Internal Disposition Research Articles

Beyond Marx—Weber: A Diversified and International Approach to the State

Marx initiated the definition of the development of the modern state as a process of expropriation of powers. Weber took over this idea and added to it two more definitions of the state: as the holder of a monopoly of the means of violence and as an authority based on rational-legal legitimation. These three definitions of the state held up well until after the second world war, but since then new developments require that they be modified. Total expropriation of all powers did not take place. Instead a fusion of state and society ensued. The monopoly of violence has not proved usable and legitimation no longer matters so much in ensuring obedience. Furthermore, politics has moved to a new global international system featuring a number of different types of state: autonomous, community, client, satellite and independent states. The combination of these five types with the previously defined three factors of expropriation, militarization and legitimacy, constitutes a theoretical approach that can relate internal structural disposition to external global position of the state.

A Non‐metric Procedure for Transforming Dissimilarities to Euclidean Distances Useful in Numerical Taxonomy and Ecology

AbstractBecause (a) in agglomerative cluster analysis, it is the smallest dissimilarities which are used, (b) in numerical ecology, little or no information is given about the resemblance between two localities if there are very few (or no) species in common, (c) for a given dissimilarity, the number of ways two objects can differ in the states shown by their attributes is small for small dissimilarities, and disproportionately larger for larger dissimilarities, (d) the major axes in principal coordinates analysis are determined by the largest dissimilarities, which from (a–c) are the least informative, and (e) the ‘orsesho’ pattern often shown by two‐dimensional scalings of dissimilarities, it is concluded that the largest dissimilarities should be replaced by values determined from the smallest.The proposal is to retain the dissimilarities corresponding with the edges in the relative neighbourhood graph, and to replace the remaining by the shortest paths on the dissimilarity‐weighted graph. The new dissimilarities, which are linearly related with the retained subset, are shown to be Euclidean, and usually the effective dimensionality is reduced in comparison with the original set. The internal disposition of distinct subsets of objects is little affected, but any distinct subsets tend to be further separated.By contrast, if the smallest dissimilarities represent random differences, while the larger subset represents those which are systematic, it is the latter which should be retained. The notion of the relative external graph is introduced, and the procedures required to obtain this, and to replace the deleted empirical smallest dissimilarities briefly described. However, this results in an increase in the effective dimension, changes in the internal disposition of distinct subsets, and reduction in their separation.–Two numerical examples, based on empirical data, illustrate some of the consequences of the transformations.

Fatigue Crack Propagation in Aluminum Single Crystals

Single crystals of commercially pure (2S) aluminum were stressed in push-pull and the development of surface fatigue cracks observed continuously with a specially mounted 300× optical microscope. Time-lapse photographic sequences were used to measure the propagation rate and to determine the relation between surface slip markings and crack propagation mechanisms. Cross-sectional views of the internal disposition of the crack were obtained by sectioning in a microtome. Back reflection x-ray photographs were used to gather evidence concerning the deformation substructure near the fatigue crack. The data thus assembled allow the mechanism of fatigue crack propagation to be described in terms of surface slip bands, the stress concentration at the edges of these bands, and subgrain formation which occurs in the vicinity of the crack tip. The linear relationship between the logarithm of the instantaneous crack length and the number of stress cycles was confirmed and the proportionality between the crack length and the plastic zone immediately ahead of the tip was demonstrated.

Physical Notes

PROF. LEMSTRÖM, of Helingsfors, has recently described to the Physical Society of St. Petersburg a singular experiment which, unless otherwise explained by some of the circumstances of the experiment not yet published, must be regarded as a fundamental fact in the physical theory of electricity. He finds that a ring of insulating material when rotated about its axis of symmetry with a high velocity acts like a galvanic circuit, and produces a magnetic “field” in the space within it. Prof. Lemström is a disciple of Edlund, and regards this experiment as confirmatory of Edlund's theoretical views on the nature of electricity. According to Lemström, the ether in the insulator, being dragged along by the ring, produces vortical motion of the ether in the central space, which vortical motion he conceives to be the essential condition of a magnetic field. Arguing from these premises, Lemström proceeds to build up an ingenious theory of terrestrial magnetism. The converse operation of rotating an iron bar within a hollow insulating body or insulating medium ought also to produce magnetism in the bar. The earth being a magnetic body rotating in an insulating medium, ought to be magnetised by rotation about its axis, the axis being the axis also of magnetisation, unless the irregular internal disposition of the magnetic constituents produced an irregular distribution of the magnetism, or unless the distribution were affected by the induced magnetism due to movements of electricity in the atmosphere, as in the aurora, or by the magnetism which would, on Lemström's theory, be generated by the revolution of the earth round the sun, and by the motion of the solar system through space.