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Airports are crucial channels of mobility for the global citizens of the twenty‐first century. They are points of entry and exit for tourists, business persons, workers, students and of course, for some refugees as well. The scale of operations is huge ‐ international passenger travel increased twelve‐fold in the second half of the twentieth century (Urry, 2000: 50) and the vast majority of this is accounted for in air travel. In the USA alone there are two million daily airtravelers on 20,000 flights (Gottdiener,2001: 1). Airports are ‘placeless’ sites of temporary sojourn, air‐lock chambers for nomadic executives or sun‐seekers. But they have profound social and political significance, particularly in personal data handling.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate if the use of “serious games” with students can improve their knowledge acquisition and their academic performance.

The research is an exploratory investigation resorting to the use of a serious game to evaluate the evolution of the students’ competencies in project management, through questionnaires processed using a structural “learning model.”

This research shows indeed that the use of “serious games” improves the knowledge acquisition and management competencies of the students with the evidencing of significant factors contributing to this improvement.

The findings of this research show that serious games can be an effective tool to be used in teaching students particularly as traditional methods are less and less accepted by today's students.

Although the use of games is not something new in education, it is still limited in teaching practices in higher education. This experiment can help lecturers and trainers to resort to them in their pedagogy and to conceive them according to variables that can enhance their effectiveness.

Describes how an inspirational‐leadership program for senior managers at Cheltenham & Gloucester, one of the UK's largest mortgage lenders, is generating enthusiasm and energy within the business and helping the managers to get the best out of their teams, using more than just basic management techniques.

Is based on information gathered during interviews with C&G's director of HR and senior HR manager.

Reveals how the program, designed in close collaboration with development specialist Roffey Park, features six “forums”, which run over a 12‐month period, with each forum lasting one or two days. Recounts how the first five forums cover leadership and the leader's role during change, driving improvement, winning commitment (including the leader's use of communication), getting results and enhancing team effectiveness, while the final forum is a presentation by the participants on the results of a workplace assignment, undertaken as part of the learning. Describes the benefits that C&G has obtained by running the program.

Shows that one of the key benefits of the program is that it brings together top managers from different parts of the organization, since organizers deliberately mix and match the cohort groups and ensure that the participants stay together for the whole program.

Provides plenty to interest senior HR specialists who are keen to use senior management development to boost motivation and improve teamwork in their organizations.

This chapter, based on a sociological approach, addresses the ethical issues of surveillance research from the perspective of the profound transformations that science and innovation are undergoing, as part of a broader shift from modern to post-modern society, affecting also other major social institutions (such as government, religion, family, and public administration). The change occurring in the science and technology system is characterised by diminishing authority, uncertainty about internal mechanisms and standards, and a declining and increasingly difficult access to resources. Such changes, also related to globalisation and new digital technologies, have transformed the way research is conducted and disseminated. Research is now more open and its results more easily accessible to citizens.

Scientific research is also put under increased public scrutiny, while, at the same time, public distrust and disaffection towards science is rising. In such a context, it is more important than ever to make sure that research activities are not compromised by fraudulent and unethical practices. The legitimate expectations of citizens to enjoy their rights, including the ability to protect their private sphere, are growing. Scientific and technological development is deeply interrelated with the widespread awareness of these rights and the possibility of exercising them, but it produces also new risks, while a widespread sense of insecurity increases. The digital revolution, while improving people’s quality of life, offers at the same time new opportunities for crime and terrorism, which in turn has produced a demand to strengthen security systems through increasingly advanced and intrusive surveillance technologies. Misconduct in the field of surveillance may not only undermine the quality of research, but also further impair society’s trust in research and science as well as in the State and its institutions.

Postal questionnaires are increasingly being used to gather health and research information. Various techniques have been shown to increase the response rate. This study used several of these techniques and also benefited from close working with general practitioners and their practices. Cross‐checking address and age against practice records reduced the number of wasted invitations to participants. The GP signature on the letter personally inviting patients to participate contributed to a response rate of 83%. Researchers carrying out postal questionnaire studies will benefit from engaging with primary care.

This article presents and reviews the evidence from a pilot project in the North of England in which a social worker was based in a surgery and worked proactively with a district nurse to introduce an integrated case management approach for patients in the practice. Decision‐making was noticeably simplified and speeded up, with most assessments completed in a single day. The authors recommend that PCTs should consider the benefits of social care input to case management, especially when planning new services and new roles such as that of community matron.

This paper will provide an overview of the contemporary surveillance environment in the age of Big Data and an insight into the complexities and overlap between security, bodily and informational surveillance as well as the subsequent impacts on privacy and democracy. These impacts include the ethical dilemmas facing librarians and information scientists as they endeavour to uphold principles of equality of access to information, and the support of intellectual freedom in private in an increasingly politicised informational environment. If we accept that privacy is integral to the notion of learning, free thought and intellectual exploration and a crucial element in the separation of the state and the individual in democratic society, then the emergence of the data age and the all-encompassing surveillance and exposure of once private acts will undoubtedly lead to the reimagining of the social and political elements of society.