Familiar Kind Research Articles

METEOR: An Artificial Intelligence System for Convective Storm Forecasting

Abstract An experienced forecaster can use several different types of knowledge in forcing. First, there is his theoretical understanding of meteorology, which is well entrenched in current numerical models. A second type is his “local knowledge,” gained over years of experience, of how weather is likely to form in his forecast area. This kind of local familiarity is not easily captured with traditional numeric techniques, but might provide additional insights for prediction that someone unfamiliar with the area might not have. A third type of knowledge is how to interpret forecast tools already in use. This might include knowledge of the tool's limitations and how it works in a particular locale. Capturing these types of knowledge is important in building computing systems that can serve as intelligent consultants to forecasters. This paper describes a prototype system, called METEOR, that incorporates all these types of knowledge to predict the location, severity, and motion of convective storms in Albe...

Essence, Origin and Bare Idenlity

It is natural to think of the identities of objects of various sorts, including some familiar kinds of persisting thing, as in a certain sense supervenient on other facts. In the first part of this paper (?? I-3) I show how such supervenience theses tend to generate a demand for individual essences; in the remainder of the paper I consider what our response to this should be. My conclusion is that we should reject at least one of the principles that lie behind the supervenience theses. In particular, I advocate that we abandon a certain otherwise attractive principle, to the effect that the difference between two possibilities cannot consist solely in the fact that they concern two different individuals. Couched in the terminology of possible worlds, the moral I draw is that there can be a 'bare' difference between identities across possible worlds. The rejection of the supervenience theses has, among its consequences, the effect of undermining a certain line of thought that, I suspect, explains the popularity of various forms of necessity of origin thesis.

Various Kinds of Face Familiarity and a Short Report on a Case of Prosopagnosia

Various Kinds of Face Familiarity and a Short Report on a Case of Prosopagnosia

From Knowledge To Wisdom: Guiding Choices in Scientific Research

This article argues for the need to put into practice a profound and comprehensive intellectual revolution, affecting to a greater or lesser extent all branches of scientific and technological research, scholarship and education. This intellectual revolution differs, however, from the now familiar kind of scientific revolution described by Kuhn. It does not primarily involve a radical change in what we take to be knowledge about some aspect of the world, a change of paradigm. Rather it involves a radical change in (...) the fundamental, overall intellectual aims and methods of inquiry. At present inquiry is devoted to the enhancement of knowledge. This needs to be transformed into a kind of rational inquiry having as its basic aim to enhance personal and social wisdom. This new kind of inquiry gives intellectual priority to the personal and social problems we encounter in our lives as we strive to realize what is desirable and of value – problems of knowledge and technology being intellectually subordinate and secondary. For this new kind of inquiry, it is what we do and what we are that ultimately matters: our knowledge is but an aspect of our life and being.

Optical Designs Of Special Interest In The Infrared

Some of the familiar kinds of optical designs for the visual region of the spectrum take on new meaning when applied to infrared problems. The availability of high indexes of refraction, for example, accentuates byways of optical design in the visual into quite unusual results in the infrared. As a first example, the ROsch combination of catadioptric system derived from the Schmidt telescope leads to a kind of wide-field system of low aperture ratio and low obscuration, although at a sacrifice of compactness. In another such instance, it is feasible to design an optical system in the IR that can illuminate some appropriate form of detector from a major fraction of a 4-pi solid angle over a field of view of appreciable size. Similarly, it is possible to design a form of retroreflector for the IR that has a 4-pi field of view, as for the Luneberg sphere. Further examples of special design for the infrared are discussed, including all-refractive, and all-reflective and catadioptric combinations. The author reviews some of these useful facets of optical design where appropriate infrared materials can be employed, and suggests how some of these forms may be applied to infrared problems.

Politics and Genre in Nonfiction Prose

I WANT TO CONSIDER a familiar kind of book, and my starting point is Frye's notion, of on which he grounds theory of genres in Anatomy of Criticism. Or rather, he claims to do so, saying that the basis of generic criticism ... is rhetorical, in sense that genre is determined by conditions established between poet and his public. This idea directly sponsors his initial division of literature into four genres. In epos poet recites directly to his audience. In fiction, audience and author are hidden from each other, with book mediating. The poet of drama is concealed, while characters speaking poet's words directly confront audience. By contrast, in lyric radical of presentation, audience is concealed from poet and, as it were, overhears him. Frye's two terms-an author and an audience-and his one two-valued relationship between them-concealment/confrontation-neatly define four main genres.' Fair enough, as an abstract beginning. But Frye breaks off this line of inquiry before long (at least I lose track of it), and when he comes round to discussing specific forms of epos, lyric, drama, and fiction, he pretty much ignores the conditions established between poet and his audience, except for some remarks in section on drama which are among most illuminating of whole essay. There he speaks of audience's status, relative to poet and characters, and of relation of all three to society's history. I wish he had done likewise in discussing other genres, for I suspect that only by being historically and socially specific can one build an understanding of genres on connections between poet and public.2 Perhaps that is why essay on genres seems to many readers least satisfactory in Anatomy. Anyhow, I want to press Frye's initial point somewhat farther, in discussing what I take to be one genre of nonfiction prose. In violation of first rule of genre theory, I won't coin a name for itthough it could be called, by someone with a taste for naming, social

The complementarity principle and the origin of macromolecular information

I am going to try to revitalize an old and controversial relationship which appears to have lost much of its significance and excite­ ment largely through a kind of superficial familiarity. This is the relation between bio­ logical information and biological structure. It is now common jargon even among the most reductionistic molecular biologists to speak of information in macromolecules, such as gene­ tic DNA, hormones or immunoglobulins, as if information were a physical property like their structure and chemistry. But, as Kendrew (1967) and Stent (1968) have so clearly recalled, the origin of molecular biology involved 2 disjoint and even hostile groups: the with an ancestry of experi­ mental X-ray crystallographers going back to Bemal, Astbury and the Braggs; and the informationists with an ancestry in phage genetics associated with Delbruck, but with strong hereditary influences from Schrodinger and Bohr. As Kendrew and Stent saw it over a decade ago, there existed 2 schools of molecular biologists, structurists and informationists, three-dimensionists, and one-dimensionists, whose conceptual foundations had little in common. The were largely moti­ vated by the power of their experimental technique, X-ray diffraction, to eventually determine the three-dimensional atomic stucture of proteins and nucleic acids, reflecting what Stent (1968) calls a down-to-earth view of the relation of physics to biology, namely that all biological phenomena, no matter what their complexity, can ultimately be accounted for in terms of conventional physical laws. By contrast, the information­ ists were largely motivated by theoretical doubts of the adequacy of physics to explain life, in any reductionistic or purely objective sense. These doubts were suggestively ex­ pressed by Bohr (1934) and Schrodinger (1945) who did not speak in informational jargon, since it did not exist at the time, but who were nevertheless both focusing on informational questions: Bohr on the pro­ blem of measurement and its possible inter­ ference with vital dynamics, and Schrodinger on the problem of explaining the incredible reliability of genetic instructions. There was,

Descartes, Belief and the Will

I want to discuss the puzzling, but, in some ways, persuasive view that I have a familiar and unproblematic kind of freedom with respect to my beliefs.

Facilitation of both “same” and “different” judgments of letter strings by familiarity of letter sequence

Three experiments employing simultaneous matching were performed to extend recent findings that three kinds of familiarity—familiarity of letter sequences, familiarity of display configuration, and familiarity of letter orientation—facilitate the matching of letter strings for “same” responses and sometimes for “different” responses. It was found that letter sequence familiarity facilitated “same” responses even when the letter strings were in an unfamiliar orientation or configuration and also facilitated “different” responses whenever the task required that a substantial portion of the display be processed before a response could be initiated. A three-stage model of the simultaneous letter-string matching task was developed. This model, which assumes that the same processes account for both “same” and “different” responses, was consistent with findings obtained when there were small differences between string pairs. Discrepant findings obtained when there were large differences between string pairs may have been produced by the premature initiation of responses.

Friedrich Welwitsch, 1806-72: A centennial memoir

The main events in the life of Friedrich Welwitsch are discussed and his achievements evaluated. SUMMARY A hundred years ago Friedrich Welwitsch, the naturalist-explorer whose name is commemorated in the monotypic genus Welwitschia, died in London. The collection he made in Angola was acclaimed, even 20 years after his death, as the best ever to have come out of tropical Africa, and to this day it remains of unique value. As well as a contentious spirit Welwitsch had an inflexible devotion to any task he undertook. The Portuguese Government did not clearly comprehend the nature of the investigation it should have invited Welwitsch to carry out in Angola or the character of the man himself. The consequent misunderstanding, discord and severance between Welwitsch and the Government sprang partly from their divergence of purpose and partly from an earlier pattern set between Welwitsch and his father. But, disappointed as it was with Welwitsch's achievement, the Portuguese Government recognized the scientific value of his collections and successfully contested his attempt to bequeath the best part of them to the British Museum. An action in the English High Court between the King of Portugal and the executors of Welwitsch's will followed, and became tangled with extraneous animosities between the British Museum and Kew before it was finally settled in a compromise. Welwitsch's life, and especially his quarrel with the Portuguese Government, foreshadowed many disputes of a now unfortunately familiar kind between governments and the scientists they employ. And the nature of his achievement, both its success and its failure, provokes thought on problems of contemporary importance to the advancement of developing countries.

Acoustic beaming and reflexion from wave-bearing surfaces

The field radiated by an acoustic monopole in the presence of an infinite membrane, or plate, is studied, with emphasis on the case when fluid loading effects are small and when a free wave in the surface has supersonic phase speed relative to the fluid. Coupling between fluid and surface is then specified by a Mach angle θMand by a fluid loading parameter ε, with ε [Lt ] 1. Asymptotic expressions for the field are derived which are uniform in the observation angle θ, measured from the surface. Previous descriptions have suggested the formation of a strong two-dimensional beaming effect along the surface of the Mach cone θ = θM. Here it is shown that this effect is a spurious consequence of nonuniform asymptotics. A beam is indeed formed, and persists without attenuation or distortion to large distancesk0R∼ ε−2. However, the beam amplitude is small compared with that of the three-dimensional reflected field, while at distancesk0R[Gt ] ε−2only the reflected wave survives. Some interesting features of the reflexion coefficient and of the field near to the membrane are also discussed. In particular, it is shown that the pressure field generated by a subsonic surface wave is also confined to a conical zone, the transition across the generators of the cone being described by Fresnel functions of a familiar kind.

Lattice Gas with Short-Range Pair Interactions and a Singular Coexistence-Curve Diameter

A simple lattice gas, of the familiar kind with only short-range pair interactions, is proved to have a coexistence curve whose diameter is singular at the critical point. Particle-hole symmetry is violated only because the range of interaction energies a molecule can experience depends on which of two nonequivalent sets its lattice site belongs to.

The Economic Situation: Annual Review : Chapter I. the British Economy in 1970

Although there was no balance of payments problem of the familiar kind in 1970, the year proved conspicuously unsuccessful in other respects. So far from leading on to a period of well-sustained economic growth, declining unemployment, and steadying prices, the hard-won struggle to ‘make devaluation work’ instead brought in its wake a period of accelerating price rises, a wage inflation of virtually unparalleled intensity, and a declining pressure of demand. This combination of ‘nominal’ inflation and ‘real’ stagnation was aptly named ‘stagflation’.

Some independent agreements and resolved disagreements about answer‐providing documents

AbstractEighty‐two documents and 30 questions, in documentation and related areas, were compared to find answer‐providing documents (documents from which answers to questions can be inferred). Two judges (documentation experts) made comparisons independently. They discussed their disagreements, attempting to resolve them. In each case the positive judge (who had independently judged a document answer‐providing) was first asked to indicate what answer he inferred, and from what document passage(s). The further discussion depended on the details of each case. There were 32 independent agreements on positive judgments. There were 48 disagreements between independent judgments, all resolved by discussion. Thirty‐four resolutions were agreements on positive judgments, accomplished by pointing out overlooked passages, unnoticed connections, or alternative meanings. Fourteen resolutions were agreements on negative judgments, accomplished by pointing out document misinterpretations, the challenged positive judge being unable to describe an inference and joint work not finding one, or agreement that both judges lacked sufficient background knowledge. In general, the resolution procedures used will resolve a disagreement about whether a document is answerproviding or reduce it to a familiar kind of scientific disagreement (about a passage's meaning, a statement's correctness, or an inference's correctness). This seems better than treating relevance judgements as subjective and not open to rational discussion.

Internal waves of permanent form in fluids of great depth

This paper presents a general theoretical treatment of a new class of long stationary waves with finite amplitude. As the property in common amongst physical systems capable of manifesting these waves, the density of the (incompressible) fluid varies only within a layer whose thickness h is much smaller than the total depth, and it is h rather than the total depth that must be considered as the fundamental scale against which wave amplitude and length are to be measured. Internal-wave motions supported by the oceanic thermocline appear to be the most promising field of practical application for the theory, although applications to atmospheric studies are also a possibility.The waves in question differ in important respects from long waves of more familiar kinds, and in § 1 their character is discussed on the basis of a comparison with solitary-wave and cnoidal-wave theories on customary lines, such as apply to internal waves in fluids of limited depth. A summary of some simple experiments is included at the end of § 1. Then, in § 2, the comparatively easy example of two-fluid systems is examined, again to illustrate principles and to prepare the way for the main analysis in § 3. This proceeds to a second stage of approximation in powers of wave amplitude, and its leading result is an equation (3·51) determining, for arbitrary specifications of the density distribution, the form of the streamlines in the layer of heterogeneous fluid. Periodic solutions of this equation are obtained, and their properties are discussed with regard to the interpretation of internal bores and wave-resistance phenomena. Solutions representing solitary waves are then obtained in the form \[ f(x) = a\lambda^2/(x^2+\lambda^2), \] where xis the horizontal co-ordinate and where aΛ = O(h2). (The latter relation between wave amplitude and length scale contrasts with the customary one, aΛ2 = O(h3)). The main analysis is developed with particular reference to systems in which the heterogeneous layer lies on a rigid horizontal bottom below an infinite expanse of homogeneous fluid; but in § 4 ways are given to apply the results to various other systems, including ones in which the heterogeneous layer is uppermost and is bounded by a free surface. Finally, in §5, three specific examples are treated: the density variation with depth is taken, respectively, to have a discontinuous, an exponential and a ‘tanh’ profile.

Transference and Transcendence: Freud and Tillich on the Nature of Personal Relatedness

Most discussions of religious and psychological thought are inclined to generalize rather broadly on religion and psychology. Little attention is usually given, for example, to precise points of contact between thought of a theologian and a psychologist, or even to relating selected theological and psychological schools or traditions. This paper attempts to contribute to more familiar kind of discussion, albeit by working at point of certain very specific aspects of both psychological and theological thought. To do this it moves progressively from a generalized of two disciplines themselves (what might be called theological and psychological scenes, taken as a whole), to an intermediate level of particular figures and systems (in this case Freud's psychoanalysis and Tillich's self-transcending realism), and then to a third level of specific constructs-transference and transcendence. This movement is followed by a brief concluding return to first and most general level. From psychological side I shall argue that is one of a small number of constructs crucial not only to psychoanalytic theory and therapy but crucial also for Freud's thought about culture and especially religion. transference remains a construct of outstanding import within and without (where it is attended if only to be criticized) classical psychoanalytic tradition. The first portion of paper will review Freud's thought at this point, by way of preparation for engagement or dialogue with Tillich's theological thought. Within current religious and theological thought subject-object relation is especially prominent. It is often employed to define epistemological and relational givenness of man's situation or condition, and theological meaning or reality is then said to issue from its transformation or transcendence. The second portion of paper will spell out and narrow down this motif with regard to psychological considerations. For illustration I shall recur to Tillich's analysis as perhaps best instance of precisely that segment of current theological thought which I wish to draw into dialogue with Freud. Both discussions focus upon what will be called the nature of personal relatedness, a phrase which could also be rendered the quality of personal

Elements of the Dramatic Model

By a model I understand some familiar kind of object the idea of which we extend by an analogy or metaphor in order to assist our understanding of other things. When we say, “All the world's a stage,” we are using the familiar antics and attitudes of the theatre as a model for thinking about our woes and joys and our activities.Sometimes a complex model is used by a thinker, by a group, or by a whole age as a guiding pattern suggesting ways of thinking in many areas. One model may even determine an inclusive view about the world from which derive emotional attitudes as well as ruling concepts and ways of thinking for our knowledge of the world. It is often said that the mechanism of a clock served in this way as a ruling model for much thought in the 17th and 18th centuries. Despite their novelty, clockworks were then becoming well known, and they were peculiarly fascinating. Reflection on them made very vivid such notions as regular motion, interchangeable parts, precise mechanical connection, influence by push and pull, and design for specific function.

Complex Spaces with Singularities

In the case of one complex variable if a Riemann surface A is spread out over a Riemann surface B and A has (isolated) ramification points of the familiar kind, then by adding such points to A the local Euclidean character is preserved and the analytic structure can be then adjusted so as to absorb the ramification points conformally as well. For several variables the situation is entirely different. A pertinent analog to a ramification point is a lower-dimensional singular subset as may occur in a complex locus that is defined by a system of equations

On the logic of quantification

The notation that I shall use here for the logic of quantification is of the familiar kind wherein the letters ‘p’, ‘q’, etc. stand in place of unspecified statements and the letters ‘ƒ’, ‘g’, etc. stand in place of unspecified predicates. The present section will deal with the significance of this notation; the purpose and scope of the paper as a whole can better be indicated afterward, in §2.By “predicates” I mean, not properties (or classes) and relations, but merely certain notational expressions. As a first approach they may be thought of as expressions like ‘walks,’ ‘is red,’ ‘touches,’ ‘gives to.’ Where ‘ƒ’, ‘g’, ‘h’, and ‘k’ represent these four predicates, we may read ‘ƒx’ ‘gy’, ‘hxy’, and ‘κxyz’ as ‘x walks,’ ‘y is red,’ ‘x touches y,’ ‘x gives y to z.’

Ice

THE subject of Sir William Bragg's Friday evening discourse at the Royal Institution on March 18 last is one which is of deep interest from a remarkable variety of points of view, among them that of the crystallographer, the physicist, the geologist, the climber, the ski-runner, the plumber, the food purveyor and distributor, and even the very housewife herself. Moreover, it is one which has proved of unusual difficulty, although it concerns natural phenomena of the most familiar kind and one of the most abundant substances in Nature. Indeed, we never seem to get a thorough and complete understanding concerning the extraordinary nature and unusual properties of ice, although they have been investigated and discussed for ages. Only quite recently, an Association for the Study of Snow and Ice has been formed in Great Britain, now numbering about eighty members, the nucleus being the British members of the International Commission of Ice and Snow, which deals with the survey of glaciers and the prevention of catastrophes due to them. One of the latest discussions at the London meeting of the Association concerned "The Structure of Flow of Glacier Ice".