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Now that the Technician Education Council has published its Circular TEC 1/751, complete with impressive black bands, giving the projected timetable for the introduction of TEC certificate programmes, and the various curriculum development groups are having a temporary rest from their labours, it seems a good time to reflect on the OND in Technology and its relationship with TEC programmes.

No self‐respecting company would permit the ignorance of costs and numbers that exists in parts of the FE world. True, a new breed of college administrator is emerging who regards himself as a manager, conversant with such sophisticated techniques as Planning, Programming, Budgeting Systems (PPBS). Yet even he will admit that planning is something of a gamble.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns and social distancing mandates forced many young Australians to radically alter everyday interactions. Physical co-presence and embodied experience, a previously taken-for-granted dynamic of territorially embedded everyday lives, and interactions with urban surroundings, were reconfigured. Digital technology, while bringing people together for work, study, or socialising, is seen to dissolve material space, and mitigate geographic isolation. But what role does co-presence and embodied, spatially embedded experience play for young people living in the city? This chapter draws on the voices and experiences of young Australians aged 18–24 during the pandemic to clarify and understand the role of the digital in their everyday lives, how they negotiated disruptions to education, work, and managing relationships during the pandemic to articulate the relationships between digital lives and embodied experiences in the city.

“Ice cream is a foodstuff in my opinion and not a confection,” stated Mr. Morley T. Parry, Northamptonshire's Chief Sanitary Inspector, at a meeting of that county's branch of the Ice Cream Alliance at Northampton on April 24th. But this very fact made it most necessary that every care should be taken to safeguard public health. Addressing the meeting on the new Ice Cream (Heat Treatment, etc.) Regulations, Mr. Parry dealt mainly, as he said, with the “etc.” These were liable to be overlooked, and he considered them certainly of no less importance than the heat treatment process itself. In particular, the regulations required traders “to protect their ice cream, at all times during its storage and distribution, from dirt, dust, or other contamination, and all apparatus and utensils must be thoroughly cleaned after use and kept clean at all times.” It is my belief, said Mr. Parry, that these requirements, together with that concerning storage temperature, will sound the death‐knell of the old‐fashioned pushcart. “I am so confident of this,” he continued, “that it is my intention to take what will probably be a ‘ test case ’ in this connection at the first opportunity. But I must add that I have seen only two such vehicles on the streets in this Borough during the last two years.” Giving examples of bacteriological tests, Mr. Parry remarked that they showed the need of coverings to prevent ingress of dust and dirt, even in shop premises, and really explained the reason for the requirement that ice cream must be stored at 28°F. He felt that protection of the product during times of busy sales was going to present the trade with an immense problem. Speaking of sampling tests of Northamptonshire's ice cream, Mr. Parry had an encouraging word to say about the county's manufacturers and traders. “Since early 1946 we have never had a really bad bacteriological sample from any traders following the methods we have advised,” he said. “I would like to take this opportunity to compliment local traders on the efforts they have made to carry out suggestions my department has made to them, many of which must have seemed ‘finicking.’” He announced that a modified form of the Methylene Blue Reduction Test used for milk was now to be used for testing ice cream samples in place of the bacteriological examination which gave plate counts, B. Coli and Faecal Coli contents.

In a recent article upon the improper handling of meat, the Daily Mail observed that if the public realised the condition of much of the meat delivered to them there would be such an outcry that the Ministry of Health would be compelled to issue definite regulations governing the transport and sale of meat. London butchers are not the worst offenders. Many of them conform voluntarily to standards of hygiene that are far better than in many provincial towns where the public health authorities are lax; but even in London it is possible, in every district, to see revolting methods of dealing with meat. The great Central Meat Market at Smithfield is under the control of the Corporation of the City of London. There are definite orders that meat porters must wear white overalls and caps in addition to various sanitary regulations as to the transport of meat. Many men disobey them with impunity. Among incidents seen there by a representative of the Daily Mail were :—Porters with filthy tweed caps and still filthier sacking carrying carcases on their shoulders; carcases of mutton lying unprotected on a muddy pavement; a scavenger sweeping up dust and manure just beneath an open cart loaded with mutton; a boy with muddy boots and grimy clothes sitting on a heap of meat in another open‐end cart. If the orders of the Ministry cannot be enforced at Smithfield it is not surprising that they are utterly ignored in other places. More than half the butchers' shops seen in a long tour of London neglected the most elementary precautions against the contamination of meat from dust and dirt. The following are some typical examples:—Meat exposed in trays on the pavement, with a marble shop wall behind absolutely black with dirt and mud splashes ; a road‐sweeping machine spraying dirt on to joints exposed without any covering on a stall in the gutter outside a butcher's shop; refuse from a dust‐cart blowing on to meat in another open‐fronted shop; cooked meats exposed in an open window in one of the busiest streets in London. The Ministry of Health, in an explanatory memorandum, expressly excluded cooked meat from the operation of any regulations. Yet, as Medical Officers of Health point out, cooked meat, since it is eaten as bought, is a more dangerous carrier of infection than raw meat. The Ministry, it is understood, “ hope to be able to issue regulations dealing with the sale of cooked meat some time,” but cannot say when or promise an early date. The whole fault, for which the public have to pay the toll of disease due to dirty meat, is in the vagueness of the regulations made by the Ministry a year ago.

SO THE Nissan Company of Kyoto has laid the foundation stone of its factory in Sunderland. An era, perhaps a new era in the history of the British Motorcar Industry is really on the way.

This paper aims to present the application and critical reflection on the effects of a intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD): the Soundbeam Imitation Intervention (SII). The intervention is based on the imitation of meaningless body gestures supported by a musical feedback. The rationale underlying SII is that mirror neurons deficit may represent the cause for the incomplete development of social and motor functioning in children with ASD. Following this assumption, it is possible to hypothesise that a systematic activation of this a system through the simultaneous observation-execution of meaningless body gestures may affect functional changes of mirror-related functions.

A sample of 14 children, who were between 5 and 9 years of age, with a diagnosis of ASD were involved in a six weeks’ SII programme. The programme is designed as a three-step progression, where each step includes exercises that focus on an activity: synchronous/one arm imitation, synchronous/two arms imitation and delayed imitation. Exercises are based on repeated movements-melodies associations of increasing difficulty. Motor imitation and social attention were assessed using a synchronous video-modelling task pre and post intervention.

Data highlight significant improvements in imitation accuracy and duration of social sustained attention were achieved.

Data reported in this paper provide preliminary and promising evidence that imitation and social attention skills acquired through SII can be generalised to a video-modelling imitation setting. The SII ordinal execution has included meaningless gestures, usually excluded from previous interventions, and this adds further validity to the training.

The study aims to investigate the relationship between chief executive officers' (CEOs') prenatal testosterone exposure, absorptive capacity and e-commerce adoption by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Based on a study of 1,519 SMEs led by a male CEO in China, the impact of entrepreneur's digital ratio on e-commerce adoption is empirically analyzed through a multivariate logistic model.

The results show that the second-to-fourth digit ratio (2D:4D), a reverse measurement of prenatal testosterone exposure, is negatively correlated with the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs. This evidence suggests that CEOs with high prenatal testosterone exposure have a higher probability of adopting e-commerce. In addition, this research indicates a positive correlation between absorptive capacity, which is defined by market innovation, process innovation and marketing innovation, and the adoption of e-commerce by SMEs.

This research can contribute to the discussion by providing new insights into the antecedents of the adoption of e-commerce in SMEs.

This study aims to explore and identify the information-seeking process and practices of those searching for the forcefully disappeared in Colombia. It answers the questions; how do families in Colombia seek information about a disappearance, how is this seeking process mediated and how are information barriers dealt with?

Based on document analysis and interviews with families and NGO representatives, this bottom-up study explores the trajectory of the families' information-seeking process to highlight the most salient information practices.

A general trajectory of a search for information is laid out. The overwhelming barriers to information forces families to carry the burden of becoming information providers. NGOs provide situated learning on how to document a disappearance and deal with the state. This knowledge is passed on to families creating communities of practices. The information produced here becomes the main source of knowledge about this crime.

It makes a new contribution to the field of information practices by introducing the context of enforced disappearances using the example of Colombia, identifying a significant information-seeking process.

Laments the abscence of a National Information Policy (NIP) in Nigeria. Highlights the relevance and possible impact of an NIP in the areas of acquisition/resource sharing and the packaging/repackaging and organization of documents and other library materials. Commends the registration of the Nigerian Library Association (NLA), arguing that it is a step towards the realization of an NIP in Nigeria. Also calls for the establishment of a Stabilization Fund for Information by the Federal Government of Nigeria for the proper funding of the information industry.