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A national multi‐gigabit‐per‐second research and education network known as the National Research and Education Network is to be established by 1996, according to the High‐Performance Computing Act of 1991 (P.L. 102–194) passed in December 1991. Commonly known as the NREN and referred to as the “information highway,” this electronic network is expected to provide scientific, educational, and economic benefits for the United States and to serve as the basis for an all‐encompassing National Information Infrastructure available to all citizens. The idea of the NREN began in the late 1960s in the Department of Defense and its Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with the development of ARPANet, the first packet‐switching network. This evolved into the Internet, or Interim NREN, after the National Science Foundation (NSF) linked its national supercomputing centers with the NSFNet. The NSFNet is to be the technological backbone for the NREN, which will continue the networking begun by the Internet. Initially, the NREN is intended to interconnect researchers and resources of research institutions, educational institutions, industry, and government in every state.

The life insurance industry has been exposed to high levels of longevity risk born from the mismatch between realized mortality trends and anticipated forecast. Annuity providers are exposed to extended periods of annuity payments. There are no immediate instruments in the market to counter the risk directly. This paper aims to develop appropriate instruments for hedging longevity risk and providing an insight on how existing products can be tailor-made to effectively immunize portfolios consisting of life insurance using a cointegration vector error correction model with regime-switching (RS-VECM), which enables both short-term fluctuations, through the autoregressive structure [AR(1)] and long-run equilibria using a cointegration relationship. The authors also develop synthetic products that can be used to effectively hedge longevity risk faced by life insurance and annuity providers who actively hold portfolios of life insurance products. Models are derived using South African data. The authors also derive closed-form expressions for hedge ratios associated with synthetic products written on life insurance contracts as this will provide a natural way of immunizing the associated portfolios. The authors further show how to address the current liquidity challenges in the longevity market by devising longevity swaps and develop pricing and hedging algorithms for longevity-linked securities. The use of a cointergrating relationship improves the model fitting process, as all the VECMs and RS-VECMs yield greater criteria values than their vector autoregressive model (VAR) and regime-switching vector autoregressive model (RS-VAR) counterpart’s, even though there are accruing parameters involved.

The market model adopted from Ngai and Sherris (2011) is a cointegration RS-VECM for this enables both short-term fluctuations, through the AR(1) and long-run equilibria using a cointegration relationship (Johansen, 1988, 1995a, 1995b), with a heteroskedasticity through the use of regime-switching. The RS-VECM is seen to have the best fit for Australian data under various model selection criteria by Sherris and Zhang (2009). Harris (1997) (Sajjad et al., 2008) also fits a regime-switching VAR model using Australian (UK and US) data to four key macroeconomic variables (market stock indices), showing that regime-switching is a significant improvement over autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (ARCH) and generalised autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) processes in the account for volatility, evidence similar to that of Sherris and Zhang (2009) in the case of Exponential Regressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ERCH). Ngai and Sherris (2011) and Sherris and Zhang (2009) also fit a VAR model to Australian data with simultaneous regime-switching across many economic and financial series.

The authors develop a longevity swap using nighttime data instead of usual income measures as it yields statistically accurate results. The authors also develop longevity derivatives and annuities including variable annuities with guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB) and inflation-indexed annuities. Improved market and mortality models are developed and estimated using South African data to model the underlying risks. Macroeconomic variables dependence is modeled using a cointegrating VECM as used in Ngai and Sherris (2011), which enables both short-run dependence and long-run equilibrium. Longevity swaps provide protection against longevity risk and benefit the most from hedging longevity risk. Longevity bonds are also effective as a hedging instrument in life annuities. The cost of hedging, as reflected in the price of longevity risk, has a statistically significant effect on the effectiveness of hedging options.

This study relied on secondary data partly reported by independent institutions and the government, which may be biased because of smoothening, interpolation or extrapolation processes.

An examination of South Africa’s mortality based on industry experience in comparison to population mortality would demand confirmation of the analysis in this paper based on Belgian data as well as other less developed economies. This study shows that to provide inflation-indexed life annuities, there is a need for an active market for hedging inflation in South Africa. This would demand the South African Government through the help of Actuarial Society of South Africa (ASSA) to issue inflation-indexed securities which will help annuities and insurance providers immunize their portfolios from longevity risk.

In South Africa, there is an infant market for inflation hedging and no market for longevity swaps. The effect of not being able to hedge inflation is guaranteed, and longevity swaps in annuity products is revealed to be useful and significant, particularly using developing or emerging economies as a laboratory. This study has shown that government issuance or allowing issuance, of longevity swaps, can enable insurers to manage longevity risk. If the South African Government, through ASSA, is to develop a projected mortality reference index for South Africa, this would allow the development of mortality-linked securities and longevity swaps which ultimately maximize the social welfare of life assurance policy holders.

The paper proposes longevity swaps and static hedging because they are simple, less costly and practical with feasible applications to the South African market, an economy of over 50 million people. As the market for MLS develops further, dynamic hedging should become possible.

The case we report elsewhere in this issue, in which a beverage described as “flavoured and coloured cider,” was sold to the public as “British Wine” at more than double the price of the genuine product, raises issues of importance not only to the general public, but also to producers and public authorities concerned with the administration of the Food and Drugs Act and other measures protecting the interests of the consumer. What standards of quality can the public reasonably demand from the supplier of British Wines? Owing to the great variety of wines produced and the multiplicity of processes involved, it has not been found practicable in any part of the world to devise a universally acceptable definition of wine, but clearly the primary condition which entitles a beverage to this description is that it should be produced with the product of the vine as a basis, at least in the case of those varieties which are marketed under foreign appellations. The consumer may also reasonably expect, and the conscientious wine merchant ordinarily takes care to provide, a wine which has keeping qualities, such as can be guaranteed only in a beverage which contains enough alcohol to preserve it. The descriptions “Port Type” or “Sherry Type” which commonly appear on British Wine labels entitle the purchaser to expect a beverage as nearly approaching the quality and characteristics of the imported variety as the Customs and Excise Regulations permit. Imported Sherries or Ports, thanks to the right granted to producers to fortify them, normally contain some 20 per cent. of Ethyl Alcohol, or 35/36 degrees of proof spirit. This right of fortification is denied to British Wines, which, therefore, must contain a lesser degree of alcohol obtained by natural fermentation. The purchaser, nevertheless, expects a beverage of the same keeping qualities as the imported variety. It is true that other wines keep in bottle at much lower strengths, but table wines of this character are usually consumed the same day as they are opened, and are not, like Ports and Sherries and their substitutes, kept for days or weeks in the cupbdard or on the sideboard. In our opinion, such keeping qualities cannot be achieved by British Wine makers with less than 16½ per cent. of alcohol, or 28/29 degrees of proof spirit, with a corresponding content in sweetness which materially helps to preserve the wine. In the drier types a still higher degree of strength is necessary. While it is true that the foreign and colonial class of N.E.25 and N.E.27 proof spirit are imported into this country, these wines are greatly helped by their high degree of sweetness which the British Wine producer can only reach, under existing regulations, at the expense of the alcohol necessary to ensure the keeping qualities demanded by his customers. In any regulations framed to protect the consumer, the above considerations, which are based on experience and traditional practice, must be constantly borne in mind.

The two islands of Trinidad and Tobago were made one administrative unit in the year 1889. The total area is something under two thousand square miles— that of an ordinary English county. The climate is tropical and healthy, the soil extremely fertile. With the exception of the asphalt of La Brea the population is mainly concerned with the forest products and with the care of and development of the sugar and cocoa plantations. The population is mixed—East Indians; people of negro stock, and a small proportion of people of European descent. With a population exhibiting widely different cultural levels the authorities responsible for public health are confronted with correspondingly complex administrative problems. The Government Chemical Department is occupied not only with the administration proper to such a department, but acts in an advisory capacity when matters relating to plantation or local manufactured products are brought to its notice. It is satisfactory to learn of the “notable developments which have taken place in the Department in recent years.” The extent of this development may be partly judged by the estimates, which in 1945 amounted to about twenty‐nine thousand dollars, to those for 1946: these were some forty‐three thousand dollars. This increase led to the enlarging of the Departmental buildings, the purchasing of special apparatus—where this came from is not stated, but if from this country its source of origin is suggested by “the extreme slowness of delivery,” and this it seems is, or let us hope was, delaying the benefits expected from the increase in expenditure. The library, too, was enlarged. Nor are the activities of the Department limited to Trinidad alone. Reference is made to the submission of samples from various islands in the British West Indies. In a word, the Chemical Department is in close and constant touch with all social and industrial developments in the island, and the hope is expressed, and it will no doubt be justified, that the laboratory will stand comparison with any laboratory of its kind and size in the Empire. With regard to the work of the Department, it seems that 5,193 samples were examinend and reported on during the year. Of these, 4,776 were official. The bulk of the work relates to Customs (1,509 samples) and Police (2,577 samples). Among the samples submitted by the police for examination by the Department were nine cases of suspected ground glass in foodstuffs, and 255 of viscera and other articles for poison. The Port of Spain City Council submitted 407 samples of potable water. It is observed that the capital city “appears for the first time as an appreciable source of work.” Only five samples were submitted in each of the two previous years. The result of the analyses showed that the samples submitted were uniformly satisfactory from a chemical point of view. The Customs examination of 146 samples were mainly for the purpose of determining the alcohol content of medical preparations and essences. The Excise examinations for duty purposes—1,314 samples in all—were almost exclusively concerned with samples of rum, bitters, brandy, and so forth. These were all of local manufacture, and they constitute an important item in local manufacture. Angostura and other bitters are too well known to require more than passing mention. The Preventive branch had to consider twelve cases for the possession of prepared opium. Eight prosecutions were successful, and fines, amounting to $925, were inflicted. As remarked above, all the major sources of water supply of the city are now examined each month. Other sources of water supply outside the city are now also subject to examination under the supervision of the Medical Services. The Colonial Secretary, to whom this report was submitted for the information of the Governor of the Colony, had informed the Town Clerk of the Port of Spain in June, 1945, that the Chemist's Department was in a position to carry out analyses of foodstuffs and drugs submitted by the City Council. In spite of this, the amount of work done for the City Council had not been on the scale that was anticipated, for up to the end of the year 1946 no samples of the kind had been sent in for purposes of analysis. On the other hand, we notice that 1,753 food samples were examined in 1946, as against 1,394 in 1945, but these were from areas outside the area under the control of the Port of Spain Authorities, but no drug samples were submitted, nor, it seems, have any been submitted under the Food and Drug Ordinance (chap. 12, No. 3) for several years! We are, therefore, not surprised to read that “it is impossible to say to what extent (if any) these important articles are sold in an adulterated or unsatisfactory condition.” It is true that adulteration of foodstuffs— nobody can say anything about drugs—would seem to be on the decrease as the percentage figure for 1944 was 10·8, that for 1945 was 9·3, and for 1946, 7. The figures, however, refer to foodstuffs in general. If, however, we turn to figures that relate to the purity of the domestic milk supply, we find that they tell in some respects a different tale. Out of the 1,753 samples sent in for analysis 454 were milk samples. Of these, 118, or 25·9 per cent., were reported against. It is true that the figure just given is less than that of the two preceding years—1944, 37·3 per cent., and 1945, 29·5 per cent.—but the chief chemist, writing with a full knowledge of the circumstances and making, no doubt, full allowance for administrative difficulties, calls the 1946 figure “outstandingly bad,” and this percentage of adulteration still does not tell the whole tale. It seems that the larger dairies are not to blame, but “it must be a matter for continued concern that one‐quarter of the milk sold by the smaller retailers is adulterated,” for they number among their customers those “who can least afford the nutritional loss involved.” The figures, it will be noted, show a decrease, and this, it is observed, is due to “greater vigilance” on the part of the police and “other competent authorities.” In the unadulterated samples the average fat content was 3·9 per cent., and of solids not fat 8·6 per cent., so there seems to be nothing wrong with the livestock as far as these figures go, but the average figures for the adulterated samples were 3·2 per cent. of fat and 7·6 per cent. of solids not fat. Of the 118 samples reported against, 69 were deficient in solids not fat, 17 in fat content, 32 were deficient in both. The standards laid down by law for the composition of milk are 8·5 per cent. solids not fat, and 3 per cent. fat. Fines amounting to $2,460 were imposed. It was pointed out that a remedy for the present state of things is to take more samples at more frequent intervals. This has been done, but the percentage of adulteration is still abnormally high. Increased vigilance by the police, who are, it appears, the sampling officers, is certainly demanded. The percentage of adulteration for other foodstuffs is very low. It calls for no special comment.

With the drastically changed pattern of the retail food trade in recent years in which the retailer's role has become little more than that of a provider of shelves for commodities, processed, prepared, packed and weighed by manufacturers, the defence afforded by the provisions of Section 113, Food and Drugs Act, 1955 has really come into its own. Nowadays it is undoubtedly the most commonly pleaded statutory defence. Because this pattern of trade would seem to offer scope for the use of the warranty defence (Sect. 115) in food prosecutions it is a little strange that this defence is not used more often.

“The year covered by the report starts in July, 1945, and ends in September, 1946. During this time the Council has had many complicated administrative tasks to perform because the period is the first almost complete year covering the change‐over from war to peace. In July of last year the ice cream trade was in the middle of one of the most phenomenal sets of conditions in the whole of its varied existence. It will be remembered that 60 per cent. of the pre‐war usage of sugar and an allocation of shimmed milk powder was still available to the trade, but the quantities were relatively small compared with the enormous public demand for our product, and the ice cream trade had begun to attract the attention of unscrupulous speculators. Every effort was made by the Ministry of Food, who alone had the power to exert any regulation whatever, to prevent unauthorised persons from entering the trade. These efforts were not always successful, but the Association took whatever steps lay in its power to assist the Ministry to prevent firms who had never been in the trade before starling the manufacture and the sale of ice cream, to the detriment of the established trader who had been doing his very best against almost overwhelming obstacles. The loose interpretation of the right of a caterer to make and sell ice cream was for a long time a most difficult problem, but during the year the Ministry of Food Executive Officers have managed to curtail a great many of the unauthorised sales of ice cream which were taking place at points far distant from the caterer's premises when the product had been made with materials obtained under a catering licence. In many of the large cities this type of trade brought the whole industry into disrepute because various forms of ice cream were being sold to the public at fantastically high prices. The whole problem of the manufacture of ice cream has been the subject of discussions by the members of the Technical Advisory Committee, mainly on the subject of proposed standards of quality and bacteriological purity. The Executive Council is indebted to the painstaking efforts of the members of this Committee for their careful researches and many long discussions. The work undertaken by the Ministry of Food and the knowledge it has gained in dietetic values during the years of war‐time feeding of the British population has been considered very carefully and the point of view of what constitutes the maximum nutrition in ice cream has altered from the pre‐war knowledge of rating the value of ice cream in accordance with the highest possible milk fats content. Professor Sir Jack Drummond, when he was the Nutritional Officer to the Ministry of Food, emphasised the need in the everyday diet of both children and adults, of the maximum amount of milk minerals and milk solids not fat. In normal times when ingredients are in free supply there is no difficulty with either children or grown‐ups in obtaining plentiful supplies of fat, but almost all of the value of the milk solids not fat has been forgotten or else brought into disrepute following the laws which were passed many years ago compelling tins of condensed skimmed milk to be marked ‘Unfit for Babies.’ The Technical Committee, taking all of these facts into consideration, has evolved a standard which has been agreed by the Executive Council and submitted to the Ministry of Food, designed to give the best type of ice cream, planned in such a way that the maximum amount of milk‐solids‐not‐fat can be included. This skimmed milk powder can be incorporated into the mix and still keep a reasonable quantity of fat, which in the Committee's opinion should consist only of milk fat. After the most careful research and discussions, having in mind the interest of the small trader who cannot install very elaborate machinery, it was agreed by the Committee that, when fresh dairy cream becomes available again, a minimum standard of milk fat in ice cream should be arranged to include the use of both fresh dairy milk and cream as well as enough skimmed milk powder to bring the total to a correct balance of ingredients which would freeze in the average type of freezer without becoming sandy or crystallised. There was a good deal of experience on which the Committee could base its findings, obtained from the use of the standards put into force by the Government of Northern Ireland before the war; these were not fully balanced and required some adjustment. Negotiations on the question of the standard between Ice Cream Alliance and the Wholesale Ice Cream Manufacturers' Federation were conducted at great length and the different points of view were examined with the utmost care. It has been found, however, that the proposals by the different Associations cannot be reconciled to form one standard common to the best interest of the members of both Associations. The Ice Cream Alliance has been safeguarding the welfare of the general public and thereby the future trade of its members, and it has insisted that the minimum standards which its Technical Committee has recommended should not be varied in principle to comply with the somewhat wider interpretation of the Wholesale Federation. One point upon which the Technical Committee lays great stress is that the tests for the standard should always be conducted by sampling the finished ice cream as delivered to the consumer, and not the ice cream mix as made in the factory. This would place definite limitations on the amount of over‐run which could be permitted and would prevent any ice cream manufacturer, regardless of his type of machinery, from giving a smaller quantity of fat or milk solids to the consumer, than his competitor who might have less elaborate and expensive machinery. It has, of course, been made clear that all questions relating to a standard for ice cream refer not to the present period of emergency, with its substitute ingredients, but to the time when all ingredients can be purchased free of any restriction by every ice cream manufacturer. There is no doubt that if it were possible to evolve a standard of substitute ingredients it would be of the greatest advantage to the trade, but this cannot be done until the right ingredients, namely skimmed milk powder, fat and sugar are made available to every member of the trade in equal proportions. Your Executive Council has approached the Minister of Food on various occasions seeking an interview to put these points before him and to emphasise the need for better and more consistent supplies of the right types of materials so that ice cream can be made worthy of its name by all manufacturers. It is also anxious to remove the difference in the allocations as between the larger manufacturer who receives 70 per cent. of his datum usage of fat and the ice cream trader who made his product in pre‐war days only from fresh milk, and who is now prohibited from making an ice cream for consumption with more than about 2¼ per cent. fat. The serious world position and shortage of food materials has, of course, worked against this project, and until there is some easing of the supply of raw materials for better distribution within the world as a whole, the British Government has found it is unable to provide supplies of the right ingredients. Your Chairman and Executive Council are, however, using every effort to bring about the desirable situation as quickly as possible. In recent months there had been major disasters to the trade which had been caused by the outbreak of typhoid fever conveyed through carriers of this disease to members of the general public through the medium of ice cream. These outbreaks have led to a tremendous amount of wrongful reporting in the daily Press and the many quite unjustified allegations against both the ice cream traders and the Local Government officials, particularly the Sanitary Inspectors and Medical Officers of Health, who are responsible for the interpretation of the 1938 Food and Drugs Act controlling the registration of ice cream manufacturing premises, and who have worked very hard to help both the trade and the public. It must be agreed that many ice cream manufacturers have been working without very much knowledge of the responsibilities of their trade and under enormous handicaps, due to the dilapidations caused by six years of war and their inability to have building work and decorations carried out to make their small factories suitable for the manufacture of ice cream. These years of war have also led to a much greater wear and tear on ice cream plant than would normally have been the case, because the trade has had to put up with flour instead of skimmed milk powder even before it was shut down in 1942. Deterioration and rust during the shut down period from September, 1942, until December, 1944, was even greater than if the plant had been in constant use even with substitute materials. The result has been that many ice cream traders have been faced with enormous difficulties of plant renewals at a time when machinery is unobtainable, with the result that unhygienic vessels and utensils have had to be kept in service, which in the ordinary way would have been scrapped many years ago. The Alliance is taking every step possible with the other Associations that manufacture plant equipment and utensils, to improve supplies to those who need the articles, but here again supplies of raw materials to the machinery equipment manufacturers are growing worse and worse. It is because of this situation that in the negotiations with the Ministry of Health regarding the compulsory heat treatment programme the greatest latitude is being requested so that no regulations would be brought into force until the trade is in a position to comply with them without undue hardship. We would like to record our appreciation to the other Associations who have expressed their willingness to collaborate with us for the good of the trade as a whole.”

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss disability hate crimes in the context of feminist theories of intersectionality.

A mixed-method approach is adopted, combing feminist auto-ethnography with case reviews of a number of disability hate crimes.

Disability hate crimes must be understood in the wider context of social inequality and the intersection of identities which make some people more vulnerable to criminal victimization than others.

Feminists can apply many of the lessons from third wave feminist debates about intersectionality to the topic of disability hate crimes, so that the multiplicity of inequalities which influence victimization are appropriately recognized. Policy changes are necessary to respond more appropriately to the intersectional forms of power underlying disability hate crimes.

There has not been a feminist exploration of disability hate crimes ever written before, so the chapter breaks new ground in exploring these issues.

Before this great innovation assaults the long‐suffering British public in mind and matter, in the retailer's cash register and the spender's pocket, a brief comparison between the present coinage and the promised decimal one might not be amiss. The £sd system has its faults and understandably is difficult for the foreigner, but no more so than the language and the weather. Like many things British it is so haphazard: why should there be 240 pennies to the pound? Why 12 pennies to the shilling? One thing, however, about this awkward currency is that it is amazingly well‐adapted to price variations at the lower level, and most commodities are in this range. Whether prices have adapted themselves to the flexibility of the coinage or the other way round is immaterial but the centuries have well and truly married the two. As a lowly coin such as the farthing has ceased to have commercial use with the falling value of money, it has disappeared and its place has been taken by the next larger, the halfpenny and then by the penny, and this must surely be the one great advantage of the £sd system.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a chemotherapy scheduling template that accounts for nurse resource availability and patient treatment needs to alleviate the mid-day patient load and provide quality services for patients.

Owing to treatment complexity in chemotherapy administration, nurses are required at the beginning, end and during treatment. When nurses are not available to continue treatment, the service is compromised, and the resource constraint is violated, which leads to inevitable delay that risks service quality. Consequently, an optimization method is used to create a scheduling template that minimizes the violation between resource assignment and treatment requirements, while leveling patient load throughout a day. A case study from a typical clinic day is presented to understand current scheduling issues, describe nursing resource constraints, and develop a constraint-based optimization model and leveling algorithm for the final template.

The approach is expected to reduce the variation in the system by 24 percent and result in five fewer chemo chairs used during peak hours. Adjusting staffing levels could further reduce resource constraint violations and more savings on chair occupancy. The actual implementation results indicate a 33 percent reduction on resource constraint violations and positive feedback from nursing staff for workload.

Other delays, including laboratory test, physician visit and treatment assignment, are potential research areas.

The study demonstrates significant improvement in mid-day patient load and meeting treatment needs using optimization with a unique objective.