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This paper aims to examine emotional labour in the work of frontline staff (FLS) of the Canadian Blood Services' Cord Blood Bank (CBB), contributes to understandings of emotional labour by allied healthcare workers and suggests implications for healthcare managers.

Qualitative interviews with 15 FLS were conducted and analyzed as part of a process evaluation of donor recruitment and cord blood collection in Canada.

Emotional labour with donors and hospital staff emerged as a vital component of FLS' donor recruitment and cord blood collection work. Emotional labour was performed with donors to contribute to a positive birthing experience, facilitate communication and provide support. Emotional labour was performed with hospital staff to gain acceptance and build relationships, enlist support and navigate hierarchies of authority.

The results indicate that FLS perform emotional labour with women to provide donor care and with hospital staff to facilitate organizational conditions. The findings are based on FLS' accounts of their work and would be enhanced by research that examines the perspectives of donors and hospital staff.

Attention should be paid to organizational conditions that induce the performance of emotional labour and may add to FLS workload. Formal reciprocal arrangements between FLS and hospital staff may reduce the responsibility on FLS and enable them to focus on recruitment and collections.

This paper addresses a gap in the healthcare management literature by identifying the emotional labour of allied healthcare workers. It also contributes to the cord blood banking literature by providing empirically grounded analysis of frontline collection staff.

Families of children with disabilities experience many challenges, which Sparkle’s Family Liaison Service (FLS) aims to alleviate. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of the service.

Qualitative interviews with ten families who had accessed the FLS and 14 professionals working with children with disabilities were conducted in 2020. Interview transcripts were analysed using inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

Families valued an accessible service and a neutral individual who could empathise with them. Professionals highlighted the FLS relieving pressure they felt to provide informal support for families they work with, resulting in considerable time saving.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first evaluation of the novel FLS meeting the unmet needs of families of children with disabilities. The service equips and empowers caregivers to enhance their own lives and the lives of their children and family.

A sample of “successful” (defined as those winning a major export in the previous three years) and less successful New Zealand companies were compared in terms of their use of foreign language specialists. Presents the results, which provided support for the expectation of a positive relationship between export success and the deployment of such skills. “Successful” companies were found to employ more foreign language specialists, to employ specialists with a broader range of foreign language skills and to expect higher levels of language proficiency. Foreign language specialists were also more likely to be employed within the marketing function and to assist the use of direct selling modes. These findings have important implications for the training of foreign language specialists. Language training needs to be coupled with sound knowledge of at least one major functional area of management. For New Zealand language specialists employability is considerably enhanced with marketing expertise and some overseas experience.

The purpose of this study is to trace time variation paths in risk sensitivities of bank stock returns over the period of 1990-2014, which covers one of most serious financial crises in the history of the USA.

This study programs the flexible least squares (FLS) approach (Kalaba and Testfatsion, 1988, 1989 and 1990) with R, a free statistical computing and graphics software, to estimate the three-factor model developed by He and Reichert (2003) to examine changes in risk sensitivities of bank stocks to the stock market, bond market and real estate market.

Both FLS and ordinary least squares (OLS) results indicate that the bond market (interest rate) sensitivity of bank stock returns experiences dramatic changes. It is significantly positive before the 2006 subprime mortgage crisis (11/1990 to 5/2006), reduces to insignificant in a short period of 11/2006 to 10/2008 and turns into significantly negative during the period of 11/2008-11/2014. Further, results of this study indicate that bank stocks negatively respond to changes in housing prices in the period of 11/1990-1/1994 and after that the sensitivity turns into significantly positive. The significant shifts in risk sensitivities of banks stock returns coincide with alterations in long-term interest rates and monetary policy, especially the enormously stimulative monetary policy after the financial crisis in 2008.

This study programs the FLS approach with R and uses the FLS approach to demonstrate the time variation paths of risk sensitivities of bank stocks over a period that covers the 2008 financial crisis. The OLS results verify the significant shifts in risk sensitivities suggested by the FLS estimates.

The study aims to equip robots with the ability to precisely maintain interaction forces, which is crucial for tasks such as polishing in highly dynamic environments with unknown and varying stiffness and geometry, including those found in airplane wings or thin, soft materials. The purpose of this study is to develop a novel adaptive force-tracking admittance control scheme aimed at achieving a faster response rate with higher tracking accuracy for robot force control.

In the proposed method, the traditional admittance model is improved by introducing a pre-proportional-derivative controller to accelerate parameter convergence. Subsequently, the authors design an adaptive law based on fuzzy logic systems (FLS) to compensate for uncertainties in the unknown environment. Stability conditions are established for the proposed method through Lyapunov analysis, which ensures the force tracking accuracy and the stability of the coupled system consisting of the robot and the interaction environment. Furthermore, the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed control algorithm are demonstrated by simulation and experiment.

A variety of unstructured simulations and experimental scenarios are designed to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in force control. The outcomes demonstrate that this control strategy excels in providing fast response, precise tracking accuracy and robust performance.

In real-world applications spanning industrial, service and medical fields where accurate force control by robots is essential, the proposed method stands out as both practical and straightforward, delivering consistently satisfactory performance across various scenarios.

This research introduces a novel adaptive force-tracking admittance controller based on FLS and validated through both simulations and experiments. The proposed controller demonstrates exceptional performance in force control within environments characterized by unknown and varying.

This paper aims to explore the diffusion of Intellectual Property (IP) knowledge in universities in Zimbabwe. Specifically, the study examines the tools, policies, programmes and unique strategies used by the universities.

The paper reports the findings of a survey that was conducted on a population of lecturers (1,546), research officers (RO) (11), IP officer (1), faculty librarians (FLs) (27) and final year undergraduate students (9,224) at universities in Zimbabwe. Questionnaires were administered to the lecturers and students while interviews were administered to the IP officer, ROs and FLs. Data analysis comprised the use of Google forms and Microsoft Excel software.

The findings reveal diffusing IP knowledge in Zimbabwean universities involves mainly the use of policies and regulations, library web pages, workshops, although not specifically on IP, presentations on IP in the university, advice and guidance services and IP lectures/teaching.

This study presents the IP situation in Zimbabwe and its findings may be applied to Africa and other developing countries.

This study endorses IP as a national issue and suggests a benchmark for diffusing knowledge on IP in Zimbabwean universities.

This study acknowledges the multi-disciplinary nature of IP and should lead to all university students graduating with adequate knowledge on IP.

FLS Aerospace Engineering has commissioned a Maintenance Control Centre (MAINTROL) at the Stansted Diamond Hangar facility in support of the Line Maintenance operation and Hangar interface.