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This paper examines some issues that arise from recent research on mentoring across a range of professional settings including teaching, nursing, medicine and social work. It discusses different models of mentoring and their potential relevance to the professional development of specialists and non‐specialists involved in health promotion. It recommends the development of an agreed and clear operational definition of what mentoring is and what it is expected to achieve, a policy framework so that those in mentoring relationships are aware of aims and expectations, good “fit” between the underlying ethos of health promotion and the model of mentoring adopted and proper resources and administration. It also suggests that mentoring schemes need the support of senior managers, clear arrangements for the recruitment, training and support of mentors, careful consideration of the basis upon which mentors and mentees are matched, and ground rules for the mentoring relationship, including those relating to confidentiality.

Adults with Down's Syndrome are at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease in later life. This paper gives an overview of the current research in the area and discusses the implications it raises for individuals, carers and service providers. Information on the link between Down's Syndrome and Alzheimer's disease and prevalence rates are given. The clinical symptoms of Alzheimer's disease and a stage model documenting the progression of the disease are presented. Attention is drawn to the problems inherent in assessing and diagnosing Alzheimer's disease in a person with a pre‐existing learning disability. The importance of a thorough assessment procedure and guidelines for assessment methods are highlighted. The paper also discusses the management of Alzheimer's disease and focuses on care management practices and recommendations for service provision. Guidelines for supporting individuals include maintaining skills, adopting a person‐centred approach, implementing psychosocial interventions and multidisciplinary care management. Finally, high prevalence rates of Alzheimer's disease in adults with Down's Syndrome and increasing life spans are highlighted as a particular concern, and recommendations for the future include increasing education and awareness, implementing screening services, improving assessment methods and developing appropriate services.

Research into the communication skills of individuals with Cornelia de Lange syndrome (CdLS) is extremely limited. This paper aims to evaluate the nature of these skills and impairments in CdLS using a detailed informant assessment of pre-verbal communication skills.

The study used the Pre-verbal Communication Schedule to evaluate communication skills in individuals with CdLS (n=14), aged five to14 years. The group was compared with a contrast group of individuals with Cri du Chat syndrome (CdCS; n=14) who were matched for age and intellectual ability.

A significant difference was identified in understanding non-vocal communication (p<0.005), with the CdLS group showing a greater deficit. These findings indicate the presence of a syndrome-specific deficit in understanding non-verbal communication in individuals with CdLS and suggest that there may be a dissociation between the processing of verbal and non-verbal communication.

The findings indicate that, in many ways, these two syndrome groups are not dissimilar in terms of their communication skills. However, individuals with CdLS show a syndrome-specific deficit in understanding non-vocal communication relative to the CdCS group.

The purpose of this paper is to report upon research into developing a biologically inspired target‐tracking system (TTS) capable of acquiring quality images of a known target type for a robotic inspection application.

The approach used in the design of the TTS hearkens back to the work on adaptive learning by Oliver Selfridge and Chris J.C.H. Watkins and the work on the classification of objects by Zdzislaw Pawlak during the 1980s in an approximation space‐based form of feedback during learning. Also, during the 1980s, it was Ewa Orlowska who called attention to the importance of approximation spaces as a formal counterpart of perception. This insight by Orlowska has been important in working toward a new form of adaptive learning useful in controlling the behaviour of machines to accomplish system goals. The adaptive learning algorithms presented in this paper are strictly temporal difference methods, including Q‐learning, sarsa, and the actor‐critic method. Learning itself is considered episodic. During each episode, the equivalent of a Tinbergen‐like ethogram is constructed. Such an ethogram provides a basis for the construction of an approximation space at the end of each episode. The combination of episodic ethograms and approximation spaces provides an extremely effective means of feedback useful in guiding learning during the lifetime of a robotic system such as the TTS reported in this paper.

It was discovered that even though the adaptive learning methods were computationally more expensive than the classical algorithm implementations, they proved to be more effective in a number of cases, especially in noisy environments.

The novelty associated with this work is the introduction of an approach to adaptive adaptive learning carried out within the framework of ethology‐based approximation spaces to provide performance feedback during the learning process.

Email lists are a continually useful resource for those seeking to establish links with their peers. Mailbase will setup and run lists for the UK HE community, providing a central service and user and technical support. The listowner has to concentrate on building the “online community”, and encouraging discussion in order to make their list into a valuable resource.