Climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing the world. Scientific research points out that it is predominately driven by human activity. There are three different types of risks that arise from this change. These have been broadly grouped into physical, transition and liability risks. These risks can impact general insurers to different degrees, depending on their business areas and investment strategies. These may pose different strategic, investment, market, operational and reputational risks. This paper provides General Insurance Practitioners with an overview of different aspects of insurance operations that may be affected by climate change. It highlights the impact of these risks on pricing and underwriting, reserving, reinsurance, catastrophe modelling, investment, risk management and capital management processes.

Background. For adolescents, there is no specific needs assessment instrument that assesses significant problems that can benefit from specified interventions. A new instrument (S.NASA) was developed by incorporating and adapting three well established adult needs assessment instruments. The S.NASA covers 21 areas of functioning including social, psychiatric, educational and life skills.

Method. Client and carer interviews were conducted by different researchers. A week later the interviews were repeated using a crossover design. Significant (cardinal) problems were generated from the clinical interviews using a pre-defined algorithm. Final need status (three categories) was made by clinicians assessing the cardinal problems against defined interventions. The interventions were generated from discussions with clinicians and a survey of appropriate professionals working with adolescents.

Results. Pre-piloting led to the final version being administered to 40 adolescents from secure units, forensic psychiatric and adolescent psychiatric services. There were 25 males and 15 females, mean age 15·5 years. Overall there were moderate to good inter-rater and test–retest reliability coefficients, the test–retest reliability coefficients for the total scores on the needs assessment interviews ranged from 0·73 to 0·85. Consensual and face validity was good, the adolescents and staff finding the instrument useful and helpful.

Conclusions. This new needs assessment instrument shows acceptable psychometric properties. It should be of use in research projects assessing the needs and the provision of services for adolescents with complex and chronic problems.

Amorphous silicon based thin film transistor liquid crystal displays (TFT/LCD) have become the dominant technology used for flat panel displays for notebook computers. The need for higher resolution, larger diagonal displays for both notebook and desktop applications is discussed. Calculations have shown that the use of high conductivity gate metal such as aluminum or copper, together with the implementation of improved groundrules, can significantly extend today's technology. Aluminum suffers from problems with hillock formation during PECVD processing, and copper typically has poor adhesion to glass, reaction problems with silicon and other PECVD films, and difficulties in contacting it to other metals. Approaches to solving problems with both materials are presented, and a novel reduced mask process to fabricate high resolution, high aperture ratio 10.5” SXGA (1280 × 1024) displays is described. The process uses copper gate metallurgy with redundancy, without the need for extra processing steps. The resulting displays have 150 dpi color resolution, an aperture ratio of over 35%, and excellent image quality, making them the first high resolution displays that are suitable for notebook applications.

Batches of cream were artificially infected with M. tuberculosis, and subjected to varying heat treatments under conditions of H.T.S.T. and holder pasteurization. Guinea-pig and phosphatase tests were applied to the treated creams.

The minimum time-temperature conditions required for the inactivation of M. tuberculosis and phosphatase were found to be similar to those pertaining to milk.

The practical difficulties of controlling the effciency of cream pasteurization are discussed.