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The value of the full‐time college GCE courses for ex‐secondary modern pupils, which have been running at Ipswich for nine years, is assessed by Mr Metcalfe. He describes the organisation of the courses and discusses their pros and cons, but warns against neglecting the interests of the secondary modern schools themselves.

The Central Training Council set down in 1968 a procedure agreed between the Department of Employment and industrial training boards for setting up joint committees of boards to coordinate the preparation of training recommendations for jobs which are found in more than one industry. Such a joint board committee was established for Commercial and Administrative Training under the general auspices of the Engineering Industry Training Board. The Chairman of the Committee is Mr F Metcalfe. Membership of the Committee includes representatives from other industrial training boards, employers, a university and colleges, trade unions, the Department of Employment, and the Department of Education and Science and the Scottish Education Department. The Joint Board Committee set up five sub‐committees to consider the training required in identified functional areas, each serviced by one of the boards represented on the parent body. The report of the Personnel Management/Training sub‐committee which was serviced by the Foundry Industry Training Committee and chaired by Mr F Christopher Hayes is the first of the five sub‐committee reports to be published.

A framework of teaching method adopted in teaching City and Guilds workshop students is offered for readers' consideration. The author has been prompted to write by the first‐class articles by Mr W. M. Macqueen, in particular the second one (March issue) in which he discusses the importance of developing and maintaining a force of highly‐skilled competent craftsmen, and by that of Mr F. Metcalfe (February issue).

Under Section 5 of the Industrial Training Act the Minister may make grants to a Board. Fifty million pound is available for this purpose, a figure which may not be exceeded without the approval of Parliament. From this source the Minister has announced that he is to make grants to Boards for five separate purposes.

It has been the custom for many years to preserve foodstuffs by drying, smoking, salting and pickling, and by the addition of sugar. The more modern methods include pasteurisation, sterilisation by heat or other means, refrigeration and the addition of chemical substances having an antiseptic action to a greater or less degree.

A special committee has been appointed by the Central Training Council to consider the problems of the recruitment and training of training officers. It is composed partly of members of the Council and partly of others with special qualifications.

Célestin Charles Edward Cassal, who died on the 22nd December last, was the eldest son of the late Chevalier Hugues Stanislas Cassal, LL.D., formerly Professor of French Language and Literature in University College, London, and The Royal Naval College, Greenwich.

What is now known as the Canning Industry commenced on the 30th January, 1810, when Montalivet, the French Minister of the Interior, wrote to Francois Appert and informed him that his—Appert's—new process for preserving foods was assured of success and thereby granting to the process the official recognition of the French Government. Official recognition also carried with it a money grant of twelve thousand francs—about £500 in those days—Appert won this prize on the principle of “Delhi taken and India saved for one rupee eight annas”—and died in the year 1841 a comparatively poor man and the founder of one of the world's greatest industries. As a result of the warlike operations in which it had been engaged, multitudes of sick and wounded were thrown on the hands of the French Government, and scurvy was terribly prevalent in the fleets. Hence the French Government gave a public notice that it would award a prize to anyone who should discover a cheap and satisfactory method of preserving foodstuffs, without either drying or pickling, so that they could be kept for a long period and still retain the natural flavour and other characteristics of the fresh product. Appert had worked at and perfected his process during the preceding ten or fifteen years and had thoroughly assured himself of its practicability. He was therefore well prepared to demonstrate the details before the Board of Arts and Manufactures of which Board Gay Lussac had been a member since the year 1805. The report of this body to the Minister of the Interior was entirely favourable, as was also that of General Caffarelli, the Maritime Prefect of Brest. Caffarelli had found that soups and vegetables prepared by Appert's process had retained their goodness after three months' bottling, and he had been able to supply what seemed to the diners to be fresh vegetables in mid‐winter. It need hardly be said that Appert's process for preserving foods is the one in use now. Appert, however, knew nothing of the principles on which his process depended, nor did anyone else at that time. He supposed putrefaction to be due to the action of the air alone. In this view he was supported by the great authority of Gay Lussac who, it will be remembered, imagined atmospheric oxygen to be the cause. Appert at the request of the Minister of the Interior wrote a short book on the subject—a practical treatise explaining the methods of preserving animal and vegetable substances. This book was almost at once translated into several languages. It would seem that one of the chief advantages that Appert hoped the French people would gain by his invention was the saving of sugar. Up to that time the only means of preserving fruit other than by drying was to immerse the fruit in strong syrup made with cane sugar, and sugar was almost impossible to obtain in France at that time owing to war conditions. He also says that the French Government wished to draw “the utmost advantage from the productions of our soil in order to develop our agriculture and manufactures, and to diminish the consumption of foreign commodities” ! This is exactly what we in this country are trying to do now in the building up of a trade in canned food, a hundred and twenty years later. The English translator of Appert's work complacently observes:—

In an article relating particularly to Meat Inspection, the Pall Mall Gazette observes that “before the war we were not entirely neglectful of public hygiene. We had, for instance, a fairly efficient system of food inspection which, by ceaseless vigilance and prompt and relentless prosecution of offenders, was steadily eliminating adulteration and preventing the public sale of bad food. Then came the war and the food shortage and a relaxing of safeguards. But the war is over, not technically perhaps, but none the less over, and it is time that the old vigilance of inspection was restored. It is the duty of the Ministry of Health to see that this is done, and the local authorities, despite the control exercised over them by the local tradespeople, should be compelled to return to the pre‐war method of food inspection. That unclean and bad food is being sold with comparative impunity is notorious and the protest of the veterinary surgeons against the inadequacy of meat inspection but called expert attention to an evil of which everyone is aware. The natural affection of the Board of Agriculture for the British farmer, and the equally natural desire of the Food Ministry to save its financial face, are it may be supposed, factors which make for neglect. But the Food Ministry has a duty to the public which must override all Departmental consideration, and we hope that Dr. ADDISON will issue orders at once compelling the local authorities to engage efficient inspectors, and to order prosecutions wherever and whenever bad meat is offered for sale.”

Scholars have examined, in various ways, the complexity of knowledge in innovation. Recently, research has begun to focus on the role of a continuous process of knowledge recombination in our understanding of a changing structure of knowledge complexity and knowledge accumulation. Furthermore, we also claim that this process may reflect changes in the underlying innovation paradigm, or in other words the arrival of the information age. Yet, little is known about how knowledge complexity is increasing in the broader context of globalization, in which the influence of a rising diversity of locational sources may feature more prominently. We consider how knowledge recombination that relies upon the global spread of innovation activities will affect our theory of the relationship through which earlier contributions to knowledge become inputs to subsequent knowledge building that generates more (or less) complex knowledge artifacts. We propose that knowledge complexity rises when recombined elements are sourced across two dimensions of distance simultaneously, namely when sources which are derived from (i) disparate knowledge fields and (ii) distinct geographic locations are combined. We thereby develop an international business perspective on knowledge complexity through recombination by better appreciating the processes that may be necessary when knowledge is combined along global value chains. We also suggest some implications for changing organizational forms by highlighting the value of connecting previously unconnected geographically distant elements, which suggests a greater potential for more informal and indirectly diffused knowledge-based connections.