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The purpose of this paper is to explore the transition to and early experience of secondary school for students with autism from the perspective of their parents. It aimed to gather the parents’ personal accounts of their views of the transition experience for their child and of their perceptions of both the positive and the negative factors inherent in the process of transition. There was an emphasis on seeking useful information for others from the parent’s perception, views and choices.

As parents were reporting on their own perceptions and also their child’s experiences, a qualitative exploratory descriptive method was required. Thematic analysis was used as a pragmatic method to report on the experiences, meanings and the reality of the transition to secondary school from a parent’s perspective (Braun and Clarke, 2012).

A variety of supports and strategies were described, parents were unanimous in their emphasis of the importance of communication to them. Parents were concerned about secondary schools not fully understanding the nature of autism, and the impact this can have on their child as an individual. Despite differing perceptions and views on the purpose or end product of secondary educations for their child, all the parents communicated a desire for their child to reach their potential and make progress within the secondary school system.

This was a small qualitative study with a self-selected group of parents in the Republic of Ireland, with fathers underrepresented. It did not take any account from any other stakeholders or the students themselves.

Parents would benefit from more practical support and communication during this time in the child’s education. Their recommendations and personal experiences may serve as a useful reference point for parents preparing for this time in their child’s school life.

The study highlights the need to better understand how children with autism can be supported in making social attainments and connections within mainstream secondary schools in Ireland.

There is a small body of knowledge related to the secondary school experience for students with autism. It contributes the parental perspective and highlights areas for further research and practice.

While working in a rural district library system, the question of planning library/information services to meet the needs of the population was always of foremost importance. Community profiles of the region had been conducted continuously for ten years, and during the eleventh year it was decided to survey the entire area in a methodical way to search for the information needs of the population. The purpose of the study was to identify information needs in a specific rural area in Israel in order to design a plan for library/information provision to meet those needs. The study consisted of a literature search of relevant material on information needs in rural areas and less developed countries and a multi‐level field survey in one specific rural area of Israel.

David M. Gordon advanced labour economics with his theory of labour market segmentation, in which jobs rather than the marginal productivity of individual workers were the unit of analysis. He advanced economic historiography and macroeconomics by conceptualising social structures of accumulation – a framework built on the foundation of his institutionalist training and enriched by his study of Marxist economics. By appropriating methods from other social science disciplines into econometrics, he augmented empirical analysis in economics. He was a founding member of the Union of Radical Political Economics and its journal, the Review of Radical Political Economics – that advanced and promoted heterodox, radical, and Marxist economists in the United States. His contributions to economics, to organised labour, and to the New School for Social Research, where I studied with him, were stunning.

Part 1 lays out some context about the New School Graduate Faculty where Gordon taught. Part 2 explores what historical forces, including his family, led to his expansive creativity. Part 3 summarises how he expanded labour economics to include the relations as well as the technology of production, linked his understanding of the production process to a historical materialist view of labour in the United States, then extended that to econometric analyses of the US macroeconomy. Part 4 presents a bibliometric analysis to provide some idea of the impact of his work. I end with some concluding remarks.

Describes the results of a Scottish Library and Information Council‐funded project into the business information needs of companies in the rural areas of the north‐east of Scotland. Based on a survey by questionnaire, interviews and case studies, describes the information providers available to rural businesses, the pattern of present use of such agencies by companies, the nature of respondents’ information needs, problems in accessing information and attitudes to IT. Highlights as significant to businesses particular types of information, some of which are felt to require the support of expert advice. The use of existing agencies suggests that many companies are poorly informed as to which agencies to approach and that these are less likely to approach libraries than “business” organizations, i.e. those providers which are seen as being more dedicated to the interests of the business community. Finds that business information provision is a dynamic and constantly shifting environment, in terms of the appearance and demise of information providers; and suggests there are lessons to be learned from the experience of the traditional and long‐established services.

If one wanted a convenient and unoriginal label to describe Mr Roy Hattersley, Labour's new education spokesman, one could classify him as a whizz‐kid. He is young (just 40), bright, ambitious, full of ideas and anxious to get things done. He is a brilliant Parliamentary performer. He is tipped as a future Prime Minister and, therefore, has political weight. Edward Short, Michael Stewart, Patrick Gordon Walker — none of these worthy people, for reasons that we need not labour, could be described as whizz‐kids. Sir Edward Boyle of course, was young (39 when he became Minister of Education in 1962), bright and full of ideas. But he was not ambitious and did not have the professional politician's killer‐instinct. Mrs Thatcher, it is true, has many whizz‐kid qualities and she is certainly ambitious; but she is a woman and, in the Tory Party, it is still not acceptable for a woman to display such things too publicly.

Forward rates in the money market are systematically higher than realised spot rates, reflecting an unobservable term premium. This paper uses a Kalman filter specification to produce time‐varying estimates of the term premia in New Zealand and Australia. Three time series specifications are used to examine the properties of the premia, such as the average size, volatility, and the degree of mean reversion. Compared to the constant term premia estimates, the time‐varying estimates explain significantly more of the difference between forward and spot rates. The results suggest that the premium in New Zealand is slowly mean‐reverting, while the Australian premium reverts quickly to the mean. It is not clear whether the method of monetary policy implementation affects the term premium, although in New Zealand the premium has been smaller and less variable since the introduction of the Official Cash Rate in March 1999. A related finding is that the size of the term premium is correlated with the volatility of short‐term rates.

Fat provides a major contribution to the palatability of food. It has a lubricating effect and improves the texture of many food products, and it also acts as a heat transfer medium in the frying of food. Fat is also a carrier of fat soluble flavour compounds which make some high fat products such as butter very attractive to consumers. As a consequence of these characteristics, fat in the diet has risen to 42.6% of calories according to the National Food Survey of 1980. The fat content of the diet in western countries shows a considerable increase during this century, and it also contrasts with developing countries where the fat intake is considerably less. A UN report estimates that fats provide about 14 per cent of total calories in developing countries. This has stimulated considerable research into the metabolism of fat and the relationship between the high intake of fat and diseases prevalent in western countries.