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The Institute of Physics is carrying out a project, funded by the British Library, to review information in physics. The approach concentrates on the gathering of quantitative data, and the article presents a first overview of some aspects of the communication system of physics of relevance to documentation. From an overall annual UK R&D budget of £1,000 million, we estimate that about £150 million is allocable to physics, including some three‐quarters of the SRC's budget. Although definition is difficult, we estimate the manpower in physics to be something over 10,000. We briefly consider the involvement of physicists in the documentary part of information flow. Firstly, as producers, or authors, a small study suggests that most members of the Institute do not write papers. Conferences are a major communication channel, but it is likely that out of more than 300 conferences of relevance to physicists held in 1973 in the UK, only fifty will produce specific proceedings. Lastly, past user studies indicate that many physicists carry out their work with little direct, daily use of libraries and information services, although these are obviously an important factor in such research. More ‘non‐user’, ‘non‐author’ etc studies are desirable. The money spent on these services we estimate at around £3 million annually, or 2% of the research budget. These first findings lead to two main conclusions: (i) the cost of library and information services is a negligible proportion of the overall physics budget, and no substantial economies can be made by cuts in them and (ii) documentation may well not play the major role in the communication system. It is only by examining the system as a whole that we can determine the relative importance of each mode of communication and the present and likely future place of documentation.

This paper aims to propose a new concept of product manufacturing mode which takes physical manufacturing theory as the basic starting point. In this work, the authors intend to systematically define the basic connotation and extension of physical manufacturing, and sort out the typical characteristics of physical manufacturing, in order to propose the general concept of physical manufacturing.

How to study the combination of physics, mathematics, mechanics and other disciplines with the manufacturing disciplines, and how to elevate modern manufacturing science to a new height, has always been a problem for scientists in the field of manufacturing and engineering construction people to deeply think about. Therefore, on the basis of tracing the development of physics and combining the attributes and functions of manufacturing, the authors propose the basic concept of physical manufacturing. On this basis, the authors further clarify the connotation and extension, theoretical basis and technical system of physical manufacturing, reveal the basic problem domain of research and construct the theoretical foundation of physical manufacturing research, which are of great theoretical value and practical significance to adjust and optimize the manufacturing industry structure, improve the quality of manufacturing industry development and promote the green development of manufacturing industry.

The research on the basic theory and technical system of physical manufacturing will therefore broaden the way of thinking and make a better understanding of manufacturing science and technology, which will promote the development of manufacturing industry to some extent.

On the basis of continuous improvement of the basic theory and conceptual system of physical manufacturing, the physical manufacturing technology will become more and more perfect; physical manufacturing system and intelligent manufacturing system will become the mainstream of next-generation manufacturing system.

The physics librarian today faces a complex and fast‐moving discipline and an almost overwhelming array of resources. Beginning selectors in physics are often perplexed. How does research in physics proceed? What kinds of information do physicists seek? Where can this information be found and what is the most effective way of providing it? How are increases in costs and volume of publication affecting collecting in physics? What do new technologies and cooperative arrangements have to offer the physics librarian? This essay, directed especially to the novice selector, seeks first to define physics research and the information needs of physics researchers. It then surveys the trends in technology and in the market‐place that are profoundly altering the way we build research collections in physics.

An attempt at unification of different groups of physical phenomena by use of cybernetic methodology in order to avoid a dualism in the formalism of Natural Self‐Regulating Systems (NRS) in now being carried out simultaneously by physics and cybernetics. A proposal is made of a unitary elaboration within a framework of cybernetic physics, which should concern not only events belonging to micro‐ and macro‐physics, but also those which are placed intermediately on the size scale, especially systems organized by the biogenesis phenomena and subjected to the laws of a “Meso‐physics”. The systems that result from this evolutively lend themselves to treatment within the framework of an organic branch, which would be a physics of systems endowed with a multihierarchized architecture and ultra‐complex structure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the gender stereotype of science by analysing the semantic attributes of gender in relation to three science subjects – chemistry, mathematics, and physics – among students and their science teachers.

This cross-sectional study applied a survey of 3,045 students and 123 teachers in secondary schools. The gendered image of science was assessed using a semantic differential consisting of 25 pairs of adjectives with semantically opposite meanings.

In summary, the results of the study demonstrate that from the female students’ perspective mathematics and physics are negatively related to female gender, whereas chemistry is neither significantly related to the male nor to the female profile. From the male students’ point of view mathematics is negatively related to the female gender, whereas chemistry and physics are positively related to the male gender. In the science teachers’ perception chemistry and physics combine feminine and masculine attributes, whereas the teachers’ perception of mathematics matches only with the male, but not with the female gender.

In contrast to previous research, the study is the first to analyse the gender stereotype of chemistry as well as to assess the gender image of three science subjects from students’ and teachers’ perspectives.

Over several decades many ranking techniques have been proposed as aids to journal selection by libraries. We review those closely related to physics and others with novel features. There are three main methods of ranking: citation analysis, use or user judgement, and size or ‘productivity’. Citations offer an ‘unobtrusive’ quantitative measure, but not only is the absolute value of a citation in question, but also there is no consensus on a ‘correct’ way to choose the citing journals, nor of the ranking parameter. Citations can, however, point out anomalies and show the changing status of journals over the years. Use and user judgement also employ several alternative methods. These are in the main of limited applicability outside the specific user group in question. There is greater ‘parochialism’ in ‘use’ ranking than in ‘judged value’ lists, with citation lists the most international. In some cases, the attempted ‘quantification’ of subjective judgement will be misleading. Size and productivity rankings are normally concerned with one or other formulation of the Bradford distribution. Since the distribution is not universally valid, for library use the librarian must satisfy him/herself that the collection conforms to the distribution, or that his users would be well served by one that did. This may require considerable effort, and statistics gained will then render the Bradford distribution redundant.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a compulsory pass in physics on undergraduate admission into estate management programme and the requisite skill for practice.

Data were collected from students in selected Polytechnics and a University in South-western Nigeria. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data. Also, One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was applied to test the difference between the means of the independent variables and application for admission. The mean plot was used to analyse the different groups of students seeking direct entry admission into the university.

Analysis shows that 18 per cent of the students seeking admission through direct entry would be denied because they have no credit score or a pass in physics in their Ordinary Level (“O” level) result. Remarkably, high school physics is a compulsory requirement for admission. Findings show that the subject is unacceptable in the Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination (UTME). An annual average of 10 prospective students who wrote physics in the UTME, but with a pass in it in the Senior Secondary School (“O” level) examination were denied admission at the point of registration. Findings from the hypothesis test show that there is no significant relationship between the rate of application for university admission into Real Estate programmes and students who took physics and had at least a pass in it. Also, the mean plot shows that more Art students would apply for admission compared with science and commercial students. Finally, analysis shows that 83.3 per cent of the students who have gone for Industrial Work Experience Scheme were of the opinion that physics has no role to play in their acquisition of the requisite job skills in Real Estate.

This study may be limited by the sample size of the universities selected for data collection. The impact of the requirement of a compulsory pass in physics for admission into real estate programme in other universities with a similar requirement is not covered.

The findings implied that a compulsory pass in physics constitutes a clog in the wheel of admission of prospective estate management students. This may affect career progression and the number of the Estate Surveyors and Valuers that are expected to render professional service to real estate investors in Nigeria.

This is the first attempt to examine the impact of variation in admission requirement into the real estate undergraduate programme in Nigeria. The novelty is in the analysis of a compulsory requirement of pass in physics for admission and the requisite skill for real estate practice in Nigeria.

1.1. Logical Necessity of the Three Dimensions as a Unit of Thought The mathematician does not look kindly on the simple question of why natural space should consist of precisely three dimensions. Instead of giving an answer he assumes a silent smile and shows us a version of space with an infinity of dimensions, as if space were some kind of toy for him to fiddle with to his heart's content.

The purpose of this paper is to trace the knowledge diffusion patterns between the publications of top journals of computer science and physics to uncover the knowledge diffusion trends.

The degree of information flow between the disciplines is a measure of entropy and received citations. The entropy gives the uncertainty in the citation distribution of a journal; the more a journal is involved in spreading information or affected by other journals, its entropy increases. The citations from outside category give the degree of inter-disciplinarity index as the percentage of references made to papers of another discipline. In this study, the topic-related diffusion across computer science and physics scholarly communication network is studied to examine how the same research topic is studied and shared across disciplines.

For three indicators, Shannon entropy, citations outside category (COC) and research keywords, a global view of information flow at the journal level between both disciplines is obtained. It is observed that computer science mostly cites knowledge published in physics journals as compared to physics journals that cite knowledge within the field.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that traces knowledge diffusion trends between computer science and physics publications at journal level using entropy, COC and research keywords.

This paper aims to present a process to generate physics-based trade-off curves (ToCs) to facilitate lean product development processes by enabling two key activities of set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE) process model that are comparing alternative design solutions and narrowing down the design set. The developed process of generating physics-based ToCs has been demonstrated via an industrial case study which is a research project.

The adapted research approach for this paper consists of three phases: a review of the related literature, developing the process of generating physics-based ToCs in the concept of lean product development, implementing the developed process in an industrial case study for validation through the SBCE process model.

Findings of this application showed that physics-based ToC is an effective tool to enable SBCE activities, as well as to save time and provide the required knowledge environment for the designers to support their decision-making.

Authors expect that this paper will guide companies, which are implementing SBCE processes throughout their lean product development journey. Physics-based ToCs will facilitate accurate decision-making in comparing and narrowing down the design-set through the provision of the right knowledge environment.

SBCE is a useful approach to develop a new product. It is essential to provide the right knowledge environment in a quick and visual manner which has been addressed by demonstrating physics knowledge in ToCs. Therefore, a systematic process has been developed and presented in this paper. The research found that physics-based ToCs could help to identify different physics characteristics of the product in the form of design parameters and visualise in a single graph for all stakeholders to understand without a need for an extensive engineering background and for designers to make a decision faster.