On Optimum Truss Layout by a Homogenization Method

1993 ◽  
Vol 115 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. R. Di´az ◽  
B. Belding

A new approach to the truss layout optimization problem is possible by using homogenization theory. Unlike traditional methods for optimization of truss topology, the new method does not require that the set of admissible connecting points be defined a-priori. This represents a great advantage over other strategies, which may inadvertently exclude optimum solutions by prescribing a set of connecting points that is inconsistent with the optimum connectivity. The homogenization approach, however, is based on the solution of the equations of plane elasticity over a two dimensional domain and its solutions are only truss-like structures. The relationship between these solutions and optimum truss structures is examined.

Author(s):  
Steven Luper

The term ‘naturalized epistemology’ was coined by W.V. Quine to refer to an approach to epistemology which he introduced in his 1969 essay ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Many of the moves that are distinctive of naturalized epistemology were made by David Hume, but Quine’s essay fixes the sense of the term as it is used today. Naturalized epistemology has critical as well as constructive thrusts. In a critical spirit, ‘naturalists’ (theorists who identify with the label ‘naturalized epistemology’) abandon several assumptions that are part of the tradition. They reject Descartes’ vision of epistemology as the attempt to convert our beliefs into an edifice resting on a foundation about which we have complete certainty. Descartes is wrong to equate knowledge with certainty, and wrong to think that knowledge is available through a priori theorizing, through reasoning which makes no use of experience. Nor should epistemology continue as David Hume’s attempt to rest knowledge on an introspective study of the mind’s contents. Moreover, the global sceptic’s claim that there is no way to justify all our views at once, should either be conceded or ignored. On the constructive side, naturalists suggest that in investigating knowledge we rely on the apparatus, techniques and assumptions of natural science. Accordingly, naturalized epistemology will be a scientific (and hence neither indefeasible nor a priori) explanation of how it is that some beliefs come to be knowledge. Issues of scepticism will be addressed only when they come up in the course of a scientific investigation. Quine’s seminal essay lays out the core of naturalized epistemology, but subsequent naturalists disagree on the appropriate responses to several issues, among them the following: First, may theories be tested on the basis of (independently plausible) theory-neutral observation, or are observations simply more theory? Second, after being naturalized, does epistemology survive as an autonomous discipline? Quine argues that epistemology should become a subfield of natural science, presumably a part of psychology, so that there is no separate field left specifically to philosophers. But can all our questions about knowledge be answered by natural scientists? Third, the claim that epistemology explains how knowledge comes to be suggests that epistemology will merely describe the origins of beliefs we take to be known; but what is the relationship between such descriptive issues and normative issues such as that of how we ought to arrive at our views? Fourth, to what extent is the new approach to epistemology susceptible to sceptical concerns such as those that so plagued traditional epistemologists, and how effective a response can be made to those concerns?


Author(s):  
Mariëlle Stel ◽  
Rick B. van Baaren ◽  
Jim Blascovich ◽  
Eric van Dijk ◽  
Cade McCall ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  

Mimicry and prosocial feelings are generally thought to be positively related. However, the conditions under which mimicry and liking are related largely remain unspecified. We advance this specification by examining the relationship between mimicry and liking more thoroughly. In two experiments, we manipulated an individual’s a priori liking for another and investigated whether it influenced mimicry of that person. Our experiments demonstrate that in the presence of a reason to like a target, automatic mimicry is increased. However, mimicry did not decrease when disliking a target. These studies provide further evidence of a link between mimicry and liking and extend previous research by showing that a certain level of mimicry even occurs when mimicry behavior is inconsistent with one’s goals or motivations.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Mackinnon

This article employs a new approach to studying internal colonialism in northern Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. A common approach to examining internal colonial situations within modern state territories is to compare characteristics of the internal colonial situation with attested attributes of external colonial relations. Although this article does not reject the comparative approach, it seeks to avoid criticisms that this approach can be misleading by demonstrating that promoters and managers of projects involving land use change, territorial dispossession and industrial development in the late modern Gàidhealtachd consistently conceived of their work as projects of colonization. It further argues that the new social, cultural and political structures these projects imposed on the area's indigenous population correspond to those found in other colonial situations, and that racist and racialist attitudes towards Gaels of the time are typical of those in colonial situations during the period. The article concludes that the late modern Gàidhealtachd has been a site of internal colonization where the relationship of domination between colonizer and colonized is complex, longstanding and occurring within the imperial state. In doing so it demonstrates that the history and present of the Gaels of Scotland belongs within the ambit of an emerging indigenous research paradigm.


Author(s):  
José Ferreirós

This book presents a new approach to the epistemology of mathematics by viewing mathematics as a human activity whose knowledge is intimately linked with practice. Charting an exciting new direction in the philosophy of mathematics, the book uses the crucial idea of a continuum to provide an account of the development of mathematical knowledge that reflects the actual experience of doing math and makes sense of the perceived objectivity of mathematical results. Describing a historically oriented, agent-based philosophy of mathematics, the book shows how the mathematical tradition evolved from Euclidean geometry to the real numbers and set-theoretic structures. It argues for the need to take into account a whole web of mathematical and other practices that are learned and linked by agents, and whose interplay acts as a constraint. It demonstrates how advanced mathematics, far from being a priori, is based on hypotheses, in contrast to elementary math, which has strong cognitive and practical roots and therefore enjoys certainty. Offering a wealth of philosophical and historical insights, the book challenges us to rethink some of our most basic assumptions about mathematics, its objectivity, and its relationship to culture and science.


GIS Business ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 85-98
Author(s):  
Idoko Peter

This research the impact of competitive quasi market on service delivery in Benue State University, Makurdi Nigeria. Both primary and secondary source of data and information were used for the study and questionnaire was used to extract information from the purposively selected respondents. The population for this study is one hundred and seventy three (173) administrative staff of Benue State University selected at random. The statistical tools employed was the classical ordinary least square (OLS) and the probability value of the estimates was used to tests hypotheses of the study. The result of the study indicates that a positive relationship exist between Competitive quasi marketing in Benue State University, Makurdi Nigeria (CQM) and Transparency in the service delivery (TRSP) and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05). Competitive quasi marketing (CQM) has a negative effect on Observe Competence in Benue State University, Makurdi Nigeria (OBCP) and the relationship is not statistically significant (p>0.05). Competitive quasi marketing (CQM) has a positive effect on Innovation in Benue State University, Makurdi Nigeria (INVO) and the relationship is statistically significant (p<0.05) and in line with a priori expectation. This means that a unit increases in Competitive quasi marketing (CQM) will result to a corresponding increase in innovation in Benue State University, Makurdi Nigeria (INVO) by a margin of 22.5%. It was concluded that government monopoly in the provision of certain types of services has greatly affected the quality of service experience in the institution. It was recommended among others that the stakeholders in the market has to be transparent so that the system will be productive to serve the society effectively


2014 ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Sabino de Juan López

RESUMEN En el artículo se ofrece una reflexión en torno a la educación y valores. Tras una referencia a los diferentes sentidos en que se puede plantear el problema en función de la forma como se puede entender la relación entre los dos sustantivos “educación” y “valores”, la reflexión se centra en algunos problemas relacionados con los valores en cuanto contenidos de la educación. Primeramente se refiere al problema del criterio en función del cual determinar los valores de la educación, concluyendo en que el criterio no podía ser ni de carácter a priori, ni empírico, sino “sintético”. A continuación, se afronta el problema del principio, de la fuente de los valores, o la concreción del criterio de los valores de la educación, entendiendo que éstos deberían ser determinados a partir del sujeto de la educación. Se concluye con la referencia a una exigencia de los valores de la educación, la configuración de una totalidad unitaria e interactiva. Palabras clave: educación, valores, fuente de valores, integración, cultura EDUCATION AND VALUES ABSTRACT The article offers a reflection on education and values. After a reference to the different senses in which one can pose the problem in terms of how you can understand the relationship between the two nouns “education” and “values”, reflection focuses on some problems related to the values in the contents of education. First, it concerns the problem of the criterion against which to determine the values of education, concluding that the criterion could be neither a priori in nature, not empirical, but “synthetic”. Herein, the problem of principle is faced, the source of values, or the realization of the criterion of the values of education, understanding that these should be determined from the subject of education. It concludes with the reference of a requirement of the values in education, setting up a unitary and interactive whole. Key Words: education, values , power values , integration, culture


Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 12
Author(s):  
Yulia Ivanova ◽  
Anton Kovalev ◽  
Vlad Soukhovolsky

The paper considers a new approach to modeling the relationship between the increase in woody phytomass in the pine forest and satellite-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and Land Surface Temperature (LST) (MODIS/AQUA) data. The developed model combines the phenological and forest growth processes. For the analysis, NDVI and LST (MODIS) satellite data were used together with the measurements of tree-ring widths (TRW). NDVI data contain features of each growing season. The models include parameters of parabolic approximation of NDVI and LST time series transformed using principal component analysis. The study shows that the current rate of TRW is determined by the total values of principal components of the satellite indices over the season and the rate of tree increment in the preceding year.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000276422110216
Author(s):  
Kazimierz M. Slomczynski ◽  
Irina Tomescu-Dubrow ◽  
Ilona Wysmulek

This article proposes a new approach to analyze protest participation measured in surveys of uneven quality. Because single international survey projects cover only a fraction of the world’s nations in specific periods, researchers increasingly turn to ex-post harmonization of different survey data sets not a priori designed as comparable. However, very few scholars systematically examine the impact of the survey data quality on substantive results. We argue that the variation in source data, especially deviations from standards of survey documentation, data processing, and computer files—proposed by methodologists of Total Survey Error, Survey Quality Monitoring, and Fitness for Intended Use—is important for analyzing protest behavior. In particular, we apply the Survey Data Recycling framework to investigate the extent to which indicators of attending demonstrations and signing petitions in 1,184 national survey projects are associated with measures of data quality, controlling for variability in the questionnaire items. We demonstrate that the null hypothesis of no impact of measures of survey quality on indicators of protest participation must be rejected. Measures of survey documentation, data processing, and computer records, taken together, explain over 5% of the intersurvey variance in the proportions of the populations attending demonstrations or signing petitions.


Urban Studies ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 004209802110078
Author(s):  
Romit Chowdhury ◽  
Colin McFarlane

In the history of urban thought, density has been closely indexed to the idea of citylife. Drawing on commuters’ experiences and perceptions of crowds in and around Tokyo’s Shinjuku Station, this article offers an ethnographic perspective on the relationship between urban crowds and life in the city. We advance understandings of the relations between the crowd and citylife through three categories of ‘crowd relations’– materiality, negotiation and inclusivity – to argue that the multiplicity of meanings which accrue to people’s encounters with crowds refuses any a priori definitions of optimum levels of urban density. Rather, the crowd relations gathered here are evocations of citylife that take us beyond the tendency to represent the crowd as a particular kind of problem, be it alienation, exhaustion or a threshold for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ densities. The portraits of commuter crowds presented capture the various entanglements between human and non-human, embodiment and mobility, and multiculture and the civic, through which citylife emerges as a mode of being with oneself and others.


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