As we have noted before, the WG-IR was created following a Joint Commission Meeting at the IAU General Assembly in Baltimore in 1988, a meeting that provided both diagnosis and prescription for the perceived ailments of infrared photometry at the time. The results were summarized in Milone (1989). The challenges involve how to explain the failure to systematically achieve the milli-magnitude precision expected of infrared photometry and an apparent 3% limit on system transformability. The proposed solution was to re-define the broadband Johnson system, the passbands of which had proven so unsatisfactory that over time effectively different systems proliferated although bearing the same JHKLMNQ designations; the new system needed to be better positioned and centered in the atmospheric windows of the Earth's atmosphere, and the variable water vapour content of the atmosphere needed to be measured in real time to better correct for atmospheric extinction.

A series of fused three-ring compounds have been synthesized and characterized for their possible use as organic crystals for second-harmonic generation. Polymer films doped with these compounds were aligned via corona poling and their second order non-linear optical properties compared with layers doped with stilbene like molecules. Values of ¼β0 have been obtained and the effects of different heteroatoms and substituents on λ max and on ¼β0 were examined. An X-ray diffraction crystal structure on one member of the series, 1,2,4-Trichloro-8-nitro-phenoxazin-3-one (Compound 1), revealed a centrosymmetric crystal habit in a P21/n space group, with a = 9.829(3), b = 8.300(2) and c = 15.542(4) Å. Final R(F) = 0.0939 for 754 reflections where I σ; 3σ(I).

The 30-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) has been validated against the criterion of a standardized psychiatric interview in the community. Used for screening, the GHQ misclassified 25 per cent of 105 respondents, being worse for men. Specificity and sensitivity were above.70. The alternative use of the GHQ as an estimator and as an indicator of morbidity in epidemiological surveys is described and discussed.

In the report of the Association's Committee on War-time Services occurs the following passage: “It seems to the Committee that the customary individualism of the profession is a luxury that cannot be unimpaired in war-time; political scientists must not go through the war with a business-as-usual attitude toward research and critical writing. The crises upon the nation and awaiting the nation demand that the profession recognize priorities in its scholarly work…. Students, mature and immature, should know what men of affairs consider to be the more crucial issues … The Committee … does ask … that the profession be given leadership in determining what to do ….”

The Research Committee of the Association considered this challenge and sought an answer from those members of the profession who had temporarily left their academic halls and plunged into the war effort in Washington. This group gave generously of their time and thought to the matter. The Committee's own function became merely that of a reporter or synthesizer of the views thus expressed. It is this synthesis which this statement incorporates. The suggestions are deliberately not attributed to any one individual. In the first place, many suggestions were made by more than one person; in the second place, the total pattern is even more intriguing than the individual suggestions.