Automatic, or robotic, milking systems have the potential to significantly change the way milk is produced on U.S. dairy farms. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty associated with adoption of this new technology. A real options approach is used to analyze the decision to replace an operational milking system with an automatic milking system. The most important source of uncertainty is shown to be the length of the technology's useful life. Under our assumptions, the automatic system is always an optimal investment if it is certain that it will last longer than the operational system being replaced.

Dwight Eisenhower's farewell address continues to resonate, beyond this admirable special edition of Enterprise & Society. The term he employed to describe the influence of corporations and financial interests over national defense policy, the “military–industrial complex,” usefully summarized phenomenon of his time. It also depicts an ongoing and arguably even structural phenomenon within contemporary American society. Ike would therefore appear in retrospect one part keen observer, another prophet. As the articles in this forum collectively suggest, the ideas embedded within his now-famous phrase continue to frame contemporary scholarship fifty years after his final Oval Office speech, though with a far narrower lens than Ike envisioned, and with less dire societal results than he feared. The military–industrial complex is both more real, and less frightening, than he foretold. At least, so far.

We report an outbreak of norovirus in a locked pediatric inpatient psychiatric unit with attack rates of 75% among 4 patients and 26% among 38 staff. Factors contributing to the outbreak included environmental contamination, close staff-patient contact including sharing meals, and inability to confine the index patient with the use of contact precautions.

The battle for dominance of the global aviation marketplace after 1945 was largely an Anglo-American competition, yet to date historians have overlooked the important role diplomacy played in shaping its outcome. Divisions over the proper regulation of strategically vital aircraft and aviation technology seriously impeded aircraft manufacturers, British producers especially. This article traces the impact of Anglo-American diplomacy upon British aviation manufacturers during the first half of the Cold War, from 1946 until the Sino-American rapprochement of the early 1970s. It explores three periods in particular: the initial postwar years, highlighted by disputed British jet engine sales to the Soviet Union; the early 1950s, when British jetliner exports seemed a genuine strategic threat in Washington; and the early 1960s, when Whitehall authorized covert transfers of American-licensed aviation equipment to complete the first British aircraft sales to the People’s Republic of China. These examples demonstrate not only the effect of strategic balancing by governments on the marketplace, but also diplomacy’s impact on business.