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The aim of this paper is to draw together within an evaluative framework British research‐based material concerning the impact of children, or the absence of children, on the quality and stability of the marriage relationship. The focus, therefore, is quite specific, and there is no attempt to review the whole corpus of literature on childbearing and child‐rearing. The relevant material is limited, fragmentary, and scattered across the literature of several disciplines. For such reasons it has been necessary in parts to draw upon American research both to indicate where the gaps and possibilities in indigenous research may lie and to show how far British findings supplement and support the American. Despite its thinness and incohesiveness, however, British material is adequate to test some common ideas about the relationship between children and marriage and, as will be seen, some of the conclusions to which it leads are counter‐intuitive, or at least contrary to beliefs which are widely found amongst relevant professionals as well as amongst the general public.

Bonded composite repair technology was pioneered at ARL and has been successfully used to repair a wide range of military and civilian aircraft. The technique has proved to be very cost effective and has been shown to increase the availability of aircraft by significantly reducing the repair time. ARL has undertaken collaborative work with a number of airline operators, the CAA and FAA and with Boeing to demonstrate the advantage of the technology when compared to conventional repair methods. The Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) has signed a licence agreement with an Australian company. Helitech P/L, to exploit this technology on a world‐wide basis.

Emphasising the significance of managing environmental and social issues for businesses, the chapter aims at highlighting the need of developing a non-financial risk management system for elevating corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in China. Particularly, through discussing its importance, opportunities, and challenges.

Analysis and discussion of the chapter are based on multiple sources of information. Review of literature includes authoritative academic articles, reports from renowned global organisations, media coverage of corporations, and examples of business cases in China.

Several key findings are covered in the chapter. First of all, environmental and social concerns are usually being deemed as intangible issues that need to be properly articulated and managed by an effective non-financial risk management system for enhancing corporate sustainability in China. Secondly, through different interpretations of sustainability, links could be drawn for non-financial risk management and sustainability. Thirdly, by explaining the impacts from non-financial risk management to sustainable development and profits, the chapter has argued CSR as a clear business case for any company in China. Fourthly, challenges are also portrayed for the effective management of non-financial risk management by corporations. Finally, the need of a well-defined non-financial risk management system for helping businesses to be more competitive, thus, moving closer to sustainability in China and elsewhere is provided.

Integrating environmental and social risks is critical to the effective management of any corporation’s real risks and to improve resource allocation in a sustainable fashion. This demands a systematic and strategic identification of issues through non-financial risk management. Most significantly, this chapter has shown the way this can be achieved by any corporation in China, and the concepts can be applied into other societies.

The contribution of the chapter is thought to be significant. Although there exists a wide body of research on sustainable development, risk management and CSR in China, there is limited insight into how corporations can effectively conceptualise such intangible or non-financial risks in relation to sustainability.

THE article which we publish from the pen of Mr. L. Stanley Jast is the first of many which we hope will come from his pen, now that he has release from regular library duties. Anything that Mr. Jast has to say is said with originality even if the subject is not original; his quality has always been to give an independent and novel twist to almost everything he touches. We think our readers will find this to be so when he touches the important question of “The Library and Leisure.”

LIBRARIES have come impressively into the public picture in the past year or two, and seldom with more effect than when Their Majesties the King and Queen opened the new Central Reference Library at Manchester on July 17th. In a time, which is nearly the end of a great depression, that the city which probably felt the depression more than any in the Kingdom should have proceeded with the building of a vast store‐house of learning is a fact of great social significance and a happy augury for libraries as a whole. His Majesty the King has been most felicitous in providing what we may call “slogans” for libraries. It will be remembered that in connection with the opening of the National Central Library, he suggested that it was a “University which all may join and which none need ever leave” —words which should be written in imperishable letters upon that library and be printed upon its stationery for ever. As Mr. J. D. Stewart said at the annual meeting of the National Central Library, it was a slogan which every public library would like to appropriate. At Manchester, His Majesty gave us another. He said: “To our urban population open libraries are as essential to health of mind, as open spaces to health of body.” This will be at the disposal of all of us for use. It is a wonderful thing that Manchester in these times has been able to provide a building costing £450,000 embodying all that is modern and all that is attractive in the design of libraries. The architect, Mr. Vincent Harris, and the successive librarians, Mr. Jast and Mr. Nowell, are to be congratulated upon the crown of their work.

OVER several decades the Defence Science and Technology Organisation's Aeronautical Research Laboratory (ARL) has undertaken materials research focussed on support for maintenance and life extension of military aircraft. The reason for selecting this research focus — rather than development of new materials — derives from the fact that approximately half of the through‐life cost of a military aircraft is spent on maintenance. The cost‐effectiveness of research which reduces maintenance costs can therefore be substantial. Similarly, research activities which prolong the service life of an aircraft can provide large benefits by delaying purchase of a replacement fleet; acquisition costs are also large, at approximately one‐third of the through‐life cost of an aircraft fleet. A recent Australian evaluation of the cost‐effectiveness of materials‐related research aimed at reducing cost‐of ownership reported a benefit: cost ratio of the order of 25:1. One example is the Mirage IIIO whose initial design safe life of 24000 flying hours was extended to 4,000 flying hours as a result of research and development carried out at ARL; the aircraft was flown for six years more than initially planned, effectively delaying the need to replace the fleet. This type of life extension R&D requires a range of scientific and engineering approaches, focussed on evaluation of potential problems, and the development of technologically feasible life‐extension measures. Many of the maintenance‐reducing and life‐extension developments for military aircraft are readily applicable to aging civil aircraft. This paper highlights some of the materials research — specifically improved corrosion protection, evaluation of defects using non‐destructive inspection and repair of damage — which is now proving to be applicable to aging aircraft.

Non‐destructive inspection. Safety‐by‐inspection There are several possible approaches to the safe extension of the useful service life of aging aircraft beyond the planned service life, including:

THE subject of penalties for undue detention of books may be regarded from various points of view. The librarian, it must be admitted, is prone to consider the receipts from this source as a welcome addition to the library's income. It assists him to eke out the expenditure of the restricted rate, and few library authorities are able to do without this additional income, even if they desire to do so. Where other penalties are inflicted it will usually be found that the rate limit of those libraries has been removed; however, it has been whispered that even in some of the libraries where the experiment has been tried the authorities are considering the policy of reverting to the old system.

The Principle of Legitimacy as formulated by Malinowski (1930) states that the father is indispensable for the full status of the child and that distinctions are always drawn which stigmatise those who are fatherless in a social sense. The universality of this rule has been a moot point since there is empirical refutation of it in Caribbean societies, which have consistently high illegitimacy rates (Hartley, 1980) and more recently, the concurrent rise of illegitimacy rates in the U.S. (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1982:66) and in many European countries since the 1950s (Eurostat, 1983) suggests that the Principle of Legitimacy is an anachronism. Whether it is limited in its application or obsolete cannot be determined, however, without first considering the validity of illegitimacy rates as a measure of fatherlessness. That is, can high or escalating illegitimacy rates be taken as evidence that the father's role is diminished and the mother‐father‐child triad supplanted? In Scandinavian countries, it is clearly the case that they cannot. Trost (1977; 1978) has pointed out that in Sweden, cohabitation is increasingly regarded as a viable alternative to marriage and that many children born illegitimate are fatherless only according to a strictly legal definition. Similarly, Carter (1977: 131) discussing historical data from Great Britain, has maintained that illegitimacy rates denote official categorisation and do not necessarily reflect the formation of incomplete families. He argues that whereas birth and death are defined biologically, illegitimacy and suicide are social definitions. The same problems hindering the utility of suicide data, he asserts, arise in the construction of illegitimacy rates and ratios and in an equally intractable form.

The weld region obtained during friction stir welding (FSW) of metallic materials (including aluminum alloys) contains typically well-defined zones, each characterized by fairly unique microstructure and properties. The purpose of this paper is to carry out combined experimental and numerical investigations of the mechanical properties of materials residing in different weld zones of FSW joints of thick AA2139-T8 plates.

Within the experimental investigation, the following has been conducted: first, optical-microscopy characterization of the transverse sections of the FSW joints, in order to help identify and delineate weld zones; second, micro hardness field generation over the same transverse section in order to reconfirm the location and the extent of various weld zones; third, extraction of miniature tensile specimens from different weld zones and their experimental testing; and finally, extraction of a larger size tensile specimen spanning transversely the FSW weld and its testing. Within the computational investigation, an effort was made to: first, validate the mechanical properties obtained using the miniature tensile specimens; and second, demonstrate the need for the use of the miniature tensile specimens.

It is argued that the availability of weld-zone material mechanical properties is critical since: first, these properties are often inferior relative to their base-metal counterparts; second, the width of the weld in thick metallic-armor is often comparable to the armor thickness, and therefore may represent a significant portion of the armor exposed-surface area; and finally, modeling of the weld-material structural response under loading requires the availability of high-fidelity/validated material constitutive models, and the development of such models requires knowledge of the weld-material mechanical properties.

The importance of determining the mechanical properties of the material in different parts of the weld zone with sufficient accuracy is demonstrated.