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The British Employers' Confederation describes the plan to raise the school‐leaving age to 16 in 1970–1 as a “welcome change”, and expresses the hope that the extra year of full‐time education might be spent either in a school or in a technical college. The BEC repeats its statement to the Newsom Committee to the effect that Industry expects its new entrants to have a sound knowledge of the basic subjects, rather than technical skills which could best be imparted by industry itself.

New Welding Institute President. New president of the Institute of Welding is E. SEYMOUR‐SEMPER, managing director of Hancock & Co. (Engineers) Ltd. He is also this year's president of the British Acetylene Association.

Mr Semper provides a fascinating picture of the ideas behind the progress of the Schools Council towards provision of engineering in the upper forms of schools. The development of two A‐level syllabuses is detailed, together with the philosophy behind the group's approach. Publication coincides with the recent DES decision to attempt to bridge the gap between schools and technical colleges.

The author's school, which was illustrated in our May issue, provides the basis for this statement of the aims and methods of a secondary technical school, the balance of its curriculum and its relations with the outside world.

ALMOST INEVITABLY the focal point of discussion on the Crowther Report has been the recommendation that the school‐leaving age should be raised. Parliamentarians, in particular, prefer to discuss ends rather than means and to leave consideration of the latter to the experts. It is unfortunate that so much professional attention has been devoted to the same end, for this report contains a great deal of stimulating, provocative, and enlightened comment on matters of social education and the reform of sixth form curricula. Moreover, hidden at the end of Chapter 35 is a valuable suggestion that a further enquiry should be made into the development of an ‘Alternative Road’, that is, a more practical approach to education.

This paper aims to present a viable approach for designing and implementing a generic per‐fee‐link framework. It also aims to design this framework to be used with any payment protocol and test it with two existing ones.

The paper presents a per‐fee‐link framework based on several generic components. These components have been developed and tested in order to prove the viability of the proposed framework.

The results show that is possible to establish a per‐fee‐link framework. Four core components are defined: first, the different modules needed for browsers and web servers, second, an extended payment protocol (EPP), which negotiates the payment protocol to use and encapsulates its related messages, third, an API for e‐wallets, which is independent of the payment protocol, to incorporate the protocols to use with EPP and finally, the definition of a per‐fee‐link that associates payment information to a link.

The framework presented shows a uniform way of using payment protocols that can increase the trust of end users. Furthermore, it has been developed and tested.

The contribution describes the components needed for supporting the framework. Its feasibility has been checked through an implementation and it facilitates the payment for content on the web. Thus, content providers can obtain an alternative revenue source to advertisement or subscription. Furthermore, developers, vendors and customers can see that the incorporation of payment protocols to the system is facilitated. Finally, the users obtain a uniform way to make payments that increases the perception of trust.

The relationship between science and craftwork in selective schools is a rapidly changing one. The position before World War Two was bad — very few grammar schools bothered with crafts save in junior forms and C and D streams. In the junior technical schools a generous allocation of time was made — in 1934 out of 30 hours teaching time per week, four hours 20 minutes were spent on science, four hours 20 minutes on engineering and drawing, three hours on woodwork, and three hours on metalwork. Unemployment in the teaching profession and elsewhere was so severe that graduates with 1st and 2nd class honours degrees eagerly sought appointments on the staff. Moreover, the economic depression deprived many able boys of the chance of an extended grammar school education and these were attracted to the shorter intensive courses in the junior technical schools. In consequence the schools achieved high standards in both written and practical work.

Engagement, motivation, and persistence are usually associated with positive outcomes. However, too much of it can overtax our psychophysiological system and put it at risk. On the basis of a neuro-dynamic personality and self-regulation model, we explain the neurobehavioral mechanisms presumably underlying engagement and how engagement, when overtaxing the individual, becomes automatically inhibited for reasons of protection. We explain how different intensities and patterns of engagement may relate to personality traits such as Self-directedness, Conscientiousness, Drive for Reward, and Absorption, which we conceive of as functions or strategies of adaptive neurobehavioral systems. We describe how protective inhibitions and personality traits contribute to phenomena such as disengagement and increased effort-sense in chronic fatigue conditions, which often affect professions involving high socio-emotional interactions. By doing so we adduce evidence on hemispheric asymmetry of motivation, neuromodulation by dopamine, self-determination, task engagement, and physiological disengagement. Not least, we discuss educational implications of our model.

CORROSION BY OILS Study of the real corrosive power of oils. Known laboratory methods of evaluating the corrosive action of lubricating oils may be divided into two groups: (1) potential action (using e.g. the Pinkevich device and DK‐2, the Underwood apparatus, the YaAZ method, etc.) whereby it is possible to determine not the initial corrosive power of the oil, before the start of test, but that developed during oxidation; and (2) the actual or existing aggressive action. The main distinguishing feature of the second group is that the metal test panel or plate is actually in the oil medium already containing aggressive components, but the test conditions are such (short period) that assume or provide for the practically complete absence of oxidation of the oil during the test itself; so that, in such case, the corrosion is excluded due to formation of oxidation products. The present work includes comparison of corrosive power for different metals, study of effect of acid number of the oil, comparative study of anti‐corrosive effect of various additives for different metals, and concentration curves for these additives. Three references.— (N. M. Grad et al., Zh. prikl. Khim., 1960, 33 (7), 1586–1590.)

A committee of enquiry to look into the question of stimulating the development of day release from employment of young people under 18 years of age has been set up by the Minister of Education.