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The financial statements of public companies located in the United Arab Emirates provide excellent examples of the impact that reporting investments at fair value can have on net income. This is because of the wide fluctuations in securities prices and real estate prices in recent years. Using an actual company, National General Insurance, which is located in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, this case provides examples of the impact of fair value accounting for investments under International Financial Reporting standards (IFRS), for both securities and property investments. As US financial reporting moves towards harmonization with IFRS, it is critical to understand how reporting for investments under US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) compares with international reporting standards. Specific learning objectives include gaining an understanding of the reporting requirements for investments under IFRS, understanding the difference between reporting requirements for investments under US GAAP and IFRS, and understanding both the positive and negative impacts on reported net income from using fair values for reporting investments.

Leading up to and now living amid the Covid-19 pandemic, teachers are faced with strong incentives, even pressure to adopt and use digital technologies. Previous research has focused on teaching with digital technologies as a matter of believing in their importance and receiving specific preparation for integration strategies. Further, teaching with technologies must appear “seamless” during instruction to not distract from what is regarded to be the more important subject matter knowledge. In this chapter, I review and problematize digital instruction focused on convincing teachers to integrate strategies that use digital technologies in a “seamless” way and then propose an alternative view emphasizing posthumanist, relational views of integrating digital technologies.

The importance of libraries as centers for the distribution of material dealing with the concerns of the elderly was highlighted recently in an open letter to state library associations from Bessie B. Moore, vice‐chairperson of the National Commission of Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS). She wrote:

LIBRARIES in War have, alas, been too often the theme of this and other library magazines owing to the times in which men and women of middle age have had to live. To‐day, even younger ones can see some reflection of the atmosphere, because they have been brought up in a pervading spirit of threats and preparations; insomuch—and this is the tragedy of i t—they ask “What is the good of preparing for life in this world when we are likely to be bombed out of it at any moment?” There is much good, because, even if the ultimate tragedy came, England and the majority of us would survive; and the world must go on. It is a descent from this perhaps grand attitude to the thought that less money may be available for libraries for the time being. We know that rates are rising in many places, owing to unemployment relief needs and A.R.P. demands, but there is the consolation that last year many new libraries were opened. It may be a result of the truth that never are libraries more needed than in hours of stress.

The Professors of the Imperial College of Science and Technology have addressed to Lord Crewe, the Chairman of the Governors of the College, a memorial urging the necessity of the encouragement of science and of research. In commenting upon this document the Journal of Chemical Technology observes that “a satisfactory feature of the memorial is the recognition on the part of the signatories that scientific education should be on broad lines.” “We have always contended that an indispensable preliminary to a professional career should be a thoroughly sound general education. Whether or not the study of science is the best kind of study may be a debatable point, but it is certain that exclusive attention to science is thoroughly bad. A man's mind is narrow when he is unable to recognise the importance of things outside his own particular sphere of action, and it is precisely this state of mind that the exclusive study of science tends to produce. It is, therefore, the more necessary, in seeking to secure greater attention to scientific studies in the reform of our educational system, to take care that nothing be done which may curtail the period required for the acquisition of general knowledge. It is far better to delay than to hasten specialisation. A step in the right direction has been made when scientific men themselves state that they do not believe that “an education which includes good teaching of science need be a narrow education,” but we wish that this opinion had been positively rather than negatively expressed. The memorial refers to the “lethargy, misconception, and ignorance” of the public regarding national education. It is pertinent here to remark that when anything goes wrong and no particular individual or individuals can be held to be, or will acknowledge themselves to be, responsible, the “public” is blamed; the public being everybody with the exception of the denunciator and his friends. In the present instance the fault is not, even for the greater part, with the people. They are, naturally enough, interested in education only in so far as it is expressed in terms of school and college accounts and of wage‐earning capacity. Of the bearing that improvement in education and the advancement of physical science has on the welfare of the community the average man knows little and cares less. He has to be educated in the value of education. He is not, and probably never will be, interested in education as an abstract good. What interest he has in it is purely utilitarian. If he sees that the knowledge which he himself does not possess carries with it but doubtful prospects for the future, poor remuneration in the present and a social position little better than his own, he is unlikely to be impressed with the value of education. The fact is that there is a lamentable want of opportunity for the intellectual classes in this country and until this state of things is remedied the public will continue to display—and with every justification — “lethargy, misconception, and ignorance” in respect to national education.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

OUR correspondent revives the problem of fiction supply on a paying basis to readers in public libraries. The figures he gives of the sums that a charge of one penny per issue might realize in certain libraries if the number of books issued remains as last year are impressive; the sums are usefully substantial. He does not deal with objections obvious to librarians. We have recently been admonished for making any charge in connexion with our lendings, as we have shown in these pages, when we wrote that the law can be altered although new library legislation seems unlikely at present. The other quite practical difficulties are that one withdraws privileges from the public only at the risk of a clamour for their restoration. Then it is commonsense to argue that if the people desire to provide themselves with any kind of reading from public funds they have the right to do so. At present they appear to exercise that right, otherwise it seems unlikely that a large city would allow two millions of fiction to be circulated out of a total issue of three and a half millions. It cannot be contended that our local statesmen do not see the significance of these figures. There is the further question of the unsatisfactory nature of the terms non‐fiction as embracing everything that is not narrative imaginative prose, and fiction as embracing everything that is. The whole question, like the poor, is always with us, but it cannot conveniently be brushed aside.

OUR various accounts of the Portsmouth Conference, and the official record of it which is now in the hands of readers shows that it may be regarded as a successful one. It was specially notable for the absence of those bickerings and differences which must inevitably come to the surface at times. There may be something in the suggestion of one of our writers that the weather was a main factor. However that may be, there was uniform good temper, and we came away with the belief that a good week's work for librarianship had been done.