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This paper presents a cheap and easy‐to‐produce microprehensile microrobot on chip (MMOC). This four‐degree‐of‐freedom (DOFs) microprehensor is able to grip, hold and release submillimetric‐sized objects. The research conducted relied heavily on the design of a simple and efficient monolithic piezoelectric two‐DOF actuator, requiring no further motion transformation system and asking for no supplementary guiding system. The integration of all these functions in a single part eliminates nearly all assembly concerns. Each finger of the gripper is an actuator, called a duo‐bimorph, which provides higher deflections than piezoelectric tubes. The paper presents the developed MMOC prototype, comments its performances and details the functioning of the duo‐bimorph.

Presents over sixty abstracts summarising the 1999 Employment Research Unit annual conference held at the University of Cardiff. Explores the multiple impacts of globalization on work and employment in contemporary organizations. Covers the human resource management implications of organizational responses to globalization. Examines the theoretical, methodological, empirical and comparative issues pertaining to competitiveness and the management of human resources, the impact of organisational strategies and international production on the workplace, the organization of labour markets, human resource development, cultural change in organisations, trade union responses, and trans‐national corporations. Cites many case studies showing how globalization has brought a lot of opportunities together with much change both to the employee and the employer. Considers the threats to existing cultures, structures and systems.

Examines the problem of the robot and fixture calibration from the perspective of simulation and off‐line programming. Looks at the two basic methods of measuring robot position—optical systems and cable‐driven systems—and describes examples of both of these methods. The Workspace PC‐based robot simulation system and the RoboTrak three‐cable measuring system for calibration are used as examples and compared with other commercial systems, and a calibration case study is presented. Concludes that if the accuracy required by a robot application of the order of 1 mm and the robot program is to be generated by an off‐line software package, then it is necessary to calibrate the robot first.

Le Maroc, français surtout, est entré définitivement depuis la fin de la guerre dans l'espace touristique contemporain. Le pays était encore inconnu des Européens, en 1907, lorsque les troupes françaises débarquèrent à Casablanca. Le 16 mars 1934, les dernières tribus dissidentes faisaient leurs soumissions à Bou Izakaren, aux confins de l'Anti‐Atlas et du Sahara. A partir de cette date et jusqu'au second conflit mondial, les premiers touristes arrivent au Maroc et «rôdent» un tour classique des capitales impériales: Marrakech, Fez, Meknès par la corniche du Moyen Atlas. L'insécurité interdit encore les hauts cols de l'Atlas (Tizi N'Test: 2100 m.; Tizi N'Tichka: 2270 m.; Zad: 2178 m.) à des groupes réguliers et les autori‐sations de voyage doivent être demandées aux bureaux des Affaires indigènes (A.I.).

Pierre Nelis joined a small group of artists working for a creative entrepreneur who had invented software to produce movies. He brought a great deal of marketing expertise to a team of technology creators, and it was this that ultimately allowed the firm to sell its software to movie industry leaders throughout the world. The firm – Softimage – was bought by Microsoft, which hired Pierre Nelis to oversee the integration process, and later to develop new communications products. Nelis has an outstanding ability to identify the elements needed by a firm to become more effective, and this led him to set up a one-of-a-kind external facilitation programme that went on to become a model for many business growth support organizations throughout the world, but especially in North America and Europe.

The impact of the European Union on Social Security is quite complex and enigmatic. At the starting point, there is a genuine paradox: whereas the construction of a large and unique market supposes, among many others prerequisites, the harmonization of social security systems, this harmonization is left to the good will of the member States since Social security is not truly within the competence of the Union. In these conditions, it is quite obvious that a thought and organised harmonisation is absolutely unreachable. So we have yet very different systems from a State to an other and even the typology is very discouraging with at least four families of systems. As for the article 137 of the EC Treaty, which allows the European bodies to harmonize the different Social security legislations, without being completely vacuous, is extremely limited in its real reach by the rule of unanimity.

Il y a seulement une vingtaine d'années, économistes ou géographes utilisaient volontiers le mot d'«exploitation» en l'appliquant aux richesses naturelles: on exploitait ainsi un bassin minier, un puits de pétrole, une forêt… C'est ainsi, très naturellement, qu'on aurait pu parler de l'«exploitation» d'un capital touristique constitué d'œuvres d'art, de plages de sable fin, de sources thermales ou d'hectares de neige.

La mise en valeur touristique de la montagne d'Europe est essentiellement une question d'accès. Le paysage est, en effet, intransportable. C'est donc aux touristes à se déplacer pour chercher dans les stations d'altitude, le plaisir de leurs vacances.

A collection of essays by a social economist seeking to balance economics as a science of means with the values deemed necessary to man′s finding the good life and society enduring as a civilized instrumentality. Looks for authority to great men of the past and to today′s moral philosopher: man is an ethical animal. The 13 essays are: 1. Evolutionary Economics: The End of It All? which challenges the view that Darwinism destroyed belief in a universe of purpose and design; 2. Schmoller′s Political Economy: Its Psychic, Moral and Legal Foundations, which centres on the belief that time‐honoured ethical values prevail in an economy formed by ties of common sentiment, ideas, customs and laws; 3. Adam Smith by Gustav von Schmoller – Schmoller rejects Smith′s natural law and sees him as simply spreading the message of Calvinism; 4. Pierre‐Joseph Proudhon, Socialist – Karl Marx, Communist: A Comparison; 5. Marxism and the Instauration of Man, which raises the question for Marx: is the flowering of the new man in Communist society the ultimate end to the dialectical movement of history?; 6. Ethical Progress and Economic Growth in Western Civilization; 7. Ethical Principles in American Society: An Appraisal; 8. The Ugent Need for a Consensus on Moral Values, which focuses on the real dangers inherent in there being no consensus on moral values; 9. Human Resources and the Good Society – man is not to be treated as an economic resource; man′s moral and material wellbeing is the goal; 10. The Social Economist on the Modern Dilemma: Ethical Dwarfs and Nuclear Giants, which argues that it is imperative to distinguish good from evil and to act accordingly: existentialism, situation ethics and evolutionary ethics savour of nihilism; 11. Ethical Principles: The Economist′s Quandary, which is the difficulty of balancing the claims of disinterested science and of the urge to better the human condition; 12. The Role of Government in the Advancement of Cultural Values, which discusses censorship and the funding of art against the background of the US Helms Amendment; 13. Man at the Crossroads draws earlier themes together; the author makes the case for rejecting determinism and the “operant conditioning” of the Skinner school in favour of the moral progress of autonomous man through adherence to traditional ethical values.