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IN high‐speed level flight in the compressibility region an entirely new factor makes its appearance, viz: small variations of atmospheric density and speed of sound with height. This factor affects dynamic stability due to continuous changes of height during longitudinal disturbances; there is no effect in lateral disturbances. The affects are very small in low‐speed flight but they increase steadily with Mach number. The short‐period oscillations are not affected but the corrections to phugoid motion become appreciable in high subcritical flight, larger in supercritical (transonic) range, and very important in supersonic flight. The effects of compressibility are of paramount significance but they should be considered in conjunction with varying height effects. Another result of the investigation is the appearance of a new mode of disturbance, due to the stability quartic being converted into a quintic. The fifth (real) root is often small, it may vary in sign according to aerodynamic properties of the aircraft and characteristics of the power unit. The new mode is a subsidence or a divergence, and it determines height stability or instability, hence it may show to what extent an aircraft is able to keep constant altitude over long stretches of time.

The purpose of this paper is to study distance measuring and sorting method of general grey number.

First, the concept of generalised grey number based on grey system theory is given in this paper. Second, from the perspective of kernel and degree of greyness of general grey number, the method of measuring the distance of general grey number and its properties are given. At the same time, the concepts of the kernel expectation and the kernel variance of the general grey number are proposed.

Up to now, the method of measuring the distance and sorting of general grey number is established. Thus, the difficult problem for set up sorting of general grey number has been solved to a certain degree.

The method exposed in this paper can be used to integrate information form a different source. Distance measuring and sorting method of general grey number could be extended to the case of grey algebraic equation, grey differential equation and grey matrix which includes general grey numbers, etc.

The concepts of the kernel expectation and the kernel variance of the general grey number are proposed for the first time in this paper; the novel sorting rules of general grey numbers were also constructed.

The Employee Provident Fund Organization (EPFO), established by the Government of India is one of the World's Largest Social Security Organizations. The purpose of EPFO is to ensure social security for Industrial workers and their dependents. EPFO maintains more than 15 crore accounts of its members. Traditionally EPFO had been functioning as a legacy organization, administered and managed by Indian bureaucracy. Operational processes were riddled with over emphasis on rules and regulations, but were weak on transparency, accountability, effectiveness and efficiency. The 120 EPFO offices established all over the country operated in silos. Consequently, the very purpose of social security and welfare of the industrial employees suffered, while all other stake holders enjoyed significant controlling power. Recent interventions at EPFO were focused on process reengineering and ICT enablement to make EPFO more customer-centric. The case documents the transformation of EPFO from a bureaucratic, opaque organization to a customer centric, stakeholder friendly, transparent and accountable organization through IT enabled operations.

This conceptual paper is offered in place of a systematic analysis of militarization in organizations and the wider world. It proceeds on the understanding that militarization implies deep historical tendencies that are not easy to simply avoid, especially where one wishes to observe or to analyse phenomena systematically.

This paper seeks out alternative means of engagement with references to the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, the critical theory of Theodor Adorno and the poetry of W.H. Auden. The departure, however, is taken in response to a brief and questionable statement by Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) about world history and the position of reason since the end of the Second World War.

Historical analysis, it is argued, is essential for any understanding of processes of militarization but not adequate on its own.

Militarization means, at least in the first instance, the adoption of military modes of organization and engagement in supposedly non‐military environments. But at a deeper level, which is nonetheless manifest in both a developing technology and an increasingly technological attitude, it implies the repetition of basic attitudes to others and to life. Furthermore the very meaning of militarization is likely to undergo metamorphoses as a result of these trends.

To investigate the role of business process redesign (BPR) in creating citizen‐centred e‐government.

It is argued in this paper that the evolutionary‐based development of BPR is better positioned to expand the use e‐commerce technology in the public sector. The Venkatraman model of IT‐enabled change is used in order to investigate the extent to which BPR was instrumental in the movement to e‐government in Ireland. A case study is presented detailing how the Irish Government's e‐government strategy was devised and implemented.

This paper details how 50 government authorities were co‐ordinated in an effort to provide a single point of access (portal) to government e‐services. However, as the infrastructure for the portal is to be developed around existing government structures, a full and complete process redesign is unlikely, as the existing authorities must remain in place.

To investigate the unique nature of processes within the public sector so that IS platforms can be developed that accommodate less efficient processes rather than platforms that require unobtainable process redesign.

The establishment of a specific government entity, whose sole purpose is to oversee and implement the e‐government strategy, has contributed greatly to the success achieved to date.

This paper fulfils an identified need for research in BPR in the implementation of e‐government and provides a valuable insight into the successful attainment of citizen‐centred e‐government in other jurisdictions.

FIRST THINGS FIRST AUTUMN may be a time for a new review of our work which is additional to our supreme task of providing and exploiting books. There is no single thing that we have done for the past fifty years that may not be made the better for examination, so long as that examination is cautious. Our publicity for example; is it direct, dignified, appealing; or, is it flabby, sometimes actually silly and sometimes a vain competing with that of great stores or newspapers with their relatively enormous resources? If the truth is accepted that the best expenditure we can make is on books and that the light that radiates from our shelves is from them we shall do well. Open shelves, well‐filled with modern editions of the new and old, are our best exhibition and the only permanently valuable one; our best publicity agents are our satisfied readers. The public will always pass on to others news of things it has proved to be good. If we came without previous knowledge to examine library literature today we might easily infer that books are now a negligible part of the thought of librarians. So much indeed that even librarians themselves have been heard to plead for some knowledge of the greater books of the world amongst themselves. Other writers in these pages and writers elsewhere have done this occasionally. The explanation lies in the fact that the “frills” we add to the real fabric of libraries are just attracting additions made to draw further attention to the existing excellent book‐services we now give. It is probable that the concern for information services, gramophone records and so many other now familiar extras is shown most by librarians whose bookstock is already excellent and is being kept so. Such an explanation we should like to believe.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the algorithm rules of the interval grey numbers and propose a new ranking method of the interval grey numbers.

The definitions of “kernels” based on lower measure, upper measure or moderate measure are given according to the properties of the interval grey number problems. By means of the measurement error, the concept of the absolute degree of greyness and the relative degree of greyness corresponding to different “kernel” are given, and different simplified forms of the interval grey numbers are put forward.

The definitions of “kernel” and the degree of greyness in this paper not only take the upper limit, lower limit and the coverage of the interval grey numbers into account, but also avoid the inconsistency of the degree of greyness caused by the different universe of discourse.

Though the method proposed in this paper has some deficiencies, such as the definition of relative degree of greyness is meaningless when the kernel of the interval grey number is 0, it provides a new idea for calculating and sorting the interval grey numbers and is conducive to the further development of the grey system theory.

The method proposed in this paper can not only distinguish interval grey numbers in different situations, but also avoid the inconsistency of the degree of greyness caused by the different universe of discourse. In this basis, the interval grey number algorithm is established and a new ranking method of interval grey numbers is given.

The purpose of this paper is to explore new ways and lay a solid foundation to solve the problem of reliability growth analysis of major aerospace equipment with various uncertainty data through propose new concepts of general uncertainty data (GUD) and general uncertainty variable (GUV) and build the operation system of GUVs.

The characteristics of reliability growth data of major aerospace equipment and the limitations of current reliability growth models have been analyzed at first. The most commonly used uncertainty system analysis methods of probability statistics, fuzzy mathematics, grey system theory and rough set theory have been introduced. The concepts of GUD and GUV for reliability growth data analysis of major aerospace equipment are proposed. The simplified form of GUV based on the “kernel” and the degree of uncertainty of GUV is defined. Then an operation system of GUVs is built.

(1) The concept of GUD; (2) the concept of GUV; (3) The novel operation rules of GUVs with simplified form.

The method exposed in this paper can be used to integrate complex reliability growth data of major aerospace equipment. The reliability growth models based on GUV can be built for reliability growth evaluation and forecasting of major aerospace equipment in practice. The reliability evaluation example of a solid rocket motor shows that the concept and idea proposed in this paper are feasible. The research of this paper opens up a new way for the analysis of complex uncertainty data of reliability growth of major aerospace equipment. Moreover, the operation of GUVs could be extended to the case of algebraic equation, differential equation and matrix which including GUVs.

The new concepts of GUD and GUV are given for the first time. The novel operation rules of GUVs with simplified form were constructed.

Virtual assembly process plays an important role in assembly design of complex product and is typically time- and resource-intensive. This paper aims to investigate a dynamic assembly simplification approach in order to demonstrate and interact with virtual assembly process of complex product in real time.

The proposed approach regards the virtual assembly process of complex product as an incremental growth process of dynamic assembly. During the growth process, the current-assembled-state assembly model is simplified with appearance preserved by detecting and removing its invisible features, and the to-be-assembled components are simplified with assembly features preserved using conjugated subgraphs matching method based on an improved subgraph isomorphism algorithm.

The dynamic assembly simplification approach is applied successfully to reduce the complexity of computer aided design models during the virtual assembly process and it is proved by several cases.

A new assembly features definition is proposed based on the notion of “conjugation” to assist the assembly features recognition, which is a main step of the dynamic assembly simplification and has been translated into conjugated subgraphs matching problem. And an improved subgraph isomorphism algorithm is presented to address this problem.