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Essays a conceptural clarification and theory of the process of economic evolution. Using the Veblenian matrix, conceptualizes the economic process in the framework of culture and its evolution. Economic evolution, as a gestalt, comprises the processes of both economic growth (quantitative statics) and development (qualitative dynamics). The dynamics of culture evolution is founded on the advance of technology which constitutes the “core of culture”. The essence of the process of culture evolution is contained in the dichotomy of useful knowledge. The advance of useful knowledge appears in its application as technology and in its store as culture. The process of economic evolution increases the capacity of culture and thereby enables humankind to take bigger and bigger bites of the infinity of knowledge. Culture evolution, fed by the dynamics of the economic process, offers the potential for an enhanced “consciousness of the cosmos” and as such a conception of human progress.

Times change and, with them, our approaches to strategy and its execution. In the 1970s, strategic planning was the corporate mantra in most companies. But as we moved into a new decade, strategic planning was tarred with the brush of “failure to implement.” In the 1980s, the corporate and consulting world was a‐buzz with strategic management—the new and improved version of setting direction and creating shareholder wealth. Now, in the 1990s, the focus is strategic leadership.

WITH an annual turnover of some $100 million, including sales to the processing and general manufacturing markets, the international Transducer Division of Schlumberger Industries embraces five long‐established suppliers to the aircraft manufacturing and aerospace industries. The Division addresses itself to both the civil and military aerospace sectors from three strategic manufacturing locations—in the USA, UK and France. In the USA, there are two design, development and manufacturing operations at respectively Oxnard, California, and Newark in New Jersey. A similar total capability exists in the UK at Farnborough, Hampshire, and at Enfield in Middlesex where incidentally the Division also has its headquarters. The equally endowed French connection is situated at Velizy, on the outskirts of Paris.

The purpose of this paper is to report the development trends and emerging applications of non‐GPS localisation sensors.

The principles of gyroscopes and micro‐electro‐mechanical systems‐based inertial sensors are introduced, followed by a review of products from various companies, and their applications.

Highly integrated systems in robust solid‐state materials are being packed into smaller housings, opening up new applications for inertial navigation sensors. The Kalman filter algorithm is widely used to remove noise from multi‐sensor data and provide reliable attitude and heading measurements. Applications range from stabilising cameras and detecting the motion of towed sonar arrays, to autonomous robot navigation, motion analysis in sports science, and navigating first‐response rescue workers in disaster zones.

Concentrates on non‐GPS localisation technology, and shows that new developments are revolutionising position‐finding and position‐controlling applications.

Radar is a useful instrument to get target information in restricted visibility and night navigation. If there are many similar targets in a close area, navigators sometimes make errors in recognizing the radar’s target direction when they find the targets in a seascape using radar information. They sometimes indicate other targets instead of their intended target by mistake. We must prevent the errors, to reduce accidents and improve safe navigation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate why navigators make mistakes when identifying the direction between the radar’s target echo on the display and the actual vessel in the seascape. We tackle this problem in three steps: 1) we propose a navigator’s radar target cognitive model; 2) we evaluate the errors of the radar target cognition and its indication in the seascape and 3) we discuss the errors with the parallax.

The purpose of this paper is to explore query expansion via conceptual distance in thesaurus indexed collections

An extract of the National Museum of Science and Industry's collections database, indexed with the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), was the dataset for the research. The system architecture and algorithms for semantic closeness and the matching function are outlined. Standalone and web interfaces are described and formative qualitative user studies are discussed. One user session is discussed in detail, together with a scenario based on a related public inquiry. Findings are set in context of the literature on thesaurus‐based query expansion. This paper discusses the potential of query expansion techniques using the semantic relationships in a faceted thesaurus.

Thesaurus‐assisted retrieval systems have potential for multi‐concept descriptors, permitting very precise queries and indexing. However, indexer and searcher may differ in terminology judgments and there may not be any exactly matching results. The integration of semantic closeness in the matching function permits ranked results for multi‐concept queries in thesaurus‐indexed applications. An in‐memory representation of the thesaurus semantic network allows a combination of automatic and interactive control of expansion and control of expansion on individual query terms.

The application of semantic expansion to browsing may be useful in interface options where thesaurus structure is hidden.

Demonstrates the relevance of a stages methodology as a basis for understanding and analysing the evolutionary metamorphosis leading to the current Russian malaise. Addresses the advantages and disadvantages of the methodology, such as the unilinear fallacy, and analyses economic stagnation and decline in the context of the dynamics of culture evolution in the stage of modern economic growth. Given the Kuznetsian emphasis on a science‐fed technology, how then to explain the lack of Russian permeability to that technological flow? Many variables, such as excessive military spending, nationalism, rigid centralization, ideology, and so on, enter into such an analytical purview. It appears that neither tsarist nor Soviet Russia was able to create a culture adequately permeable to the dynamics of an ongoing science‐fed technological flow. The basic problem for Russia to overcome today is one of a cultural lag. A greater democratization of social and economic organization, concomitant with the needs of a modern industrial society, appears in order.