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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study the general trends in the area of dividend policy which will help to identify fertile research streams in this area with a potential for further investigation. Design/methodology/approach: To conduct a systematic literature review, the authors use a three-step methodology to collect resources and thus evaluate the research work done in the area of dividend policy. First, the necessary data are extracted from the Scopus database using the relevant keywords. The initial search results are then narrowed down to include only English language journal publications which are stored in the file. Finally, this file is used as primary data for data analysis. Data analysis is done using bibliometric and network analysis tools to recognize the trends in dividend policy to help researchers identify emergent areas for future work to be done. Findings: This study reveals that research in the area of dividend policy is rapidly expanding since 2005; affiliation statistics show that majority of the publications are done in the USA and the UK; and many questions linked to dividend decision remain unanswered, especially in respect of emerging markets. Originality/value: There is a need to organize the literature and understand the different areas that have been explored by many researchers. This study attempts to recognize the important research studies, determine the current areas of research attention, provide an understanding for current research interest and provide guidelines for future studies in the area of dividend policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We created a suite of packages to enable analysis of extremely large genomic data sets (potentially millions of individuals and millions of molecular markers) within the R environment. The package offers: a matrix-like interface for .bed files (PLINK's binary format for genotype data), a novel class of linked arrays that allows linking data stored in multiple files to form a single array accessible from the R computing environment, methods for parallel computing capabilities that can carry out computations on very large data sets without loading the entire data into memory and a basic set of methods for statistical genetic analyses. The package is accessible through CRAN and GitHub. In this note, we describe the classes and methods implemented in each of the packages that make the suite and illustrate the use of the packages using data from the UK Biobank. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the results of the independent research "BridgeHead Software Information Lifecycle Management Audit" which confirms the continued information technology data growth in the U.S. and Great Britain. There has been a 22 percent growth in the number of respondents who had more than five terabytes of online data in Great Britain. Information technology data growth is dominated by unstructured data. In spite of the increasing awareness in file archiving, British respondents said they would likely not be able to find and restore a three month old file.

The article reports on the impact of the British Computer Society's (BCS) initiative to launch the European Computer Driving License in Great Britain in May 1998. This initiative has received positive responses from the public with almost 100 colleges and training firms accredited to run the course. This qualification has also been adopted by some employers as a standard for their staff. It is based on independent evaluation of skills in concepts such as file management, word processing, spreadsheets, databases and network services.