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The Teaching of Chemistry By N. F. Newbury. Second edition, completely revised and reset. Pp. xv + 294. (London: William Heinemann, Ltd., 1958.) 21s. net.

Gas Calorimetry The Determination of the Calorific Value of Gaseous Fuels. By C. G. Hyde and M. W. Jones. Second edition, entirely revised and reset. Pp. vii + 456. (London: Ernest Benn, Ltd., 1960.) 105s. net.

CHAMBERS first published a volume of mathematical tables in 1844. This was enlarged and reset in 1878, and has been re-issued at intervals in the same format. The volume will be, familiar to most people who have, at some time or other, needed to use 7-figure tables. It is now replaced by the volumes under review. They are in no sense a revision, but rather an entirely new publication. For good reasons given in the preface, six-figure values are given in the new tables instead of seven. Chambers's Six-Figure Mathematical Tables By Dr. L. J. Comrie Vol. 1: Logarithmic Values. Pp. xxii+576, Vol. 2: Natural Values. Pp. xxxvi + 576. (Edinburgh and London: W. and R. Chambers, Ltd., 1948–1949.) 42s. net each.

THE adequate control of temperature is of fundamental importance in nearly all branches of science, and there are numerous applications in industrial and technical fields. Courses of study and text-books for students of physics, chemistry, engineering and metallurgy, invariably include, in the heat section, a discussion of the methods of temperature measurement ; but, in general, the treatment is too brief and inadequate. The practical difficulties inherent in all thermal measurements are very rarely appreciated, and insufficient regard is paid to the necessity of a correct choice of instrument and method for the temperature or temperature-difference measurement. Methods of Measuring Temperature By Dr. Ezer Griffiths. Third edition, revised and reset. Pp. x + 223. (London: Charles Griffin and Co., Ltd., 1947.) 20s. net.

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Life of the Shore and Shallow Sea By Dr. Douglas P. Wilson. Second edition, completely revised and reset. Pp. xvii + 213 + 45 plates. (London: Nicholson and Watson, Ltd., 1951.) 15s. net.

The findings of recent studies on commercial loan officers' predictive accuracy of corporate failure have been inconsistent. Using only limited sets of data consisting primarily of financial ratio profiles, subjects in studies by Libby [1975] and Zimmer [1980] predicted corporate failure for samples of real-life firms with 74 and 77 percent accuracy, respectively. Participants in studies by Abdel-khalik and El-Sheshai [1980] and Casey [1980], however, achieved only 62 and 57 percent accuracy, respectively.' In earlier studies, Abdel-khalik [1973] and Kennedy [1975] found that approximately one-half of the subjects' probability judgments were greater than 50 percent for the incorrect alternative. Commenting on the poorer performance of loan officers in Casey's study relative to his own and Libby's, Zimmer remarked that the inconsistency "appears to be attributable to the fact that Casey declined to reset subjects' priors" [1980, p. 635]. Libby and Lewis [in press] also believe Zimmer's results support the notion that different performance results can occur depending on whether subjects know the probabilities of failure for their samples of firms. The current study was undertaken to provide some empirical evidence

C A Hooker (ed) Dordrecht-Holland: D Reidel 1975 pp xv + 607 price Dfl 175, $68 (cased), Dfl 85, $34 (paperback) A collection of reprinted articles (entirely reset, not merely photo-reproduced: note the price) on the logical, formal, abstract analysis of quantum theory. Intended as a historical background to a projected second volume, it reproduces without comment 31 significant papers that appeared in 1935–74, but predominantly before 1966.

M Financial engineering can be described as the construction of a security or a portfolio of securities with an otherwise unavailable risk-return configuration. A classic example of financial engineering is the recent issuance of floating rate notes (FRNs) with nontraditional coupon reset formulas. A traditional FRN resets the coupon rate periodically at some fixed margin over (or under) a reference index rate, for example, LIBOR + 0.25%. Since 1986, a number of FRNs have been issued with reset formulas at some fixed rate minus the reference rate. These can be called bull or inverse floaters or, as named by some issuers, yield curve notessee Ogden [8] for further institutional details. The idea is that an investor who is "bullish" on bond prices would be attracted to a security that has a coupon rate that moves inversely to the market rate. SallieMae (the Student Loan Marketing Association) has issued several bull floaters, including the initial one that had a reset formula of 17.20% LIBOR. Albert Lord, the chief financial officer of SallieMae, said at the time (April 1986)

R C Weast (Ed) Oxford: Blackwell Scientific 1969 pp xxiv + 2033 price £12 10s This is such a well known book that it needs no introduction which spells out its aims. Although some tables are still out of date, revisions are continuously being made and, in this edition, the table of isotopes (296 pp) and that of physical constants of organic compounds (468 pp) have been reset and updated.

By Herbert Bristol Dwight New York. London: The Macmillan Company. Pp. x + 336. Price 26s. A deservedly popular work of reference, first published almost thirty years ago, this book now appears in a fourth edition, re-designed and reset. The section on definite integrals has been considerably enlarged and a section added on integrals essentially of elliptic type.

Reading French's Differential Diagnosis has been a new experience for me. I was not sure how one should go about such a task; it is not my habit to read encyclopedias. My first attempt was to try to use the volume by asking a question and looking for the answer. This turned out to be unsatisfactory because my questions usually hinged upon etiology and French's is a volume dealing mainly with manifestations. The only recourse, then, was the simple one of starting at the beginning. If every page was not read, each was fingered. The format can be dispensed with as displaying the expected British excellence of composition. This edition has 1,034 pages compared to 1,111 pages in the previous one. This is because the present volume has been entirely reset and the use of double columns to the page greatly improves readability. There are now 812 illustrations compared

The Teaching of Science in Secondary Schools Compiled by a Joint Committee of the Incorporated Association of Assistant Masters and the Science Masters' Association. Second edition, revised and reset. Pp. ix + 274. (London: John Murray (Publishers), Ltd., 1958.) 17s. 6d. net.