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The purpose of this paper is to investigate changes in the economic importance of performance-related-pay (PRP) in Britain through the 2000s using firm-level data.

The authors utilise nationally representative, monthly data on the total wage bill and employment of around 8,500 firms. Using these data, the authors decompose the share of the total economy-wide wage bill accounted for by bonuses into the shares of employment in the PRP and non-PRP sectors, the ratio of base pay between the two sectors, and the gearing of bonus payments to base pay within the PRP sector.

The growth in the economic importance of bonuses in Britain in the mid-2000s – and subsequent fluctuations since the onset of recession in 2008 – can be almost entirely explained by changes in the gearing of bonus to base pay within the PRP sector. There has been no substantial change in the percentage of employment accounted for by PRP firms; if anything it has fallen over time. Furthermore, movements in the gearing of bonuses to base pay in the economy are heavily influenced by changes in Finance: a sector which accounts for a large proportion of all bonus payments in Britain.

The paper demonstrates the importance of understanding further how firms decide the size of bonus payments in a given period.

This is the first paper to present monthly firm-level data for Britain on the incidence and size of bonus payments in the 2000s.

An analysis of the characteristics of a sample of the unemployed in the local area of Stoke‐on‐Trent, UK, is compared with information on the skills and characteristics which would be demanded resultant from an expansion of the local economy in both public and private activity. Much evidence emerged to show that a likely mismatch exists between the skills of the unemployed and the skills required by an expanding local economy.

The purpose of this paper is to explore primary school children’s beliefs towards eating fruit and vegetables in a deprived area in England.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 children aged 9-11 from an after school club at a primary school in a deprived area in the West Midlands. Interviews were analysed using inductive thematic analysis.

Six master themes emerged from the data: “effect on the senses”, “feelings about food”, “healthy vs unhealthy foods”, “effects on health”, “convenience” and “family and friends”. Analysis showed that children seemed to have a very good awareness of the health benefits of eating fruit and vegetables. However, negative beliefs were associated with sensory perceptions (such as taste, texture, appearance and aroma), availability, and the competing desirability of other, unhealthy foods. Also, although parents were key influences, siblings and friends were often perceived as negative influences and would tease children about eating fruit and vegetables.

Suggestions for interventions include increasing the appeal and availability of pre-prepared fruits and vegetables in both home and school environments. Additionally, an approach to eating more fruit and vegetables which focusses on siblings and friends is advocated as these groups appear to play a key role in terms of promoting the consumption of these foods.

This study is novel as it uses individual interviews to explore primary school children’s attitudes towards fruit and vegetable consumption in a deprived area in England. By focussing on the specific behaviours of fruit and vegetable consumption, the findings aid the development of interventions that are designed to improve children’s healthy eating behaviour.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of ebrary's e‐books at Staffordshire University.

Details are provided of the history of Staffordshire's involvement with ebrary as a supplier of e‐books as well as methods of searching for information in the ebrary collection as well as other e‐book collections used by Staffordshire University.

In a split‐site university such as Staffordshire, and with many students never visiting campus libraries, the provision of course material and readings in e‐format is essential. ebrary provides an “instant library” solution, and the possibility of adding individual texts to this core collection strengthens this provision. The ability for students and researchers to search across the full content of 30,000 e‐books in one “go” and then capture that information quickly and easily is also very valuable.

The paper provides information based on some years of practical experience in providing access to e‐book collections.

This paper aims to describe the 2D meshless local boundary integral equation (LBIE) method for solving the Navier–Stokes equations.

The velocity–vorticity formulation is selected to eliminate the pressure gradient of the equations. The local integral representations of flow kinematics and transport kinetics are derived. The integral equations are discretized using the local RBF interpolation of velocities and vorticities, while the unknown fluxes are kept as independent variables. The resulting volume integrals are computed using the general radial transformation algorithm.

The efficiency and accuracy of the method are illustrated with several examples chosen from reference problems in computational fluid dynamics.

The meshless LBIE method is applied to the 2D Navier–Stokes equations. No derivatives of interpolation functions are used in the formulation, rendering the present method a robust numerical scheme for the solution of fluid flow problems.

In 1994, a leaked council report revealed that, for more than ten years, Gordon Rowe, a former social worker, had been beating, raping and ill‐treating the adults with learning difficulties who lived in the residential homes run by his company, Longcare. This paper describes the effect of this abuse on some of those residents.

This research seeks to uncover some empirical evidence on how prevalent the problem of information overload has become, how it has affected the performance of organisations.

Set in the context of the information‐intensive tourism industry, this exploratory study examined the top two state‐owned tour operators in China. Using semi‐structured group interviews supplemented by a questionnaire survey, the empirical evidence gathered was examined to identify key themes concerning information overload.

The problem was felt more by the front line operatives than those who managed them. Increasing tiredness, high stress levels and more mistakes made at work were amongst the symptoms. Factors specific to the tourism industry included poor clarity in job division and task procedures, low standardisation of job contents, inter‐team work, and loose team structures. Experience, training and staff motivation were identified as possible ways to address the problem.

To fully appreciate the strategic impact of the problem of information overload on corporate performance, considerable further research needs to be carried out involving organisations in different sizes and forms operating in difference industries across different countries.

This paper adds practical value by providing some empirical evidence to complement the growing body of anecdotal evidence demonstrating how information explosion especially through the internet is having an adverse impact on corporate performance.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how the growing phenomenon of information overload is affecting corporate performance, especially in the information‐intensive industry of travel and tourism.

Aarhus Kommunes Biblioteker (Teknisk Bibliotek), Ingerslevs Plads 7, Aarhus, Denmark. Representative: V. NEDERGAARD PEDERSEN (Librarian).

The development of robust control algorithms for the position, velocity and trajectory control of unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) depends on the accuracy of their mathematical models. Accuracy of the model is determined by precise estimation of the UUV hydrodynamic parameters. The purpose of this study is to determine the hydrodynamic forces and moments acting on an underwater vehicle with complex body geometry and moving at low speeds and to achieve the accurate coefficients associated with them.

A three-dimensional (3D) computer-aided design (CAD) model of UUV is designed with one-to-one dimensions. 3D fluid flow simulations are conducted using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software programme in the solution of Navier Stokes equations for laminar and turbulent flow analysis. The coefficients depending on the hydrodynamic forces and moments are determined by the external flow analysis using the CFD programme. The Flow Simulation k-ε turbulence model is used for the transition from laminar flow to turbulent flow. Hydrodynamic properties such as lift and drag coefficients and roll and yaw moment coefficients are calculated. The parameters are compared with the coefficient values found by experimental methods.

Although the modular type UUV has a complex body geometry, the comparative results of the experiments and simulations confirm that the defined model parameters are accurate and close to the actual experimental values. In the proposed k-ε method, the percentage error in the estimation of drag and lifting coefficients is decreased to 4.2% and 8.39%, respectively.

The model coefficients determined in this study can be used in high-level control simulations which leads to the development of robust real-time controllers for complex-shaped modular UUVs.

The Lucky Fin UUV with 4 degrees of freedom is a specific design and its CAD model is first extracted. Verification of simulation results by experiments is generally less referenced in studies. However, it provides more precise parameter identification of the model. Proposed study offers a simple and low-cost experimental measurement method for verification of the hydrodynamic parameters. The extracted model and coefficients are worthwhile references for the analysis of modular type UUVs.