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Superconductive ceramics, at present, have not yet grown into a practical material for actual application to devices and systems, but are still in the raw material stage within the research laboratory. This paper will discuss some application possibilities in Japan to the HMT field: LSI wiring, transistors, hybrid ICs, and packaging, from electrical, physical and chemical aspects, supposing that only such superconductive ceramics as Y‐Ba‐Cu‐O(YBCO) and Bi‐Sr‐Ca‐Cu‐O(BSCCO) under liquid nitrogen cooling can be used.

On 20 April ISHM‐Benelux held its 1988 Spring meeting at the Grand Hotel Heerlen. This meeting was totally devoted to implantable devices, in particular to the technologies used for these high reliability, extremely demanding devices. For this meeting ISHM‐Benelux was the guest of the Kerkrade facility of Medtronic. Medtronic (headquartered in Minneapolis, USA) is the world's leading manufacturer of implantable electronic devices. Apart from the assembly of pacemakers and heart‐wires, the Kerkrade facility acts as a manufacturing technology centre for Medtronic's European facilities.

I was an invited speaker to the ISHM‐Benelux meeting. As I arrived early, I also sat in on the committee meeting as an observer. Jos B. Peeters was the outgoing president and the incoming committee was widened to about 15 members compared with the previous 6. Following the unanimous election of all those nominated, the committee reconvened and elected Mr Kwikkers as the new president of ISHM‐Benelux. He is a professor at the Technische Hogeschole in Delft.

For the considered system, an enumeration method is applicable to evaluate the exact system reliability only for very small‐sized systems, because, when the size of system is large, it takes huge execution time. Therefore, the paper provides approximate values for the system reliability as useful for calculating the reliability of large systems in a reasonable execution time.

The paper provides upper and lower bounds of the system reliability, and limit theorem for the reliability of our considered system in i.i.d. case.

The paper experimentally finds that the proposed upper and lower bounds are effective when component reliabilities close to one or the value of k becomes larger. Next, it concludes approximate values for approximate equation derived from the limit theorem are always smaller than lower bound through numerical experiments.

The upper and lower bounds for the reliability of a system can be calculated by using the reliability of a small system by the same idea as previous study for two‐dimensional system.

Up to now some researchers studied multi‐dimensional consecutive‐k‐out‐of‐n:F systems, and showed promising applications of such multi‐dimensional models, e.g. diagnosis of a disease diagnosed by reading an X‐ray. As another examples, three‐dimensional system can be applied for the mathematical model of a three‐dimensional flash memory cell failure model, and so on.

The paper considers a kind of three‐dimensional k‐within‐consecutive‐r‐out‐of‐n:F system. It proposes upper and lower bounds of the system reliability and limit theorem.

This issue is a selected bibliography covering the subject of leadership.

In order to stimulate the interest of company management in the business perspective of internal audit this paper aims to investigate the possibilities of using internal audit as a helpful managerial tool and describes the benefits of such use.

The benefits of IA as a managerial tool are investigated on a review of the relevant literature. Theoretically based findings are tested analytically using evidence from empirical research and empirically by a case study research.

Internal audit outcomes and benefits for management depend on the purpose of internal audit and on managers' support and expectations about it. The paper shows that in order to use internal audit as an effective managerial tool, internal audit has to be appropriately integrated within a strategic management system. The greatest benefits can be achieved by companies that are internally motivated to introduce the QMS which have a mature quality culture and QMS and their quality objectives linked to the business ones.

Discussing internal audit benefits from a managerial point of view is not a common approach in the professional literature on this topic. However, covering managers' needs by using quality tools is one of the most important issues companies should understand in order to make these tools attractive and beneficial. Showing the results of a real‐life case can convince managers from other companies that benefits of using IA as a managerial tool are tangible.

Internal audit purpose and results have been theoretically integrated within a broader managerial system of the company. This enables identification of possible business benefits resulting from appropriate implementation of internal audit itself and possible business benefits related to QMS and strategic management system of the company that can be affected through appropriate IA implementation.

The University of Illnois Information Retrieval Research Laboratory contracted with the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to identify and analyze word‐oriented databases of potential relevance to FEMA. A subject profile technique was used to measure how many potentially relevant citations were found in selected databases, thus allowing a ranking and comparison of databases for the multidisciplinary field of emergency management. “Distribution of Citations in Databases in a Multidisciplinary Field” describes the ranking of databases relevant to emergency management and demonstrates the applicability of Bradford's law of scatter to citations in databases. This article describes an experiment to compare the subject profile technique used in the FEMA project to another common database coverage evaluation technique — the ‘bibliography’ or ‘review article’ technique. Although the two techniques have slightly different purposes, they can both be used to compare the coverage of databases in a particular subject area. This study shows the subject profile technique to be less costly and less time consuming.

Employee participation is an important construct in contemporary organisations. Recently, the argument has concentrated on whether leader direction and participation can co‐exist. It is argued that leader direction is perceptually acceptable by employees at the strategic level of the decision process but is interpreted as intrusive at the tactical (task) level. This study examined the possibility of any interaction effects between leader direction at the task level and participation, and whether this exacerbated the relationship between participation and favourable work‐related attitudes. A total of 108 middle managers were surveyed using measures for both dimensions of leader direction, participation, job satisfaction, commitment and intrinsic motivation. Separate two‐step moderator regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesis. Results indicate that while participation predicts significantly all work‐related attitudes, both leader direction variables exacerbated the relationship between participation and job satisfaction. Implications of the results and future research are also discussed.

This study seeks to explore the interrelationships between knowledge management and ISO 9001:2000, and details knowledge management and ISO 9001:2000 practices for organizations, according to the prevailing ISO 9001:2000 guidelines and processes.

This study proposes an intact process model that integrates ISO 9001:2000 processes in order to exploit critical knowledge within an organization. A Delphi approach is designed and used to identify activities within this process model, which will facilitate knowledge flow practices. In addition, a knowledge management conceptual framework which integrated ISO 9000 processes, quality information system and infrastructure is proposed. Empirical research, involving a case study with thematic analysis, is presented to discuss the proposed framework.

This paper identifies the most important activities within ISO 9001:2000 processes which can facilitate knowledge flow. Meanwhile, a comprehensive ISO 9000 process‐based knowledge management system architecture which is derived from the in‐depth interview and the qualitative analyses will be proposed.

This study is limited in its research methodology. This case study is considered as only one empirical illustration of many other possible implementation processes. It is not assumed that this company is a paradigm or that its specific situation is applicable to all other business enterprises.

This architecture offers an initial model for an organization that wants to facilitate knowledge flows according to the prevailing ISO 9001:2000 guidelines and processes, and further proceed with its knowledge management system implementation to encourage the management of corporate knowledge and effectively enhance the firm's competitiveness.

Low health literacy is a hidden epidemic. Identifying individuals with low health literacy is a formidable barrier to eliminating disparities and improving health care quality and health outcomes. However, screening individual patients for low health literacy can be prohibitively expensive, time consuming, and inefficient. Focusing on communities, rather than individuals, provides opportunities for action. Identifying geographic areas with large numbers of individuals with low health literacy can enable stakeholders to focus interventions in areas of greatest need. Creating such a measure also sheds light on health literacy as a community or neighborhood-level resource that contributes to health disparities and can inform health interventions.

We applied regression coefficients from a predictive model of health literacy to US Census data to estimate health literacy scores for census geographic areas in Missouri. We then created maps displaying the variability in health literacy levels. Finally, we compared areas identified by the predictive model to those identified on the basis of educational attainment alone.

Areas identified by the predictive model as having the lowest health literacy were substantially different from those identified using educational attainment alone, suggesting that a multivariate approach using a limited set of widely available predictors is considerably more accurate.

This study demonstrates a cost-effective and feasible method for estimating and mapping community-level health literacy. Predicting and mapping areas of low health literacy is relatively straightforward and inexpensive and makes complex data readily accessible to many stakeholders. Such maps can also identify and prioritize geographic areas for intervention by health care and public health providers. Moreover, this focus on community-level health literacy may help foster stakeholder collaboration, leading to efficient resource use that is targeted effectively and resulting in a positive return on investment for stakeholders.