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Maintaining an adequate nutritional state, important at all times, is never more so than during the dark days of Winter. The body reserves are then taxed in varying degrees of severity by sudden downward plunges of the thermometer, days when there is no sight of the sun, lashing rains and cold winds, ice, frost, snow, gales and blizzards. The body processes must be maintained against these onslaughts of nature — body temperatures, resistance against infections, a state of well‐being with all systems operating and an ability to “take it”. A sufficient and well balanced diet is vital to all this, most would say, the primarily significant factor. The National Food Surveys do not demonstrate any insufficiency in the national diet in terms of energy values, intake of vitamins, minerals and nutrients, but statistics can be fallacious amd misleading. NFS statistics are no indication of quality of food, its sufficiency for physiological purposes and to meet the economic stresses of the times. The intake of staple foods — bread, milk, butter, meat, &c., — have been slowly declining for years, as their prices rise higher and higher. If the Government had foreseen the massive unemployment problem, it is doubtful if they would have crippled the highly commendable School Meals Service. To have continued this — school milk, school dinners — even with the financial help it would have required would be seen as a “Supplementary Benefit” much better than the uncontrolled cash flow of social security. Child nutrition must be suffering. Stand outside a school at lunch‐time and watch the stream of children trailing along to the “Chippie” for a handfull of chip potatoes; even making a “meal” on an ice lollie.

The purpose of this study was to characterize fruit properties of pomegranate cultivars grown in South Africa in order to provide information to assist in selecting cultivars for food and industrial purposes, as well as to optimize postharvest handling and processing.

The physical, textural and chemical properties as well as volatile profile and free radical scavenging capacity of eight cultivars (cvs “Acco”, “Arakta”, “Bhagwa”, “Ganesh”, “Herskawitz,” “Molla de Elche”, “Ruby”, and “Wonderful”) were quantified to demonstrate the diversity among the characters of the commercially grown cultivars.

Statistically significant differences were found between cultivars for most of the evaluated characters, primarily highlighting the genetic diversity among the cultivars. The classification of fruit cultivars based on quality traits (such as size, texture, colour, soluble solids, acidity, juiciness and phenolics) showed the great potential of the cultivars for processing and fresh market. The relationship among these quality traits was analysed by principal component analysis (PCA) resulting in the separation of the investigated cultivars into two groups (cluster 1=Ruby, Arakta and Ganesh; Class 2=Bhagwa, Acco and Herskawitz) and two ungrouped cultivars (Molla de Elche and Wonderful). Specific understanding about quality traits of each cultivar was established using the correlation coefficients obtained.

This study provides valuable fundamental information that can be useful for commercial and industrial purposes, as well as the development of optimal postharvest handling and processing parameters for the investigated South African grown pomegranate cultivars.

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of elite women's biographical sketches in Who's Who-type collections, now out of copyright, published in Australia in the 1930s: Victoria (1934), New South Wales (1936) and Queensland (1939). It concentrates on information given about their schooling.

The biographical sketches of the women, defined as “elite” by their inclusion in three collections from the 1930s, were examined for information about their and their daughters' education. Using mixed methods in a prosopographical approach, this is mainly a quantitative analysis. It outlines and compares the schools they attended where given as well as providing basic demographic details of the 491 women.

The paper shows that, for those who gave educational details, the women and their daughters attended private schools almost exclusively. Three types of schools were listed – private venture, corporate, and a very few state schools. The paper demonstrates that the landscape for girls’ secondary schooling was not a settled terrain in terms of type, place, religion, or age of schools available for elite girls' education in the late 19th and early 20th century. Private schools are shown to be part of the “machinery of exclusiveness which characterised the inter-war years” (Teese, 1998, p. 402) and private venture schools survived well into the third decade of the 20th century.

Beyond the histories of individual schools, little is known about the educational profile of Australian elite women in the past. This largely quantitative analysis helps to uncover and compare across state-based cohorts, previously unknown demographic, and schooling details for interwar women who recorded their educational details, as well as for the NSW and Victorian daughters where given.

Although a comparatively rare disease in Great Britain, cases of trichinosis have been reported from different parts of the country from time to time. Statistics show that during the present century only 59 cases were reported prior to the Wolverhampton outbreak in 1941. Trichinosis is a parasitic disease. The Trichina spiralis lives in the small intestine, the female measuring about ⅛ in. in length and the male 1/16 in. The ova emerge as minute hair‐like embryos which burrow from the intestines to the musculature of the host. Thus if man consumes pork containing live trichinæ the larvæ are freed from their capsules by the action of the gastric juices, and maturity is attained in the small intestine. The female grows rapidly and at the end of a week gives rise to a swarm of a hundred or so embryos. The burrowing process starts again, and this boring into muscles produces intense muscular pains, swelling and tenderness, high fever, and other symptoms. The effects of cooking and preserving on infected meat are described by Mr. C. R. A. Martin, who says that thorough cooking for twenty minutes at a temperature above 150° F. is sufficient to destroy all trichinæ, providing the whole of the meat is subjected to this temperature for a similar period. It is obvious, therefore, that in domestic cookery boiling would be preferable to roasting in order to kill live parasites. Only very low temperatures (0°–5° F.) applied for three weeks have any effect on the vitality of trichinæ. Dry salting will kill all trichinæ in surface layers of the meat after exposure to the salt for fourteen days, but in the case of large bacon or hams a much longer exposure of eight to twelve weeks would be necessary, together with brine pumping of the thicker parts. Pickling in brine, if the brine is sufficiently strong, is a surer method of destroying larvæ. Smoking, partly through heat and partly the resinous products of burning pine sawdust, also has a slight effect on their vitality. It has, howver, been suggested that Memo. 62/Foods issued by the Ministry of Food, which recommends that a carcase affected with trichinosis should be condemned, is out of date and that there should be no grounds for ignoring the possibility of the disease during the ordinary routine meat inspections. In this connection, the recent circular dealing with outbreaks of cysticercus bovis infestation of cattle in different parts of the country should serve as a warning. A further warning is given in a letter to the British Medical Journal in which the writer deplores the way in which corned beef is served to the public. The procedure in the majority of shops, says the writer, is to open a large tin of corned beef and place the contents on a wooden cutting board. The same knife used for cutting uncooked sausages, uncooked beef, uncooked pork, and slabs of sausage meat is used, without any attempt at cleaning it, for cutting slices of corned beef. The writer goes on to say that the corned beef is then placed on the weighing machine plate, which quite normally in a butcher's shop is covered with blood. Further contact between the uncooked meat and corned beef is made when the wrapped (and sometimes unwrapped) corned beef is placed on top of the raw meat. Should parasitic worms or cysts which have evaded the eye of the meat inspector be present in the raw meat, they will be transferred to the corned beef by knives, by butchers' hands, by scales, and by direct contact with the raw meat. Many veterinarians have pressed for the detailed examination of pig carcases for trichinosis which would necessitate the removal of suspected muscle by means of a trichinoscope, but no such instrument is in existence in the abattoirs of this country. The whole operation, which is carried out as a matter of routine inspection in many Continental abattoirs, takes only a few minutes. Should simple safeguards in feeding and inspection be adopted, it seems fairly evident that the absence of a trichinoscope need not be regarded as a serious gap in our public health services, but the rarity of outbreaks of the disease in this country must not lead to complacency or to ignoring the possibility of its presence during the normal course of meat inspection.

This paper reviews the use of logit and probit models in marketing and focuses on demonstrating the use of ordered probability models. This type of model is appropriate for many applications in marketing and business where the dependent variable of interest is ordinal (e.g., likert scales). A comparison between the properties of the ordinary least squares (OLS) model and ordered logit and probit models is made using consumer satisfaction data on automobiles. This comparison between the two models shows that the use of OLS for ordered categorical data gives misleading results and produces biased estimates, leading to inaccurate hypothesis testing. The paper concludes that ordered probability models, such as the ones illustrated, should be employed in marketing and business research where the dependent variable is ordinal.

The widespread use of zinc dust paints and their economic advantages compared with the traditional methods of protecting steel from corrosion were described by speakers from the USA, Japan, the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway and the United Kingdom at a symposium organised by The Zinc Development Association in London on 25 and 26 September. This, the newest method of applying metallic zinc coatings to steel, has grown enormously in popularity during the last 10 years and has found many spectacular applications, such as for coating oil tankers of over 300,000 tons deadweight, oil and sulphur rigs in the Gulf of Florida, off‐shore oil drilling wells in Alaska, as well as for the more routine protection of bridges, railway rolling stock and the steelwork of chemical and other industrial plants. The symposium, which was attended by 300 people, mainly from the steel using industries in Britain and from the Continent, was the first of its kind at which users and suppliers of zinc dust paints and specialist consultants have been brought together to discuss the latest developments in zinc dust paints. Much interest was shown in descriptions of satisfactory methods of welding steel coated with zinc‐rich paints, and the simple ways in which health hazards from zinc fumes arising from welding can be avoided. It was stressed in several papers that zinc dust paints require good surface preparation, carefully controlled application and properly engineered overcoating, but the comparatively high initial cost of achieving this is amply repaid in reduced maintenance in subsequent years. The ZDA is preparing a full, illustrated report on the seminar which will contain the texts of the papers and an edited account of the discussions. This report will be sent to all who took part in the seminar and further copies will be available in a few weeks from the ZDA, 34 Berkeley Square, London.

As in diseases, a commercial crisis is a critical moment to go through. As soon as embarrassments arise, the question is whether one will resist or one will succumb. A crisis is the touchstone that allows us to gauge the soundness of commercial houses, the size of their commitments and of the resources they possess, in capital or in credit, to face up to them. Thanks to the crisis the market operates a sort of selection; the houses that have lost their balance collapse; the others resist. This is how crises indicate the firms that are dubious and those we can trust. Carried away as people were on the wings of credit, they now regain a foothold, although, alongside the businesses that are still afloat, a large number are now under water.

High-nitrogen steel is a common material for the manufacture of drilling equipment such as drill collars. However, its poor surface properties often limit its applications. The purpose of this paper is to find a way to enhance the surface performance of high-nitrogen steel, which is expected to improve the wear resistance of high-nitrogen steel.

The CoCrNi and CoCrFeNi medium-entropy alloy (MEA) coatings were prepared on high-nitrogen steel substrate by laser cladding technology. The microstructure, phase composition and element distribution of the fabricated coatings were investigated using scanning electronic microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction and X-ray diffraction. The phase structure, phase stability and structural stability of the CoCrNi and CoCrFeNi MEAs were investigated in combination with phase diagram calculation and molecular dynamics. Then the wear tests were carried out for coatings.

The results show that both prepared MEA coatings have good quality and contain a single face-centered cubic phase. The wear performance of MEA coatings is improved by the refinement of grain size and the increase of dislocation density. Due to the addition of Fe atoms, the lattice distortion of the CoCrFeNi system increased, resulting in a higher dislocation density of the coating. Cr atoms in the CoCrFeNi system are the largest, and the local lattice distortions induced by them are greater. Through this study, MEA coatings with high hardness can be expanded to drilling field applications.

CoCrFeNi and CoCrNi MEA coatings were successfully prepared on the surface of high-nitrogen steel for the first time without obvious defects. The micromorphology and grain orientation of the different kinds of coatings were discussed in detail. The hardness-strengthening mechanism and structure stability of the coatings were illustrated by experiments and molecular dynamics simulations.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-04-2024-0116/

Protective coatings based on epoxide resins have by now become well established industrial finishes and it is not therefore necessary to enter into a long and detailed introduction dealing with their chemical structure. What is, however, of importance to the user is the essential nature of the various types of epoxide finishes, with their usefulness and respective merits.