bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Productivity Standards
Authors: Lehmann Scott
Published: November 2020

The USFS often sells National Forest timber at a loss. Although loggers may pay market price for it, the agency absorbs various costs—stand thinning, roads, sale preparation, reforestation, etc. Environmentalists view below-cost sales as evidence that “the Forest Service continues to treat timber as the number-one priority on every acre of land not otherwise designated by Congress.” Appealing to the multiple-use language of NFMA and other legislation, they point out that the forests are not to be managed solely for timber production and that “optimal policy requires a harmonious blend of land uses.” The USFS, however, defends below-cost sales partly in the same terms, claiming that “[t]imber harvest is often an efficient tool that can be used to achieve non-timber objectives and the desired ecological conditions outlined in forest plans.” Its friends in The American Forest and Paper Association suggest, for example, that cutting aspen in Minnesota’s Superior National Forest improves habitat for the small mammals that support the local wolf population and maintain that sales of this low-value timber “provide the most cost-effective means to provide prey for the wolf.” Some natural resource economists also endorse this general position, albeit more cautiously. John KKrutilla and Michael Bowes, for example, claim that “on public land, occasional timber sales below cost and timber management can be justified economically on the basis of the long-term improvement in multiple-use value that may result from harvesting.” Evidently, multiple use is an accommodating ideal. Appeals to “multiple-use values” remind us that the National Forests can produce a variety of things in various “harmonious” combinations; they do not settle what “blend” of outputs is “optimal.” We might be able to do this if we could agree on some standard of productivity that gives sense to claims of the general form “this use of those resources is better than that one.” Since the case for privatizing the National Forests and other public lands rests largely on the claim that their resources would thereby be put to better use, such a standard would also help in assessing the proposal by clarifying what is being claimed for it.
The Ethics of Privatization
Authors: Lehmann Scott
Published: November 2020

Insofar as arguments for privatization can be read as appealing to general ethical conceptions, they acquire greater depth and, perhaps, respectability. The argument from productivity suggests a rule-form of preference utilitarianism: by changing institutions (in this case, by substituting private property rights for collective management of public lands), we’ll promote people’s welfare by enabling them better to satisfy their desires. But we can also glimpse in the recommended institution of private property rights a more Kantian commitment: where I can acquire what’s yours only with your willing consent (and generally in exchange for something of mine you value more), I can’t treat you simply as a means, at least in certain respects. However, in my view, such appeals do little to advance the argument for privatization; on the contrary, they reveal weaknesses in it. The property rights recommended by privatization advocates provide for individual freedom but not for its wise use. They do not help people to treat humanity in their own persons as an end or to form desires worth satisfying. There is an opening here for arguing that privatization is a bad idea, not because the current system, despite appearances, is relatively efficient or the cost of dismantling it is too great, but because what we’d get is inferior in a more basic sense to what we now have. Public land management promises greater protection of our natural and cultural heritage than the market—at least if we can resist the seductive suggestion that it be marketized, i.e., that we aim to allocate the resources of public lands as would an ideal market. Furthermore, the opportunity to define and defend values in public debate rather than simply buying what we happen to prefer (and can afford) is one we should, in our own interests, preserve. It is primarily on such grounds that I oppose privatizing public lands. To get this argument off the ground, we must allow that what I’m interested in can differ from what’s in my interest. I shall spend much of this chapter meeting objections to such a distinction and arguing that the free market can’t be expected to help people take an interest in what’s in their interest.
Self-interest and Collective Management
Authors: Lehmann Scott
Published: November 2020

Arguments for privatizing public lands that appeal to the virtues of markets don’t look very good under close inspection. The free market may, in some sense, maximize the satisfaction of desires. The property rights which define it may, to some degree, institutionalize respect for persons. But such justifications are quite incomplete, for they do not explain how we are to encourage respect for humanity in one’s own person or the formation of desires worth satisfying. Before enlarging the market by privatizing public lands, we should ask whether we wouldn’t thereby eliminate institutions that help do this. I have suggested that this is indeed the case. It doesn’t quite follow that privatization is a bad idea, for under scrutiny the federal land-management system may not look very good either. The extravagant claims privatization advocates make for markets create unrealistic expectations, but privatization might still improve on what we now have, if that system were as fundamentally flawed as critics like Stroup and Baden allege. In that case, the good I see in it might be outweighed, and we’d have to look for other ways to achieve that good. So in this chapter I consider attacks on the current regime, attacks which appeal to problems that are supposedly inherent in the collective management of resources and are therefore remediable only by privatization. A good deal of it concerns the claim, made by premise 1 of the argument from productivity, that individuals are self-interested. Like the philosophical thesis of determinism, 2 this one challenges us to give a reading that is both true and non-trivial. As detailed in Chapter 3, privatization advocates argue that, while self-interest rules everyone’s behavior, the current system doesn’t constrain it in a socially productive way, for it allows people, particularly those with a role in shaping public land policies, to gain by shifting costs to others. After reviewing this argument in the first section, I suggest in the second section that, if self-interest were really as advocates of privatization conceive it to be, privatization would be a hopeless cause and an ineffective remedy to these problems.
Weakly Bound Molecular Complexes as Model Systems for Understanding Chemical Reactions
Authors: Miller R. E.
Published: November 2020

An issue of central importance in chemical reaction dynamics is the nature of the energy transfer processes within and between reactants and products. At a fundamental level, bond rupture and formation can be understood in terms of the transfer of energy into the reaction coordinate, causing a bond to break, and then relaxation of the energy away from the newly formed bonds in the product molecules to the other degrees of freedom of the system. By their very nature, these processes are highly anharmonic, making their detailed characterization a formidable challenge. In recent years, spectroscopists have taken on the challenge of trying to characterize the quantum states of a molecule at the high vibrational energies corresponding to the chemically interesting regime. At these energies, the density of states becomes extremely high and the coupling between the states very strong, the result being that the vibrations can no longer be characterized in terms of simple isolated local or normal modes. In the extreme limit, where RRKM theory (Wardlaw and Marcus 1987) applies, there is rapid energy redistribution that, at least approximately, samples the available states statistically, allowing us to overlook many of the fine details. Although we are still far from having a complete understanding of the quantum state dynamics of systems in this regime, the recent progress that has been made in both experiment (Felker and Zewail, 1985; Go et al., 1990; Parameter 1982, 1983; Smalley 1982) and theory (Stuchebrukhov and Marcus 1993; Uzer 1991) is helping to better define the important processes. Ultimately, the detailed characterization of all the intramolecular couplings in a molecule would provide us with a basis for understanding the chemistry at a fundamental level, in both the statistical and nonstatistical regimes. After all, energy transfer from one vibrational mode of a molecule to another is determined by the intermode couplings, which, in the ground electronic states of molecules, are predominantly due to anharmonic and/or coriolis effects. Of course, the problem becomes even more challenging when one moves from the realm of isolated molecules to solvated systems.
Galilean Models and Explanations
Authors: Giunti Marco
Published: November 2020

Given a natural kind K (for example, mechanical, chemical, biological, cognitive, etc.), I say that a real system is a K -system if and only if it has some K-property. The main goal of this chapter is to analyze a particular type of scientific explanation, which I call a Galilean explanation. This analysis is based on a more general view of scientific explanation, according to which scientific explanations are solutions of problems of a special type. This type of problem essentially consists of two parts: first, considering a certain K-system and, second, setting the goal of scientifically explaining some K -property of this system. A scientific explanation of a K -property of a K -system is an explanation obtained by studying a model of the K -system, and the type of scientific explanation we construct in general depends on the type of model that we are going to study. Galilean explanations are a particular type of scientific explanations, for they are based on the study of models of a special type. I call a model of this special type a Galilean model of a K -system. The next four sections of this chapter explain, exactly, what I mean by a Galilean model of a K-system. A Galilean explanation of a K -property of a K -system is an explanation obtained by studying a Galilean model of the K -system. But if we need to study a Galilean model of the K -system, we must first specify or describe the model in such a way that we are able to use the model for constructing the explanation we seek. Therefore, the problem of constructing a Galilean explanation of a K -property of a K -system presupposes the problem of specifying a Galilean model of the K -system. we will see in section 6 that this second problem is equivalent to that of producing a correct Galilean framework of the K -system. Thus, if our main goal is to produce a Galilean explanation of a particular K -property P of a fixed K -system KRS, we must first construct a correct Galilean framework of KRS. Furthermore, this correct framework must also be P-explanatory, in the sense that it must specify a Galilean model of KRS whose study will then allow us to produce an explanation of the particular K -property P we want to explain.
Feng-shui: Ideology and Ecology
Authors: Anderson E. N.
Published: November 2020

My first direct encounter with feng-shui came soon after I arrived in Hong Kong in 1965. A new hospital was being built on a hill overlooking Castle Peak Bay, where my family and I lived. The hospital foundations cut deep into the slope. Several old peasants told me, “This is very bad; the construction has cut the dragon’s pulse.” I learned that the hill had a dragon in it, whose blood circulation had been cut by the foundation trench. This seemed strange to me. I noted it down as a fascinating local belief, and thought no more of it. Soon afterward, a typhoon dumped two feet of rain on Hong Kong within a few days. The oversteepened, undercut slope failed, and a torrent of mud descended, washing out the hospital foundations and burying a house or two at the hill foot. “See?” said my friends. “This is what happens when you cut the dragon’s pulse.” A light went on in my head. The Chinese peasants, pragmatic to the core, had described the phenomenon in terms strange to me; but the phenomenon they described was perfectly real. I reflected that the geologists’ terms “oversteepening” and “slope failure” were not much more empirically verifiable than the dragon. Any Chinese peasant would find them even stranger than I had found that eminent serpent, since I had already learned from reading that ancient Chinese saw dragons in the scaly, ridged contours of mountain ranges. As time went on, I learned that I had found more than a different way of talking about obvious facts. Chinese site planning seemed more and more rational. I learned that villages protected the groves of trees that ringed them, because trees attract good influences and also provide shade, firewood, fruit, leafmold, timber, and other goods. I learned that roads to villages were made crooked to discourage evil beings—and that the evil beings included not only demons but also soldiers, government officials, and (other) bandits.
Needs and Human Nature
Authors: Anderson E. N.
Published: November 2020

The preceding chapters raise complex and deep issues about why people act and believe as they do. Clearly, people are not only acting “irrationally” in many cases, but they are often basing their most “rational” actions on completely false premises or basing utterly “irrational” actions on perfectly accurate (but irrelevant) beliefs. This forces us to take a whole new look at human action, right from its bases. The following two chapters explore in some detail the ways in which humans understand environments. This will take me rather far afield from ecology into the somewhat arcane realm of cognitive psychology. The relevance will, I hope, become clear in the following chapters. The first, most basic, question is: Why do we act at all? What are the ends of behavior? Economists take the structure of “final demand” as a given. Economics is the study of how people choose between ways of reaching predetermined ends. Final demand is outside the system: it is what the system works to satisfy. Similarly, environmental damage is “external” to this system. The difference between economics and cultural ecology is that cultural ecologists do not exempt these matters from our calculus. We work final demand into our system. We also deny the existence of “externalities.” Nothing produced or consumed on earth is an externality to us. Even the satellites shot into space have to be counted; they cost the world a tiny bit of metal and fuel. Moreover, culture often determines “final demand,” and we try to explain culture. Everybody has to have protein, but why is it that Americans prefer that protein come from a cow, while high-caste Hindus are horrified at the thought? A traditional economist would have to take this as given; cultural ecologists try to explain it. Lately, anthropologists have emphasized the highly culture-bound and contingent nature of human wants. However, all humans do have pretty much the same physical survival needs. Since these survival needs are the ultimate determinants of resource use, and since they have been neglected in recent literature, it is necessary to list them here.
Housing Segregation and School Desegregation
Authors: Armor David J.
Published: November 2020

The issue of residential segregation has had a long history in the development of school desegregation laws and policies. Most social scientists and jurists would agree that school segregation is closely associated with racial segregation in housing, particularly in larger school systems. Residential segregation can give rise to school segregation between school systems, such as that existing between a predominantly minority city school system and its predominantly white suburban systems, and within a single school system when a neighborhood school policy reflects segregated residential patterns. The debate over the relationship between housing and school segregation arises, however, not from the mere fact of association, but from the causal interpretations applied to this association. Two major issues have framed the debates over this relationship. One issue concerns the causes of housing segregation itself, whether it arises primarily from discriminatory actions, either public or private, or from a complex set of social, economic, and demographic forces in which discrimination plays only a secondary role. The second issue focuses on the causal connections between school segregation and housing segregation and the direction of the causal relationship: the extent to which a neighborhood school policy actually contributes to housing segregation (rather than simply reflecting it) and the extent to which school desegregation contributes to integrated housing choices. On these points there is sharp disagreement between and within the social science and legal communities. The debates within the social science and legal communities have had reciprocating influences. On the one hand, a considerable amount of research on housing segregation has been generated by school desegregation litigation. On the other, a number of court decisions about the role of housing in school desegregation cases have been influenced by social science research and expert testimony. Thus the relationship between judicial policy and social science research is well illustrated by the housing segregation issue. The role of residential segregation in school desegregation law has itself passed through several stages during the past thirty years of school desegregation litigation.
Chemical Methods
Authors: Herz Norman , Garrison Ervan G.
Published: November 2020

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once" (anonymous). Time is a continuum—we sense this continuum as a succession of events. In archaeological matters it is one of the most salient attributes. To determine time accurately the archaeologist must rely on modern dating techniques. Age determination by chemical methods relies on the constancy or predictability of rates of chemical processes. For instance the oxidation of iron—rust—could be used for dating purposes if one could determine a chemical rate, in this case that of oxidation, that applied to more than the singular event. Unfortunately, the rate of the oxidation of iron is highly variable, being affected by temperature, available moisture, and the particular type of iron (mild, cast, stainless, etc.). Another common chemical change is the patination of certain types of glass. Yet here, too, the process is highly variable, making dating impractical. Still, there have been attempts to use patination and rock "varnish" for archaeological dating, as we shall see. In the main, chemical dating is used to determine relative ages since absolute ages require calibration for each sample and its find site using independent dating measures such as radiometric or dendrochronological techniques. We shall first discuss the relative techniques based on the uptake or decrease in fluorine, uranium, and nitrogen found in bone. This is most appropriate because these chemical techniques played a key role in unmasking one of the most famous frauds in the history of science: Piltdown Man. Next we shall examine the two most accepted chemical processes utilized in absolute age determination, which are based, respectively, on amino acid racemization and obsidian hydration. Finally, we shall examine a few techniques that show some promise for the dating of archaeological materials or deposits, such as those using patination ("varnish") and cation ratios. Our points of reference are those events we view as, in some sense, marking a change in the state of things. Stylistic or formal change in an archaeological facies can be a chronological landmark for the archaeologist and allows us to divide the continuum of time into discrete segments or phases.
Load Transfer Problem and Boundary Collocation
Authors: Phan-Thien Nhan , Kim Sangtae
Published: November 2020

The acoustic and mechanical properties of cemented granular materials such as sedimentary rocks are directly related to the load transfer problem between two granules (Stoll). The theoretical description of granular materials has been based on the Hertzian contact problem between two elastic spherical inclusion in an elastic matrix, or its modifications; a review of the contact problem can be found in Johnson. In essence, the deformation problem resulting from a relative displacement between two nearby spherical elastic inclusions is studied, and the load transfer between the two is used to construct a constitutive theory for the particulate solid. In particular, Dvorkin et al. studied the deformation of an elastic layer between two spherical elastic grains, using a two-dimensional plane strain analysis similar to those of Tu and Gazis and Phan-Thien and Karihalo. They concluded that the elastic properties of the cemented system can depend strongly on the length of the cement layer and the stiffness of the cement. The main problem with the method is the assumption that the contribution to the load transfer between the granules comes from the region near contact. The assumption is well justified in the case where the Poisson’s ratio of the cement layer is 0.5 (incompressible), in which case the problem is equivalent to the corresponding Stokes flow problem where exact and asymptotic solutions are available (see, for example, Kim and Karrila). The Stokes asymptotic solution shows that the leading term in the load transfer is of O(є-1), where є is the dimensionless thickness of the cement layer. In the case where the Poisson’s ratio of the elastic layer is less than 0.5, it is not clear that the load is still strongly singular in є, and therefore a local stress analysis in the region of near contact may not necessarily yield an accurate answer, unless є is extremely small. The load transfer problem is pedagogic in that it allows us to demonstrate an effective technique often used in Stokes flow known as the reflection method, which has its basis in Faxén relations (discussed in the previous chapter).
Some Applications of CDL-BIEM
Authors: Phan-Thien Nhan , Kim Sangtae
Published: November 2020

This chapter presents some selected three-dimensional applications of the CDL-BIEM in elasticity and Stokes flows, especially to particulate solids for which the method is devised. It is paramount that any numerical method should be validated against known analytical solutions. The method will therefore be benchmarked against known simple solutions of the type reported in chapters 2 and 5. Some selected nontrivial examples, where no analytical solutions are available, will also be presented. The translating sphere is a simple problem with known analytical solution and smooth bounding surface; it is a popular benchmark problem for boundary element codes. Here a rigid spherical inclusion of radius a, centered at x = 0, is displaced by either (1) a constant vector U or (2) acted on by a force F, and we seek the force in the case of problem (1), or the rigid displacement in problem (2).
General Geology
Authors: Emery K. O. , Neev David
Published: November 2020

The Dead Sea occupies a linear down-dropped region between two roughly parallel faults along the central segment of the major northsouth- trending crustal rift that extends about 1,100 km from the Red Sea through the Gulf of Elath to Turkey. This rift or geosuture separates the Arabian crustal sub-plate on the east from the Sinai one on the west. An origin as early as Precambrian is possible (Bender, 1974; Zilberfarb, 1978). Crystalline crust along the north-south trough of the Sinai sub-plate is about 40 km thick in contrast with a thickness of half as much above ridges along both flanks (Ginsburg and Gvirtzman, 1979). Toward the north the ridges appear to converge (Neev, Greenfield, and Hall, 1985). Since the Miocene period the Arabian plate has moved north about 105 km relative to the Sinai plate. This sort of crustal movement along either side of a rift is termed strike-slip faulting. One result of it was the opening of the Red Sea relative to the Gulf of Suez. The Dead Sea graben, a down-dropped block between two roughly parallel faults, occupies the central segment of the long crustal rift. The boundary between these is rather sharp along the east shore of the sea (Frieslander and Ben-Avraham, 1989). Actual post-Miocene movement was along not just a single major fault but was distributed among numerous sub-parallel faults that form a 100-km-wide belt in which movements were transferred from one fault to another (Eyal et al., 1981; Gilat and Honigstein, 1981). Recent movements have occurred along the south segment of the north-south-trending Arava fault south of the Amazyahu transverse fault (Zak and Freund, 1966). These strike-slip movements probably did not continue after Miocene along the main East fault of the Dead Sea, which is the north extension of the Arava wrench fault. In contrast, recent movements have been present along the north-northeast- trending Jordan or Dead Sea fault (Ben-Menahem et al., 1977, fig. 1). The movements extend south from east of Jericho in the north along the base of the west submarine slope of the sea and the elongate salt diapir of Mount Sedom as far as the Amazyahu fault in the south.
Climate Inferred from Geology and Archaeology
Authors: Emery K. O. , Neev David
Published: November 2020

Early climatic interpretations for the Lisan and later formations (Late Pleistocene and Holocene—Neev and Emery, 1967, figs. 16, 17) were supported and updated by information from additional coreholes. Although most new and old coreholes bottomed at relatively shallow depths, 20 to 30 m, four of them reached greater depths, 74, 80, 161, and 285 m beneath the 1960 floor of the Dead Sea south basin. The sequences consist of alternating layers of marl and rocksalt. Most marls were deposited from dilute brine during high lake levels and contain alternating laminae of chemical deposits of white aragonite, gray gypsum, and fine-grained detritus consisting of yellowish, brown, green, or dark gray carbonates, quartz, and clay. The detrital fraction is coarser and more dominant toward the deltas, especially near Amazyahu escarpment in the south. Rocksalt layers indicate deposition from more concentrated brine when the levels dropped to about -400 m m.s.l. Lower elevations could have been reached when the sea continued to shrink and when the runoff-to-evaporation ratio diminished, bringing the south basin to complete dessication. As neither the geochemical nature (ionic ratios) of the brines nor the physiography of the terminal water body has changed at least since Late Pleistocene or Lisan Lake time (Katz, Kolodny, and Nissenbaum, 1977), it is probable that through the past 60,000 years rocksalt was precipitated only when the water surface was at or below the critical level of -400 m m.s.l. Gamma-ray logs for some of the new coreholes provide more objective and precise depths of marl and rocksalt layers than do actual samples of sediments. Content of radiogenic minerals in the rocksalt is negligible compared with that in the marl; thus, these layers identify changing physical environments and climates as well as correlating stratigraphy. On gamma-ray logs the peaks or highest intensities of positive anomalies indicate that marl layers or wet climatic subphases and their thicknesses on the logs are proportional to their duration. Presence of negative anomalies or very low levels of gamma radiation show both the existence and thickness of rocksalt layers that denote dry climatic phases.
Electrodynamics I: Macroscopic Interaction of Light and Matter
Authors: Thomas Michael E.
Published: November 2020

Thus far, we have developed the properties of the electromagnetic field at optical frequencies, based on Maxwell’s equations. These equations further give a classical macroscopic perspective on the coupling of the propagation media to the field, as presented in Chapter 2. The macroscopic properties of a medium are based on averaged microscopic properties. The microscopic energy structure of matter was presented in Chapter 3, covering gases, solids, and liquids by employing mostly quantum models. We now proceed to the next level of development, the dynamic description of the interaction between the optical field and the propagation medium as a function of the field frequency and propagation media variables (e.g., energy structure, temperature, and pressure). In this chapter, the classical electromagnetic field is coupled to discrete frequency oscillators via Newton’s equation of motion. This approach leads to the popular classical oscillator model, often presented in introductory books on lasers. The classical oscillator model is an incomplete theory and can be only a semiempirical model. In the next chapter, a more detailed and comprehensive approach, which also includes statistical and quantum mechanics, is used leading to robust semiclassical and quantum oscillator models. This chapter and the next are the basis for the applied models presented in Part II of this book. Classical electrodynamics is based on Maxwell’s equations, as given in Chapter 2, and the Lorentz force relation, as given below: . . . F = q[E + (v × B)]. (4.1) . . . These equations cover the classical description of the interaction of light and matter. The first term in Eq. 4.1 represents coupling of the electric field to the medium. As discussed in Chapter 2 (Section 2.2), the leading mechanism for this is the electric dipole moment. To see that this is the coupling mechanism in the first term, consider the potential function driving this force, F = −∇V(r) = −∇(−qr · E). The above expression contains the dipole moment, as defined in Chapter 2. The second term in Eq. 4.1 represents coupling of the magnetic field to the medium.
Dialog Processing Theory
Authors: Smith Ronnie W. , Hipp D. Richard
Published: November 2020

Consider the following dialog situation. The computer is providing a human user with assistance in fixing an electronic circuit that causes a Light Emitting Diode (LED) to display in a certain way. The current focus of the task and dialog is to determine the status of a wire between labeled connectors 84 and 99, a wire needed for the circuit that is absent. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show two possible dialog interactions that could occur at this point. In figure 3.1, the computer has total dialog control, and a total of 29 utterances are needed to guide the user through the rest of the dialog. In figure 3.2, the human user has overall dialog control, but the computer is allowed to provide direct assistance as needed (i.e. in helping add the wire). Only 11 utterances are needed for the experienced user to complete the dialog. These samples are from interactions with a working spoken natural language dialog system. To engage in such dialog interactions, a system must exhibit the behaviors mentioned at the beginning of chapter 1: (1) problem solving for providing task assistance, (2) conducting subdialogs to achieve appropriate subgoals, (3) exploiting user model to enable useful interactions, (4) exploiting context dependent expectations when interpreting user inputs, and (5) engaging in variable initiative dialogs. Achieving these behaviors while facilitating the measurement of system performance via experimental interaction requires a theory of dialog processing that integrates the following subtheories. • An abstract model of interactive task processing. • A theory about the purpose of language within the interactive task processing environment. • A theory of user model usage. • A theory of contextual interpretation. • A theory of variable initiative dialog. This chapter presents such a theory of dialog processing. Frequent reference to the dialog examples in figures 3.1 and 3.2 will guide the discussion. The first section discusses the overall system architecture that facilitates integrated dialog processing. The remainder of the chapter addresses each subtheory in turn, emphasizing how each fits into the overall architecture. The chapter concludes with a summary description of the integrated model.
Parsing
Authors: Smith Ronnie W. , Hipp D. Richard
Published: November 2020

Both the user of the system and the dialog controller communicate using language. The user’s language consists of strings of English words ordered according to the rules of English syntax. The dialog controller’s language is made from strings of ground logic terms, variables, and punctuation symbols all connected according to the syntax of Prolog expressions. This chapter describes the design of a parser whose task is to translate strings from the user’s language into strings with approximately the same meaning in the dialog controller’s language. Some difficulties encountered by the parser follow. 1. Because of the less than flawless performance of speech recognizers, the parser will not know exactly what the user has said. Instead, the parser will receive as input one or more estimates of what was spoken, none of which may be absolutely correct. 2. Even what was spoken might not be what the user was thinking. The user may have mispronounced part of the utterance, or may make simple grammatical errors in the utterance. 3. The user may deliberately omit small structure words, such as “the” and “of”, from what is said. This is a natural and subconscious response of native speakers when speaking to a machine which has less than perfect language skills. 4. The parser’s grammar of the English language is probably not identical to the user’s. Thus, even without recognition errors, mispronunciations, or omitted words;, the input to the parser may not be syntactically well-formed. 5. The mapping from the user’s language to the dialog controller’s language is not one-to-one. Many inputs will have multiple meanings, and will thus need to be translated into two or more outputs. Conversely, a particular output may result from several syntactically unsimilar inputs. Together with [EM81], [HHCT86], [HM81], and [YHW+90], we argue that due to the above problems, the traditional natural language parsing techniques that accept written or typed input are not adequate for systems which accept speech input. New parsing architectures are required to deal with the high level of uncertainty that is inherent to speech input.
Good Farming and the Public Good
Authors: Worster Donald
Published: November 2020

Rain is a blessing when it falls gently on parched fields, turning the earth green, causing the birds to sing. But when it rains and rains, for forty days and nights, as it did for Noah, then the waters rise and destroy. Life is everywhere like that. Too little is a curse, too much is a plague. For thousands of years, the philosopher’s task has been to discover an optimum point where men and women can live modestly and securely, avoiding the extremes. The philosopher may seek a point of environmental balance where there is neither too little nor too much of nature’s gifts. Or he may try to define the point where private ambitions and collective needs are in harmony, where individual appetites do not overrun the commonwealth and society’s demands do not cut too deeply into individual freedoms. When philosophy is applied to the definition of a society’s welfare, we call that point the "public good." Farmers, more than most people, ought to be responsive to that philosophical quest for a harmonious, balanced good, for it has been their aim over a long history to seek moderation from nature and cooperation from their neighbors. Yet it has been a while since American agriculture, as a whole, has enjoyed a feeling of balance. The problem has not been in nature so much as in our society. We have not had a feeling of balance because we have come to hold extravagant ideas of what agriculture should contribute economically to the nation and the farmer. These days we are not a people noted for moderate thinking, so perhaps we have no reason to expect the idea of moderate farming to thrive. The most serious consequence of an immoderate culture, I will argue, is that the public good will not be well understood and therefore will not be achieved—in agriculture or in other areas. Another consequence is that farmers in the aggregate will suffer immensely and so will the practice of farming. That has indeed happened in America, and we can blame it on our extreme dedication to the goal of maximizing agricultural productivity and wealth.
The Ecology of Order and Chaos
Authors: Worster Donald
Published: November 2020

The science of ecology has had a popular impact unlike that of any other academic field of research. Consider the extraordinary ubiquity of the word itself: it has appeared in the most everyday places and the most astonishing, on day-glo T-shirts, in corporate advertising, and on bridge abutments. It has changed the language of politics and philosophy— springing up in a number of countries are political groups that are self-identified as “Ecology Parties.” Yet who ever proposed forming a political party named after comparative linguistics or advanced paleontology? On several continents we have a philosophical movement termed “Deep Ecology,” but nowhere has anyone announced a movement for “Deep Entomology” or “Deep Polish Literature.” Why has this funny little word, ecology, coined by an obscure nineteenth-century German scientist, acquired so powerful a cultural resonance, so widespread a following? Behind the persistent enthusiasm for ecology, I believe, lies the hope that this science can offer a great deal more than a pile of data. It is supposed to offer a pathway to a kind of moral enlightenment that we can call, for the purposes of simplicity, “conservation.” The expectation did not originate with the public but first appeared among eminent scientists within the field. For instance, in his 1935 book Deserts on the March, the noted University of Oklahoma, and later Yale, botanist Paul Sears urged Americans to take ecology seriously, promoting it in their universities and making it part of their governing process. “In Great Britain,” he pointed out, . . . the ecologists are being consulted at every step in planning the proper utilization of those parts of the Empire not yet settled, thus . . . ending the era of haphazard exploitation. There are hopeful, but all too few signs that our own national government realizes the part which ecology must play in a permanent program. Sears recommended that the United States hire a few thousand ecologists at the county level to advise citizens on questions of land use and thereby bring an end to environmental degradation; such a brigade, he thought, would put the whole nation on a biologically and economically sustainable basis.
John Muir and the Roots of American Environmentalism
Authors: Worster Donald
Published: November 2020

In the wild garden of an early America there coiled and crawled the devil’s own plenty of poisonous vipers—cottonmouths, copperheads, coral snakes, the whole nasty family of rattlers and sidewinders. A naturalist roaming far from the settlements regularly ran the risk of a fatal snake bite. Fortunately, he was reassured by the field experts of the day, the deadly reptile always furnishes its own antidote. It conceals itself in the very plants whose roots can counteract its poison, plants like the so-called “Indian snakeroot.” As the viper sank its sharp fangs into your leg, you simply pulled up the roots of that plant, quickly chewed them down, and laughed in the viper’s face. You were instantly immune. How many backwoods naturalists and hunters died from believing that bit of advice is not known. Science, ever improving its hypotheses, now suggests carrying a snakebite kit in your pack or calling in a helicopter. But before we dismiss the old advice as completely foolish, we might ask whether it might not have had some useful, genuine logic in it. Sometimes the remedy for wounds does indeed lie near at hand among the shrubs and weeds in which the reptile lives; and sometimes dangerous forces do indeed suggest, or even contain, their own antidote. Take, for instance, the case of North America’s continuing environmental degradation. What we humans have done over the past five hundred years to maim this continent and tear apart its fabric of life is in large degree the consequence of the Judeo-Christian religious ethos and its modern secular offspring—science, industrial capitalism, and technology. I would put almost all the blame on the modern secular offspring, but I have to agree that religion too has been a deadly viper that has left its marks on the body of nature. Paradoxically, I would add what no one else seems to have noticed: an Indian snakeroot for this venom has appeared in the reptile’s own nest. The antidote for environmental destruction has been a movement called environmentalism and that movement has, in the United States, owed much of its program, temperament, and drive to the influence of Protestantism.
Worldviews: A Whirlwind Tour
Authors: Norton Bryan G.
Published: November 2020

Languages are more like searchlights than floodlights; they do not illuminate equally across the full range of the perceptual field. This generalization is especially true of technical vocabularies that characterize specialized professions such as economics and ecology, and to a lesser extent of systems of favored expressions used by groups that share a special interest, such as nature preservation. Because of this selectivity of focus, languages and special vocabularies can disclose the world differently. If various environmentalists’ descriptions of the same events often sound as though they are perceiving something quite different, it is because environmentalists, who have not adopted a shared worldview, express themselves in a variety of unsystematized languages and vocabularies. It will therefore be useful to examine the systems of concepts that important environmentalists have used to describe what they have perceived. It is important not to think of concepts as abstractions, however. A language and the forms of expression it embodies are the glue that hold worldviews together; our vocabularies therefore carry our perceptions, playing an active role in shaping the world we see. The very meaning attributed to events is affected by the interplay of perceptions, actions, and the linguistic behaviors that express the meaning of events. Perceptions, we assume, directly affect the theoretical hypotheses and conjectures we develop to make sense of our world as we act within it. But theoretical assumptions likewise affect perception; and since perception is the only basis we have for discriminating among theories of reality, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that to some degree at least, the constellation of conceptual, theoretical, and value precepts we operate with, and the vocabulary we use to express them, will determine the shape of the world we encounter. This, loosely put, is the idea behind worldview analysis, as introduced in Chapter 2 and used occasionally throughout this book. Because most people are not accustomed to question their linguistic forms and the philosophical commitments embodied in them, it is often useful to discuss these issues informally in metaphorical terms. For example, the language of atomism as applied to nature is often associated with a mechanistic metaphor, while more holistic approaches are associated with an organicist metaphor.
Storms
Authors: Hoyt Douglas V. , Shatten Kenneth H.
Published: November 2020

We now examine some attempts to link storm numbers and storm track locations to solar activity. The number of both tropical cyclones and thunderstorms has increased and decreased with time and location as a function of solar activity. In fact, an early correlation between the number of Indian cyclones and solar activity proved so startling it caused an explosion of related research. In the previous century, tropical cyclones were called hurricanes or typhoons. Today tropical cyclones refer only to the weaker tropical storms with sustained winds above 31 miles per hour. Here, tropical cyclones refer to the stronger storms like those in the previous century. Anywhere from 1 to about 30 hurricane-strength storms can form each year. Among other factors, formation of these storms requires oceanic water temperatures above 26 °C (79 °F). William Gray at Colorado State University has successfully predicted the number of Atlantic Ocean hurricanes each year. This number is a function of the equatorial wind direction, the sea-level air pressure in the Caribbean, the strength of the westerly winds near the top of the lower troposphere, the presence or absence of an El Niño current, and, particularly, the amount of rainfall in the Sahel in Africa. Earlier we noted that increased solar activity produces a corresponding increase in rainfall in some regions. Figure 6.4 indicates that increased rainfall in the Sahel is expected, so based on this expectation and Gray’s theory, hurricanes should increase in number. Higher solar activity and a higher solar irradiance can also be expected to increase the tropical ocean temperatures by a few tenths of a degree. These increased water temperatures tend to increase both the number of tropical cyclones and their intensity. Figure 7.1 illustrates the number of Atlantic Ocean hurricanes observed between 1962 and 1994 as a function of the sea-surface temperatures (SST). A sharp gradient exists in the number of storms produced between 23 and 25 °C. In some regions, even a small increase in SST can lead to sharp increases in the number of tropical cyclones. Changes in solar brightness on the 11-year time scale could be expected to cause a corresponding cycle in the number and strength of tropical cyclones.
The Structure of Liquids
Authors: Fawcett W. Ronald
Published: November 2020

It is well known from studies of the properties of matter that the liquid state is much more complex than either the gaseous or solid states. Studies of the properties of gases quickly lead to the ideal gas law, which describes the properties of real gases at low pressures and high temperatures. This success is clearly due to the fact that the molecules in a dilute gas are far from one another so that the effects of intermolecular forces and of the finite volume occupied by the gas molecules are negligible. As the pressure of a gas is increased and its temperature lowered, the effects of non-ideality become apparent, and the equation of state becomes more complex. These changes are those required to convert the gas to a liquid. As the molecules come closer together, the influence of intermolecular forces becomes greater and the free volume available for the gas molecules is significantly reduced because of the space occupied by the molecules themselves. The statistical mechanical description of a gas relies upon the concept that the molecules are in constant movement with trajectories determined by collisions with the walls of the container and with other molecules. The probability of finding another molecule in the immediate vicinity of a given molecule is extremely low and does not vary significantly with distance from the reference molecule. On the other hand, solids are characterized by a very ordered structure in which each ion or molecule is surrounded by a fixed number of neighbors whose nature and orientation are determined by the interparticle forces in the crystal. These may be chiefly ion–ion interactions, as in an ionic crystal, or intermolecular forces, as in a molecular crystal. Because of the high state of order in crystals it is a reasonably straightforward problem to calculate their thermodynamic properties on the basis of quite simple statistical mechanical models. One way of conceptualizing a liquid is as a very disordered solid. If one disrupts the structure of the nearest neighbors around a reference molecule in a molecular crystal, the effect of the disruption extends quite far.