Search

Copyright of Weed Research is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Information about several papers discussed at the exhibits sponsored by the British Ecological Society is presented. Topics include the purpose of land use mapping first as a record on maps of the actual and existing land use, and the Human Settlement and land use in Snowdonia against the background of vegetation ecology in the area. The meeting featured several speakers including Dr Woodhead, Dr Reynoldson, and Mr Le Cren.

In general, it is also a fact that the existence of the effect has important real world policy implications only if its magnitude is sufficiently large. Partly in the same context, certain questions might be asked of the proper "identification'' of the wealth effect in past empirical studies. Most important, there is the matter of the proper liquid assets to be studied if one wishes to identify and, hence, measure correctly the workings of this influence and to avoid picking up some other mechanism. In fact, the existing studies are highly overaggregated and likely to misstate the empirical wealth effect; further, they use constructs which do not appear to correspond to the accepted theoretical versions. Even so, little comment has been induced in the literature; even Patinkin (1965), perhaps in a state of euphoria, only serves passing notice on these untidy efforts. There is one final area which this paper will undertake to fill. To date, there is no British test of the wealth effect. Accordingly, the data used to illuminate the more theoretical comments of the first parts of the paper will be British. The principal finding is that there is a significant--but small--observable short-run wealth effect in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents news updates from the field of sociology. Raymond E. Bassett, professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire, died on December 5, 1956. Charles Spurgeon Johnson was born in Bristol, Virginia, on July 24, 1893 and died in Louisville, Kentucky, on October 27, 1956. After receiving his bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago in 1918, he pursued graduate studies in sociology under Robert E. Park, Albion W. Small, W.I. Thomas, and later Ellsworth Fans. M.W. Hodges, of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in Great Britain, has been appointed for two years to Great Britain's Scientific Mission in Washington for liaison duties in the field of industrial management and social science research. The Fourth Interamerican Congress of Psychology by the Interarnerican Society of Psychology was held at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, from December 26-30, 1956. Luigi Sturzo Institute is holding a contest and offering a prize for a paper on sociology which the judges consider an effective contribution to this field of study both from the point of view of serious research and maturity of thought.

This paper is concerned with the estimation of an econometric model designed to test the Modigliani-Miller (henceforth MM) hypothesis. The primary interest is not in the theoretical validity of the hypothesis. The major sources of theoretical disagreement with Modigliani and Miller arise from the key role they impute to the arbitrage process and the effect of leverage on the expected value of the returns to equity through the increased probability of bankruptcy. These issues have occasioned a number of important contributions in recent years (see especially [2] and [23]). The first section of the paper provides a skeletal outline of the MM hypothesis and discusses the problems of formulating an appropriate econometric model. In the second section an econometric model is developed, which, while drawing on the ideas of several
1 This study is part of a continuing program of research into company financial behavior financed by a grant from the Social Science Research Council. I am indebted to Mrs. Eileen Sutcliffe of the Institute of Social and Economic Research, University of York, and Milton Chen of New York University for assistance with data collection and computer processing, and to the personnel of the SRC Atlas Computer, Chilton, the University of York Computer Center and the New York University School of Commerce Computer Center.
2 References in square brackets are listed on pp. 161-2, below.
3 In terms of the implicit aggregation procedures, the old Liquidity-Preference/ Loanable-Funds controversy has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.
different writers, has certain elements of originality in the way it seeks to incorporate growth and leverage. Finally, in the third section the results of the econometric tests are evaluated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the efficiency of the coal-fired steam-generated electricity in Great Britain, the U.S. and France in 1970. The authors selected this industry for close examination because it had experienced rapid technological progress, its output is homogeneous and the data available are comparatively good. They found that the average level and rate of growth of fuel productivity in Great Britain industry were less than in France and in the U.S. The authors were careful to state, however, that technological backwardness was not the only interpretation of this result. They were aware that partial productivity measures could be very misleading because the contribution of other inputs, particularly capital, is ignored. Furthermore, this paper shows that the percentage increase in output in Great Britain from 1949-63 was higher than that in France and in the U.S., while the percentage increase in capital, measured by generating capacity, was much lower than in France or the US. This difference could be interpreted as implying that the productivity of capital in Great Britain industry was rising relatively to that in France and in the U.S. and thus that the industry in Great Britain was technologically forward. However, there are other interpretations, because capital productivity is also a partial measure of productivity. Thus, this paper suggests that there is a need a measure of productivity which reflects the simultaneous influence of all inputs and output and a production function provides such a measure. This article also estimates production functions for this industry.

This article presents comments on the research paper by Joseph Aschheim entitled "Supplementary Security-Reserve Requirements Reconsidered." Presented are comments on how the volume of bank deposits is regulated in Great Britain. The author states that Aschheim's analysis is "limited to supplementary security-reserve requirements with the objective of insulating bank-held government debt, in whole or in part, from the impact of restrictive monetary policies on the private credit market." Comments on the liquidity ratio in Great Britain are also provided.

The article presents the author's comparison of the patterns of publicity, privacy, and secrecy between the U.S. and Great Britain. In Great Britain, the equilibrium of publicity, privacy, and secrecy is more stable, and its deviations from the normal state are smaller than they are in the U.S. The British governmental papers which are not published at the time as part of government policy, are opened to scholarly inspection only after a very long lapse of time and even then with restrictions. On the other hand, in the U.S., government documents are made available to historians without long delay.

Copyright of International Journal of Production Research is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper describes the extent to which formal financial justification was carried out for most of the process control computer applications in a major British industry. It also discusses some of the problems associated with financial evaluation and with planning computer installations. Finally the paper looks at the relative severity of a wide range of problems common to the installations studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents news updates on the Sociological Society of Great Britain, compiled as of January 1913. The meetings of the Session 1912-13 began on October 15 (evening) with a lecture on "Mythology and Life: An Interpretation of Olympus"; On October 29, at an evening meeting, F.W. Mott, read the paper on "Is Insanity on the Increase?"--Edward Brabrook was in the chair. On November 12, at an afternoon meeting, A.K. Coomaraswamy read a paper on "Sati: A Vindication of the Indian Woman"--Sir Francis Younghusband was in the chair. The paper will be published in the April number of the "Sociological Review." On November 26, at an afternoon meeting held in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, B.L. Hutchins read the paper on "Fatigue and Efficiency."

Presents a reappraisal of technical institutions in Great Britain. Problems encountered in higher education; Concept of binary system in polytechnics; Validation of academic programs.

The article presents a list of research papers on foreign economic history. Some of the research papers are "The Influence of the Manufacturers Upon the Early Policies of William Pitt," by W. Bowden, "The Huterian Communities," by B.W. Clark, "The Rise of the Rural Standard of Living in the Punjab," by M. Darling, "Notes Sur Let Russie: Faits et Obsercations Économiques," by B. Ellacheff, "The Sale of Corn in the Nineteenth Century," by C.R. Fay, "China in Transition," by D. Torrance, "The Economic Function of the Rhine," by J. Levainville, "Propaganda Argentina en AmÉrica," by I.R. Moreno, "The Agrarian Phase of the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920," by H. Phipps. "The Economic Activities of the Falkiand Islands," by C.F. Jones, "Our English Villages," by L. Ernle, "The English Workingmen and the American Civil War," by J.H. Park, "Financial and Monetary Policy of Great Britain During the Napoleonic Wars," by N.J. Silberling, "The Maritime and Rural Life of Norway," by C. Vallaux.

This article discusses a plan to make the monetary unit conform to a standard of constant purchasing power over commodities in Great Britain. The original use of money was that a medium of exchange. When gold was settled upon as the best form of money because of its portability, durability, divisibility and concentration of large value in small bulk, money had practically no function as a standard for deferred payments. The plan if virtually to vary the amount of gold in the dollar or sovereign to the extent necessary to keep its purchasing power invariable. The use of an index number of prices, a mean of securing information as to changes in the general price level, can increase and decrease the weight of the sovereign. The government buys gold from the miner and sells it to the jeweller, at the rate of 123.27 grains per sovereign. The proposal to increase or decrease the amount of gold in a bullion-sovereign becomes, then, a proposal for the government to lower or raise the mint price of gold bullion. Using paper representatives like the gold certificates of the U.S. can avoid recoinage in the country. When gold was taken to the government it would not be coined and the certificate would be issued. Gold would only exist only as gold bullion and the only gold sovereign would be a virtual sovereign.

In this Symposium various papers have been presented dealing with many aspects of work in progress in the United Kingdom recently. I have been asked to make a comparison between this and what is happening elsewhere in the world and also to consider where these various reports may lead. The papers have deal: with such basic concepts as the pharmacological, psychological and social basis of various types of drug dependence, epidemiological reports on changes in incidence and prevalence in England and Ireland; the ejects of legislation on prevention and some aspects of treatment in specialised units and by voluntary bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the scheme for abstracting publications on the British Empire Vegetation. The proposed plan is to invite authors of papers and books dealing with vegetation and ecology to send to the Secretary of the Committee abstracts of their publications. It is noted that the abstracts will be collected and edited by a number of collaborators, and will then be published by arrangement with the British Ecological Society in the form of supplements to "The Journal of Ecology."

The article discusses the British view regarding safety issues in nuclear power plants, based from the paper presented to the Norwegian Atomic Energy Society. According to the author, all activities involve some risk of harm to people either through direct participation or indirectly. However, it is hoped that the risks will be minimized and more than compensated for by attendant advantages. Thus, minimum performance requirements for a large range of plant used may be able to reduce accident frequencies to levels below a pre-set target. Moreover, the British Atomic Energy Authority is sponsoring and developing techniques for the better understanding of reactor accidents and their consequences.

This paper shows that suicides increase immediately after a suicide story has been publicized in the news papers in Britain and in the United States, 1947-1968. The more publicity devoted to a suicide story, the larger the rise in suicides thereafter. The rise in suicides after a story is restricted mainly to the area in which the story was publicized. Alternative explanations of these findings are examined; the evidence indicates that the rise in suicides is due to the influence of suggestion on suicide, an influence not previously demonstrated on the national level of suicides. The substantive, theoretical, and methodological implications of these findings are examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the paper "The Landscape and the Machine: Technical Interrelatedness, Land Tenure and the Mechanization of the Corn Harvest in Victorian Britain," by Paul A. David, that appeared in the book "Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840," edited by Donald N. McCloskey. David contends that the slowness with which mechanical reapers were adopted by British farmers is to be explained by physical features of the farm landscape in Britain which made their adoption relatively unattractive. David's evidence for the index of the harvest differential turns out on inspection to be based on rates of pay of women workers on one farm in Northumberland. Whether this is an adequate basis for estimating the movement of the differential for (predominantly) male workers in all the corn-growing regions of England, might be questioned. Given that the critical factors determining the profitability of mechanization-cum-improvement were the incremental cereal yield and the cost of improvement, it is proper to ask whether any doubt attaches to the values David posits for the other parameters and variables composing these expressions.

A recent paper published in this journal (Poole & Kuhn, 1973) has reported that ‘a relatively large family appeared to be no impediment to the educational achievements of middle-class children’. This finding, however, is based upon an analysis which fell into a relatively unknown statistical trap. Poole & Kuhn are only the latest in a long line of victims of this trap and some of their predecessors are reviewed below. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article lists international meetings published in the November 1, 1968 issue of "International Social Science Journal." The list includes Fifth European Symposium of European Committee for Rural Law to be held in the Netherlands, session of Institute of International Law to be held in Great Britain on matters of international law, public and private, conference of Inter-Parliamentary Union to be held in India, and Eleventh General Conference of International Association for Research in Income and Wealth to be held in India. The list also includes Second International Congress of Balkan and Southeast European Studies to be held in Athens, Greece, Tenth International Congress of Criminal Law of International Association of Penal Law to be held in Europe, International Conference on the International Transfer of Management Skills to be held in Europe, Thirteenth Triennial Conference of War Register's International to be held in the U.S., Nineteenth Congress of International Union of Local Authorities to be held in Athens, Greece.

The article provides information the history of dermatological journals in Great Britain. The first medical periodicals were published in the seventeenth century and were adaptations of contemporary news-sheets, ephemeral and of limited circulation, designed to serve political or personal rather than scientific ends. The earliest known to have been published in Britain was "Medidna Curiosa," in 1684. The transactions of learned societies and the general medical journals published from their earliest days many papers on dermatology and what are now other specialties. The "Journal of Cutaneous Medicine and Diseases of the Skin, A Quarterly Record of Dermatological Science," was published by John Churchill and Sons, of London. For about 20 years after the failure of the Journal of Cutaneous Medicine there was no journal of dermatology in Britain. The "British Journal of Dermatology," which was in its first decade, came as a specialist periodical of that time.

In this research article based on material gathered during the course of a study of extra-familial kinship in the County Borough of Swansea, the authors draw attention to the importance of a detailed consideration of affinal roles and relationships in studies of kinship and marriage in Great Britain. The obvious neglect of this subject in the few previous studies that have been made in both rural and urban situations appears to arise from two sources. Firstly, this is an area of research in which the use of adequate statistical techniques is essential for the discernment of regularities in behaviour. Secondly and more importantly, there has been a tendency to use a conceptual approach which emphasizes consanguinity to the nearly complete exclusion of relationships through marriage. In this paper the author is primarily concerned with affinal roles and relationships. It seems essential to their argument to state that the particular conceptual approach discussed above which tends to treat husband and wife as a composite Ego, as "one flesh" socially, or the household as an undifferentiated unit in kin relations, is methodologically inaccurate and must of necessity obscure the analysis of these important relationships.

The aim of the paper is, to consider the social position of the Anglo-colored in relation to his ethnic group and to the host society. The immigrants take as wives or consorts mostly local working class white women and miscegenation has now produced two generations of British-born colored. For the purpose of this paper they will be called Anglo-coloreds and only Negro and Muslim immigrants will be discussed. Muslim immigrants and their sons are seamen by occupation. Their wives or consorts are mostly white working class women but as the communities increase in numbers and time-depth Anglo-colored Muslim girls become available for marriage. Muslims have their own institutions for religious, social and recreational purposes using as centres for these activities, the Mosque or Zoaia, cafes and boarding houses respectively, with the sheikh and boarding house master performing the roles of primary and secondary leaders of the community. The attitude of the Negro father towards the upbringing of his child differs from that of his Muslim counterpart. Except for his insistence on strict obedience to parental control no attempt is made to train the child to become a carrier of the culture of the Negro community. The British wife or consort occupies a unique position in the community.