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The purpose of this research is to determine whether the trading of equity index futures contracts on the South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) results in an increase in the volatility of the underlying spot indices. Since equity index futures contracts were first listed in the USA in 1975, various studies have been undertaken to determine whether the volatility of shares in the underlying indices increases as a result of the trading of such futures contracts. These studies have lead to the development of two schools of thought: [a] Trading activity in equity index futures contracts leads to an increase in the volatility of index shares. [b] Trading activity in equity index futures contracts does not lead to an increase in the volatility of the index shares and could in fact lead to greater stability in equity markets. Although some evidence of higher volatility in expiration periods was found, volatility in the expiration periods was not consistently higher than in the corresponding pre‐expiration period.

Suggests a performance index, overcoming changing economic conditions and the effect of the product life cycle, thus serving as an extra aid to management, as existing measures do not adequately reflect actual performance. Focuses on the performance of the marketing programme and not specific marketing activities such as advertising, sales promotions etc. Sums up that it is shown that this index incorporates aspects not taken into account in previous methods.

Measuring the overall success of product development efforts has been frustrating because there is no generally recognized metric to measure effectiveness. The R&D Effectiveness Index is introduced to address this need. It measures effectiveness by comparing the profit from new products to the investment in new product development. Provides the details for calculating the index along with alternative interpretations. Finds a strong relationship between the R&D Effectiveness Index and other performance factors and argues that the R&D Effectiveness Index can be used to compare performance, measure improvement, and evalute business units. Illustrates its application in a case study.

An automatic indexing method is described in which index tags for documents are generated by the computer. The computer scans the text of periodical articles and automatically assigns to them index terms with their respective weights on the basis of explicitly defined text characteristics. A machine file of document references with their associated index terms is automatically produced which can be searched on a co‐ordinate basis for the retrieval of specified drug‐related information.

This paper begins with a discussion on the need for book indexes and highlights their benefits. Indexes to symposia and reports are considered. Reasons for indexless books are offered and suggestions and guidelines given for deciding whether or not a publication should have an index. Indexes for educational books are discussed. In the corporate environment indexes are recommended for brochures, training and product manuals. An evaluation is made of the benefits and qualities of competent book indexes. Types of indexes and published literature are reviewed together with the role and contribution of the Society of Indexers for training and supply of indexers to the information and publishing industries. The paper concludes with suggestions on search techniques for making best use of indexes.

Most librarians and information officers spend some part of their time using the indexes in books; only a few have direct experience of the making of such indexes, closely related though the process is to the more familiar cataloguing and indexing of books and periodical articles which occur in most libraries. One novelty about the Index to the Report and to the Minutes of Evidence of the Company Law Committee (HM Stationery Office, 1962) is that it was produced by professional librarians in their normal course of duties, being one of the major products of the library staff now carrying out the Board of Trade Library's responsibility for providing indexes for certain of the Board's publications. However, the fact that it was the librarians who made this index is not enough in itself to make it interesting. The aim of this article is rather to describe the problems which arise, and some methods of dealing with them, in indexing a type of literature which is of particular importance in information work in the social sciences—the government report. So far as I know, there is no existing literature on this aspect of official publications: no literature, that is, which deals with the problems either of the specialized but non‐technological subject matter and language which characterize most fields of the social sciences, or of the complexity of arrangement, physical form, and programmes of publication which characterize major government inquiries in published form. The Company Law Committee's work was an outstanding example of its kind, and it is this which may lend interest to an account of its indexing.

The choice of a particular architectural solution when designing a building considerably influences the costs of its construction. The aim of this paper is to present the indexes which may relate to the complexity of the building shape, and which were then specified and compared on a particular example.

The article analyses various indices of building shape evaluation, their influence on the changes in construction costs and their sensitivity to the changes in the dimensions of the building. The methodology adopted in this article concerns the analysis of the selected simple factors assessing the shape of the building against the cost‐effectiveness of constructing the basic elements of the building.

The authors established the best building shape in relation to the costs of constructing the walls and foundations (square), and to the layout of the inside of the building (rectangle). They believe that the best evaluations of building shape were achieved by the LBI index, which evaluated the shape correctly in all of the analysed examples and which is the most sensitive to the changes in building parameters in correct proportions to the changes in construction costs.

The article presents the indexes which may relate to the complexity of the building shape. The authors established the best building shape in relation to the costs of constructing. The authors provide the degree of the floor area usability in buildings of various shapes.

Most documentation systems allocate a variable number of descriptors to their documents. From a consideration of indexing as a stochastic process it is suggested that the distribution of indexing depth in such a system might represent samples of a (truncated) mixed Poisson process. Examination of five different systems showed that indexing depth does appear to be distributed in this manner, since a reasonable fit to negative binomial distributions can be made statistically. Factors in the art of indexing which influence the distribution are discussed. As a first approximation the distribution of indexing depth, i, of a system, or of any subset of descriptors in it, is simple Poisson, p(i) = e−m(mi/i!), where m is the average depth of indexing. The results contradict previous reports that a log‐normal distribution of indexing depth is to be expected.

The value of newspaper indexes in libraries is a topic that few public services librarians would be willing to debate on the negative team. Most large and mid‐size libraries, and many small ones, subscribe to indexes of major dailies such as the New York Times or the Christian Science Monitor. Recent advances in computer technology have not only made these indexes more efficient to publish, but have also made online access to full‐text newspaper databases possible. However, access to the contents of local or regional newspapers is often more important to the typical library user than indexed information carried in the national press, with the possible exception of Dave Barry's column.

To present an ongoing research effort based on previous industrial experience in the content management field.

The project began with lessons learned while working in the IT industry. A model was then developed based on these lessons for managing content and enabling searching for content over the internet.

The author has used the proposed model both before and after joining academia a few years ago. The model works fine with some tune‐up from one case to another.

As this is ongoing research, the model will be subject to enhancements based on further lessons learned in the future.

The proposed model has been used by the author on several projects and has led to good results in most cases.

The model itself and the approach followed to integrate content into enterprise systems are both novel.