Inspectors are the executing branch of state regulation. Existing literature focuses on their tasks and operations, mostly with regard to their commitments to the state and their complex relations with inspectees. The present study explores a heretofore-unexamined issue: the playing out of inspection in a sociopolitical context of national conflict and discriminatory majority-minority relations. Namely, it focuses on the work of inspectors of social services overseen by the Israeli welfare state but provided by local or contracted agencies, offered to one of the country’s most oppressed and marginalized populations: Arab-Palestinian young women. The research was based on interviews with 25 national and district inspectors in the field of services for young women in Israel, and reveals numerous barriers hindering effective inspection, resulting from having to inspect the implementation of universalist policy in a context of local needs; and the implementation of welfare policy in a context of national sociopolitical inequality. This is discussed in terms of the severe toll that color-blind and gender-blind policy can have on the feasibility of enforcing regulation, and on the potential to ensure that Arab-Palestinian young women receive adequate social services.

Much development work has already been done by the industry and the competent authorities in countries exporting meat to the EU, and these countries are well on their way to satisfying the requirements of Regulation (EC) No 1099/2009. The major problem for animal welfare was that the electrical parameters used for water-bath stunning of poultry were not set at levels which ensured that birds were effectively stunned. In addition, there are meat quality issues when higher currents are used. Other areas to be further developed include clarification and formalisation of the tasks of the Animal Welfare Officer; certifying competence of the relevant staff; adapting and improving or completing the existing standard operating procedures. Several countries need to make changes to their transport/delivery practices or to the arrangements for accommodating animals, so that they respect the requirement to feed and bed animals if not slaughtered within 12 hours of their arrival at the slaughterhouse.

This study analysed the free use of phrases related to animal-based and resource-based measures of animal welfare in Swedish state animal welfare inspection reports on conventional (C) and organic (O) farms. From 244 reports by 35 inspectors, 88 were analysed as matched pairs of C and O farms (same inspector, species and size of farm). They were analysed ‘blind’ for negative comments referring to the animals or to the resources (buildings and facilities). The most commonly reported deficiencies were poor body and hoof condition and dirty animals, accounting for a total of 79% of all animal-based remarks. Deficiencies in measures and equipment or excessively high stocking density together accounted for 78% of all resource-based remarks. The total number of general (non-compulsory) comments was similar for O and C farms. But the number of (compulsory) requirements for change to comply with legislation was almost twice as high for O than C. There were significantly more comments about body condition and hooves in C than O but a tendency for the opposite to be the case for animal health. Despite this, the number of requirements for change was greater for O-farms regarding their animals. There was no difference in number of comments on resources, but once more a tendency for more requirements for change was seen on O-farms. The study demonstrates that the analysis of inspection reports can be useful in terms of identifying where, in practice, animal welfare problems lie as well as further developing the methodology of animal welfare control.

Child protection systems monitoring is key to ensuring children’s wellbeing. In England, monitoring is rooted in onsite inspection, culminating in judgements ranging from ‘outstanding’ to ‘inadequate’. But inspection may carry unintended consequences where child protection systems are weak. One potential consequence is increased child welfare intervention rates. In this longitudinal ecological study of local authorities in England, we used Poisson mixed-effects regression models to assess whether child welfare intervention rates are higher in an inspection year, whether this is driven by inspection judgement, and whether more deprived areas experience different rates for a given inspection judgement. We investigated the impact of inspection on care entry, Child Protection Plan-initiation, and child-in-need status. We found that inspection was associated with a rise in rates across the spectrum of interventions. Worse judgements yielded higher rates. Inspection may also exacerbate existing inequalities. Unlike less deprived areas, more deprived areas judged inadequate did not experience an increase in the less intrusive ‘child-in-need’ interventions. Our findings suggest that a narrow focus on social work practice is unlikely to address weaknesses in the child protection system. Child protection systems monitoring should be guided by a holistic model of systems improvement, encompassing the socioeconomic determinants of quality.

In the last decades, an increasing number of EU institutions and agencies have been given the power to conduct administrative inspections. While the legal literature has traditionally focused on the Commission’s inspection powers in competition proceedings, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF), the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), and the European Fisheries Control Agency (EFCA) are also entrusted with such powers. The Commission has also been granted inspection powers in the field of Food Safety. Inspection powers can have a crucial impact on the fundamental right of the inviolability of the home, recognized by the Court of Justice as a general principle of EU law, and protected under Article 8 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights (ECFR). This Article argues that the current remedies do not fulfill all the criteria set forth by the Strasbourg Court for ex post judicial control vis-à vis inspections to be full and effective, in particular when these powers are used in the context of composite procedures, and suggests remedies to improve the system of review, in order to effectively protect fundamental rights.

This article, written at the time it was taking place, discusses the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic is having on music education in schools, focusing on the UK. It discusses how schools and teachers have had to make a sudden shift to a largely on-line modality, and the effects of these on teaching and learning in music. It asks questions of curriculum and assessment, especially with regard to the fact that classroom teachers in England are having to use their professional judgment to provide grades for external examinations, where hitherto these would have come from examination boards. It questions the ways in which teachers have been inadequately prepared and supported for this, by years of neoliberal undermining of confidence. It goes on to question accountability, and teacher training, raising issues which, at the time of writing, are of significant concern or music education.

Zonal Safety Analysis (ZSA) is a major part of the civil aircraft safety assessment process described in Aerospace Recommended Practice 4761 (ARP4761). It considers safety effects that systems/items installed in the same zone (i.e. a defined area within the aircraft body) may have on each other. Although the ZSA may be conducted at any design stage, it would be most cost-effective to do it during preliminary design, due to the greater opportunity for influence on system and structural designs and architecture. The existing ZSA methodology of ARP4761 was analysed, but it was found to be more suitable for detail design rather than preliminary design. The authors therefore developed a methodology that would be more suitable for preliminary design and named it the Preliminary Zonal Safety Analysis (PZSA). This new methodology was verified by means of the use of a case study, based on the NASA N3-X project. Several lessons were learnt from the case study, leading to refinement of the proposed method. These lessons included focusing on the positional layout of major components for the zonal safety inspection, and using the Functional Hazard Analysis (FHA)/Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) to identify system external failure modes. The resulting PZSA needs further refinement, but should prove to be a useful design tool for the preliminary design process.

This paper presents a method for designing the arm lengths of a screw drive in-pipe robot with a pathway selection mechanism to pass through bent pipes. The robot comprises a front-rotating unit (rotator), middle-steering unit, and rear-supporting unit (stator). Each unit has elastic arms, which can be elongated by springs and can be pushed against the inner wall of the pipe. The robot can travel and steer not only in straight pipes but also in bent pipes and T-branches. When the robot passes through such pipes, its mobility depends on whether the arms can touch the inner wall because the robot will lose the driving force if one of the arms cannot reach the inner wall. This is especially important in vertically positioned pipes, where the robot will fall down if it is unable to reach. In this paper, we focus on the cross-section of the bent pipes, arm length, spring stiffness, and mass of the robot to clarify the mobility of the robot in these types of pipes. A method for determining the initial arm length on the basis of simple quasi-statics is proposed and experimental verification is conducted.

Airborne ultrasound based sensor systems have been applied to a variety of problems in robotics and advanced manufacturing. These include slot and hole inspection, and systems suitable for workspace imaging and autonomous guided vehicle (AGV) navigation. The transmission line matrix (TLM) method of modelling wave propagation has been used in the evaluation of these systems. The model gives both graphical and numerical outputs, and allows an improved understanding of the interaction of ultrasonic waves and targets to be obtained.

The assessment of damage of structural concrete elements relies on the engineering judgment of the person in charge of the inspection and evaluation. This paper describes a rule-based prototype expert system developed to assist an engineer engaged in the task of assessing postearthquake damage to structural concrete elements in the task of providing guidance for inspection as well as criteria for evaluation and courses of action to take afterwards. The expert system, called DASE, identifies the most likely failure modes that may be developed by columns or beams of a damaged building, determines the severity of damage and, suggests immediate actions to take afterwards, such as rehabilitation procedures or tests, to maintain an acceptable local safety level. Floor damage classification and restoration guidelines can also be provided, assuming that all of the structural components in a building's floor have been inspected. The Analytic Hierarchy Process has been implemented as the overall framework to determine the severity of damage, since it allows judgments and personal values to be represented in a systematic and rational manner. DASE provides graphics that customize the user interface and an explanation facility. The knowledge acquisition process consisted primarily of the analysis of documented knowledge found through literature research.

For systems subject to inspections at Poisson random times, we present an analytic method which gives upper and lower bounds for the reliability. We also study its asymptotic behaviour and derive the asymptotic failure rate.

This paper examines the availability of a maintained system where the rate of deterioration is governed by an exogenous random environment. We provide a qualitative result that exposes the relationship between remaining lifetime, environment, and repairs. This result leads to simple bounds that can be used to choose inspection rates that guarantee a specified level of availability. The principal result requires no specific distributional assumptions, is intuitively appealing and can be directly applied by practitioners. Our development employs techniques from stochastic calculus.

We present a problem of finding the optimum inspection procedure for a system whose time to failure is an exponential random variable. We characterize a simple and surprising solution to the problem.