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A three year Esprit project – ProCure – is ultimately aiming to take a significant but achievable step forward in the application of available information and communication technology (ICT) to the large scale engineering (LSE) construction industry. The ProCure consortium consists of five industrial partners supported by four associated research and expert partners. The project combines leading expertise from three member states to support ICT deployment by three industrial collaborative groups, i.e. UK, Germany and Finland. The basis of the project is in the partners’ belief that sufficient ICT is now available to achieve deployment, with care, in real projects, with an acceptable risk of failure. This paper presents work undertaken within the project to investigate the various metadata standards that exist in order to define a minimum metadata set based on these standards for the implementation of two demonstrators for XML based automated document exchange between a simulation of a corporate document management system and a simulation of a collaborative construction project Web site.

The paper aims to recommend legal and regulatory reforms to better prevent child abuse in childcare institutions in Hong Kong.

A summary of investigation report and news reports are referred to in describing the abuse incidents which occurred in a children’s residential home. Routine Activity Theory (RAT) is used as the framework for identifying the causes. Local and overseas legislation, regulations, case law, and policies are analysed to provide recommendations for reforms.

There are systematic failures such as workload issues, inadequate supervision, and the absence of continuing professional development (CPD) that contributed to the incidents. The regulations governing the operation of childcare centres and criminal laws against child abuse are long overdue for an update in Hong Kong. On the institutional side, this paper recommends enacting regulations that mandate CPD, lower the staff-to-child ratio, and strengthen the Social Welfare Department’s (SWD) supervisory powers over childcare centres. From the criminal law perspective, it is recommended that “reasonable chastisement” be abolished as a defence of corporal punishment, and that there be new offences for failure to report suspected child abuse incidents and causing or allowing the death/serious harm of a child.

The child abuse incidents, occurring in a childcare institution, have drawn wide public concern. Reform is required to protect vulnerable children and regain public confidence.

Two corrosion inhibitors for closed cooling water systems, nitrite-based and mixture of nitrite and molybdate corrosion inhibitor, are often compared to each other. This study aims to optimize these two inhibitors in terms of concentration and pH for carbon steel protection, with insights into the double layer structure on surface and its impact on corrosion inhibition.

Electrochemical analysis including electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and potentiodynamic test are carried out for quick assessment of corrosion inhibition efficiency and optimization, which is confirmed by immersion test and microscopic analysis. The electronic properties of the surface film are analyzed through Mott–Schottky method which provides new insights into the inhibition mechanism and the role of each component in mixture inhibitor.

Mixture of nitrite and molybdate is shown to present higher inhibition efficiency, owning to the double layer structure. Nitrite alone can form a protective surface film, whereas molybdate leads to an n-type semiconductive film with lower donor density, hence giving rise to a better inhibition effect.

Surface after inhibitor treatment has been carefully characterized to the microscopic scale, implying the effect of micro-structure, chemical composition and electronic properties on the corrosion resistance. Inorganic corrosion inhibitors can be tuned to provide higher efficiency by careful design of surface film structure and composition.

Almost every study on corrosion inhibitor applies such method for quick assessment of corrosion inhibition effect. Mott–Schottky test is one of electrochemical methods that reveals the electronic properties of the surface film. Previous works have studied the surface layer mainly through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. This study provides another insight into the surface film treated by nitrite and molybdate through Mott–Schottky analysis, and relates this structure to the corrosion inhibition effect based on multiple analysis including electrochemistry, microscopic characterization, thermodynamics and interface chemistry.

The purpose of this paper is to address four interrelated questions: what is the prevalence of ageism amongst employers? What are the factors conditioning employers’ age stereotypes? To what extent are ageist attitudes among employers translated into discriminatory recruitment, retention and firing practices? And what factors can moderate the stereotype–discrimination interaction?

The paper draws on a survey conducted among Danish employers; 2,525 completed the survey questionnaires; response rate 25 per cent.

The major finding is that ageist stereotypes among employers do not translate into discriminatory personnel management practices.

The findings may be specific to Denmark. Denmark is renowned to be a non-hierarchical, egalitarian society, which may have implications for personnel management practices.

Contrary to this study, most studies analysing ageist stereotypes do not assess the extent to which stereotypes are translated into discriminatory personnel management practices in the workplace.

A multimedia computer system is one that can create, import, integrate, store, retrieve, edit, and delete two or more types of media materials in digital form, such as audio, image, full‐motion video, and text information. This paper surveys four possible types of multimedia computer systems: hypermedia, multimedia database, multimedia message, and virtual reality systems. The primary focus is on advanced multimedia systems development projects and theoretical efforts that suggest long‐term trends in this increasingly important area.

Waqf (Islamic endowment) in the form of cash is important to address the problem of developing idle waqf lands. Although there are various existing models of cash waqf, there is still a need for innovative cash waqf models. This paper aims to offer an alternative mode of financing for developing idle waqf lands using the concepts of cooperatives and waqf.

The present study first evaluates relevant literature on financing issues faced by waqf institutions in developing idle waqf lands as well as existing models of cash waqf. Based on the prevailing gap in cash waqf models, the study proposes a hybrid model of cooperative-waqf to finance idle waqf lands in Malaysia.

The proposed model is unique owing to the new dimension of membership being embedded into the waqf project. It considers donors as members of the waqf project, which is funded through the cash waqf collected, and thus, donors are given the privilege to receive benefits from the commercialised projects that are developed on the waqf lands. The existing models of cash waqf use traditional methods in which donors merely contribute cash waqf without any awareness of how the contributions are utilised. Usually, this problem occurs due to the lack of reciprocal communication between cash waqf donors and waqf institutions.

The present study examines the case of waqf land development in the context of Malaysia only. Secondly, the paper does not contain any empirical analysis, and the development of the paper is based on existing literature that discusses various models of cash waqf practised in Muslim-majority and -minority countries. Future research can conduct surveys of donors and other stakeholders on the practicality of the model.

It is expected that the proposed cooperative-waqf model will be able to create a synchronised relationship between cash waqf donors and waqf institutions and hence boost participation in developing waqf lands.

The present study adds to the existing literature in the area of waqf and cash waqf models, especially the application of this instrument in the context of Malaysia. It also offers a new hybrid model to the State Islamic Religious Councils (SIRCs) – Malaysia’s sole trustee of waqf assets management – such that the implementation of the proposed model could boost the collection of cash waqf in developing commercial projects on idle waqf lands.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new measure for criticality analysis of different components of a production plant, called cost‐effective importance measure (CEIM) that considers the component's performance, system structure and economic aspects.

In this work, an explorative literature study covering the concept of importance measure and criticality analysis has been carried out on contemporary literature. The literature study shows that the commonly used importance measures consider the probability of failure of a component and systems structure, and ignore the effect or severity of failures, which is an important factor in engineering decision making. It is not clear how to use the concept of importance measure in combination with cost parameter. Hence, a cost‐effective importance measure (CEIM) is defined and a case study is presented, to demonstrate the application of the proposed importance measure.

The paper indicates that CEIM useful for the analysis of production plants where reliability and cost of break down are of paramount importance.

The concept of CEIM is demonstrated using only a case study of a belt conveyor system in the underground mine of Singareni Coal Company Ltd. However, the concept of CEIM can be used in other area.

The concept of CEIM can be a handy and effective tool for scheduling of inspection, maintenance and fault diagnosis and these activities can be carried out as per the rank of the components to maximize the benefits in skilled manpower crunch. It also indicates that the upgradation of the production plant's performance can also be done by improving performance of components with relatively large CEIM values.

In this paper, the concept of importance measure is extended to include the effect of severity of failures and cost parameter in the criticality analysis.

This article analyzes recent Japanese efforts to recruit care labor from seven Asian countries to identify the relative contributions to migrants and their respective countries' health systems. Besides considering the factors affecting migration from, and benefits to, sending countries, it asks how differences in the role of public and private actors may matter.

The study uses two stages of analysis. The first uses quantitative and qualitative data for seven countries that send care labor migrants to Japan to identify differences in benefits for individual migrants and health care systems in the sending countries. The second stage examines recent initiatives for funding care worker training in Japan to assess the relative impacts of different public-private cooperative arrangements, especially in terms of Vietnam.

In addition to general migration policy mechanisms provided by the destination country, bilateral relationships and foreign assistance, along with economic, demographic and health care conditions in the origin countries, contribute to the relative benefits of migration. Among countries supplying care labor to Japan, Vietnam is obtaining the most benefits for its health care system in return.

Responding to central concerns surrounding care labor migration, the article compares across countries sending care workers to a single country. The comparison highlights a constellation of factors that contribute the greatest benefits. The article identifies how different types of public and private relationships can influence this process. The study provides observations applicable to other welfare states developing care labor migration relationships.

The report of the Chief Veterinary Officer of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries which records the proceedings taken under the Diseases of Animals Act for the year 1929 has just been issued. It indicates clearly the enormous amount and complexity of the work which devolves on the officers of the Ministry. They may very well say with John Wesley, “ All the world is my parish.” For instance in seven outbreaks of anthrax “ which …. occurred a few years ago,” the cause was found to be infected bone meal used as a manure and imported from an Eastern country (p. 43); another outbreak was traced to beans that had been imported from China (p. 44); again, special measures have been taken, at the instance of His Majesty's Government, by the Governments of Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentine to prevent the introduction of foot‐and‐mouth disease into this country by chilled or frozen meat (p. 46); an outbreak of foot‐and‐mouth disease at Los Angeles, California, led to an embargo being placed on the importation of hay and straw from that State (p. 52); while an outbreak in Southern Sweden led to similar steps being taken (p. 52). It is unnecessary to give further instances, but it is evident that the complexities of modern commerce and the development of rapid means of transport imposes world‐wide duties on the Ministry of a nature that were by no means contemplated when in 1865 the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council—of which the present Ministry is a lineal descendant—was instituted as a result of the outbreak of cattle plague which had ravaged the country. Table I. (p. 94) gives the total number of cattle in Great Britain for the five years 1925–1929 inclusive, each year ending in June. The percentage variation in the number of cattle during that time appears to be four per cent., so that the Ministry is responsible under the Act for about 7¼ millions of cattle, the 1929 return gives 7,190,539. The census and the subsequent co‐ordination of the returns made is in itself a task of no inconsiderable magnitude. In addition to this, however, veterinary skill of a high order is demanded, not only in the interests of a trade whose dimensions are indicated by the figures just given, but in the interests of public health in relation to notifiable cases, under the Act, of bovine tuberculosis. The number of cows and heifers in milk or in calf is given as 3,166,292 or 44 per cent. of the total number of bovine animals. It is of course from these that we derive our supplies of fresh milk, so that on their health our own health to a certain extent depends, and to a greater extent the health of invalids and children to whom milk is a prime necessity. It is therefore scarcely possible to over‐rate the weight of responsibility resting on the Ministry when the relation of its duties to the incidence of bovine tuberculosis is considered. Two important facts, however, demand attention. The first is that the Tuberculosis Order of 1925 was, as the Report points out, neither designed nor expected to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. The disease is widespread, and it is to be feared somewhat firmly established in our herds—an evil legacy from the past. The most that can be done at present is by means of the Order to remove as far as possible the danger to human health from the ingestion of the milk of infected animals and to reduce the number of these animals. Any attempt which might be made to completely eradicate the disease would in our present state of knowledge lead to a serious depletion of our herds throughout the country, and large expenditure in compensation (p. 23). In the second place while the Order of 1925 requires certain forms of the disease to be reported, no steps are at present taken or can be taken to search out the disease. An organisation designed so to do would be costly, as it would in the first place involve “ a considerable extension of periodical veterinary inspection of all dairy cows, coupled with the application of the biological test ” (p. 23). Hence leaving out of consideration our deficient knowledge of the disease, though its effects are horribly evident in our national life, the old conflict of public health versus public pocket is presented to us in an acute form.

This paper asks the reader to consider future information retrieval services that return multimedia documents containing any combination of text, graphics, still raster images, audio, and motion video in response to user queries. It then argues that the emergence of generally available multimedia information services depends on four things: (1) close to ubiquitous high‐bandwidth networks; (2) inexpensive user appliances capable of handling multimedia; (3) adoption of standards for representation, compression, packaging and transport of multimedia information; and (4) development of a corpus of multimedia information and associated infrastructure for organizing and searching it. After some explanation, it asserts that the first three are already happening and expresses reserved optimism about the fourth.