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To provide educationalists with an understanding of the key quality issues relating to multiple‐choice tests, and a set of guidelines for the quality assurance of such tests.

The discussion of quality issues is structured to reflect the order in which those issues naturally arise. It covers the design of individual multiple‐choice questions, issues relating to the question bank as a whole, choice of test format, and what can be learned through post‐test analysis. The paper offers practical advice, with an emphasis on maximising test reliability.

It is recognised that considerable expertise and effort is required to undertake a thorough post‐test statistical analysis, but pre‐test quality assurance is relatively straightforward, if labour‐intensive. The question of which is best amongst the various alternative test formats is left open.

The general issue of quality assurance of multiple‐choice tests is surely an important one, yet the author is not aware of any other publication that deals directly with this topic.

In April we celebrate Pets Are Wonderful Month (PAW) to honor the companion animals that bring joy and love to their owners' lives. Humans have lived with animals as companions for thousands of years and during that time our knowledge about the animals we choose as pets has grown enormously. Recent research involving pet therapy indicates that not only do pets give us love and companionship, but they also are beneficial to our physical and mental health. Pets are used in nursing homes, prisons, and mental health institutions, with autistic children, and in many other capacities.

Thousands of children, and many grown‐ups too, have at last had their patience rewarded by the appearance of another Arthur Ransome in the Swallows and Amazons series. There was general unhappiness last Christmas when there was no new tale, many children appearing to think that there must be something wrong and that Christmas would not, in fact, be Christmas without a Ransome. Much as authors dislike writing to order, Mr. Ransome would surely have been touched had he seen the disappointed faces. His readers now range from the under tens to the well‐over‐twenties, for the latter are still faithful to the favourite writer of their childhood. All ages will be delighted with Great Northern (Cape, 9/‐) in which the Walkers, Blacketts and Callums go sailing round the Hebrides with Captain Flint and have adventures appropriate to a Scottish setting. Dick's bird — watching activities start the children on the trail of the great northern diver in an effort to confirm an important scientific discovery. The figure of Mr. Jemmerling, the famous egg‐collector, looms dangerously near and he is not the only enemy to be avoided. In The Story of Migration (Harrap, 10/6) Mr. E. A. R. Ennion deals not only with birds but also with mammals, reptiles, fish and insects. The information is attractively presented and illustrated. A nature book for younger readers is J. M. Young's The Blue Bowl (Chambers, 7/6) which describes a country family, their pets (wild and tame) and the fascinating life of the countryside between Perth and Aberdeen. Another book for bright boys and girls is Roger Duvoisin's They put out to Sea (University of London Pr., 12/6) which tells how the world was discovered from the time of the earliest traders to the days of Magellan. This book is strikingly illustrated with line drawings on almost every page and double plates in bright colours; it includes sketch maps, a bibliography and an index. Boys interested in the sea can read of the everyday life of a cadet in the merchant navy in The First Tripper (O.U.P., 7/6) by Peter Dawlish. Interwoven among the adventures is much practical information for boys wanting to go to sea.

Before starting to trace the development of PRECIS to its theoretical beginnings I shall describe the system briefly in its present form. This will serve not only as an introduction for those who are not familiar with the system, but will also help to explain the relevance of some of the historical sections which follow, in which we shall see how a machine‐produced alphabetical indexing system, based on a syntax derived from a study of natural language, developed out of research into principles for a new general classification.

The purpose of the paper is to show that the Arabian Peninsula, and the United Arab Emirates in particular, has not been spared by the trends of biodiversity loss observed on the world scale. The authors aim to present a rapid review of the challenges facing the biodiversity in the UAE and the solutions that this young country proposes to counteract the erosion of its biodiversity.

The authors gathered and compiled published and unpublished information from governmental and non‐governmental sources.

Despite being regarded as a vast desertic and unfertile area with one of the lowest human populations in the world, the UAE hosts a unique and remarkably adapted fauna and flora. Adding to natural causes (drought), the main threats facing biodiversity identified were: coastal development and urbanisation, as well as over‐exploitation of natural resources (fishing, hunting, grazing and water extraction) that are linked with the tremendous population increase and changes in lifestyle. Traditional systems of resource management in the UAE have been abandoned. Over the last few decades, the UAE has lost most of its big fauna and is witnessing the remaining Arabian leopard, Mountain Gazelle, Arabian Tahr, Arabian Sailfish, groupers and shark populations at the brink of extinction.

The paper proposes the inclusion of environmental issues in the development planning (with proper environment impact assessments), the involvement of local communities in the decision making and the improvement of federal and international trans‐boundaries collaborations. Highlights that an urgent step would be the implementation of integrated costal management zoning to stop the current extent of coastal development that contributes through physical alteration of habitats to the disappearance of key resources and habitats.

The approach of biocybernetics and non‐equilibrium systems dynamics is used to analyse biological, psychological, anthropological and cultural evolution. Using experimental data, positive feedback of biological activation and Prigogine‐Einstein fluctuation analysis, the energy dissipation equations for biological and anthropological evolution are developed.

This study investigated the design of three online public library catalogs in light of the cognitive ability and success of children ages five to eight.

A quasi-experimental approach was employed to examine the influence of system design on children’s searching strategies and search success. Interviews were used to explore children’s rationale for using icons and taxonomies in the catalogs. Fifty one children from one public library participated in this study. Inferential statistics were utilized to whether significant differences existed between use of the catalogs and the children’s success in finding information.

Use of images and text were helpful in searching the catalogs. Results of the ANOVA test indicated no significant difference among children’s searching success rates and the three catalogs. Additionally, the participants misidentified representations used in icons in all three catalogs and created valid search paths that did not produce results. There was a disconnect between the children’s cognitive abilities and the design representations of the three catalogs.

The study took place in one location, thus one should not overgeneralize the findings. Use of assigned tasks may have affected children’s success rates. Children’s searching using printed cards of display screens from the three catalogs instead of real-time interaction with them is also a limitation.

Because of the children’s reliance on images, the choice of visual representations is crucial to successful searching. Interface designers should involve young users in the design of today’s online catalogs. They should also consider new forms of representations such as auditory icons, verbal mouse overs, and zooms.

In addition to addressing the need for research on young children’s information seeking and use of online catalogs in public libraries, this research focuses on the need for an additional layer of visual representation and highlights flaws in currently used catalog designs.

Food and water safety is a major international concern. Among the food groups implicated with greater frequency in recent years as having caused or been associated with enteric diseases in humans are raw fruits and vegetables. Outbreaks of diseases caused by infectious and toxigenic bacteria as well as parasites and viruses have been documented to occur as a result of consumption of contaminated produce. This paper seeks to review the scientific literature reporting evidence to support the potential for preharvest contamination of fruits and vegetables intended to be eaten raw.

Sources of preharvest contamination of produce include manure, manure compost, sewage sludge, irrigation water, runoff water from livestock operations, and wild and domestic animals. Literature was reviewed to assess the conditions affecting survival of pathogenic microorganisms originating from these sources in preharvest environments and potential for contamination of produce before or at the time of harvest.

Prevention of preharvest contamination is essential to minimizing the risk of illness caused by consuming raw produce because postharvest treatment with sanitizers cannot be relied upon to eliminate pathogens.

A better understanding of the behaviour of pathogens in preharvest environments will enhance the prospect of developing effective strategies and interventions that will assure the delivery of safe produce to the consumer.

The purpose of this study is to propose a knowledge‐based mobile learning framework that integrates various types of museum‐wide content, and supports ubiquitous, context‐aware, personalized learning for museums.

A unified knowledge base with multi‐layer reusable content structures serves as the kernel component to integrate content from exhibitions for education and collection in a museum. The How‐Net approach is adopted to build a unified natural and cultural ontology. The ontology functions as a common and sharable knowledge concept that denotes each knowledge element in the unified knowledge base, and associates each learner's learning context and usage with a content and usage profile respectively. Data mining algorithms, e.g. association mining and clustering, are applied to discover useful patterns for ubiquitous personalization from these content and usage profiles.

A pilot project based on the proposed framework has been successfully implemented in the Life Science Hall of the National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS), Taiwan, demonstrating the feasibility of this framework.

This study proposes a mobile learning framework that can be replicated in many museums. This framework improves learners' learning experiences with rich related content, and with ubiquitous, proactive and adaptive services. Museums can also benefit from implementing this framework through outreach services for educational, promoting and usability needs from combining mobile and Internet communication technologies and learning services.

The Australian publishing industry continued to expand during the period under review and the last six months of 1979 witnessed a record number of books published in Australia. According to the Australian Bookseller and Publisher, 1,726 titles with a total retail price of A$16,861.44 were published compared with 1,413 titles (A$11,351.92) for the same period in 1978.