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The long interval between the last abortive attempt to negotiate entry to the European Economic Community and the present time, when, if we read the signs aright, the atmosphere is more favourable, seems to have been a period of reflection for great numbers of people. Nothing has changed politically; “getting into Europe” is the official policy of both Government and Opposition, but many of the so‐called Marketeers are now ready to admit to there being problems. What has emerged, however, in the last year or two is that to the British people, the Common Market is not a political question; there are probably as many against it in both camps; big business remains for it, but the spate of letters in the correspondence columns of newspapers from people who, having had time to think, expressing misgivings, cannot have escaped observation by the policy‐makers. A few politicians confess to having second thoughts, mainly from concern at the price the British public may be called upon to pay.

The Queen's Speech opening the new Session of Parliament contained three references to education. In the first place, it declared that the Government would continue to develop higher education and that a Bill would be introduced to facilitate revision of the constitution of the older universities in Scotland and to provide for separate universities at St Andrews and Dundee.

It is unlikely that many public meetings of library workers will be held during the coming winter. In London, at any rate, the preoccupations of the time have increased in intensity rather than otherwise; the darkness of the streets is more or less opaque; the train difficulties are very real; and those who might receive librarians at their libraries are loth to keep their buildings open to later hours than are absolutely necessary. The Library Association shows no disposition to hold meetings and the President, whose hospitality made some pleasant gatherings possible last year, finds it impossible to extend that hospitality this winter. The suggestion that an occasional afternoon meeting might be held does not seem to have been made, but we hope it will be considered. At such a time as this we cannot afford to lose any opportunity for an exchange of ideas upon our work.

The food standards of the Indiana State Board of Health, which appear on another page, show that it is quite possible to lay down official definitions of various articles of food; and a study of these regulations may be of assistance to those authorities who are striving to arrive at some form of order out of the chaos which at present exists in this country in matters relating to food standards. With reference to milk, it will be seen that not only is the question of composition dealt with, but strict directions are given that milk derived from a cow which can in any way be considered as diseased is regarded as impure, and must therefore, says the Board, be considered as adulterated. In regard to butter and margarine, limits are given for the total amount of fat—which must consist entirely of milk‐fat in the case of the former substance—water, and salt; and not only are all preservatives forbidden, but the colouring matters are restricted, only certain vegetable colouring matters and some few coal‐tar colours being permitted. All cheese containing less than 10 per cent, of fat derived from milk must be plainly labelled as “ skim‐milk cheese”; and if it contains fat other than milk‐fat, it must be described as “ filled cheese.” Some exception is taken to the use of preservatives in cheese, inasmuch as it appears that cheese may contain a preservative if the name of such preservative is duly notified upon the label ; and the rules for the colouring of cheese are the same as those which apply to butter and margarine. All articles of food containing preservatives are considered as adulterated unless the package bears a label, printed in plain type and quite visible to the purchaser, stating that a preservative is present, and also giving the name of the preservative which has been used. Articles of confectionery must not contain any ingredient deleterious to health, such as terra alba, barytes, talc, or other mineral substance, nor may they contain poisonous colours or flavours.

Portastor all‐steel security vaults — protection against fire and theft The rapid introduction of information systems into the office environment has led to a growing concern over the security of such valuable and portable elements as wordprocessors and printers. A simple, safe and relatively cheap way to protect office equipment is offered by Brovault, from Portasilo's range of security vaults, Portastor.

The writer of a review article in the IT area depends on a variety of information sources containing authoritative material, hyped‐up reports, or even partial or pure fiction. Sometimes articles are biased or the author has a particular axe to grind — for instance the person is associated with a company and the article is no more than a dressed up sales piece. Academics are usually reliable — although unlikely to damn themselves with faint praise if the next grant is round the corner. I will try to exercise good judgement when assessing my information sources, supressing my various prejudices if possible. But what is meant by the word new? For the purposes of this article ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) protocol (rules) and ATM switches in broadband networks, and aspects of Cable‐TV and cable modems have received a lot of exposure. They will not be discussed here. However, there is much interest in the contest between fibreoptic systems to the home and the conversion of telephone lines to wideband lines. These topics will be discussed.

Merger waves have typically been viewed through the prism of either corporate strategy or macro-economics. This paper aims to broaden debate about factors that cause – or are associated with – mergers/merger waves over a 120-year period. It ascribes “personalities” to six distinct waves and draws an overarching conclusion about how merger architects are viewed.

Databases and interviews are used to piece together detail about CEOs associated with six distinct and recognized merger-waves during a 120-year focal period. The study establishes and defends, a priori, principles for interrogating data to get a sense of each wave-era’s corporate personality/idiosyncrasy. For each era, two exemplar CEO-profiles are presented and – through inductive-reasoning – held out as representative.

Distinct personalities are associated with six merger waves. Each wave is given a summary anthropomorphic description which conveys a sense that it may be viewed as the non-rationale expression of aggregate and historically distinct CEO behavior within a circumscribed timeframe.

The work’s key limitation – explicitly acknowledged – is that it amassed data/evidence from disparate historical sources. However, the authors have developed and defended principles for addressing this concern.

Improved investment analyses, in particular. The work prefigures formal establishment of a new variable-set impacting share-price prediction.

The paper offers a perspective on how psychological/personality-related variables impact management decision-making, creating something of a bridge between mostly non-overlapping research disciplines.

The paper broadens debate about how and why merger waves occur. It removes the exclusive analysis of merger waves from the hands of economic historians and strategic management theorists.

This review covers those aspects of communications which are relatively new and will probably have a continuing impact for at least two years — although this forecast, like nearly all other forecasts, is likely to be mostly wrong. A small amount of essential basic material is included — such as the section entitled ‘The bandwidth/speed imperative’, So much effort is being devoted to this subject, particularly in the case of POTS ( Plain Old Telephone System) improvements, that a few words about it seems to be in order.