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Reports on an audit of service organizations, clinical care and casemix. The sample included up to 40 consecutive cases of acute stroke (1CD10 161‐164) from each trust, admitted from 1 January to 31 March 1998 and 1 August to 31 October 1999. Feedback consisted of individualized reports showing participants’ own results compared to the national data, and regional multidisciplinary workshops between audit rounds. A total of 197 (81 per cent) trusts (6,894 cases) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland participated in the first round, and 175 (72 per cent) (5,823 cases) in the second. Of the 38 organisational standards, 29 improved between 1998 and 1999 (range 1‐20 per cent, median 5 per cent); 64 of the 71 process standards improved (range 1‐20 per cent, median 8 per cent). Inter‐rater reliability was good with kappa scores of 0.49 to 0.87. National multidisciplinary, cross sector audit is feasible and can promote service improvements. Comparison of participants’ results to national data is a useful way of identifying areas needing change at local level.

The former colleague at University College of Raymond Irwin (1902–1976) and his obituarist here presents a fuller portrait of this unusual man.

Literature on face‐to‐face intercultural business communication (IBC) suggests that language, culture, business culture, and interpersonal context variables lead to misunderstandings, but these predictors have not been studied with regard to e‐mail communication. This exploratory study identifies variables that cause e‐mail miscommunication, reduce work accomplishment, and harm business relationships. We conducted a survey to capture the effect of common predictors and asked respondents to share the most commonly employed strategies when communication problems arose. We offer a multi‐dimensional model for further research.

CIRCUMSTANCES have delayed us this month long enough for us to have read the page on the new President of the Library Association Professor Raymond Irwin. It is a tribute that all will endorse cordially. Since he went to University College he has identified himself even more intensely than he was able to do with every movement that concerns the betterment of libraries as well as his main occupation which was to maintain and extend the work of library training. He has done so, insomuch that students even from America, where good schools abound, have come to take the session at University College. We, as speaking for Grafton and Co., have been privileged to publish the three works by which he is best known, and we hope that they may still be available to readers, especially his Librarianship which is concise, profound and unpedantic a study of library “what's what” or “what should be” as any we know. Those who have not read it would advantage themselves by repairing the omission. His Bird Index, a reflection of the labours of his scanty and strenuous leisure of many years, is we suppose in the library of every reader of this journal. That he will do honour to the Presidency there is no possible doubt. His election was as wise as any that we have had; and the Brighton Conference in 1958 should be amongst our brightest and best.

Librarianship, the comprehensive title Mr. R. Irwin has given to the small, concentrated series of discourses recently published by Messrs. Grafton & Co., is a sort of landmark in our thinking. It is a valiant attempt to establish some sort of arena for librarians ; not, indeed, a “philosophy of librarianship”—that, Mr. Irwin asserts, is not feasible as the term philosophy can be applied correctly only to subjects which are part of philosophy itself, although he admits a philosophy of religion, of science and, tentatively, of history. In spite of this precision, the book is what we ordinary librarians call a philosophy of librarianship. Like all good books, it will be the cause of considerable discussion and probably a good deal of argument, some of which the Editor of a library journal thinks it appropriate to indicate, for the book goes to the roots of current activities. But, in the first place, the author Stands apart as it were to get a comprehensive view and then asserts that librarianship is a word for “ applied bibliography ” and that definition covers every activity, book‐selection, bibliography popularly named, cataloguing, classification and the general exploiting of books. Librarianship is one technique, not several, and he implies that it has suffered from the tendency to teach library subjects as separate techniques, for example, cataloguing and classification which are actually one process. This separation was the result of part‐time and other fortuitous forms of teaching. Since the advent of library schools the tendency of the training and examination courses of the Library Association, and as a consequence of the schools themselves, has been to create a unity of Studies which is the perfect librarian's soundest equipment. That is the briefest Statement is the purpose.

IF work study principles are being applied rather belatedly to the organisation of clerical duties it is doubtless because the area, being much smaller, is recognised as a less profitable one in which to effect substantial savings. There is, however, an increasing use of such techniques in offices.

The purpose of this paper is two fold: educate investors about hedge fund managers' activities prior to the fraud recognition by the authorities and to help investors and other stakeholders in the hedge fund industry identify red flags before fraud is actually committed.

The paper investigates fraud committed by the Bayou Funds, Beacon Hill Asset Management, Lancer Management Group (LMG), Lipper & Company and Maricopa investment fund. The fraud activities took place during 2000 and 2005.

The five cases alone cost the hedge fund investors more than $1.5 billion. Investors may have had a good opportunity for avoiding the irrecoverable costs of the fraud had they carefully vetted the backgrounds of the hedge fund managers and/or continuously monitored the funds activities, especially during turbulent market environments.

This is the first research paper to identify and extensively investigate fraud committed by hedge funds. In spite of the size of the hedge fund industry and relatively substantial level and inevitably recurring fraud, academic journals are to yet address this issue. The paper is of great value to hedge funds and their individual and institutional investors, asset managers, financial advisers and regulators.

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.

SIR ALAN HERBERT SUGGESTS TWO‐PENCE A certain liveliness has been created in the past month by the re‐appearance of the “Lending Rights” idea, which in one way or another has pursued public libraries almost from their beginnings. It is an idea with which most authors, though not all, must feel sympathy, since it is by the sale of their books that many authors live. Why, they contend, should authors, alone among creative workers, receive only the sale royalties of their books—there are of course other rights but the statement is true in this connection—while the player, composer, dramatist, singer, player actor, and all creators of public entertainment and recorders of it have the Performing Rights Act, which assures them that they receive for every public performance of their work their due royalty and thus an income large or small according to their success.

As smart technologies become an integral part of real estate in smart cities, the purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of ubiquitous computing on space users in smart real estate.

The analysis builds on two fields of knowledge rarely referenced in real estate studies: computer sciences and social sciences. The paper starts by analysing the idiosyncrasies of a new type of space user in smart real estate, known as the Cyber-dasein in reference to Heidegger’s phenomenology. The Cyber-dasein serves as an archetypical space user in smart environments.

The paper introduces digital-time as a new realm of real estate, and discusses the use of “experienced utility” in hedonic pricing models of smart real estate. It concludes by advocating a multidisciplinary collaborative approach for future research on real estate in smart environments.

There is a need for the real estate sector to decide on a metric for the new digital dimension of real estate owing to the implementation of smart technologies in the built environment.

This is the first research paper on this important topic. It is totally original and new.