A "Proposed Standard for the Flairanability of General WearingApparel" was submitted to the Consumer Product Safety Commission in February 1976. This report discusses the reasons for the choices of experimental arrangement for the flammability test and the choices of pass-fail criteria.The specimen is cylindrical, to simulate a garment, and to eliminate framed specimens which often burn differently from garments. Criteria for the fire hazard of fabrics are the time to ignite with a specified gas flame and the heat transferred to sensors inside the burning specimen. The proposed standard specifies that fabrics which transfer little heat to the inside of the specimens could be used in all garments but would have to be used in garments which cover most of the body and/or fit loosely. They would also have to be used in children's dresses and skirts (children's nightwear is covered by an earlier standard) .Fabrics which transfer larger amounts of heat, and thus have larger injury potential, could be used in garments with normal or tight fit such as most present-day shirts, slacks, etc.If such fabrics ignite in one-half second or less, they would be excluded from use in garments. These provisions in the proposed standard were based on the need to reduce the number and severity of apparel fires with miminum economic and technological impact on the fiber, textile, and apparel industry. The present report summarizes the available knowledge in the area covered by the standard, and points out areas in which additional work is indicated.

With the growth of public air transport, safety in the air is a matter of concern not just to those who design, manufacture and operate aircraft, but to the public at large. After an accident has occurred and an unfortunate chain of events leading to the accident is exposed, it may be easy to say ‘this accident should not have occurred’ or ‘would not have occurred if…’. Publication of annual totals brings forth informed and uninformed comment on the apparent decrease or increase in the accident rate relative to some criteria such as the number of passenger kilometres flown. The objective of this paper is to present a scientific account of the evidence on the relationship between navigation and air accidents and the implications of this evidence for those who are professionally concerned with air navigation. As will become evident, how-ever, there are factors operating which go much deeper than the technical aspects and appear to have their roots in human behaviour, not just of the individual but of organizations and society as a whole.

Time is so much a part of everyday experience that no thought is normally given to the meaning of the word. The scientific measurement of a quantity such as time, however, requires the definition of a gauge as a standard of measurement that is reasonably invariant to human experience and the creation of a measurement language capable of independent empirical reproduction so that one laboratory can share experience with another using only a written language to do so.Time as a means of scientific measurement for navigation requires a further extension of this experience to independent reproduction on a moving craft.

The terms “cost-effectiveness” and to a lesser degree “cost-benefit” analysis have become familiar words in the technical and national press, the former usually in relation to defence projects—the latter in relation to social projects, such as transport, power generation and building. Indeed, at the time of the last General Election the political correspondent of a national newspaper wrote, “Mr. Heath and Mr. Callaghan, Chancellor of the Exchequer, vied with each other in stressing the importance of cost-effectiveness, which used to be known as getting value for money”. The apparently simple concept of “value for money” raises three important issues: (i) how is “value” of defence and social projects quantified? (ii) what is the “money” involved, i.e. what are all the relevant costs? and (iii) what are the information and decision processes that are used in attempting to obtain “value for money“?

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