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To review Peter Plantec's book Virtual Humans: A Build it Yourself Kit.

This book is meant to be read by one willing to actively engage with the technologies that Plantec introduces. While the technology that enables virtual agents is stable, many agents are annoyingly non‐humanlike in their interactions. Plantec encourages his readers to enter the world of virtual humans by providing the resources and coaching necessary to create a digital agent. He challenges the reader to throw off the notion that she is creating a technical implementation, a piece of software, and instead persuades her to approach the task as a scriptwriter would in creating a character.

Only through the application of artifice can developers hope to create deeply engaging virtual humans with recognizable, engaging personalities. But once people start to believe in their virtual companions, where might it lead them as a society?

Provides information about virtual humans.

Describes the life history of the British Food Journal, its changing editorial team, ownership and editorial focus. The authors have used much wider source material than the archives of the journal, now in its 100th year. The journal was always closely identified with the safety of food, its adulteration and the government’s duty to safeguard the public. The second section reviews the profession and role of the public analyst, in particular the history and development of the Society of Public Analysts. The next and longest section of the monograph is devoted to an interesting examination of food safety, nutrition and food manufacturing issues over the last 100 years. Many of the points raised are illustrated by excerpts from papers written in BFJ and included as Appendices to the monograph. Food irradiation was first raised as a subject in the journal in 1928! Bread and milk as staples in the British diet are looked at in some detail in terms of their ingredients and health properties. Some appendices have been included just for interest and provide brief snapshots of some of the main food concerns of the time, e.g. The Pure Food Society, the food we eat, food poisoning, a world food policy, the packaging of foods, food hygiene. Plus ça change ...

This paper aims to investigate the merit of Fred Taylor's claim that he did not conceive the notion of time study on his own. He insisted that he acquired it while a student at Phillips Exeter Academy and identified the particular individual to whom, he claimed, he owed his earliest exposure to time study – George A. “Bull” Wentworth.

Drawing on archival material, including a recently discovered letter by Taylor, this paper substantiates Taylor's claims regarding his association with Wentworth. By corroborating existing and new evidence of the Wentworth‐Taylor link, it probes into the nature and the scope of the influence of the “Old Bull” of Exeter on the father of scientific management.

Taylor did not conceive of time study on his own but acquired it early in his life via traceable socialization influences, many of which came from Wentworth. Such influences were both substantive and lasting: the residue of Wentworth's methodology is distinct in Taylor's early and later time study work. Taken together, both internal and external consistency of the evidence has led me to assert that it is plausible that Wentworth had a traceable and lasting socialization impact on Frederick Taylor.

This paper is a rare inquiry into the part of Taylor's life history that precedes his pioneering of the industrial, managerial, and economic applications of time study. It grounds the matter of Taylor's conceiving the time study idea into the context of his early‐in‐life socialization – an important subject left largely unexplored by Taylor's biographers and the historians of the scientific management movement.

OUR good custom, as we deem it, to wish our readers a larger measure of happiness and success than heretofore we repeat for 1947. There are many signs in the libraries to give encouragement to the hope that they, the libraries, are now so well established everywhere that the old evils of complete disregard, penury and restriction will not recur and that, gradually but surely, the aims and the purpose for which we stand will be realized. That they may be so for all readers of The Library World is, we believe, the best possible New Year wish.

Using puns as an illustration, we examine how verbal ambiguity affects the process of discourse. Our major focus is on the responses people make to the occurrence of puns in face-to-face conversations. First, we question the notion that the groans that commonly and distinctively greet puns are responses to the perceived low or high quality of specific puns. Next, we describe the special problems of interpretation that accompany puns arising in encounters. Finally, we suggest a modification of the views of Blumer and of Goffman as to the incidental or disruptive intrusion of jocularity into encounters. We conclude that verbal ambiguity – despite its popular identification as enigmatic, “incorrect” language – does not significantly alter the processes or results of everyday discourse.

Teaching about families in a classroom may seem rather simple and uncomplicated because families are thought to be familiar settings – a part of our day-to-day life experience. Most often the task is not that simple. For this purpose, personal and familial biographies of students were used as part of family pedagogy for understanding the family structure and value orientations. Such an approach requires respect for students’ lived experiences as valid knowledge to use as a subjective and experiential journey to teach about families. There is a dearth of such pedagogical approaches to teach about the complexity and diversity of families in India. This chapter documents such an attempt to teach students, using three exercises, the concepts of family through experiential learning. The concepts include the myth of a normative family, nature of family change, and multigenerational extended kin relationships. The first author developed the teaching exercises and used them in the classroom. The data were collected across three consecutive MSW (Children and Families Concentration) batches of 2012–2016 from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India. A focus group interview method was used, and qualitative analysis was undertaken. The analysis of the data deconstructed the myth of the so-called normative family, helped to understand family change, and showed the presence of a range of multigenerational extended relations in families in the Indian context. The results of our study will be useful for researchers, practitioners, and teachers to employ experiential learning techniques in teaching about families in India through classroom interaction.

THERE is a tendency to regard the industrial problems which face us as unique to British firms. That is a blinkered outlook in days when the commerce of thought is international and no country is insulated from another.

The process of educating future architects and designers around the world varies dramatically. However, there is one striking similarity - the dominance of the design studio as the main forum for knowledge acquisition and assimilation, and for creative exploration and interaction. Such a setting encompasses intensive cognitive and physical activities, which ultimately result in conceptualizing meaningful environments proposed to accommodate related human activities. The design studio is the primary space where students explore their creative skills that are so prized by the profession; it is the kiln where future architects are molded. It has occupied a central position since architectural education was formalized two centuries ago in France and later in Germany, the rest of Europe, North America, and the rest of the world.

1. The Committee was informed that the manufacture of shredded suet from imported premier jus is subject to control by licence and that it is a condition of the licences that the product shall contain not less than 83 per cent. of fat. This figure was adopted in 1931 by the Council of the Society of Public Analysts and Other Analytical Chemists pending the establishment of a legal standard. 2. In the manufacture of shredded suet premier jus the fat is forced into shreds or granules and a cereal or amylaceous filler is added so as to form a coating over the particles of fat, thus preventing them from adhering together and at the same time retarding the development of rancidity. 3. The amount of filler taken up by the shredded fat depends primarily on its stickiness, which in turn depends on the temperature at which the manufacturing process is conducted. Manufacturers must give special attention to the problem of securing uniformity of distribution, otherwise part of a batch will take up more than its share of the amount of filler allowed by the manufacturing formula. In spite of all practicable care, complete uniformity cannot be ensured and some tolerance is therefore necessary to allow for unavoidable variations. 4. The proportion of filler used in the past by different manufacturers has varied considerably. A purchaser of shredded suet is primarily purchasing fat and it is desirable that the fat content shall be the maximum that can be included whilst still retaining good keeping properties. The Committee is of the opinion that shredded suet, to be of satisfactory quality, should not contain substantially less than 85 percent. of fat, and that a product approximating to this standard will have the necessary keeping properties. The Committee is satisfied that the allowance of 2 per cent. for uneven distribution on and among the shreds, which was adopted by the Council of the Society of Public Analysts in 1931, is reasonable, and understands that it is considered adequate by the manufacturers of shredded suet. 5. A small amount of suet (i.e., natural unrendered fat), received by butchers as part of their meat allocation, is chopped or minced, and in the latter case mixed with cereal filler and sold under the description “shredded suet.” By whichever method it is prepared it differs from the shredded suet made from premier jus by reason of the presence of membrane and moisture. If made by chopping it will contain more fat than the product made from premier jus, but if made by mincing and admixture with a filler it is likely to contain less owing to the membrane and moisture in the raw material and the impracticability of analytical control. 6. It was suggested to the Committee that the use of the description shredded suet for the products made by butchers was misleading and that the name should be restricted to the product made from premier jus. The Committee is, however, of the opinion that the general public would be equally satisfied whether the product supplied in response to a demand for shredded suet had been prepared with premier jus or suet. Further, it is considered that a purchaser of shredded suet is not prejudiced if he receives a product containing membrane and moisture provided he also receives the appropriate amount of fat. It therefore does not appear to the Committee that there is any necessity, from the viewpoint of protecting the public in regard to quality, for recommending the imposition of this restriction. 7. The Committee noted that the statement issued by the Council of the Society of Public Analysts included an expression of opinion that “the nature of any admixture to suet should be declared.” This recommendation is, however, outside the terms of reference of the Committee and no comment is therefore made thereon. 8. The Committee accordingly recommends that shredded suet should be required to contain not less than 83 per cent. of fat.

Basic science, sometimes called “curiosity-driven research” at the National Science Foundation and other places, starts with a question that somehow stays in the mind, nagging for an answer. Such questions really are “puzzles”; they arise in an intellectual field or context, asking someone to fit pieces to an improving but incomplete picture of the social world. What makes a worthwhile puzzle is a missing part in understanding the picture, or a new piece of knowledge that does not seem to fit among other parts. Sometimes creative theorists can imagine a solution to one of the holes in the puzzle. If they are also empirical scientists, they devise ways to get evidence bearing on their ideas, and some of those ideas survive to give more complete and detailed pictures of the world. This chapter is the story of puzzles and provisional solutions to them, developed by dozens of men and women investigating status processes and status structures, using a coherent perspective, for over half a century.¹