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The purpose of this paper is to portray the valuation of financial investments as mental time travel.

In a series of thought investments, $1 invested in an investment fund is mentally projected forward in time and then discounted back to the present – with no objective time passing. The thought investments feature symmetric valuation (in which discount rates exactly match projection rates) and asymmetric valuation (in which discount rates and projection rates happen to differ). They show how asymmetric valuation can result in differences between the current personal value and market value of an investment and, by way of real-world illustration, between a closed-end investment fund's net asset value and its market value. The authors explore possible reasons for asymmetric valuation.

Thought investments illustrating mental time travel can be used to help understand both financial investment valuation generally and, more specifically, established explanations of the closed-end investment fund puzzle. The authors show how different expectations, different perceptions of time and risk and different risk and time preferences might help determine value.

There are vast literatures on prospection, discounting and future-orientated or intertemporal decision-making. The authors’ innovation is to illustrate how these mental activities might combine to facilitate financial investment valuation. In particular, the authors show that a low personal discount rate could be a consequence of a shortened perception of future time and vice versa.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a study which aims to provide an alternative approach to clinical governance. This involves patients in redesigning services based on their actual experiences of health services. This will be of interest to front line health care staff and public and patient involvement leads.

The paper illustrates Experience Based Design (EBD) as a structured, formal methodology with clearly defined roles, actions and timescales. A case study approach is used to describe the implementation of this model in a District General Hospital.

This study demonstrates how three theoretical components of good design: functionality, engineering and aesthetics can be used as a framework to improve performance, safety and governance and in addition, actual experience of the service for patients and staff.

The case study approach used has provided a good range of learning and transferable information; however, the results are currently based on a single site.

The use of the EBD approach will ensure that healthcare services truly reflect the needs of patients and carers based on their specific experience. It provides a mechanism whereby patients' views contribute fully to the change process leading to safer, more effective and reliable care. This approach will require the application of the non‐clinical competencies included in the Medical Leadership Competency Framework and specific health and wellbeing dimensions in the Knowledge and Skills Framework.

This paper offers a new model that can be incorporated into service redesign. The model enables greater understanding of clinical governance as described by patients through narrative of their actual experiences.

THE following list of contracts placed by the Air Ministry during April is extracted from the May issue of The Ministry of Labour Gazette:—

Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are widely used in disaster research and practice. While, in some cases, these practices incorporate methods inspired by critical cartography and critical GIS, they rarely engage with the theoretical discussions that animate those fields.

In this commentary, the author considers three such discussions, and draws out their relevance for disaster studies: the turn towards processual cartographies, political economy analysis of datafication and calls for theorising computing of and from the South.

The review highlights how these discussions can contribute to the work of scholars engaged in mapping for disaster risk management and research. First, it can counter the taken-for-granted nature of disaster-related maps, and encourage debate about how such maps are produced, used and circulated. Second, it can foster a reflexive attitude towards the urge to quantify and map disasters. Third, it can help to rethink the role of digital technologies with respect to ongoing conversations on the need to decolonise disaster studies.

The paper aims to familiarise disaster studies scholars with literature that has received relatively little attention in this field and, by doing so, contribute to a repoliticisation of disaster-related maps.

IT is well known that the drag of an air‐cooled engine can be much reduced by the addition of a suitable form of cowling. The present tests were undertaken to investigate the cowling of an air‐cooled radial engine and in particular to develop a suitable “helmet” cowling for this type of engine. Certain other forms of cowling have also been tested. From the results obtained estimates have been made of the probable improvement in performance resulting from the various types of cowling. Most of the work has been carried out in the No. 17‐ft. tunnel at the Royal Aircraft Establishment; the tests were begun in January, 1929, and have occupied the tunnel at intervals throughout the year.

At each New Year we stand at the threshold of fresh scenes and hopes, of opportunities and pastures new. It is the time for casting off shackles and burdens that have weighed us down in the old year; almost a new chapter of life. We scan the prevailing scene for signs that will chart the year's unrolling and beyond, and hope profoundly for a smooth passage. The present is largely the product of the past, but of the future, who knows? Man therefore forever seems to be entering upon something new—a change, a challenge, events of great portent. This, of course, is what life is all about. Trends usually precede events, often by a decade or more, yet it is a paradox that so many are taken by surprise when they occur. Trends there have been and well marked; signs, too, for the discerning. In fields particular, they portend overall progress; in general, not a few bode ill.

“Ice cream is a foodstuff in my opinion and not a confection,” stated Mr. Morley T. Parry, Northamptonshire's Chief Sanitary Inspector, at a meeting of that county's branch of the Ice Cream Alliance at Northampton on April 24th. But this very fact made it most necessary that every care should be taken to safeguard public health. Addressing the meeting on the new Ice Cream (Heat Treatment, etc.) Regulations, Mr. Parry dealt mainly, as he said, with the “etc.” These were liable to be overlooked, and he considered them certainly of no less importance than the heat treatment process itself. In particular, the regulations required traders “to protect their ice cream, at all times during its storage and distribution, from dirt, dust, or other contamination, and all apparatus and utensils must be thoroughly cleaned after use and kept clean at all times.” It is my belief, said Mr. Parry, that these requirements, together with that concerning storage temperature, will sound the death‐knell of the old‐fashioned pushcart. “I am so confident of this,” he continued, “that it is my intention to take what will probably be a ‘ test case ’ in this connection at the first opportunity. But I must add that I have seen only two such vehicles on the streets in this Borough during the last two years.” Giving examples of bacteriological tests, Mr. Parry remarked that they showed the need of coverings to prevent ingress of dust and dirt, even in shop premises, and really explained the reason for the requirement that ice cream must be stored at 28°F. He felt that protection of the product during times of busy sales was going to present the trade with an immense problem. Speaking of sampling tests of Northamptonshire's ice cream, Mr. Parry had an encouraging word to say about the county's manufacturers and traders. “Since early 1946 we have never had a really bad bacteriological sample from any traders following the methods we have advised,” he said. “I would like to take this opportunity to compliment local traders on the efforts they have made to carry out suggestions my department has made to them, many of which must have seemed ‘finicking.’” He announced that a modified form of the Methylene Blue Reduction Test used for milk was now to be used for testing ice cream samples in place of the bacteriological examination which gave plate counts, B. Coli and Faecal Coli contents.

The latest information from the magazine chemist is extremely valuable. He has dealt with milk‐adulteration and how it is done. His advice, if followed, might, however, speedily bring the manipulating dealer before a magistrate, since the learned writer's recipe is to take a milk having a specific gravity of 1030, and skim it until the gravity is raised to 1036; then add 20 per cent. of water, so that the gravity may be reduced to 1030, and the thing is done. The advice to serve as “fresh from the cow,” preferably in a well‐battered milk‐measure, might perhaps have been added to this analytical gem.

At a meeting of the Council of the Royal Borough of Kensington on February 29th, ALDERMAN A. G. McARTHUR, Chairman of the Public Health Committee of the Council, brought up a Report as follows— “We have received replies from nineteen City and Borough Councils to the circular letter addressed to them by this Council protesting against the suggestion made by the Board of Agriculture and Fisheries that, before proceedings under the Sale of Food and Drugs Acts are instituted on analytical evidence in respect of milk there should be a preliminary investigation by an officer of the Local Authority, or that the milk producer should be given an opportunity of offering an explanation.

It may be said that the great mass of the food taken by an individual is required and used to satisfy the demands of the body for a source of energy in order that the normal functions and activities of life may be carried out. This energy value of the food was looked upon, until within comparatively recent years, as the important consideration in dietetics. With the accumulation of knowledge regarding the necessity of supplying food essentials, apart altogether from their energy value, this attitude has changed, and it is now known that not only is a certain total quantity of food essential, but that an adequate quantity of the various food essentials must also be supplied. The quantitative problem of dietetics, therefore, resolves itself into a consideration of two aspects which may be considered separately—(1) the total food requirements of the body for energy purposes; and (2) the requirements of the body for the individual food essentials—protein, carbohydrates, fats, mineral salts, vitamins, and water.