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Vulnerability analysis provides an assessment of the likelihood of system failure in a man‐made hostile environment, involving sabotage, security compromise and combat damage. The fault‐tree approach proved most useful as many obscure but significant failure modes surfaced as a result of the step‐by‐step logic involved. Analysis tools were applied to the problems of nuclear reactor sabotage, space shuttle and combat system vulnerability. An increased qualitative understanding of system vulnerabilities, the effectiveness of counter‐measures and the ranking of scenarios by their attractiveness to saboteurs or other adversaries were the chief results of the work.

The results of a study of the reliability of the Los Alamos National Laboratory electrical system are discussed and an assessment of the risk arising from power interruptions is made. The study was intended to provide a current status of the system and to rank modifications to improve the system. Fault‐tree analysis, cause‐consequence analysis, and directed graphs were used. The study resulted in a ranking of the relative importance of the consequences of power loss to various Los Alamos technical sites and facilities, sets of equipment whose failure will lead to loss of power to the sites, and statistical estimates of the frequency of power loss to sites and facilities.

This article describes a programme planning tool for complex research and development projects called the Process Tree Management Tool (PTMT). The PTMT was developed for use in programme management for a particular large, diverse, advanced weapon system. The PTMT includes a set of logic diagrams and specially developed software for manipulating the information represented by the logic diagrams. Two logic diagrams are included in the PTMT in its current form. One diagram, called a process tree, graphically represents the physical processes that occur when an engineered system functions successfully. Another, called a programme tree, includes gates representing elements of a successful research, development, and fabrication programme. These trees are used in conjunction to store programmatic and scientific information useful for a manager of a large, technical research and development programme. The objective of this article is to explain the methodology involved in development of the process tree and its associated programme tree and to describe a computer software tool based on the HYPERTALK language that make the logic diagrams vastly more useful to the manager. The methodology is illustrated by a relatively simple and understandable example.

We enjoin stakeholder theory, radical-cultural feminist theory, and critical race theory with critical intersectionality to critique findings which suggest that there still are significantly more men than women on nearly every Fortune 500 board of directors, with only six corporations featuring (50-50%) gender equity in 2017. Also, only 4.1% board members are women of color and 9% are men of color. Sixty-five people of color on corporate boards serve on more than one board. This means there are even fewer people of color filling top corporate leadership positions than meets the eye. The proposed alternative course of action is for boards of directors to follow the example of the small handful of peer Fortune 500 corporations that have achieved greater levels of board diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A highly significant action taken by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, reported elsewhere in this issue, could well result in important advances in surveillance and probably legislative control over enforcement of certain aspects of EEC legislation in the Member‐states. The Minister has sent an urgent request to the Commission in Brussels to dispatch inspectors to each country, including the United Kingdom, to examine and report on the standards of inspection and hygiene with detailed information on how the EEC Directive on Poultry Meat is being implemented. Information of the method of financing the cost of poultrymeat inspection in each country has ben requested. The comprehensive survey is seen as a common approach in this one field. The Minister requested that the results of the inspectors' reports should be available to him and other Member‐states.

The findings of the Steering Group on Food Freshness in relation to the compulsory date marking of food contained in their Report, reviewed elsewhere in this issue, has brought within measurable distance the Regulations which were, in any case, promised for1975. The Group consider that the extension of voluntary open date marking systems will not be sufficiently rapid (or sufficiently comprehensive) to avoid the need or justify the delay in introducing legislation.

From earliest times the land and all it produced to feed and sustain those who dwelt on it was mankind's greatest asset. From the Biblical “land of milk and honey”, down through history to the “country of farmers” visualised by the American colonists when they severed the links with the mother country, those who had all their needs met by the land were blessed — they still are! The inevitable change brought about by the fast‐growing populations caused them to turn to industry; Britain introduced the “machine age” to the world; the USA the concept of mass production — and the troubles and problems of man increased to the present chaos of to‐day. There remained areas which depended on an agri‐economy — the granary countries, as the vast open spaces of pre‐War Russia; now the great plains of North America, to supply grain for the bread of the peoples of the dense industrial conurbations, which no longer produced anything like enough to feed themselves.