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On 6th September, 2000 the SEC issued a press release accusing 33 companies and individuals of fraudulently using the Internet to make more than $10m in illegal profits by driving up the prices of more than 70 small stocks. The companies and individuals, including a bus mechanic, a car service driver and a self‐chilling can company, boosted the total market value of these stocks by $1.7bn, claimed the SEC, in announcing 11 civil fraud lawsuits filed in federal courts. ‘What used to require a network of professional promoters and brokers, banks of telephones and months to accomplish can now be done in minutes by a single person using the Internet and a home computer,’ SEC enforcement director Richard H. Walker said. Two weeks later, the SEC announced that it had settled an enforcement proceeding brought against a 15‐year‐old stock trader who, operating from a computer in a bedroom in his parents' home, had earned more than $270,000 in profits over a six‐month period by engaging in classic ‘pump and dump’ market manipulation of small over‐the‐counter stocks.

The very high rate of infant mortality and the profound effects of malnutrition during infancy on the physique in after life are of such national importance that no excuse is needed for referring to a subject which has been much to the fore of late, and has figured prominently in medical literature as well as in the columns of the daily press. The fact that about two‐thirds of the total infant mortality is due to diarrhœa is quite enough to show that the danger is not an imaginary one.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

Turvey (2007, Physica A) introduced a scaled variance ratio procedure for testing the random walk hypothesis (RWH) for financial time series by estimating Hurst coefficients for a fractional Brownian motion model of asset prices. The purpose of this paper is to extend his work by making the estimation procedure robust to heteroskedasticity and by addressing the multiple hypothesis testing problem.

Unbiased, heteroskedasticity consistent, variance ratio estimates are calculated for end of day price data for eight time lags over 12 agricultural commodity futures (front month) and 40 US equities from 2000-2014. A bootstrapped stepdown procedure is used to obtain appropriate statistical confidence for the multiplicity of hypothesis tests. The variance ratio approach is compared against regression-based testing for fractionality.

Failing to account for bias, heteroskedasticity, and multiplicity of testing can lead to large numbers of erroneous rejections of the null hypothesis of efficient markets following an independent random walk. Even with these adjustments, a few futures contracts significantly violate independence for short lags at the 99 percent level, and a number of equities/lags violate independence at the 95 percent level. When testing at the asset level, futures prices are found not to contain fractional properties, while some equities do.

Only a subsample of futures and equities, and only a limited number of lags, are evaluated. It is possible that multiplicity adjustments for larger numbers of tests would result in fewer rejections of independence.

This paper provides empirical evidence that violations of the RWH for financial time series are likely to exist, but are perhaps less common than previously thought.

At a recent meeting of the Glasgow Grocers' and Provision Merchants' Association, it was alleged that there are provision merchants in Glasgow who are doing a large business in selling margarine as butter at 1s. 2d. per pound. In commenting upon this statement The Grocer very properly urges that the officials of the Association referred to should take prompt steps to place the facts in their possession before the Glasgow authorities and their officers, and observes that in certain cities and towns—Birmingham, for example—the grocers' associations have co‐operated with the authorities in their efforts to suppress illegal trading, particularly in regard to the sale of margarine as butter. It appears that one of the members of the Glasgow Association expressed the opinion that the Margarine Act has been a failure and that shopkeepers who sell margarine as butter should be charged with obtaining money under false pretences.

EVERYONE interested in the British library movement will learn with sorrow and regret that one of its greatest friends and strongest champions has passed away, in the person of Thomas Greenwood, the kind‐hearted and generous advocate of libraries, who won the respect and regard of every English libiarian. From one of his own periodicals the following particulars are abstracted:—

Current issues of Publishers' Weekly are reporting serious shortages of paper, binders board, cloth, and other essential book manufacturing materials. Let us assure you these shortages are very real and quite severe.

This research updates and expands upon Decker’s article “Citizen attitudes toward the police: a review of past findings and suggestions for future policy” by summarizing the findings from more than 100 articles on perceptions of and attitudes toward the police. Initially, the value of research on attitudes toward the police is discussed. Then the research pertaining to the impact of individual level variables (e.g. race) and contextual level variables (e.g. neighborhood) on perceptions of the police is reviewed. Studies of juveniles’ attitudes toward the police, perceptions of police policies and practices, methodological issues and conceptual issues are also discussed. This review of the literature indicates that only four variables (age, contact with police, neighborhood, and race) have consistently been proven to affect attitudes toward the police. However, there are interactive effects between these and other variables which are not yet understood; a finding which indicates that theoretical generalizations about attitudes toward police should be made with caution.

Researchers have investigated the link between business strategy and performance, the process of resource acquisition and employment, and issues associated with strategy implementation. However, empirical investigations into the moderating or mediating effects of resource deployment and implementation in the strategy‐performance relationship have been lacking. Data analyzed in the present study lends support for the notion that the appropriate strategy should be aligned with specific resource competencies if the strategy is to be successful.

The first statutory meeting of the Pure Food and Health Society of Great Britain was held on October 16 at the registered offices of the Society, 20, Hanover Square, W. LORD CAMOYS, Chairman of the Executive Committee, presided. In opening the meeting LORD CAMOYS said:—