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Accles & Pollock Ltd. of Oldbury, Worcestershire, a TI Steel Tube Division company, will be exhibiting a comprehensive range of precision steel tube and tubular products, including plain, annularly convoluted and thin wall tube, at Farnborough.

In the Earth’s upper atmosphere, damage to satellite electronics is caused by exposure to extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation. One particular region where this type of radiation occurs is the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly region. As a result, there is a need to design and develop a sensor which could be used to investigate the flux and energy levels of radiation in this region. To do so, the aim of this study is to characterise the sensor and its electric response to typical EUV radiation levels based on the photoelectric effect principle.

For this purpose, a copper plate planar sensor prototype with dimensions that fit on the sides of a one-unit (1U) CubeSat was constructed. The sensor prototype was placed in a vacuum chamber and was subjected to continuous radiation from a vacuum ultraviolet deuterium light source at test facilities available in the Western Cape region (South Africa). Subsequently, the terminal voltage of the sensor was measured and compared with theory.

The measured time-averaged terminal voltages indicate the generation of photocurrents of the order of 1 μA, which is consistent with theory.

Conclusively, these results validate the measurement approach and operation of the sensor, which can be used to design a 1U CubeSat sensor that measures EUV radiation in low Earth orbit.

Screen printing for the fabrication of Thick Film microelectronic circuits is now a mature technology. A greater understanding of the processes and materials used has allowed the once ‘black art’ to develop into the high precision, high yield process of today—with circuits containing 250 µm conductors on many levels being printed over large areas up to 6 in. × 8 in. However, electronic systems designers are demanding more compact interconnections and screen printing technology must advance to meet this challenge. Encouraging research to date has demonstrated that 50 µm lines and spaces are readily printable under controlled conditions, and a complete 120 µm multilayer system is now a reality. Unfortunately, this rapid advance in the technology is likely to hit insurmountable barriers in the near future, and alternative patterning techniques may be required if Thick Film technology is to cope with the ultra high tracking densities that will soon be required.

Identify the influence of contextual variables (i.e. politics) in the strategy of a military organisation. Analyse and evaluate strategic change options of a military organisation. Decide on a strategic change from the resources and capabilities model.

Colombia Aeronautics Industry Corporation (CIAC) is a Colombian mixed economy company that commercialises, maintains and repairs civil and military aircraft and aeronautical components. The case presents the decision that the manager must make regarding a change in corporate strategy because of the entry into force of the peace agreement between the Government of Colombia and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). This agreement assumes that the main line of business of the CIAC would be weakened (i.e. repair of military aircraft used in the internal armed conflict with FARC), because in a new peace scenario, the aircraft would not need as much maintenance as in the most critical stages of the conflict.

Master of Business Administration level (suggested courses: strategy, strategic management and organisational change). Undergraduate level (suggested courses: strategy and organisational change).

Teaching notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS 11: Strategy.

Within critical-infrastructure industries, bow-tie analysis is an established way of eliciting requirements for safety and reliability concerns. Because of the ever-increasing digitalisation and coupling between the cyber and physical world, security has become an additional concern in these industries. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how well bow-tie analysis performs in the context of security, and the study’s hypothesis is that the bow-tie notation has a suitable expressiveness for security and safety.

This study uses a formal, controlled quasi-experiment on two sample populations – security experts and security graduate students – working on the same case. As a basis for comparison, the authors used a similar experiment with misuse case analysis, a well-known technique for graphical security modelling.

The results show that the collective group of graduate students, inexperienced in security modelling, perform similarly as security experts in a well-defined scope and familiar target system/situation. The students showed great creativity, covering most of the same threats and consequences as the experts identified and discovering additional ones. One notable difference was that these naïve professionals tend to focus on preventive barriers, leading to requirements for risk mitigation or avoidance, while experienced professionals seem to balance this more with reactive barriers and requirements for incident management.

Our results are useful in areas where we need to evaluate safety and security concerns together, especially for domains that have experience in health, safety and environmental hazards, but now need to expand this with cybersecurity as well.

Discusses an attempt by the British Library Document Supply Centre to exploit the capabilities of electronic mail linked to satellite transmission as a channel for large scale document delivery. Examines the background, transmission procedure, mode of operation, and future directions for electronic document delivery. Surmises that satellite transmission′s most serious competition comes from ISDN, although the likelihood is that the two will merge to carry a multitude of services.

A scenario is given of a possible library of the future. Such a library might have shelves containing talking books, video cassettes, computer programs on floppy disks and the entire contents of Chemical Abstracts and Encyclopaedia Brittanica on biochips. The catalogue of the library stock and the reference books might well be stored on optical disks and viewed on flat screens. Information on the classification scheme and how to use the collection might be provided by listening to tape recordings and voice synthesisers might inform borrowers where to return items. Robots collect these items from dispensers and replace them on the shelves. Each item in the library has a barcode which is scanned by a laser to provide details of loans/returns and patrons. Terminals linked to computers via satellites enable distant files to be searched on demand for information not stored in the library. Most of the journals taken by the library will be in digital form but a touch of a button on the terminal causes the images to be printed out locally. Fact or fiction? The paper goes on to describe some of the equipment that is currently available to them in the future (such as holography, robotics and satellites). Where we are now in terms of technological developments in libraries and information centres is discussed with reference to some actual projects such as Maggie's Place and Dave's Den. Finally, the impact of such futuristic, electronic libraries on the user as well as the librarian is considered.

Meckler Publishing has announced the acquisition of Micro Software Reports and Micro Software Evaluations from Nolan Information Management Services of Torrance, California. Alan M. Meckler, President of Meckler Publishing, stated that “Micro Software Reports is the world's largest and most comprehensive index to microcomputer software with specific library applications”. He went on to say that “the publication indexes 110 library and computer oriented journals concentrating on information that includes pricing, installation locations and complete system descriptions”.

The purpose of this paper is to solve the ground verification and test method for space robot system capturing the target satellite based on visual servoing with time-delay in 3-dimensional space prior to space robot being launched.

To implement the approaching and capturing task, a motion planning method for visual servoing the space manipulator to capture a moving target is presented. This is mainly used to solve the time-delay problem of the visual servoing control system and the motion uncertainty of the target satellite. To verify and test the feasibility and reliability of the method in three-dimensional (3D) operating space, a set of ground hardware-in-the-loop simulation verification systems is developed, which adopts the end-tip kinematics equivalence and dynamics simulation method.

The results of the ground hardware-in-the-loop simulation experiment validate the reliability of the eye-in-hand visual system in the 3D operating space and prove the validity of the visual servoing motion planning method with time-delay compensation. At the same time, owing to the dynamics simulator of the space robot added in the ground hardware-in-the-loop verification system, the base disturbance can be considered during the approaching and capturing procedure, which makes the ground verification system realistic and credible.

The ground verification experiment system includes the real controller of space manipulator, the eye-in-hand camera and the dynamics simulator, which can veritably simulate the capturing process based on the visual servoing in space and consider the effect of time delay and the free-floating base disturbance.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.