The Chemical Senses

Long-standing neglect of the chemical senses in the philosophy of perception is due, mostly, to their being regarded as ‘lower’ senses. Smell, taste, and chemically irritated touch are thought to produce mere bodily sensations. However, empirically informed theories of perception can show how these senses lead to perception of objective properties, and why they cannot be treated as special cases of perception modelled on vision. The senses of taste, touch, and smell also combine to create unified perceptions of flavour. The nature of these multimodal experiences and the character of our awareness of them puts pressure on the traditional idea that each episode of perception goes one or other of the five senses. Thus, the chemical senses, far from being peripheral to the concerns of the philosophy of perception, may hold important clues to the multisensory nature of perception in general

Methods of calculating ionization energies of multielectron (five or more) isoelectronic atomic ions

We have previously used simple empirical equations to reproduce the literature values of the ionization energies of isoelectronic sequences of up to four electrons which gave very good agreement. We reproduce here a kinetic energy expression with corrections for relativity and Lamb shift effects which give excellent agreement with the literature values. These equations become more complex as the number of electrons in the system increases. Alternative simple quadratic expressions for calculating ionization energies of multielectron ions are discussed. A set of coefficients when substituted into a simple expression produces very good agreement with the literature values. Our work shows that Slater's rules are not appropriate for predicting trends or screening constants. This work provides very strong evidence that ionization energies are not functions of complete squares, and when calculating ionization energies electron transition/relaxation has to be taken into account. We demonstrate clearly that for particular isoelectronic sequences, the ionizing electrons may occupy different orbitals and in such cases more than one set of constants are needed to calculate the ionization energies

On Knowing One's Own Language

We rely on language to know the minds of others, but does language have a role to play in knowing our own minds? To suppose it does is to look for a connection between mastery of a language and the epistemic relation we bear to our inner lives. What could such a connection consist in? To explore this, I shall examine strategies for explaining self-knowledge in terms of the use we make of language to express and report our mental states. Success in these strategies will depend on the view we take of speakers' understanding of the words they use to speak their minds. The key is to avoid circularity in the account of how they know what they mean; for if knowing what one is saying in speaking a language provides a means of knowing one's own mind, it cannot simply be a part of it. I shall look at ways in which we might proceed here, and examine whether the strategy can make room for a genuinely first-person point of view. But first let me try to motivate the problem of self-knowledge

Ontology-assisted database integration to support natural language processing and biomedical data-mining

Successful biomedical data mining and information extraction require a complete picture of biological phenomena such as genes, biological processes, and diseases; as these exist on different levels of granularity. To realize this goal, several freely available heterogeneous databases as well as proprietary structured datasets have to be integrated into a single global customizable scheme. We will present a tool to integrate different biological data sources by mapping them to a proprietary biomedical ontology that has been developed for the purposes of making computers understand medical natural language

Surrounding Space

The history of evolution is a history of development from less to more complex organisms. This growth in complexity of organisms goes hand in hand with a concurrent growth in complexity of environments and of organism-environment relations. It is a concern with this latter aspect of evolutionary development that motivates the present paper. We begin by outlining a theory of organism-environment relations. We then show that the theory can be applied to a range of different sorts of cases, both biological and non-biological, in which objects are lodged or housed within specific environments, or niches. Biological science is interested in types — for example in genotypes, phenotypes, and environment types — and in regularities that can serve as the basis for the formulation of laws or general principles. Types, however, can exist only through their corresponding tokens. Our theory of token environments is meant to plug this gap and to provide a first step towards a general theory of causally relevant spatial volumes

A new model of metallic structure and bonding

This paper briefly describes the current physical model of metallic structure and bonding. An alternative model is introduced. It shows that the new model, which calculated internuclear distances of Group 1 and Group 2 crystalline binary salts to a remarkable degree of accuracy, can be applied to calculate metallic radii (equal to half the internuclear distances) of Group 1 and Group 2 metals precisely. A simple expression previously used to calculate lattice energies using the soft-sphere radii concept is applied to calculate enthalpies of formation of Group 1 and Group 2 metal ions and results compare well with observed values. A few of the limitations of the current models are described and properties of metals which can be accounted for by the soft-sphere model are discussed. The work functions of Group 1 and Group 2 metals are shown to be inverse functions of the soft sphere ionic radii

The Nature of Sensory Experience: the Case of Taste and Tasting

Recently, psychologists and neuroscientists have provided a great deal of evidence showing that perceptual experiences are mostly multimodal. As perceivers, we don’t usually recognize them as such. We think of the experiences we are having as either visual, or auditory or tactile, not realising that they often arise from the fusion of different sensory inputs. The experience of tasting something is one such case. What we call ‘taste’ is the result of the multisensory integration of touch taste and smell. These unified flavour experiences provide a challenge when trying to reconcile the underlying processing story with the conscious experience of subjects, but they also challenge assumptions about our access to our own experiences and whether how we conceive of those experiences plays any in role in accounting for their ultimate nature

Vehicle routing and scheduling for the ultra short haul transportation system

July 1979Includes bibliographical references (p.195-196)A method of vehicle routing and scheduling for an air based intraurban transportation system is developed. The maximization of level of service to passengers in a system operating under time varying demand is considered on both the optimal and heuristic levels. It is shown that while the determination of an optimal schedule is mathematically feasible, it is computationally impractical. Heuristic vehicle control algorithms are developed and tested using computer simulation. It is shown that, as compared to fixed routing strategies, dynamic vehicle routing strategies provide a greater level of service to passengers while substantially reducing the direct operating costs of the system

Chapter 2.2: 3-D Topo Surface Visualization of Metal Ion Anti-Buffering: An Unexpected Behavior in Metal–Ligand Complexation Systems

Diluting a system that contains metal complexes can sometimes cause surprises. This chapter describes “metal ion anti-buffering”, a situation in which free metal ion concentrations rapidly increase as system dilution drives dissociation. It only occurs under excess free ligand conditions when a solution is dominated by higher stoichiometry complexes. The Law of Mass Action is used to provide a mathematical justification for the phenomenon. A Cu2+-ethylenediamine mixture exhibits this phenomenon when excess free ethylenediamine (en) is present. For example, it occurs when diluting a solution containing a four-fold excess of en over Cu2+. As this mixture is diluted by a factor of ~5600, the modeled free Cu2+ concentration shows a ~470-fold increase. Taken together, this is 2.5 million times higher than dilution of the system would yield in other circumstances. Included are experimental data confirming anti-buffering in the Cu2+-en system. Many other metal-ligand systems can display this behavior. Four additional examples are illustrated including an amino acid under physiological pHs. Anti-Buffering TOPOS, a downloadable Excel workbook in a supplemental file, allows readers to simulate this behavior for many metal-ligand systems. A PowerPoint lecture and teaching materials are also provided, suitable for inclusion in upper division and graduate courses in analytical chemistry, biochemistry and geochemistry.https://scholarworks.umt.edu/topos/1005/thumbnail.jp

Book Reviews

Reviews of the following books: Maine: A Bicentennial History by Charles E. Clark; History, Records, Recollections of Gray, Maine by George T. Hill; History of the Town of Burlington, Penobscot County, Maine from Settlement to 1975 by Alan H. Hawkins; Charlie York: Maine Coast Fisherman by Harold B. Cliffor