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It is stated that the new version of the IP protocol, IPv6, is the answer to the majority of the problems that were raised during the enormous expansion of the Internet and its transformation to a global communication platform with commercial scope. At the same time it is also stated that IPv6 dominance will not be easy and there will be a period when the two versions of the protocol will co‐exist. In this paper we describe some of the main transition mechanisms that can be deployed in order to facilitate the transition process to the new version of the IP protocol. Furthermore, the presented mechanisms are discussed regarding their usability, usefulness and manageability. Describes the way some of these mechanisms were applied to the Greek Research & Technology Network (GRNET).

There is an ongoing debate about how specialist psychiatric services for people with learning disabilities and mental health problems should be developed. Nursing personnel are the largest professional group involved with care provision, yet to date there has been little research addressing the knowledge and experiences of learning disability and mental health nurses co‐working with this population. This aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of these nurses, using qualitative methods. The findings are discussed in relation to A Vision for Change (DoHC, 2006) and in comparison with the innovative collaborative working that has occurred with the UK.

In recent years, a number of alternatives for service differentiation and QoS provision have been proposed and standardized in communication networks. In the case of back‐bone networks the DiffServ architecture has prevailed, due to its scalability and deployment feasibility. The provisioning of differentiated services has raised the requirements for interdependent controlled resource allocation and service pricing, with particular needs for pricing mechanisms that preserve the potential and flexibility of the DiffServ framework. At the same time, such mechanisms should reflect resource usage, allocate resources efficiently, reimburse costs or maximize service provision profits and lead customers to requesting services that will maximize their revenue. Presents the key issues involved in the area of pricing DiffServ‐based services and the research work carried out in this field, while at the same time outlining the basic principles that such a pricing infrastructure should obey with respect to the particularities that apply to the case of DiffServ services provision.

Widely varying rates for the prevalence of psychiatric disorder have been reported in the previous published literature. The aims of this study were to describe the prevalence of psychiatric disorders in a random sample of adults with moderate to profound learning disabilities living in the community, and to explore the socio‐clinical factors associated with psychiatric disorders.A process of active case finding was undertaken to identify adults with learning disabilities. A random sample of 240 was taken of whom 121 were found to have moderate to profound learning disabilities at interview. Information was collected on socio‐demographics, service use, physical health, medication use, and life events. Standardised instruments were used to assess psychiatric symptoms, problem behaviour, and severity of learning disabilities. Diagnoses were generated using four diagnostic systems: clinical, DC‐LD, DCR‐10 and DSM‐IV.Higher rates of psychiatric disorder are reported than in previous published studies in the general population and in studies with people with learning disabilities living in the community. Further investigation of the effect of diagnostic system on prevalence rates, and associations of psychiatric disorder are warranted.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a computer‐assisted learning experience in operations management (OM) higher education that entailed the development of interactive learning software, its evaluation in an experimental environment and the formal analysis of the teaching method's influence on student perceptions.

The software design follows the constructivist focus based on widely‐accepted educational technology principles. Objective tests of knowledge and subjective appraisal of the learning process were used in the experiment to compare two educational scenarios (computer‐assisted learning and on‐site class). Students' perceptions of the software's technical and teaching features are also analyzed.

The study shows that the teaching method can significantly affect students' perceptions of the learning process. The findings also confirm the pedagogical effectiveness of the software that was designed and that information communication technologies (ICT)‐based methods are an alternative to traditional methods used in OM education.

The experiment involved strict control over various potential threats to validity. From a statistical point‐of‐view, the conclusions can only be generalized in the population analyzed. Nevertheless, the features of the software and the student profile allow the main conclusions to be generalized to other OM environments.

The use and evaluation of interactive software in OM educational environments are reflected on, with emphasis on the influence that the teaching methodology has on students' attitudes to the learning process. It is of interest for researchers interested in improving teaching through the use of ICT.

There are very few studies on interactive self‐learning software for OM and its effects on student perceptions. This paper is a new contribution to this field.

The purpose of this paper is to present a thorough analysis of three complementary features of real-scale really simple syndication (RSS)/Atom feeds, namely, publication activity, items characteristics and their textual vocabulary, that the authors believe are crucial for emerging Web 2.0 applications. Previous works on RSS/Atom statistical characteristics do not provide a precise and updated characterization of feeds’ behavior and content, characterization that can be used to successfully benchmark the effectiveness and efficiency of various Web syndication processing/analysis techniques.

The authors empirical study relies on a large-scale testbed acquired over an eight-month campaign from 2010. They collected a total number of 10,794,285 items originating from 8,155 productive feeds. The authors deeply analyze feeds productivity (types and bandwidth), content (XML, text and duplicates) and textual content (vocabulary and buzz-words).

The findings of the study are as follows: 17 per cent of feeds produce 97 per cent of the items; a formal characterization of feeds publication rate conducted by using a modified power law; most popular textual elements are the title and description, with the average size of 52 terms; cumulative item size follows a lognormal distribution, varying greatly with feeds type; 47 per cent of the feed-published items share the same description; the vocabulary does not belong to Wordnet terms (4 per cent); characterization of vocabulary growth using Heaps’ laws and the number of occurrences by a stretched exponential distribution conducted; and ranking of terms does not significantly vary for frequent terms.

Modeling dedicated Web applications capacities, Defining benchmarks, optimizing Publish/Subscribe index structures.

It especially opens many possibilities for tuning Web applications, like an RSS crawler designed with a resource allocator and a refreshing strategy based on the Gini values and evolution to predict bursts for each feed, according to their category and class for targeted feeds; an indexing structure which matches textual items’ content, which takes into account item size according to targeted feeds, size of the vocabulary and term occurrences, updates of the vocabulary and evolution of term ranks, typos and misspelling correction; filtering by pruning items for content duplicates of different feeds and correlation of terms to easily detect replicates.

A content-oriented analysis of dynamic Web information.

Community mental health services are of increasing importance for people with an intellectual disability (ID), as the government aims to reduce the number of people treated within inpatient services. However, due to limited evidence base, it is unclear which service models are most effective for treating people with both ID and a mental health condition. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to carry out a survey in order to gain a better understanding of the current state of ID community services.

The survey was e-mailed to 310 consultant psychiatrists based in England and whose main specialism was in ID. In total, 65 consultants responded to the survey with 53 complete data sets.

In total, 84 per cent of consultants identified themselves as working in a generic community ID team. The majority of services were not integrated with social care (71 per cent). Regional differences were found. In contrast to the rest of England, the majority of services in London were integrated with social care. The Health of the Nation Outcome Scale for people with Learning Disabilities (HoNOS-LD) was found to be the most common outcome measure used by services. A range of interventions are widely available across services including psychological therapies and specialist memory assessments. The survey also provides evidence for increased decommissioning of specialist inpatient units and a need for more robust community services.

Findings limited by low return rate (21 per cent) and because responses could not be matched to specific services. The implications of this survey are that there is still a variable level of integration with social care and that lack of integration could affect the quality of service. While HoNOS-LD is used consistently across services, there may be a need to supplement it with other outcome measures. There is a need for larger scale and higher quality studies in this area to strengthen the evidence base and therefore demonstrate the benefits of integration and specialisation more convincingly to health professionals and commissioners.

This survey presents an overview of the current state of community services for adults with ID in England. This information can be harnessed to add to revised approaches to mental health service models for people with ID.