Peter Edwards

SwitchPoints is the inspiring story of how Canadian National Railway (CN) advanced from good to great in a few short years–becoming North America's top-performing railroad and a favorite with of corporate customers and investors. In it, the authors reveal how company-wide culture change propelled this aging transportation giant to become the profitable powerhouse it is today. Rich with insights and anecdotes, SwitchPoints offers lessons that can be applied to any organization seeking to improve the bottom line by improving their culture.

Horses were used for many purposes in Shakespeare's England: for travel, either on horseback or in carriages, for haulage and for pleasure, and for work in the fields. The upper classes were closely involved with horses, for jousting, hunting and racing. Horses was also essential to any army, both as cavalry and to draw supplies and artillery. Horse ownership was, however, much more widespread than might be imagined. "Horses in Shakespeare's England" shows how, in pre-industrial England, horses were bred and trained, what they ate, how much they were worth, how long they lived, and what their owners thought of them. While they were named individually, and sometimes became favourites, many were worked hard and poorly treated, leading to their early deaths. They were, nevertheless an essential part of the life of the time and are strikingly depicted in literature and art, as well in many other records.

This book enhances the reader's understanding of the nature and presence of risk by raising the organisation's awareness of the risks it faces, and formalising the systems needed to deal with and learn from those risks. While based on the experience of the construction industry, the book also acts as a broader project management text, meeting the needs of project managers and students in many disciplines and professions from architecture and construction through engineering and commerce to IT, finance and banking. Essential for anyone studying or involved in organisational decision-making for projects, this book will help readers to develop confidence in dealing with risk in a systmatic manner.

Horses played a vital role in the economy of pre-industrial England. They acted as draught animals, pulled ploughs, waggons and coaches, worked machines, and transported goods around the country. As saddle animals they enabled their riders to carry out a wide variety of tasks, and at all levels of society they were regarded as status symbols in a unique relationship with man shared by no other animal. During the Tudor and Stuart period, horses were needed in ever-growing numbers, and for a greater variety of tasks. As demand grew, improvements became necessary in the means of supply and distribution. The agents of change, the specialist dealers, were often condemned as rogues and cheats, whose actions raised prices and caused shortages. Dr Edwards argues that, far from being generally unscrupulous, the dealers were no better or worse than those amongst whom they lived and worked.

Facing North is the first substantial history of Australia s relations with Asia since Federation. Volume 1 (2001) chronicles Australian Asian relations from 1901 to the 1970s. Volume 2 now carries the story through the last decades of the century. Both make extensive use of official government sources and of the private collections of ministers and public servants. This volume discusses the changing relations between Australia and Asia in the period from the 1970s to 2000. Over this time, integration became a dominant theme as Australia looked increasingly to its near neighbours to form political, social and economic alliances. An important driving force behind this direction was the economic opportunities presented by Asia. At the same time, Australia championed the rights of Asian countries to self-determination, economic development and an independent role in international affairs. The book combines the discussion of broad policy themes with detailed analysis of policy-making in relation to particular issues such as human rights, and episodes such as the crisis in East Timor. At home, a key concern was the question of difference between Australian and Asian v

Hardware inaccuracy and imprecision are important considerations when implementing neural algorithms. This book presents a study of synaptic weight noise as a typical fault model for analogue VLSI realisations of MLP neural networks and examines the implications for learning and network performance. The aim of the book is to present a study of how including an imprecision model into a learning scheme as a“fault tolerance hint” can aid understanding of accuracy and precision requirements for a particular implementation. In addition the study shows how such a scheme can give rise to significant performance enhancement.

Using practical examples this book demonstrates how a theoretical model for shared care operates in practice to deliver improved health outcomes within limited resources. It shows how clinically-led initiatives can influence health care commissioning strategies and how the implementation of the model meets the needs of clinicians purchasers and providers. The model and evaluation protocols advocated here provide a firm foundation for the development of shared care in the future.

For GPs and practice managers the challenge of the NHS reforms is to understand the business context in which general practice operates. Of the many skills learned from commerce and industry needed for the development of an effective strategy, business planning has been demonstrated to bring important benefits to the practice. However, for many the concept is necessary but unfamiliar. This book sets out to demystify the subject, explains the benefits and, by way of numerous examples, shows how they can be applied to the single-handed GP and group practices, whether or not they are fundholders. It suggests that good clinical care is not possible without the necessary planning and management skills to run a business.