Concept Of Thickness Research Articles

How should we understand "bias" as a thick concept in recruitment discrimination studies?

Cesario criticizes the experimental design of studies of bias by claiming that acting on stereotypes in the experimental situation might not be an "error" from a Bayesian perspective. However, social psychologists might have an ethical reason to label the observed decision-maker biases as "erroneous." Decision-making can be considered as "biased" and "erroneous," because it reflects illegal and morally condemnable discrimination.

Art History as a Thick Discipline

The text is an attempt to look at art history from the perspective of cultural ontology. Science in general and art history in particular are seen as a kind of practice whose specificity gives identity to particular groups of sciences and disciplines. The practice of the humanities, including art history, is specifically related to signification and is carried out from within axio­logical situations. A reference to meanings (senses and values), constitutive for the humanities, is made, among other things, through the use of thick concepts, i.e. concepts that are both value expressing and descriptive. As I see it, art history uses specific thick concepts which make it possible to distinguish it from other humanistic disciplines. Seeing the integrating factor in the practice of art history makes it possible, at the same time, to preserve its theoretical openness which corresponds to the openness of human praxis, including artistic praxis.

Comparative energy analysis of a laboratory building with different materials using eQUEST simulation software

In the context of global warming and climate change issues, the building sector is one of the major contributors to energy consumption and Green House Gas emissions. In view of this, the building concepts are shifting from the standard structures to the low-energy consumption structures through use of passive and active systems to save energy during the life expectancy of the buildingswithout compromising quality and comfort levels. The main aim of this study is to investigate the passive strategies (by using non-energy strategies) to achieve energy-efficient buildings. The work has been carried out for a laboratory building at Nitte, India. The laboratory with Galvanized Iron (GI) sheet roofing and concrete walls, due to which has an uncomfortable living space, has been used for the study. The US department of energy’s eQUEST (The Quick Energy Simulation Tool) software has been used for the simulations. The results show that it is possible to improve the human comfort to the acceptable standards by using the concept of economic thickness of insulation such as the use of 5 mm coconut pith insulation board on the wall and 5 mm jute fiber below the roof with 0.3 m air gap and also by using low emissivity glass window. The Temperature maintained is 75 to 80 ˚F (24 ˚C to 27 ˚C) for maximum number of hours and relative humidity is found to be in between 40 and 49 percent for maximum number of hours, both of which otherwise used to be much outside these comfortable limits.

A Study to Investigate the Viscosity Effect on Micro-Confined Fluids Flow in Tight Formations Considering Fluid–Solid Interaction

Understanding different fluids flow behavior confined in microscales has tremendous significance in the development of tight oil reservoirs. In this article, a novel semiempirical model for different confined fluid flow based on the concept of boundary layer thickness, caused by the fluid–solid interaction, is proposed. Micro-tube experiments are carried out to verify the novel model. After the validation, the viscosity effect on the flow rate and Poiseuille number considering the fluid–solid interaction is investigated. Furthermore, the novel model is incorporated into unstructured networks with anisotropy to study the viscosity effect on pore-scale flow in tight formations under the conditions of different displacement pressure gradients, different aspect ratios (ratio of the pore radius to the connecting throat radius), and different coordination numbers. Results show that the viscosity effect on the flow rate and Poiseuille number after considering the fluid–solid interaction induces a great deviation from that in conventional fluid flow. The absolute permeability is not only a parameter related to pore structures but also depends on fluid viscosity. The study provides an effective model for modeling different confined fluid flow in microscales and lays a good foundation for studying fluid flow in tight formations.

A Study on the Relationships between Water Film Thickness, Fresh Properties, and Mechanical Properties of Cement Paste Containing Superfine Basalt Powder (SB).

In this paper, the effect of a newly developed superfine basalt powder (SB) on the fresh and mechanical properties of cement paste was studied. The concept of water film thickness (WFT) was cited to explain the influence of SB on fresh and mechanical properties and related mathematical model formulas were established. In addition, the relationship between the fresh properties and mechanical properties of paste was also explored. The results indicated that SB can improve the segregation resistance and cohesiveness. The maximum improvement rate relative to the control cement paste was 75.4% and 50.4%, respectively. The 5% SB and 10% SB reduced the fluidity in the range of 4.1–68.7% but increased the early and late compressive strength in the range of 1.2–25.7% compared to control cement paste under different water/cementitious materials (W/CM) ratios. However, the influence of 20% SB on fluidity and compressive strength was opposite to the above behavior, and the increase rate and decrease rate were 1.8–11.8% and 1.1–13.9% respectively. The WFT was the most important factor that determined the compressive strength, rheological parameters, and flow parameters of paste containing SB, while the substitute content of SB and WFT together determined the bleeding rate and cohesiveness. Among them, the correlation between bleeding rate and WFT increased with time. The empirical mathematical models between WFT, fresh properties, and compressive strength were established and verified by other mineral admixtures, which were successfully extended and applied to the entire field of cement-based materials.

Disrupting Displacements: Making Knowledges for Futures Otherwise in Gullah/Geechee Nation

In this article, I consider the politics of making knowledge and building theory about displacement that has as its goal transformative social change. Drawing on my experience conducting research as a member of the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank, I engage with strands of Black feminist thought to consider the politics of pursuing what I call itineraries of verification. I propose a thick conception of the politics of knowledge production as best understood as a bundle of social relations. By thick conception, I mean to inextricably link the products of knowledge production practices (e.g., academic publications, data sets, and other artifacts that are produced through acts of research and systematized knowing) and the institutional, social, interpersonal, and political economic relations that are made and reified in the process. Central to this set of concerns is how social formations are implicitly or explicitly reproduced or reworked in the knowledge production process. In particular, I am skeptical of the assumption that knowledge about systems of power is inherently disruptive of those systems. With respect to research on displacement generally, or in my work with Gullah/Geechees specifically, this critique invites reflection on the political stakes of ways of knowing about processes we wish to disrupt, rework, or abolish.

Rule of Law Through The Mirror Glass – Is The New 2020 Enlargement Methodology a Pre-Accession TEU Article 7 Mechanism?

The rule of law in the EU is a very complex concept due to its nature, different understanding and its diverse practical implementation, which has led to rule of law backsliding. In parallel, the rule of law represents a crucial pillar of the conditionality policy of new accession processes. The EU’s recent enlargement methodology introduced more stringent and conditional criteria for progress. This resulted in similarities between TEU Article 7 sanctioning mechanism and the new enlargement methodology that implies elaborate sanctions approach for candidate countries in cases of values’ breaches, backsliding, stagnation and lagging behind. The EU polity has, therefore, taken advantage of the empiric knowledge about the rule of law within its own borders and in the enlargement countries, constantly moving between the thin and the thick concept of the rule of law. The two processes have been feeding into each other, therefore, resulting in a growing convergence.

A fractal hydraulic model for water retention and hydraulic conductivity considering adsorption and capillarity

Commonly used hydraulic models that describe the water retention and transport properties of variably saturated soils mainly account for the capillary component of matric potential but ignore the adsorption component. Experimental evidence suggests that soil hydraulic conductivity may be underestimated by several orders of magnitude in the low saturation range for models ignoring the adsorbed film flow. Thus, this paper introduces a fractal method to characterise the effects of capillary and adsorption components of matric potential on soil hydraulic properties considering a simplified pore water transport process. Furthermore, the concept of specific thickness for the adsorbed film was defined to describe the adsorption and adsorption capacity of the soil. Based on these, a complete hydraulic model, including the soil water retention curve (SWRC) and relative hydraulic conductivity curve (RHCC), was derived to describe the water retention and transport properties of the soil in the entire matric head range. The performance of the proposed model was then evaluated using 13 sets of test data, from clean sand to bentonite, showing that it can capture the characteristics of water retention and transport properties well. The model parameters calibrated from the SWRC dataset could predict RHCC over the entire suction range without introducing any additional parameters. Additionally, the influences of the model parameters on soil hydraulic behaviours are also discussed in the paper. It was found that the pore size distribution of the soils mainly controlled the transport characteristics of capillary water, but had a slight influence on the hydraulic properties of adsorbed water, which was dominated by the type and content of minerals and specific surface area of the soil.

Thick Concepts in Economics: The Case of Becker and Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction

In this paper, we examine the viability of avoiding value judgments encoded in thick concepts when these concepts are used in economic theories. We focus on what implications the use of such thick concepts might have for the tenability of the fact/value dichotomy in economics. Thick concepts have an evaluative and a descriptive component. Our suggestion is that despite attempts to rid thick concepts of their evaluative component, economists are often not successful. We focus on the strategy of explication to remove the evaluative component of thick concepts and argue that often economists either have to make value judgments or are unable to individuate out the phenomenon under analysis. We support our claim with a case study, namely the concept of addiction in Gary Becker and Kevin Murphy’s Theory of Rational Addiction (1988). One consequence of our analysis is that theories containing thick concepts could commit economists to making value judgments and as such undermine the fact/value dichotomy.

Political Representation in Liquid Democracy

This article provides an in-depth survey of political representation in Liquid Democracy (LD). More precisely, it refutes two potential criticisms: 1) LD impoverishes the concept of political representation relative to existing representative democracies; 2) LD undermines the centrality of political parties. In answer to (1), the article shows that LD is compatible with a selection model of representation, in which proxies are characterized as gyroscopic representatives, driven by intrinsic motivation and indifferent to sanctions. This claim has far-reaching normative implications for the mandate-independence tradeoff, anti-elitism, and deliberation under LD. With regard to (2), the article examines the function of parties, arguing that, although it puts parties and interest groups on a level playing field, LD does not threaten partisanship, but rather expands the range of potential carriers of partisanship. In addressing these objections, this article demonstrates the democratic credentials of LD, showing that LD is compatible with a high-quality, democratic understanding of representation, which is surrounded by a cluster of thick concepts like commitment, intrinsic motivation, alignment of objectives, sympathy, trust, and dialogue. This turns LD into a powerful instrument for the refurbishment of representation both as a unique mode of political participation and as a practice of self-government.

Thick Concepts in Social Research: What, Why, and How?

Thick concepts are concepts that describe and evaluate at once. Academic discussion on thick concepts originated in meta-ethics, but thick concepts increasingly draw attention from qualitative researchers working in the social sciences, too. However, these scholars work in relative isolation from each other, and an overview of their ideas is missing. This article has two aims. The first is to provide such an overview, by bringing together these disparate voices on why thick concepts matter for the social sciences and how to work with them in qualitative social research. The second aim is to reflect on the methodological difficulties of working with thick concepts, by thinking through the example of my research on a specific thick concept—the concept of dependency. The article argues that thick concepts are invoked by social researchers for either epistemological or methodological purposes. It then goes on to claim that if we want to take thick concepts as our sensitizing concepts or as our objects of research, these two purposes really ought to be considered in unison: any methodological approach involving thick concepts must factor in the epistemological challenge thick concepts pose to social-scientific research. To show why—and to consider what this requires from qualitative researchers—I draw on insights acquired during my study on dependency. I end with practical recommendations for working with thick concepts in social research.

Conceptual Stewardship and Ethics Centers

In this essay I propose that ethics centers should take leadership roles in clarifying uses of normatively thick and complex concepts. Using the concept of integrity as an example, I build a case for increased focus on thick concepts at work in ethics. Integrity is a special case, given its conceptual complexity and the diversity of contexts in which it is utilized. I argue that failure to focus on conceptual clarification leaves the door open to misuse or manipulation of ethical concepts and to contextual siloing, each of which limits the work that ethics and ethics centers can do in support of institutional cultures. Ethics centers stand, or—as I make clear—should stand, as conceptual stewards for articulation of the importance of such concepts in balancing external ethics visibility and personal ethics engagement.

Photoacoustic Experimental System to Measure Infrared Absorption

When a modulated light is absorbed by a material, a sound with the same frequency as the modulation is generated by the material. This phenomenon, which is called the photoacoustic effect, is a convenient way to study the infrared absorption of gases. Several studies have been conducted to employ it as an educational tool to support students’ understanding of the greenhouse effect and global warming. To enhance educational effectiveness, we have made the following two attempts; one is using two serially aligned sample cells, and the other is an experiment employing microscope cover glasses. The former helps students analyze the experimental data more quantitatively, and the latter helps them learn the concept of optical thickness in meteorology.

Calculation of the three-dimensional turbulent boundary layer in the vessel’s bow and midship area by the integral method

The quality of technical solutions applied in ship design and construction is substantially determined by the validity of viscous flow parameters, especially in the vicinity of thrusters. The influence of shapes on velocity, pressure and turbulence distribution can be assessed by physical experimentation. Along with undeniable advantages, physical modelling has a number of disadvantages: high labour input and cost, limited range of parameters variation (e.g. Reynolds numbers), difficulty in separating the influence of individual factors. Therefore, the development of mathematical models and numerical calculation schemes based on them is extremely relevant. Calculation of friction resistance and calculation of the velocity field in the vicinity of a vessel comes down to the calculation of its boundary layer and trace parameters. Current mathematical models with a planar representation, i.e. working with projections rather than real curves, do not give an accurate description. This has led to the need for a mathematical model that can address all of the required characteristics of a three-dimensional turbulent boundary layer. Both differential and integral methods are used to calculate three-dimensional boundary layers. The model is capable of calculating the characteristics of the spatial boundary layer in the stern and the viscous wake, in the bow and in the middle of the vessel. The model is quite versatile: it has been successfully used both for computing the boundary layer characteristics in the bow and midship area by the integral method based on the thick boundary layer concept, and for computing the turbulent flow in the stern and viscous wake by the differential method based on the partial parabolic concept using the k-ε turbulence model. In this paper we will elaborate on the integral method calculation.

Separating the evaluative from the descriptive

Thick terms and concepts, such as honesty and cruelty, are at the heart of a variety of debates in philosophy of language and metaethics. Central to these debates is the question of how the descriptive and evaluative components of thick concepts are related and whether they can be separated from each other. So far, no empirical data on how thick terms are used in ordinary language has been collected to inform these debates. In this paper, we present the first empirical study, designed to investigate whether the evaluative component of thick concepts is communicated as part of the semantic meaning or by means of conversational implicatures. While neither the semantic nor the pragmatic view can fully account for the use of thick terms in ordinary language, our results do favour the semanticist interpretation: the evaluation of a thick concept is only slightly easier to cancel than semantically entailed content. We further discovered a polarity effect, demonstrating that how easily an evaluation can be cancelled depends on whether the thick term is of positive or negative polarity.

Toward a ‘We’-Mode Team Production Theory of the Firm: A Confucian Approach

Blair and Stout’s (1999) team production model of the corporation (TPM) has become an attractive alternative to principal-agent models of the corporation. TPM literature has been developed to address opportunism, that is, problems of exploiting one’s position within an organization to acquire a benefit without giving anything (e.g., firm-specific investments) in exchange. The problems of team production have prompted a revival of the concept of authority within firms. We maintain, however, that the prevailing conception of authority in the TPM literature is market-based and therefore fails to reflect some powerful ways to address team production problems through a properly thick concept of authority. In particular, we maintain that Blair and Stout’s TPM model does not adequately encourage team-specific commitments and fails to acknowledge the full prescriptive and descriptive potential of the TPM paradigm. We offer an alternative conception of authority in team production: a Confucian communitarian account of the internal workings of a firm, including the production team and the hierarchy endowed with the authority to govern it. On the standard market-based view of the team and its attendant conception of authority, each team member uses the team and its authority as an instrument for advancing her own personal interests. On our Confucian alternative, team production members see the team itself as inherently valuable and create team-specific commitments; they act for the team’s sake, and not merely for their own.

Clarifying questions about the nature of rights

ABSTRACT This Article critiques the debate over the nature of rights on the grounds that theorists have (1) failed to specify and defend an ultimate aim, (2) predominantly deployed a standard of success–extensional fit—that is deeply problematic, and (3) failed to articulate with sufficient specificity or concreteness the notions of having a will and exercising a power that are at the heart of the disagreement. Will Theorists implicitly deploy thick conceptions of those notions but do not defend that choice or grapple with its exclusionary and discriminatory implications for adults. The Article concludes by suggesting that, in light of the likely insurmountable difficulty of the challenges posed, the debate should be abandoned and legal philosophers should stipulate a meaning of ‘right’ that is optimal on normative grounds.

Growing thickness as a research methodology

According to the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, ‘thickness’ is the distance between the opposite sides of something, as well as the quality of being thick. From the same dictionary, as an adjective, ‘thick’ also refers to the attribute of things growing close together, with little space between them and in large amounts. If an object is thick, it is difficult to see through it. These definitions look respectively at an object from the outside - recognising its opposite borders, and from the inside - appreciating the things populating the distance between those borders. Thickness consists of the opposite borders with the evolving entities growing within them simultaneously. Therefore, discussing thickness implies dynamic zooming in and out. In the “Inquiries on Dropull's states of Liminality” workshop in Tirana, February 2019, the concept of thickness was appropriated to describe a desired state of liminality in several southern Albanian territories belonging to the Dropull region. At the workshop kick-off, the instructors highlighted liminal spaces as physical thresholds between the rural and the urban, and the teams were asked to work towards growing a thickness from such boundaries. In the following sections, I will describe the methodology enacted to grow thickness and I will draw an analogy with my PhD research project as it sits in a liminal space between disciplines that need to be scientifically positioned and defined.

Surface fatigue crack growth under variable amplitude loading

Plasticity-induced fatigue crack closure plays an important role in fatigue crack growth. Under fatigue loading with variable amplitude, however, the influence of fatigue crack closure along the crack front in three-dimensional cracked bodies is difficult to analyze. Here we develop a three-dimensional strip yield model to calculate crack opening stresses of surface fatigue cracks under variable amplitude loading. An equivalent thickness concept is incorporated to quantify the thickness effect for points on the surface crack front with a series of straight-through cracks. Using this equivalent thickness based strip yield model and fatigue crack growth rate curves obtained with standard through the thickness cracked specimen under constant amplitude loading, fatigue growth of surface cracks under variable amplitude loading are able to be predicted. We used this method to calculate fatigue crack growth of five semi-elliptical surface cracks and found that the ratios of the predicted life to the experimental life ranged from 0.86 to 1.01. The average value of the results was 0.93 and the standard deviation was 0.055. Good agreements are found between the predicted and experimental life for semi-elliptical surface cracks under variable amplitude loading. This method paves an avenue for fatigue crack growth life prediction of practical structures using materials properties obtained in laboratory according to material test standards.

Living through Thick Concepts in Revolutionary Egypt

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