An Arbitrary Assumption?

Science News ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 3
Author(s):  
Valentin D. Fikovsky
Keyword(s):  
Arbitrary Assumption

The Athenian Hoplite Force in 431 B.C.

1927 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 142-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. W. Gomme
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

There is still something to be said about these figures for the Athenian hoplite force, the more so as the most reasonable discussion of them, Meyer's, is spoilt by some unsound inferences and has in consequence not found support. Their difficulty is apparent: a muster πανσημει in 338 meant calling up all classes up to the age of 50 (Lycurg. c. Leocr. 39), and since Socrates fought at Delion and Amphipolis when he was in his late forties, and not at Mantineia when he was over 50, we may assume that it meant the same in the fifth century; we also assume (though this is by no means proved) that ‘the youngest’ are those in their nineteenth and twentieth years, as in the fourth century, certainly after the reform of the Ephebeia, perhaps earlier (Aeschin. II. 167); military service ceased at 60. But how could the number of men in these twelve classes, 19-20 and 51-60, stand in the proportion of 13: 17 (16,000 less 3,000 metics, 13,000 plus 1,000 cavalry and 3,000 metics) to the men between 21 and 50 ? They could not be more than a third, and might be less. (Beloch, 1923, tries to make the problem more difficult by the arbitrary assumption that the 13,000 citizen hoplites are all the men of 21-60, instead of 21-50. Meyer, who accepts Thucydides’ figures, forgets that there must have been ‘oldest and youngest’ metics, besides the 3,000 who marched into Megara. Busolt and Meyer also argue that the classes 51-60 will have suffered specially heavy losses in the battles of 459-445, while the eight youngest classes would have seen no fighting;

Biconditional Rule-Difficulty

1974 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 955-962
Author(s):  
Tom Ciborowski
Keyword(s):  
Present Experiment ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Rule Learning ◽  
Learning Problems ◽  
Direct Test ◽  
College Age ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

Three different groups of college age Ss received biconditional rule-learning problems that were altered in such a way as to permit a direct test of an unpublished model of Ss' behavior proposed by C. K. Sawyer and P. Johnson and substantially extended by Salatas and Bourne (1972). The present experiment obtained strong support for the model and evidence to support the widely reported suggestion that the principal difficulty with a biconditional rule is that S must learn to classify together two groups of elements that share no elements in common. The major outcome of the experiment was that strong empirical support was obtained for a useful but arbitrary assumption by Salatas and Bourne concerning a metric for evaluating biconditional rule-difficulty.

A New Generalized Carbon Exergy Tax: An Effective Rule to Control Global Warming

2003 ◽  
Vol 125 (4) ◽  
pp. 972-978 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Traverso ◽  
A. F. Massardo ◽  
M. Santarelli ◽  
M. Cali
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Co2 Emission ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Analytical Procedure ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Gas Oil ◽  
Complete Procedure ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

An instrument for promoting CO2 emission reductions, taking the Kyoto Protocol goal into account, could be the assignment to energy conversion plants of a monetary charge linked to their specific emission intensity, usually called carbon tax. There are two main problems closely connected with this approach: the estimation of the charge (that must be related to the “external” cost associated with CO2 emission) and the choice of the strategy to determine the amount of the imposed charge. In this paper an analytical procedure proposed by the authors and called carbon exergy tax (CET) for the evaluation of CO2 emission externalities is presented. It is based on the thermoeconomic analysis of energy systems, which allows second law losses to be quantified in monetary terms: the resulting cost represents the taxation that is to be applied to the energy system under examination, calculated without any arbitrary assumption. Since the complete procedure of the CET evaluation is too complex to become a feasible instrument of energy policy, hereby, after applying the procedure to some conventional and advanced power plants, gas, oil, and coal-fueled, a new generalized approach, based on the results of the complete CET procedure, is proposed. The generalized CET evaluation requires much less information about the energy system and thus a simple and effective energy policy rule to manage global warming is obtained and available.

Mechanical Potential Drops at a Fluid Branch

1967 ◽  
Vol 89 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Secondary Flow ◽  
Flow Problem ◽  
Steady Flows ◽  
Equal Area ◽  
Tee Junction ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

Separating and mixing steady flows are analyzed at a 90 deg equal area branch (TEE junction). An arbitrary assumption is made linking secondary flow forces to the turning momentum through an experimental constant. This constant is evaluated from the data of Vogel on TEE junctions and the data of Barton on pipe laterals. Expressions are derived for the mechanical potential drops at the branch. These expressions are then used to solve a simple branch flow problem.

scholarly journals MEMBRANE POTENTIALS IN THE DONNAN EQUILIBRIUM. II

1954 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 717-727 ◽  
Author(s):  
David I. Hitchcock
Keyword(s):  
Electromotive Force ◽  
Chloride Ion ◽  
Membrane Potentials ◽  
Salt Bridges ◽  
Dilute Solutions ◽  
Total Chloride ◽  
Donnan Equilibrium ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption ◽  
As If

Measurements were made of electromotive force in the Donnan equilibrium of systems containing dilute solutions of protein and acid. Removal of the membrane produced a decrease of no more than 2 to 4 mv. in electromotive force, while the membrane potentials, as estimated by the usual arbitrary assumption, were of the order of 12 to 34 mv. Ion ratios, as calculated from analyses for total chloride, were definitely greater than those calculated from the electromotive force of cells with salt bridges, as if there had been combination of some of the chloride ion with protein.

scholarly journals The adjustment of biological assay results for variation in concomitant observations

1947 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-406 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. J. Finney
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Tests ◽  
Covariance Analysis ◽  
The Body ◽  
Biological Assay ◽  
Gland Weight ◽  
Body Weights ◽  
The Mean ◽  
Measured Response ◽  
Considerable Doubt ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

When individual responses in a biological assay show considerable variation associated with the values of a concomitant variate, covariance analysis may be used in order to adjust the mean responses and to improve the precision of the assay. Usually this is preferable to the choice of an adjustment which involves an arbitrary assumption about the effect of variations in the concomitant variate on the measured response. Published accounts of the process are open to certain theoretical objections, though they may be sufficiently exact for most practical purposes.The present paper describes a method of calculating the relative potency, and its precision, which may be a little more laborious, but which is in full accord with standard statistical practice. The computations are illustrated on data from a prolactin assay by the pigeon crop-gland technique, in which the final crop-gland weight showed a positive correlation with the body weight at the start of the assay. The results are compared with those obtained either from the unadjusted crop-gland weights or from these weights expressed as proportions of body weights. The covariance method leads to a more precise estimate of the potency of the test preparation than do either of the others; there is evidence, however, that the increase in precision will not necessarily be large unless the correlation between the response and the concomitant variate is very close.In a final section, the full statistical tests of assay validity in the covariance analysis are described; these are lengthy, and fortunately are required only when the validity is in considerable doubt.The methods of adjustment have been described in this paper with respect to an assay depending upon parallel regression lines of responses on the logarithms of doses. They may be adapted for use with ‘slope-ratio’ assays (Bliss, 1946; Finney, 1945; 1948; Wood & Finney, 1946), in which the regression of response on dose itself is linear. So far the need for adjusting for concomitant variation in these assays seems not to have arisen, and discussion of computational details may be postponed until the need is felt.

The Impossible Dream of Fechner and Stevens

Perception ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 431-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Power Function ◽  
Stimulus Intensity ◽  
Power Law ◽  
Psychophysical Function ◽  
Empirical Function ◽  
Universal Law ◽  
General Truth ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

The idea that there is a single psychophysical function which describes how the human responds to stimulus intensity is rejected. The form of any empirical function depends upon the buried yet arbitrary assumption about how the stimuli are to be measured. Because psychophysical functions have this arbitrary basis, there can be no universal law, and further, no psychophysical function can reveal a general truth about the nervous system. The power law has been inappropriately reified; the descriptive usefulness of the power function has been incorrectly extended, perhaps because simplicity is appealing.

scholarly journals The theory of the Raman effect in crystals, in particular rock-salt

1947 ◽  
Vol 188 (1013) ◽  
pp. 161-178 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Rock Salt ◽  
Lattice Dynamics ◽  
Raman Effect ◽  
Order Effect ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Coupling Constants ◽  
Combination Frequency ◽  
First Order ◽  
Combination Frequencies ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

The Raman effect in crystals is treated in this paper with the help of Placzek’s approximation. It consists of contributions of different orders with respect to the amplitudes of the vibrations; the first-order effect is a line spectrum depending only on the vibrations of infinite wavelength, the second-order effect is a continuous spectrum depending on combination frequencies of all pairs of branches of the lattice vibrations, each pair taken for the same wave vector. In highly symmetrical crystals like rock-salt the first-order effect is zero. The second order effect can be calculated for rock-salt with the help of the tables of the lattice frequencies published by Kellermann. It consists of thirty-six peaks, each belonging to a combination frequency. The superposition of these allows us to determine without any arbitrary assumption about the coupling constants, the frequency of the observable maxima in fair agreement with Krishnan’s measurements. By adapting three coupling constants one can also determine the relative intensities of the most prominent peaks and obtain a curve which in its main features agrees with the observed one. The results show that lattice dynamics can account quantitatively for the Raman effect in crystals and that Raman’s attacks against the theory are unfounded.

A New Generalised Carbon Exergy Tax: An Effective Rule to Control Global Warming

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Traverso ◽  
M. Santarelli ◽  
A. F. Massardo ◽  
M. Cali`
Keyword(s):  
Global Warming ◽  
Energy Policy ◽  
Co2 Emission ◽  
Power Plants ◽  
Analytical Procedure ◽  
Carbon Tax ◽  
Energy System ◽  
Gas Oil ◽  
Complete Procedure ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

An instrument for promoting CO2 emission reductions, taking the Kyoto Protocol goal into account, could be the assignment to energy conversion plants of a monetary charge linked to their specific emission intensity, usually called Carbon Tax. There are two main problems closely connected with this approach: the estimation of the charge (that must be related to the “external” cost associated with CO2 emission) and the choice of the strategy to determine the amount of the imposed charge. In this paper an analytical procedure proposed by the authors and called Carbon Exergy Tax (CET) for the evaluation of CO2 emission externalities is presented. It is based on the thermoeconomic analysis of energy systems, which allows Second Law losses to be quantified in monetary terms: the resulting cost represents the taxation that is to be applied to the energy system under examination, calculated without any arbitrary assumption. Since the complete procedure of the CET evaluation is too complex to become a feasible instrument of energy policy, hereby, after applying the procedure to some conventional and advanced power plants, gas-, oil- and coal-fuelled, a new generalised approach, based on the results of the complete CET procedure, is proposed. The generalised CET evaluation requires much less information about the energy system and thus a simple and effective energy policy rule to manage global warming is obtained and available.

Robustness and Accuracy Improvement of Data Processing with 2D Neutral Network for Transient Absorption Dynamics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruixuan Zhao ◽  
Daxin Wu ◽  
Jiao Wen ◽  
Qi Zhang ◽  
Guganglei Zhang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Data Processing ◽  
Conventional Method ◽  
Transient Absorption ◽  
Neutral Network ◽  
Absorbance Spectrum ◽  
Accuracy Improvement ◽  
Transient Absorbance ◽  
Fitting Ability ◽  
Arbitrary Assumption

To achieve the goal of efficiently analyzing the transient absorbance spectrum without arbitrary assumption and to overcome the limitation of conventional method in fitting ability and highly noised background, it...

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