Computational simplification tools can make complex information sources easier to read for engineering designers. To guide and evaluate such approaches, it is necessary to understand how designers process information and how that information can be enhanced and measured. Here, we establish an approach for enhancing and measuring the comprehensibility of technical information for engineering designers. It is grounded in theories of document search and comprehension and provides theoretically supported principles for enhancing information and methods for measuring comprehension experimentally. It is tailored for engineering design in that it (i) does not summarize or remove potentially important information, (ii) is suitable for long, complex sources of information, (iii) can be applied in experiments that simulate real-life information sharing scenarios, and (iv) enables the measurement of domain-specific comprehension. The feasibility of the approach was tested by using patent documents as a test case since they represent a valuable but underutilized source of technical information. A 2 (patent documents) × 2 (conditions: control vs. modified) experiment was conducted with 28 professional engineering designers. Two patent documents were modified with six information design principles. Comprehension scores were higher for the modified patent than for the control, but the change was not statistically significant (p = 0.073). We attribute this either to redundancy effects causing a smaller than expected overall improvement in performance, or differences in prior knowledge for each patent. Overall, this approach offers a novel method for investigating and measuring information comprehensibility in engineering design; however, its effectiveness in enhancing information comprehensibility remains unvalidated.

Following a brief history and explanation of the extent and role of the faculty jurisdiction, the article considers various reviews of its working, and that of the ecclesiastical exemption, starting with the Report of the Faculty Jurisdiction Commission in 1984 and the Newman Report in 1997. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport stated in 2005 that the operation of the ecclesiastical exemption would be monitored periodically, and in 2010 that it would be kept under review to ensure the required standards of protection were maintained. The article argues that a no-holds-barred review of the faculty system would now be appropriate, with a view to achieving a less cumbrous structural apparatus, with a markedly less restrictive approach to changes within unlisted churches and a more rigorous and expert approach to changes affecting listed churches.

The mechanical properties of thin-walled plate with close-packed film cooling holes are studied based on the equivalent solid material concept. The equivalent principals of the method of equivalent strain energy, homogenization theory and uniform static deformation are considered. A simplification method of square penetration pattern for pitch and diagonal direction loading is presented. The goodness of fit is calculated to determine the optimal method. The tensile deformation, bending deflection, rotation displacement and maximum Mises equivalent stress of simplification plate models are in good agreement with plate models with close-packed film cooling holes. For square penetration pattern for pitch direction loading, the equivalent errors of Mises equivalent stress are all less than 10% when the ligament efficiency is more than 0.6.

There is a large demand for holistic welfare assessment systems that result in a singular balanced summary of welfare. The Welfare Quality® (WQ) broiler protocol summarizes 18 welfare measures into four principles (‘good feeding’, ‘good housing’, ‘good health’ and ‘appropriate behaviour’), which are then integrated into one overall category (‘excellent’, ‘enhanced’, ‘acceptable’ or ‘not classified’). But the protocol is time consuming which hampers implementation. Furthermore, WQ’s aim to assess animal welfare in a wide range of husbandry systems may decrease its ability to discriminate between flocks from the same system. We applied the protocol in the context of intensive indoor rearing to assess whether it discriminated sufficiently between flocks, could be shortened without losing essential information, and provided a balanced summary of welfare. The vast majority of the flocks (88%) received the same overall classification (acceptable) whilst all other flocks received an adjacent classification (enhanced), suggesting poor discriminative capacity. For 95% of the flocks overall classification was explained by two measures only (‘drinker space’ and ‘stocking density’). A system based on these two measures would reduce assessment time from 3.5 h to a few minutes. However, both measures’ validity can be questioned as they are risk factors for poor welfare rather than animal-based outcome measures and they suffer from methodological weaknesses. Furthermore, the possibility for such an extreme simplification raises doubts on whether the overall classification reflects a balanced summary of different welfare aspects. In line with this, overall classification was not affected by replacing single measures within the ‘good health’ and ‘appropriate behaviour’ principles with realistically attainable minima or maxima for intensively reared flocks. Even replacing either of these two principles entirely with their realistically obtainable minimum or maximum did not affect classification. Such insensitivity to change may discourage attempts to improve the welfare of intensively reared flocks when assessments are made based on the overall classification. This calls for an adjustment of the classification system, which is currently being developed by the Welfare Quality Network.

Welfare Quality® (WQ) assessment protocols place the emphasis on animal-based measures as an indicator for animal welfare. Stakeholders, however, emphasize that a reduction in the time taken to complete the protocol is essential to improve practical applicability. We studied the potential for reduction in time to complete the WQ broiler assessment protocol and present some modifications to the protocol correcting a few errors in the original calculations. Data was used from 180 flocks assessed on-farm and 150 flocks assessed at the slaughter plant. Correlations between variables were calculated, and where correlation was moderate, meaningful and promising (in terms of time reduction), simplification was considered using one variable predicted from another variable. Correlation analysis revealed a promising correlation between severe hock burn and gait scores on-farm. Therefore, prediction of gait scores using hock burn scores was studied further as a possible simplification strategy (strategy 1). Measurements of footpad dermatitis, hock burn, cleanliness and gait score on-farm correlated moderately to highly with slaughter plant measurements of footpad dermatitis and/or hock burn, supporting substitution of on-farm measurements with slaughter plant data. A simplification analysis was performed using footpad dermatitis, hock burn, cleanliness and gait scores measured on-farm predicted from slaughter plant measurements of footpad dermatitis and hock burn (strategy 2). Simplification strategies were compared with the full assessment protocol. Close agreement was found between the full protocol and both simplification strategies although large confidence intervals were found for specificity of the simplified models. It is concluded that the proposed simplification strategies are encouraging; strategy 1 can reduce the time to complete the on-farm assessment by ~1 h (25% to 33% reduction) and strategy 2 can reduce on-farm assessment time by ~2 h (50% to 67% reduction). Both simplification strategies should, however, be validated further, and tested on farms with a wide distribution across the different welfare categories of WQ.

Through a systematic comparison of major reforms to minimum income benefits for people of working age in France and the UK, this paper assesses the scope for cross-national convergence in this growing sector of European welfare states. It shows that while differing institutional legacies have shaped the precise design of the new minimum income systems that have been put in place on each side of the Channel in recent years, there is also evidence of an increasingly common conceptualisation of the function of the last safety net and its articulation with the labour market, despite the two countries' still very different political economies. This suggests the potential across welfare states for convergence “from below” on broader understandings of the role of social security provisions in regulating economic life.

Improvement of regulatory quality has become one of the most important items on the European Union’s (EU) Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs. In this context, the European Commission has sought to influence the regulatory reform policies of the Member States, focusing on the implementation of better regulation principles and tools. This article explores the interactive nature of Europeanization, viewing domestic institutions as ‘users’ of European policies according to their strategies. The author performs a within-case study based on a bottom–up research design, analysing the impact of EU better regulation on Italy. The results show that the effects of Europeanization relate more to agenda setting than to implementation – the latter is still, prevalently, determined by domestic factors.

Sicilo-Sarde dairy flock test-day data were analysed (1) to check predicting ability of ten milk recording procedures, based on information from a single monthly or bimonthly milking and (2) to look for the best pair of factors for predicting daily milk yield from either morning or afternoon milkings for the alternate testing method (AT). Prior to analyses, data were adjusted for variation factors with known significant effect. Number of test-day observations was 4755 from 458 lactations of 288 ewes. Losses of precision associated with simplified methods were evaluated by comparing estimated lactation yields with those observed both in a reference plan, where the two daily milkings were recorded at 2-weekly intervals and in the official A4 milk recording (monthly recording of the two daily milkings). Ranking of simplified plans based on their accuracy was still the same under either monthly or twice-monthly frequency. Estimates of lactation yields showed more lack of precision when the usual monthly designs were compared with twice-monthly sampling of both a.m. and p.m. milkings. Losses of precision ranged from 5·1%, for the A4 plan, to 14·6%. Thus, milk production should be estimated from both mikings when their measurement is economically feasible. When only one milking is weighed, designs based on—or beginning with—the a.m. milking were more accurate. There was no evidence of improvement in sampling accuracy by adjustment for milking interval or production level. For practical and economic reasons, the design alternating a.m. and p.m. milkings, without adjustment, is suggested for ovine milk recording. In such a case, new factors for estimating daily production from the measured milking (1·7, 2·3) should be used rather than the factors currently in use (2, 2) because they improved the loss of precision by more than 13% in a monthly recording system.

Simplified designs of milk-composition recording, based on information from a single monthly milking, adjusted or not for interval between milkings and for milk yield, were simulated and evaluated for 2553 ewe-test-day records belonging to 155 lactations of Churra dairy ewes. Accuracy of simplified methods was evaluated by comparing estimated trait values (fat, protein, casein and total solid yields) with those observed both in a reference plan, where the two daily milkings were recorded at weekly intervals (A1), and in the official A4 milk recording (monthly records of the two daily milkings). Trait yields per lactation were estimated and adjusted to the only milking period (days in milk 30–120). Estimates of milk component traits were less precise when monthly designs, including the A4 design, were compared with a weekly sampling of both a.m. and p.m. milkings, with fat yield being the most difficult trait to estimate. All options with one daily milking every month were more accurate when the corresponding plan was based on, or began with, the a.m. milking. Adjustment for the preceding interval between milkings or milk yield did not improve sampling accuracy. The design alternating a.m. and p.m. milkings every month, without adjustment, is suggested for recoding milk component traits in dairy ewes.

Simplified designs of milk yield recording based on the yield of a single monthly milking, adjusted or not for interval between milkings and for production level, were simulated and evaluated for 3173 ewe-test-day records belonging to 155 lactations of Churra dairy ewes. Losses of precision associated with simplified methods were evaluated by comparing estimated lactation yields with those observed both in a reference plan, where the two daily milkings were recorded at weekly intervals, and in the official A4 milk recording (monthly records of the two daily milkings). Estimates of lactation yields were less precise when the usual monthly designs were compared with a weekly sampling of both a.m. and p.m. milkings. The losses of precision were high at 9·4–36·2% including the A4 plan. The yield from only the milking period was more predictable than milk yield from the whole lactation (suckling and milking periods) and should consequently be adopted in dairy ewes. All options with one daily milking every month were more accurate when the corresponding plan was based on, or began with, the a.m. milking (loss of precision 14·9–15·8%). There was no evidence of improvement in sampling accuracy by adjusting for the preceding interval between milkings or production level. For practical and economic reasons, the design alternating a.m. and p.m. milkings every month, without adjustment, is suggested for ovine milk recording.

T. Fukui introduced an invariant for the blow-analytic equivalence of real singularities. For a nondegenerate analytic function (germ) f, he discovered a formula for computing the one-dimensional invariant, denoted by A(f) := A1(f). We find a formula for A(f) for any f (real or complex, degenerate or not). We then define, and characterise, various notions of stability of A(f), using the formula. For real analytic f, the Fukui invariant with sign is defined, and computed by a similar formula. In the case where f is an analytic function of two complex variables, A(f) can also be computed using the tree-model of f.