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The purpose of the study is to implement a methodology intended to identify the links between the microclimatic quality of urban routes and the behavior of pedestrians. This document will open up new opportunities for the development of urban open spaces and facilitate decision-making for urban decision-makers.

The methodology intended to identify the links between the microclimatic quality of urban routes and the behavior of pedestrians is deployed in two stages. The first stage represents a microclimatic characterization of the pedestrian routes. The second step represents a behavioral characterization of these same journeys, based on the on-site video observation of the pedestrians.

The analysis of the results obtained by applying this method shows that the physical factors of the urban environment in the two climatic seasons (winter, summer) significantly influence the choice of routes, the percentage of route use, the speed of travel and the frequency of user stops.

The authors have recently observed that the issue of the influence of microclimatic factors on the behavior of pedestrians, and more particularly their movements, has only rarely been addressed. It is therefore in this context that the authors would like to provide, through this article, some technical solutions for analysis and characterization as well as some answers to the problem of the influence of microclimatic factors on pedestrian movements.

An important stage in the process of retrieval of objects from a hypertext database is the creation of a set of inter‐nodal links that are intended to represent the relationships existing between objects; this operation is often undertaken manually, just as index terms are often manually assigned to documents in a conventional retrieval system. Studies of conventional systems have suggested that a degree of consistency in the terms assigned to documents by indexers is positively associated with retrieval effectiveness. It is thus of interest to investigate the consistency of assignment of links in separate hypertext versions of the same full‐text document, since a measure of agreement may be related to the subsequent utility of the resulting hypertext databases. The calculation of values indicating the degree of similarity between objects is a technique that has been widely used in the fields of textual and chemical information retrieval; in this paper, we describe the application of arithmetic coefficients and topological indices to the measurement of the degree of similarity between the sets of inter‐nodal links in hypertext databases. We publish the results of a study in which several different sets of links are inserted, by different people, between the paragraphs of each of a number of full‐text documents. Our results show little similarity between the sets of links identified by different people; this finding is comparable with those of studies of inter‐indexer consistency, where it has been found that there is generally only a low level of agreement between the sets of index terms assigned to a document by different indexers.

Hovercraft N4 (col, 19 min) tells a story of wide interest — the design, construction and testing of the world's largest hovercraft built to date. The tale of the first N4 dates back to 1962, only four years after Christopher Cockerell's original idea had been proved feasible. Design studies were started after a breakthrough led to the development of vastly improved flexible skirts. Detailed drawings and the successful testing of models culminated in orders for three craft and, by February last year, the first of these was undergoing sea trials. This British Petroleum Film is available from Petroleum Films Bureau, 4 Brook Street, London W1.

Proposes the particle model as an improved finite element method for the analysis of metal forming, particularly highlighting the forging process. Analyses the forged material in the present modelling in conjunction with non‐material domain, and expresses the process not by the finite element deformation, but by the “movable particle” which discriminates the material domain. This “fixed mesh” algorithm gives the capabilities treating metal forging problems easily. Demonstrates the effectiveness of the method using some applications.

IN June, 1965, Swedish Lloyd and Swedish American Line gave the hovercraft industry the boost it so desperately needed by having the courage to order not one but two SR.N4 hovercraft to operate a cross‐Channel service starting in 1968. For the previous two years both Vickers and Westlands had tried to interest British companies in this new form of transport. There was even talk of a grant issued through the NRDC to encourage would‐be operators. Such an operation was to be known as Operation Shop Window, and its purpose was to demonstrate to the world the potential of hovercraft travel and the undoubted lead that Britain had in this field. However, it was the Swedes who, true to their adventurous seafaring tradition, took up the challenge, and it was indeed a challenge for at that time the fund of hovercraft knowledge, particularly in the commercial field, was not as great as it is today.

Normalization is a crucial step in all decision models, to produce comparable and dimensionless data from heterogeneous data. As such, various normalization techniques are available but their performance depends on a number of characteristics of the problem at hand. Thus, this study aims to introduce a recommendation framework for supporting users to select data normalization techniques that better fit the requirements in different application scenarios, based on multi-criteria decision methods.

Following the proposed approach, the authors compare six well-known normalization techniques applied to a case study of selecting suppliers in collaborative networks.

With this recommendation framework, the authors expect to contribute to improving the normalization of criteria in the evaluation and selection of suppliers and business partners in dynamic networked collaborative systems.

This is the first study about comparing normalization techniques for selecting the best normalization in dynamic multiple-criteria decision-making models in collaborative networks.

WHEN Sir Eric Mensforth — now, appropriately, President of the Institution of Production Engineers — presented the 1964 Lord Sempill Paper of ‘Background to the Production of Helicopters and Hovercraft’ in April of that year, he remarked on the hovercraft being still in its infancy and on the ‘state of constant and exciting advance’. Sir Eric, at that time, was able to refer to the in‐service achievements of the 27 ton SR.N2 and the 37 ton SR.N3, the beginning of manufacture of the 7 ton SR.N5, and the projected 160 ton SR.N4 — all in the five short years since the advent of the original 4 ton SR.N1 research vehicle in 1959.