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Considers the daily production‐scheduling problem in the “make‐to‐order” apparel‐manufacturing industry and presents a solution procedure for the problem based on the simulated annealing technique. The development is aimed at the quick generation of a feasible solution and the improvement on the solution.

EACH September the eyes of the aeronautical World turn towards the S.B.A.C. Air Display and Exhibition with interest unequalled by any other event. It is fitting that the Display is now held each year at the airfield of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, one of the world's most prominent aeronautical research centres. This interest becomes increasingly keen too, as the preview day comes closer, because new prototypes of unorthodox designs often appear a short time before the Show to illustrate the results of years of careful planning, development and research of the particular company. These designs often mould the path of progress for smaller countries without the economic resources to forge the way ahead alone. Most British citizens are very proud of their country's place in aviation today, both in the military and civil fields. This is understood by most foreigners because it is clear that Britain has won a place in aeronautical development second to none.

The author provides an examination and a comparison of the New Privacy rules under Regulation S‐P here in the United States with differing and conflicting rules in member states of the European Union

For the purposes of this article, the indexing of information is interpreted as the pre‐processing of information in order to enable its retrieval. This definition thus spans a dimension extending from classification‐based approaches (pre‐co‐ordinate) to keyword searching (post‐co‐ordinate). In the first section we clarify our use of terminology, by briefly describing a framework for modelling IR systems in terms of sets of objects, relationships and functions. In the following three sections, we discuss the application of indexing functions to document collections of three specific types: (1) ‘conventional’ text databases; (2) hypertext databases; and (3) the World Wide Web, globally distributed across the Internet.

EVERYONE interested in the British library movement will learn with sorrow and regret that one of its greatest friends and strongest champions has passed away, in the person of Thomas Greenwood, the kind‐hearted and generous advocate of libraries, who won the respect and regard of every English libiarian. From one of his own periodicals the following particulars are abstracted:—

Indexing systems have traditionally been geared to cater for search requests of the form ‘documents about…’. It is far from clear what is meant by the notion ‘about’, but the model that guides indexing is built around it. The procedure is:

In acknowledgement of the key position of the concept of ‘aboutness’ in the indexing process, the definition of the term ‘about’ seems to have become the crux of the discussion about indexing systems. ‘About’ is not a simple and self‐evident term in the process of indexing, and the earlier view of a one‐sided relationship between the term and the contents of documents is called into question. A new definition of ‘about’ is needed and a short review of recent contributions on the subject will illustrate some of the suggestions put forward for operational and functional definitions of the ‘aboutness’ of documents. The problem has also been tackled through experiments on alternative design criteria for indexing schemes (Swift et al).

Illustrates the need for incorporating time‐phased operator efficiency levels in apparel production plans. Presents a list of factors which predict how long it will take an operator to learn a sewing operation. Describes prediction models which use these factors to estimate time‐phased operator performance under different conditions.

A behavioural approach to information retrieval system design is outlined based on the derivation of a behavioural model of the information seeking patterns of academic social scientists. The information seeking patterns of a variety of academic social scientists were broken down into six characteristics: starting, chaining, browsing, differentiating, monitoring, and extracting. These characteristics constitute the principal generic features of the different individual patterns, and together provide a flexible behavioural model for information retrieval system design. The extent to which these characteristics are available on existing systems is considered, and the requirements for implementing the features on an experimental system are set out.

THE end of October saw the return of most of our overseas visitors, continental and otherwise, to their homes, leaving with us pleasant memories of a mutually successful visit. The Englishman's proverbial difficulties with foreign tongues, even of neighbouring France, did not complicate matters unduly or reduce too much those interchanges which conference and school afforded. We can repeat our frequently‐expressed hope that there will be an ever increasing series of visits, both of the foreigner to England and of ourselves as foreigners to other countries. We would welcome longer stays in both cases. Nothing but good can come from them.