papers, trend summaries, statistics, working papers, etc. Submissions are invited from both academic and industry sources. Contributions are welcome and because this section has a shorter lead time than the main body of the Journal we will be accepting and including ‘copy’ right up to going to press.

In an attempt to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of correctional facilities the Australian Government has recognised the need for their privatisation. Consequently, the Victorian Government initiated an “Infrastructure Investment Policy”, which led to the development of a portfolio called the “New Prisons Project”. This paper presents findings from several prison projects that have been developed using different procurement methods by both the public and private sector. The findings reveal that prisons procured by the private sector using BOO systems are more cost‐efficient, specifically in relation to construction and operating costs, than those procured by other means. Discussions on the future of privatising correctional services using BOO systems are also presented.

This chapter provides an overview of scholarship on leadership processes in groups. It investigates leadership both as a role and as influence, and considers structural influences on group leadership communication. A short chronological overview on the most important leadership theories gives a special emphasis on the meaning and role of communication within these approaches. The chapter shares the common basis of the handbook in communication as a fundamental and critical process in groups and teams. Approaches where communication plays a central role is amplified. The last paragraph focuses on three newer strands of leadership research as well as management practices. In each of these new contexts, leadership as a functional role and as social influence is discussed and the criticality of interaction and communication traced.

This paper aims to reconstruct the spatially varying orthotropic conductivity based on a two-dimensional inverse heat conduction problem described by a partial differential equation (PDE) model with mixed boundary conditions. The proposed discretization uses a highly accurate technique and allows simple implementations. Also, the authors solve the related inverse problem in such a way that smoothness is enforced on the iterations, showing promising results in synthetic examples and real problems with moving heat source.

The discretization procedure applied to the model for the direct problem uses a pseudospectral collocation strategy in the spatial variables and Crank–Nicolson method for the time-dependent variable. Then, the related inverse problem of recovering the conductivity from temperature measurements is solved by a modified version of Levenberg–Marquardt method (LMM) which uses singular scaling matrices. Problems where data availability is limited are also considered, motivated by a face milling operation problem. Numerical examples are presented to indicate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method.

The paper presents a discretization for the PDEs model aiming on simple implementations and numerical performance. The modified version of LMM introduced using singular scaling matrices shows the capabilities on recovering quantities with precision at a low number of iterations. Numerical results showed good fit between exact and approximate solutions for synthetic noisy data and quite acceptable inverse solutions when experimental data are inverted.

The paper is significant because of the pseudospectral approach, known for its high precision and easy implementation, and usage of singular regularization matrices on LMM iterations, unlike classic implementations of the method, impacting positively on the reconstruction process.

Dear Madam, After having read Mr Negus's highly entertaining and informative paper on the juggling of edge‐punched cards, I cannot help wondering if, in changing to multiple‐entry subject card index, he still has not backed the right horse. Could not the ASM Metallurgical classification be put straight on to Peek‐a‐boo cards and used as a co‐ordinate index? This would be a less sophisticated form of ASTIA's automated retrieval system where document numbers are put on to magnetic tape instead of being punched on cards. Bill Barden, in conversation at the Aslib Aeronautics Group Conference in July [1961], expressed the view that a Peek‐a‐boo co‐ordinate index was extremely efficient for document collections of 100,000 or less, and that computer scanning was only a logical extension of a highly selective retrieval technique.

I first met punched feature cards in 1956. I was working as an assistant to E. G. Brisch, whose company classified the materials and components used in industry. His method brought similar articles together, both notionally in classified codebooks and practically when the classified items were stored in their code number order. The result was an excellent aid to variety reduction, standardization, and stock control. E. G. gave me a good grounding in analytical classification; but his office held other secrets too. One of these was a sort of punched card representing a property or quality, not an object or event as with all other punched cards I had met. On these other cards, notched or slotted for hand‐sorting with needles, or punched and verified in thousands for reading by machine, the holes stood for characteristics possessed by the item concerned. The new cards were different. Since they represented properties, the items possessing these had to be shown by the holes, and so they were. E. G. named them ‘Brisch‐a‐boo’: this I found was his special variant of ‘peek‐a‐boo’, a title by which they are still occasionally known. To stack some of them in exact register with each other is to find, as a set of through holes in numbered positions, the reference numbers of all the items recorded on them which have the qualities concerned.

The search for an easily installed, practicable and inexpensive information retrieval system continues unabated. This is reflected in the Aslib Library almost daily by requests for advice on the feasibility of installing this or that system, or for information on what systems are available in Great Britain. Study of the following bibliography, which covers only a narrow selection of information retrieval systems, will reveal that much original thought has been producing concrete results in this country. In fact, one of the earliest references is to a paper given at the twenty‐second Aslib Conference in 1947 by W. E. Batten, in which he describes his development of an ‘aspect’ card system—more often referred to today as ‘Peek‐a‐boo’ or ‘feature’ cards. Mr C. W. Cleverdon's Cranfield project is also adding considerable knowledge on the use of various indexing methods, including Uniterm.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how farmers are reducing vulnerability of rain‐fed agriculture to drought through indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in the Atankwidi basin, north‐eastern Ghana.

This paper draws on combined qualitative and quantitative research methods and data. First, the paper draws on qualitative data generated from in‐depth interviews and focus group discussions from purposively sampled farmers in the Atankwidi basin. It also draws on a survey conducted on 131 systematically and randomly sampled households in three communities of the basin, namely Yua, Pungu and Mirigu.

The results show that farmers are planting multiple indigenous drought resilient crop varieties and employing different rounds of seeding and or staggering planting between multiple farms. They are also applying indigenous forms of organic manure, checking soil erosion through grass strips and stone terracing and adopting paddy farming for improving soil and water conservation towards enhancing plant adaptation to drought. The paper therefore, asserts that through conscientious effort, farmers are reducing vulnerability of rain‐fed agriculture to drought through indigenous knowledge systems of drought risk management.

The paper recommends that capacity for managing vulnerability to drought at the local level, including the Atankwidi basin, can be enhanced by incorporating IKS into District Development Planning (DDP) and giving priority to the strategic role of IKS in climate change adaptation planning.

This paper fulfills a need for researching the relevance of IKS for reducing vulnerability of rain‐fed agriculture to drought in particular, and enhancing adaptation to climate change in general in the quest for promoting Endogenous Development (ED) in Africa.

Dear Madam, Mr Tams complains that little has been said about working principles for constructing systems using ‘concept co‐ordination’ descriptions or systems employing optical stencil devices for detecting joint membership of classes, such as Taylor (‘Peek‐a‐boo’) cards. Much has been written about both of them.