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Contemporary societies face serious environmental and social challenges that require decisive action. In the 1970s, Environmental Education (EE) was conceived as an important method for raising awareness and bringing about the needed changes in social practices that can lead to environmental protection and more recently sustainable development (transforming EE to Education for Sustainability (EfS)). Since then, many EE/EfS programmes have been implemented and some change has been observed despite the persisting problems. EE/EfS – especially when aiming to change behaviours – has been akin to critical pedagogy which aims to prepare independent and critical thinkers and empowered citizens that can effectively address social problems. What pedagogical approaches and educational methods are more effective in bringing about changes in attitudes and social practices? What instructional design and practices facilitate this transformation? What are the challenges? These are questions that have troubled environmental educators and are worth reflecting on in the present context of knowledge societies and Higher Education that is significantly impacted by a neoliberal ideology.

This chapter aims to contribute to the ongoing discussions around these questions, via a dialogue between theory and practice. A discussion of critical theory and pedagogy and of EE/EfS is counterposed with theoretical reflections and insights from the author's more than three decades of teaching experience (primarily in Greece). A discussion of the instructor's key pedagogical influences and the evolution of her (my) instructional practices follows, with the aim to identify instructional practices that have a transformative potential, within the context of the challenges and the facilitating parameters of contemporary societies and educational contexts. The instructor's self-reflections and students' qualitative comments are used in a variety of research methods: a self-study research approach drawing on the author's self-reflections as instructor and an analysis of students' qualitative comments in course evaluations and other informal evaluative situations.

The purpose of the present work is to improve the industry performance by identifying and quantifying the risks faced by the Indian pharmaceutical industry (IPI). The risk values for the prominent risks and overall industry are determined based on the four risk parameters, which would help determine the most contributive risks for mitigation.

An extensive literature survey was done to identify the risks, which were also validated by industry experts. The finalized risks were then evaluated using the fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) method, which is the most suitable approach for the risk assessment with parameters having a set of different risk levels.

The three most contributive sub-risks are counterfeit drugs, demand fluctuations and loss of customers due to partners' poor service performance, while the main risks obtained are demand, financial and logistics. Also, the overall risk value indicates that the industry faces medium to high risk.

The study identifies the critical risks which need to be mitigated for an efficient industry. The industry is most vulnerable to the demand risk category. Therefore, the managers should minimize this risk by mitigating its sub-risks, like demand fluctuations, bullwhip effect, etc. Another critical sub-risk, the counterfeit risk, should be managed by adopting advanced technologies like blockchain, artificial intelligence, etc.

There is insufficient literature focusing on risk quantification. Therefore, this work addresses this gap and obtains the industry's most critical risks. It also discusses suitable mitigation strategies for better industry performance.

The International Electronic Components Show in Paris in November, 1983, provided the occasion for a very successful meeting of ISHM‐France which attracted 170 attendees. The following presentations were given:

The purpose of this paper is to propose a cost-effective, time-saving and easy-to-use failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) system applied on the quality control of supplied products. The traditional FMEA has been modified and adapted to fit the quality control features and requirements. The paper introduces a new and revised FMEA approach, where the “failure concept” has been modified with “defect concept.”

The typical FMEA parameters have been modified, and a non-linear scale has been introduced to better evaluate the FMEA parameters. In addition, two weight functions have been introduced in the risk priority number (RPN) calculus in order to consider different critical situations previously ignored and the RPN is assigned to several similar products in order to reduce the problem of complexity.

A complete procedure is provided in order to assist managers in deciding on the critical suppliers, the creation of homogeneous families overcome the complexity of single product code approach, in RPN definition the relative importance of factors is evaluated.

This different approach facilitates the quality control managers acting as a structured and “friendly” decision support system: the quality control manager can easily evaluate the critical situations and simulate different scenarios of corrective actions in order to choose the best one. This FMEA technique is a dynamic tool and the performed process is an iterative one. The method has been applied in a small medium enterprise producing hydro massage bathtub, shower, spas and that commercializes bathroom furniture. The firm application has been carried out involving a cross-functional and multidisciplinary team.

This paper aims to contribute towards understanding how safety knowledge can be elicited from railway experts for the purposes of supporting effective decision-making.

A consortium of safety experts from across the British railway industry is formed. Collaborative modelling of the knowledge domain is used as an approach to the elicitation of safety knowledge from experts. From this, a series of knowledge models is derived to inform decision-making. This is achieved by using Bayesian networks as a knowledge modelling scheme, underpinning a Safety Prognosis tool to serve meaningful prognostics information and visualise such information to predict safety violations.

Collaborative modelling of safety-critical knowledge is a valid approach to knowledge elicitation and its sharing across the railway industry. This approach overcomes some of the key limitations of existing approaches to knowledge elicitation. Such models become an effective tool for prediction of safety cases by using railway data. This is demonstrated using passenger–train interaction safety data.

This study contributes to practice in two main directions: by documenting an effective approach to knowledge elicitation and knowledge sharing, while also helping the transport industry to understand safety.

By supporting the railway industry in their efforts to understand safety, this research has the potential to benefit railway passengers, staff and communities in general, which is a priority for the transport sector.

This research applies a knowledge elicitation approach to understanding safety based on collaborative modelling, which is a novel approach in the context of transport.

Meetings can serve the important role of facilitating communication and coordination for systems of teams known as “multiteam systems” (MTSs) that work interdependently to achieve grand societal challenges. Given that MTSs often appear in complex, ambiguous, urgent, and multifaceted task contexts, the MTSs require effective, and efficient but thorough, communication within and between teams in order to achieve shared goals. However, the extant literature regarding the science of meetings has left much to be explored in regard to the inter- and intrateam influences and impacts. This chapter considers the significance of meetings and their practical value in facilitating MTS processes and performance by leveraging what is known thus far regarding MTS structural attributes, their value, their challenges, and opportunities, integrating this foundation with the broader science of meetings. Building on this rationale, the authors move toward empirically and theoretically derived considerations for how meetings may best be designed, facilitated and utilized for MTS effectiveness, as guided by our current understanding of critical MTS attributes.

Producing meeting documents requires an instantaneous recorder during meetings, which costs extra human resources and takes time to amend the file. However, a high-quality meeting document can enable users to recall the meeting content efficiently. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

An application based on this framework is developed to help the users find topics and obtain summarizations of meeting contents without extra effort. This app uses the Bluemix speech recognizer to obtain speech transcripts. It then combines latent Dirichlet allocation and a TextTiling algorithm with the speech script of meetings to detect boundaries between different topics and evaluate the topics in each segment. TextTeaser, an open API based on a feature-based approach, is then used to summarize the speech transcripts.

The results indicate that the summaries generated by the machine are 85 percent similar to the records written by humankind.

To reduce the human effort in generating meeting reports, this paper presents a framework to record and analyze meeting contents automatically by voice recognition, topic detection, and extractive summarization.

A Summary by Dr. Alexander Klemin of the Papers Presented Before the Fourteenth Meeting of the Institute held at Columbia University, New York, on January 29–31, 1946. AERODYNAMICS IN spite of increased wing loadings, the use of full span wing flaps has been delayed, because of inability to find a suitable aileron. The Development of a Lateral‐Control System for use with Large‐Span Flaps by I. L. Ashkenas (Northrop Aircraft), outlines the various steps in the aerodynamic development of a retractable aileron system well adapted to the full span flap and successfully employed on the Northrop P‐61. Included is a discussion of the basic data used, the design calculations made, and the effect of structural and mechanical considerations. Changes made as a result of preliminary flight tests are discussed and the final flight‐test results are presented. It is concluded that the use of this retractable aileron system has, in addition to the basic advantage of increased flap span, the following desirable control characteristics: (a) favourable yawing moments, (b) low wing‐torsional loads, (c) small pilot forces, even at high speed.

Shows how to translate the voice of the customer into design processes. Asserts it is esential to apply design tools at the earliest possible stage in the product development cycle. Examines the role of quality function deployment and barometer design using Taguchi methods in designing quality processes. Demonstrates the power of these tools by using a case study from the automotive industry. Concludes that the link of QFD and parameter design by Taguchi methods is a powerful one. Contends that, if done together, it enables upstream quality engineering to become an effective tool for bringing new products to market on time and meeting company and market expectations in all aspects of performance.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.