Path Of Progress Research Articles

Urban distribution problems and opportunities in the UK

This paper featured in the one‐day conference held in London in May '79. The conference, entitled ‘Urban distribution — strategy for the future’ and organised by the National Materials Handling Centre, had two objectives: to bring about a greater awareness of the causes of problems in delivering goods to our major cities and to emphasise the need for closer liaison at local level between the planning authority and shops and transport operators, in order to better pursue solutions to such problems. The call for co‐operation is one of the key points of this particular paper; the need to make the distribution operation more efficient whilst keeping town and city habitable. The solutions offered are practical and take the path of steady progress, the measures recommended being fairly well tried already. However, the need for experiment is reiterated.

Along the path of progress

Along the path of progress

Two Centuries of American Medicine 1776-1976

This mammoth book is divided into three parts (The First Century: 1776-1876, Period of Scientific Advance: 1876-1946, and Period of Explosive Growth: 1946-1976). It is written for the interested layman, as well as the physician, and the authors make it clear that their story is one of a straight path of progress. No space is devoted to people and events that are not obviously part of that straight line. Nor is there any consideration of the cut and thrust, serendipity and luck, that are so often associated with medical and scientific developments. The authors indicate that these omissions are a limitation of their work; historians may well say a severe limitation. On the other hand, by often reminding the reader of relevant background information, such as social conditions and mechanisms of funding research (and the important effect this has had on American medical education), the authors make clearto the alert

The theory of periodic screening I: Lead time and proportion detected

A stochastic model for a periodic screening program is presented in which the natural history of a chronic disease is assumed to follow a progressive path from a preclinical state to a clinical state. The sampling of preclinical state sojourn times by screening examinations generates bounds on the preclinical state recurrence times. The distribution of the bounded forward recurrence time is derived and used to obtain the distribution and mean of the lead time, and relationships for calculating the proportion of preclinical cases detected. These expressions are derived in terms of the preclinical state sojourn-time distribution and adjustible parameters important in the design of a periodic screening program.

The theory of periodic screening I: Lead time and proportion detected

A stochastic model for a periodic screening program is presented in which the natural history of a chronic disease is assumed to follow a progressive path from a preclinical state to a clinical state. The sampling of preclinical state sojourn times by screening examinations generates bounds on the preclinical state recurrence times. The distribution of the bounded forward recurrence time is derived and used to obtain the distribution and mean of the lead time, and relationships for calculating the proportion of preclinical cases detected. These expressions are derived in terms of the preclinical state sojourn-time distribution and adjustible parameters important in the design of a periodic screening program.

The Role of History in the DDR

AbstractWhen Walter Ulbricht and other Communist Party leaders returned to Germany from their Soviet exile in April, 1945, they brought with them not only blueprints for the administration and rehabilitation of Germany and for her gradual conversion to socialism,1 but also detailed plans for the Marxist reinterpretation of German history and for the teaching of this revised history in German schools and universities. Work on these plans had been underway for more than a year; it was based on earlier studies designed to refute Nazi conceptions of Germany's past. Similarly, it could draw on efforts to implement the popular-front strategy of the preceding decade, pointing out to non-Marxists that the communist-sponsored anti-fascist popular front (Volksfront) was deeply rooted in German history. This concern with history had gathered further momentum in connection with efforts to denazify German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union. To gain their support for the "National Committee 'Free Germany'," the Volksfront organization set up in the USSR in July, 1943, the communist leaders sought to convince these men that the goals of the Committee accorded with some of the noblest traditions of Germany's past. On this basis outlines were compiled for a new approach to German history, emphasizing the democratic progressive strands of that history. Similarly texts were drawn up to explain the inevitability of the defeat of reactionary Nazism and imperialism at the hands of the forces of progress as represented above all by the Soviet Union. The nation was thus to be led on to the path of peace and progress, but with the ultimate socialist goal barely mentioned. Preparations also were made to train at once teachers who could offer this type of instruction.2

On Some Celebrated Measures of the Schoenberg String Trio

The following pages chart a passage through measures 12-17.5 of the Trio, Op. 45, of Schoenberg. These measures were chosen for examination because they form an intuitively grasped, completed phrase, and because much of what is in them is a synthesis of previous parts of the piece, to be developed in later sections. In the course of viewing mm. 12-17.5 I have tried to indicate some of the many paths of progression to, and a few of those away from, these measures, by sightings and soundings, fore and aft.

Technological Innovation and the Decorative Arts: 19th Annual Winterthur Conference, March 1973

Despoliation of the environment and the degradation of the quality of life by triumphant technology seem to be keynotes of lament in our late 20th-century society. Nostalgic for a simpler, often romanticized past, yet unwilling to abandon the comforts and conveniences of a technology which has grown to an almost indispensable part of everyday life, Americans also wonder whether the dominance of the machine and its profusion of commodities must ultimately deprave even our sense of beauty and good taste. The lament is not a new one. It was the expansion of the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and early 19th centuries which first brought into serious question the issue whether technological and beauty as expressed through artifacts were compatible. That the union of technology and art is not necessarily easily come by was suggested by the grotesqueries wrought by their advancing mechanical know-how which Americans displayed so proudly in their first Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia in 1876. A writer quoted in the Western Manufacturer in 1881 recalled the triumphs and the failures portrayed at Philadelphia and contrasted the conflict between an older and a newer ideal apparent in the American application of art to manufactures: Compare these plain, unadorned tools, and their beautiful curves and outlines with the species of crass ornamentation, gilt or saw-cut, the gross realization of decoration laboriously wrought for ill-defined purpose, in our machine-made furniture, organs, pianos, sewing machines, and the innumerable Yankee notions, good enough in themselves practically, but made hideous by the abortive attempts to make them beautiful as well. Here, he argued, was a betrayal of the example set by American shipbuilders who, following the hints of nature, and keeping their own aims steadily in view, succeeded in producing the most beautiful vessels possible. Like their shipbuilding compatriots, American toolmakers were unwitting pioneers of American art. Theirs is the correct principle and right path of labor and progress (American Art in Tools, letter to the

On the biological alkylating agents.

07V THE BIOLOGICAL ALKYLATING AGENTS ALEXANDER HADDOW* Les poisons peuvent être employés comme agents de destruction de la vie ou comme moyens de guérison des maladies; mais, outre ces deux usages bien connus de tout le monde, il en est un troisième qui intéresse particulièrement le physiologiste. Pour lui, le poison devient un instrument qui dissocie et analyse les phénomènes les plus délicats de la machine vivante, et, en étudiant attentivement le mécanisme de la mort . . . il s'instruit par voie indirecte sur le mécanisme physiologique de la vie.—Claude Bernard, La Science expérimentale, 1878. Introduction Of necessity, this review, on the one hand, considers only a minute fraction of the vast literature on the alkylating agents, and, on the other, pays perhaps disproportionate attention to the work of the Chester Beatty Research Institute on these compounds [I]. The great Paul Ehrlich is very properly considered the father of the alkylating agents, and, toward the end of the nineteenth century he gave as his opinion that, of all the many hundreds of types he had considered, he regarded vinylamine—later recognised as dimethyleneimine—as being unique in altering the hereditary properties of the cell through a process of chemical combination with what he then called protoplasm (see [2]). At the same time, it was thought appropriate to pause at what is a veritable milestone and to estimate the path and direction of future progress. Mustard gas was first synthesised by Guthrie [3] and Niemann [4] in 1860 and was found to be a powerful vesicant. Meyer [5] prepared a pure gas which was liquid at ordinary temperatures. In 1919, Krumbhaar [6] related the leucopenia to marrow injury, a fact which was also observed during the classic and later researches of * Chester Beatty Research Institute, Institute of Cancer Research, Royal Cancer Hospital , London SW3 6JB. The author wishes to acknowledge the inestimable help of his literary assistant, Miss A. M. Whitecross, of Mrs. Audrey Stewart of the Chester Beatty Research Institute Library, and of Professor W. C. J. Ross. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine · Summer 1973 \ 503 Winternitz and his school, bearing upon the nitrogen mustards of the Second World War and upon various accidental circumstances, of which that occurring at Bari was a famous example. Herrman [7] and Warthin and Weiler [8, 9] had noted erosions and ulcers in the stomach and intestines of patients who had been severely gassed in the First World War. Other workers, including Heitzman [10] and von den Velden [11], described the occurrence of headache, nausea, and progressive cachexia, which implicated the nervous system. In 1935, Ward [12] prepared tris(beta-chloroethyl)amine HCl as an alternative to S-mustard for war purposes. Regression of superficial mouse tumours following local application of mustard was noticed by Adair and Bagg ([13], see also [14]), and Visser and Vos [15] produced tumour regression in mice and rats with S-mustard, early preludes to the chemotherapeutic application of the alkylating agents. Swords may be beaten into ploughshares, and surely there could have been no more striking example. Soddy, while professor at Aberdeen, separated ethylene from coal gas and used it to make mustard gas (ca. 1914-1918). A special feature has also been the implication of the alkylating agents in a wide range of biological phenomena including mutation [16], the induction of changes in genes and chromosomes [17, 18], reduced titer of antibody in mice treated with cancer chemotherapeutic agents ([19], see also [20, 21]), the effects of different halogenated alkyl amines on the division of sea-urchin eggs [22], genetical effects of nitrogen mustard in the house mouse [23], inhibition of mitosis in the roots of the broad bean (Vicia faba) by nitrogen mustard [24], testis atrophy [25, 26], sensitivity of Drosophila germ cells to mutagens [27], alkylating treatment of frog sperm [28], depigmentation of hair as a biological radiation dosimeter [29], effects upon cell division in Chilomonas Paramecium and Saccharomyces cerevisiae [30], and effects upon Paramecium aurelia [31]. Very comprehensive reviews have been given through the specialised symposia held under the auspices of the American Academy of Sciences and published in 1958 and 1969. Aromatic...

The roll (role) of the wheel

The paper attempts to show that the rolling wheel is the ultimate achievement in land locomotion and follows as a logical development of the evolutionary progress. Two distinct paths of progress are shown, one being the natural evolutionary line, and the other that arising from man's inventiveness. It is seen that the creativity of man has led to considerable improvement in the efficiency of land locomotion based principally on developments in the wheel. In a sense the suggestion is made that since efficiency of locomotion is a primary boundary condition in the evolutionary progress the effects of Tribology in evolution are well worth further study.

Development of the peoples of the north during the Soviet epoch

The author examines in her article the destinies of over a score of small peoples of the North inhabiting the northern outlying regions of the USSR who have, during the Soviet period, traversed a path of rapid progress in their economy and culture. Data from the two most recent censuses (1959 and 1970) are adduced to show the numbers of these peoples.

Lights in the great darkness. The 1971 Harvey Cushing oration.

In this address one o / the most distinguished and thoughtful living neurosurgeons recalls and pays tribute to select individuals who each in their time and way have lighted a path for neurosurgical progress. I], in fact, the neurosurgical darkness is now less profound than at the beginning of the author's career, the change is due in large part to the unique illumination which his own work has shed upon the physiological approach to neurosurgery. Editor

Paths of technical progress

Paths of technical progress

Acylation of phenol with the hydrochlorides of carboxylic acid amides

1. A study was made of the acylation of phenol with the hydrochlorides of carboxylic acid amides in nitrobenzene solution. 2. The hydrochlorides of the N,N-dialkyl-substituted amides of carboxylic acids possess the highest acylating capacity. 3. The formation of the N-protonated form of the amide is apparently one of the possible paths for progress of the acylation reaction.

Feasibility Study of Oilfield Automation

An optimum relationship between man and equipment - necessary to the economic success of any oilfield modernization project - can best be achieved by a study team. The system has been used successfully by a major oil company in its Midland division of West Texas. Introduction The economic success of oilfield modernization and telemetry is closely allied to attaining an optimum relationship between man and equipment. To achieve this objective, it has been found useful to employ the "team" concept to prepare a feasibility study of oilfield automation. The study team, comprising management and administrative, operations, and engineering personnel, combine to prepare an integrated plan of modernizing, automating and operating each plan of modernizing, automating and operating each producing facility within a given management producing facility within a given management operating area. The approach used by Continental Oil Co. in evaluating the feasibility of individual lease modernization and large computer control projects has been used effectively for large-scale operating areas such as divisions. Fig. 1 illustrates this type of area. Project Definition and Objectives Project Definition and Objectives The first steps in undertaking and effectively completing an automation feasibility study include defining the project, establishing ultimate objectives, and planning how the study requirements will be met. planning how the study requirements will be met. Project Definition Project Definition The project to be covered by the feasibility study should include all properties operated with a specified level of management authority. This definition of coverage, as opposed to one based on geographic or field limits, eliminates some problems that can arise concerning operating organization. When handled this way, the total "before and after" evaluations of the installations are generally more clear-cut. The management level, which has proved efficient for defining the area coverage in Continental Oil Co., is the level with a full complement of staff capabilities, including engineering, administrative and operating. The field areas illustrated in Fig. 1 are an example of the coverage that can be considered effectively by this study approach. Project Levels Project Levels There are several project levels of automation that may be considered for installation. It is helpful to define initially the different project levels and to determine what, if any, restrictions may dictate exclusion of a particular project level. The project levels that may be considered are (1) optimization, (2) automation, (3) remote alarm systems, (4) data retrieval systems, and (5) computer control systems. Fig. 2 depicts each classification to illustrate the project level and path of progression required to get from the present operations to a proposed level. A feasibility study may be divided into proposed level. A feasibility study may be divided into two major phases. The first phase would include all the potential candidates for telemetry projects. Properties to be considered for only modernization would Properties to be considered for only modernization would be completed in the second phase. Modernization of facilities includes optimization and automation. As illustrated in Fig. 2, optimization is usually required before a higher project level becomes feasible. JPT P. 1455

The American Labor Movement

A union movement that no longer challenges the domination which the owners of industry have over the lives of working people has departed from the path of progress. This is the condition in which the American labor movement finds itself today. Without confidence in the power of the rank and file and lacking any independent ideals, goals, or perspective, the present leaders of the AFt-CIO see little else but hopelessness and frustration before them.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Interaction of the Vibrational and Electronic Motions in Some Simple Conjugated Hydrocarbons

A semiempirical theory of vibrational and electronic reciprocation, in both degenerate and nondegenerate electronic states, is developed under the assumptions that (1) a molecule may be accurately described by the adiabatic approximation; (2) solutions of the electronic and vibrational SCHRÖ-DINGER equations for some fixed molecular conformation are available; (3) the electronic wave functions may be analytically continued to vicinal geometries; (4) the power series expansion of the electronic wave functions and HAMILTONian operator, in terms of nuclear displacements, may be truncated at degree two; and (5) first order perturbation theory is applicable. The formulae derived for nondegenerate electronic distributions are employed to compute the intensities of the HERZBERG-TELLER (“vibronic”) type absorptions of normal benzene, the cyclopentadienide ion, and the tropylium ion. For convenience in numerically evaluating the requisite phenomenological vibronic constants, the LENNARD-JONES approximation is introduced. The resultant accord of experiment and theory is good. To test the educed mathematical expressions for either essentially or fortuitously degenerate electronic dispositions, extremal energy calculations are performed for the cyclobutadiene and benzene molecules, the cyclopentadienyl radical, and the benzene plus one ion. It is found, in agreement with the JAHN-TELLER theorem, that all these systems are configurationally unstable with respect to some asymmetric nuclear displacement. The utilization of the LENNARD-JONES approximation again permits a numerical specification of the required vibronic parameters. Application is then made to the ultraviolet spectrum of benzene: the second singlet absorption system and the RYDBERG spectrum are theoretically interpreted in the light of the reckoned predictions. An attempt is made to answer the four cogent queries of WILKINSON concerning the nature of JAHN-TELLER interactions in the RYDBERG spectrum of benzene. A mathematical and pictorial description of the nuclear dynamics of JAHN-TELLER and HERZBERG–TELLER molecules is also given, and the portraitures of the underlying potential surfaces are verbally and diagrammatically painted. In addition, a critical discussion of the reality of both the computational techniques and of the emergent algebraic forms is presented, and paths for future progress are indicated. A censorius discourse on the flagrant abuse of the phrase “JAHN-TELLER effect” is appended; it is recommended that its use be restricted to the dynamical manifestations of the theorem of JAHN and TELLER (e. g., forbidden asymmetric vibrational progressions and abnormal paramagnetic behavior). Statical demonstrations of the theorem are better ascribed to intrinsic JAHN-TELLER instability.

Progress in Allergy.

Advances in the understanding of allergy have proceeded with giant strides in the last few years. Some of the most important paths of progress are described fully in this volume, by masters of their particular fields and with full bibliographic references. The significance and advances obtained in immunology with various techniques of gel diffusion are described by Ouchterlony, the father of this principle. Paton of London brings our knowledge of histamine and its localization, release by various mechanisms, and its depletion up-to-date. The mechanism of hemolysis by antibody and complement is discussed by Manfred Mayer. Boyden presents a full coverage of the various immunological responses claimed for antigens of the tubercle bacillus. The subject of immediate antigen-antibody reactions in the skin of experimental animals, including passive cutaneous anaphylaxis, is amply covered by its chief proponent, Ovary. Byron Waksman's chapter of more than one hundred pages covers a variety of basic

Motions in the Ionosphere

The ionosphere, even in its "undisturbed" state, is constantly in motion. Its charged and uncharged constituents may travel together or independently, while irregularities in the distribution of charge may take a different course again. The pertinent observational data are extensive and, in some cases, conflicting; their interpretation is seldom direct. The theoretical factors affecting that interpretation are becoming clear, though in some cases their areas of relevance are still subject to divergent opinions. An attempt is made here to bring into focus the theoretical factors themselves, to record their bearing on the observations wherever it has been established, and to suggest paths of future progress wherever it has not. Details of observational results and theoretical developments are largely suppressed, and with them the conflicts and discrepancies which, however real, would obscure the presentation of the principles involved.

MARCUS THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA: UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM 1850-51

MARCUS THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA: UNPUBLISHED LETTERS FROM 1850-51 TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD Marcus Thrane (1817-90) was the leading figure in the labor movement in Norway that started under the impetus of the European revolution of 1848. Besides having been an avid reader from youth, he had acquired some first-hand knowledge of Continental Europe from a tramping trip through Germany, Switzerland, and France, to which his natural curiosity had led him when he was twenty years old. Three years after his return, he took his student's examination in Christiania; in the year following, he was married ; and then he gave up his theological studies to try schoolteaching for some five years at Lillehammer. To what extent Thrane was directly influenced by Wilhelm W. Weitling's Guarantien der Harmonien und Freiheit (Guarantees for Harmony and Freedom - Vevey, Switzerland , 1842), of which a Norwegian translation had appeared in 1847, is not certain; but clearly some of his followers in the "Thranite movement" were. He was editor for a few months of the little known Drammens adresse , but lost his position when the owners found that he had speedily turned it into the country's most radical newspaper. His next step, in December of 1848, was to initiate Norway's first labor organization , with the announced purpose of "working little by little for the improvement of the laborers' living standards and making them less dependent on the rich." The movement thus begun by Thrane grew by leaps and bounds. Thrane wrote better than he spoke, but he traveled ceaselessly from town to town and about the countryside, secured assistance from others - some of whom proved later to be irresponsible agitators - and eventually saw organized, by June of 1850, 273 labor societies with a total membership of 20,850. 143 144 WALDEMAR WESTERGAARD As labor's recognized leader, Thrane proceeded to set up a central board in Christiania to handle the combined organizations . He had already started a labor paper in May, 1849, Arbeider-foreningens blad , which championed the laborer's right to work and emphasized the need for more commonschool education. As a result of his lively interest in better schooling, free instruction was provided in a Christiania Sunday school in which teachers like Henrik Ibsen and A. O. Vinje took part. Thrane looked on the Union King Oscar I as a social-minded ruler who stood above all political parties. So it was with the hope of arousing the royal interest in labor's cause that he prepared a petition to the king, which was accompanied by nearly 13,000 signatures. This was delivered to the stadholder (king's representative in Christiania ) on May 19, 1850. It requested "administrative support in doing away with the obstacles that lie athwart the path of material and intellectual progress of the working class," and "asked only for justice by lawful means." The main objectives listed in the petition were abolition of the protective tariff and introduction of free trade, a new law regarding the cotters' place in society, restriction of the liquor trade, better folk schools, the universal right to vote, people's law courts, and universal military service. To give publicity to this - by modern standards - far from revolutionary program, Thrane and his group held a workers' convention early in August of 1850, with 103 members participating, of whom but few were actual laborers. Despite the peaceful nature of the meeting, its emphasis on the improvement of the cotters' social status aroused deep distrust in administrative circles. Thrane was soon charged with encouraging a bloody revolt, but when evidence failed to support any such accusation, he, and others with him, were charged with blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. It is true that, in a few areas, some irresponsible labor agitators had provoked riots against the authorities, despite Thrane's efforts to bring them under control and within the law. When mat- THRANE IN CHRISTIANIA 145 ters got out of hand, Thrane decided to resign his newspaper editorship as a gesture toward peace. From the beginning of 1851 his student assistant, Theodor F. S. Abildgaard, took charge of the paper. The blasphemy charges nevertheless continued, not only against Thrane, but...