Qualitative Short-Time (ST) Dynamical Systems Analysis of Changes in Smoke Patterns with Applications to other ST dynamical Systems in Nature

The smoking of a cigarette is an obvious metaphor for the observation of qualitative short-time (ST) dynamical patterns in life as a function of heat, diffusion, and the eventual death of a system of molecules (i.e., see laws of thermodynamics [4]), which includes particles that make up common ingredients in a cigarette, including nicotine, tobacco, and the associated artificial chemicals used to deliver these materials into the blood stream. I use the basic materials associated with smoking a cigarette as a framework for exploring qualitative patterns observed in ST dynamical systems. The actual process of smoking a cigarette was used to test the following hypotheses: (1) Do the patterns of change over time of smoking a cigarette from start to finish demonstrate ST dynamical patterns that can be analyzed with simple time series (TS) analysis tools? (2) Does the qualitative ST dynamical behavior generated from smoking a cigarette follow a predictable pattern? Next, I place my qualitative observations within a quantitative framework. Lastly, I use results obtained from hypotheses (1) and (2) to propose how change over time in qualitative ST dynamical behavior of the simple act of smoking a cigarette can be applied to other experiments, especially experiments examining the qualitative and quantitative ST dynamics of patterns observed in naturally occurring systems

The Color, Power Spectrum, and Hurst Exponent Associated with the Linear and chaotic Nature of Changes in Pitch of Selections of Music By Philip Glass

White noise is what we call random or white colored noise. It is a simple measure of the frequency at which the system changes over time. The color of noise is a measure of the instability (white noise) or probabilistic nature of a system’s dynamics (i.e. white noise is the most unstable random colored noise), whereas, red noise is the most stable, non-random colored noise. In all types of music, changes in the pitch of the music is a proxy for measuring change in the color of noise, and hence, the stability of noise over time. In the following paper, I hypothesize that particular pieces of Philip Glass’s music can be used to measure (qualitatively and quantitatively), linear and chaotic or fractal (unstable) dynamic change in pitch, which can best be qualitatively and quantitatively explored by determining the color and chaotic (or fractal) nature of a particular measure within a composition. I use statistical models and analysis of those models using computer software to test my hypothesis. The models presented here are analogs, which do not explicitly model the pitch patterns ingrained in a measure from a particular Glass composition. Rather, these models are meant to generate the types of patterns one expects Glass’s music to generate. Surprisingly, I found that one of the analog models predicted that a measure of one of Glass’s compositions consisted of both linear and chaotic pitch components, resulting in the generation of a measure with an indefinite pitch (blue color) state, one, whose dynamics are in-between a stable and unstable state. Analysis of each individual note of a measure of a particular composition is not the intent of this paper at this moment in time. Future research the explicitly models pitch dynamics is needed. Lastly, I opine about further application of this approach to quantify the color of noise and associated power spectrum in many other disciplines.&nbsp

Testing for negligible interaction: A coherent and robust approach.

Researchers often want to demonstrate a lack of interaction between two categorical predictors on an outcome. To justify a lack of interaction, researchers typically accept the null hypothesis of no interaction from a conventional analysis of variance (ANOVA). This method is inappropriate as failure to reject the null hypothesis does not provide statistical evidence to support a lack of interaction. This study proposes a bootstrap-based intersection-union test for negligible interaction that provides coherent decisions between the omnibus test and post hoc interaction contrast tests and is robust to violations of the normality and variance homogeneity assumptions. Further, a multiple comparison strategy for testing interaction contrasts following a nonsignificant omnibus test is proposed. Our simulation study compared the Type I error control, omnibus power and per-contrast power of the proposed approach to the noncentrality-based negligible interaction test of Cheng and Shao (2007). For 2 x 2 designs, the empirical Type I error rates of the Cheng and Shao test were very close to the nominal α level when the normality and variance homogeneity assumptions were satisfied, however only our proposed bootstrapping approach was satisfactory under nonnormality and/or variance heterogeneity. In general a x b designs, although the omnibus Cheng and Shao test, as expected, is the most powerful, it is not robust to assumption violation and results in incoherent omnibus and interaction contrast decisions that are not possible with the intersection-union approach.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canad

Robust tests of equivalence for k independent groups

A common question of interest to researchers in psychology is the equivalence of two or more groups. Failure to reject the null hypothesis of traditional hypothesis tests such as the ANOVA F‐test (i.e., H0: μ1 = … = μ k ) does not imply the equivalence of the population means. Researchers interested in determining the equivalence of k independent groups should apply a one‐way test of equivalence (e.g., Wellek, 2003). The goals of this study were to investigate the robustness of the one‐way Wellek test of equivalence to violations of homogeneity of variance assumption, and compare the Type I error rates and power of the Wellek test with a heteroscedastic version which was based on the logic of the one‐way Welch (1951) F‐test. The results indicate that the proposed Wellek–Welch test was insensitive to violations of the homogeneity of variance assumption, whereas the original Wellek test was not appropriate when the population variances were not equal.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC

Higher Yield and Fewer Weeds in Four-Species Grass/Legume Mixtures Than in Monocultures: Results from the First Year at 20 Sites of Cost Action 852

Utilisation of grass/legume mixtures instead of grass monocultures is a sensible alternative for low input, efficient agricultural systems that reduce production costs, promote environmental policy and maintain a living countryside. Consequently, widely adapted forage legumes will become increasingly important. Instability of simple grass / legume mixtures with only one grass and one legume species is a major problem (Wachendorf et al., 2001). An experiment was established in 39 sites in Europe, Australia and Canada within COST Action 852 to: (1) assess the benefits of grass / legume mixtures in terms of forage production, (2) test whether the combination of fast and slow-growing species improves the stability of the mixtures and (3) assess response patterns over a large environmental gradient

Scientific, institutional and personal rivalries among Soviet geographers in the late Stalin era

Scientific, institutional and personal rivalries between three key centres of geographical research and scholarship (the Academy of Sciences Institute of Geography and the Faculties of Geography at Moscow and Leningrad State Universities) are surveyed for the period from 1945 to the early 1950s. It is argued that the debates and rivalries between members of the three institutions appear to have been motivated by a variety of scientific, ideological, institutional and personal factors, but that genuine scientific disagreements were at least as important as political and ideological factors in influencing the course of the debates and in determining their final outcome

Scientific publishing and the reading of science in nineteenth-century Britain: a historiographical survey and guide to sources

[FIRST PARAGRAPH] It is now generally accepted that both the conception and practices of natural enquiry in the Western tradition underwent a series of profound developments in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century—developments which have been variously characterized as a ‘second scientific revolution’ and, much more tellingly, as the ‘invention of science’. As several authors have argued, moreover, a crucial aspect of this change consisted in the distinctive audience relations of the new sciences. While eighteenth-century natural philosophy was distinguished by an audience relation in which, as William Whewell put it, ‘a large and popular circle of spectators and amateurs [felt] themselves nearly upon a level, in the value of their trials and speculations, with more profound thinkers’, the science which was invented in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century was, as Simon Schaffer has argued, marked by the ‘emergence of disciplined, trained cadres of research scientists’ clearly distinguished from a wider, exoteric public. Similarly, Jan Golinski argues that the ‘emergence of new instrumentation and a more consolidated social structure for the specialist community’ for early nineteenth-century chemistry was intimately connected with the transformation in the role of its public audience to a condition of relative passivity. These moves were underpinned by crucial epistemological and rhetorical shifts—from a logic of discovery, theoretically open to all, to a more restrictive notion of discovery as the preserve of scientific ‘genius’, and from an open-ended philosophy of ‘experience’ to a far more restrictive notion of disciplined ‘expertise’. Both of these moves were intended to do boundary work, restricting the community active in creating and validating scientific knowledge, and producing a passive public

Climate and colonialism

Recent years have seen a growth in scholarship on the intertwined histories of climate, science and European imperialism. Scholarship has focused both on how the material realities of climate shaped colonial enterprises, and on how ideas about climate informed imperial ideologies. Historians have shown how European expansion was justified by its protagonists with theories of racial superiority, which were often closely tied to ideas of climatic determinism. Meanwhile, the colonial spaces established by European powers offered novel ‘laboratories’ where ideas about acclimatisation and climatic improvement could be tested on the ground. While historical scholarship has focused on how powerful ideas of climate informed imperial projects, emerging scholarship in environmental history, history of science and historical geography focuses instead on the material and cognitive practices by which the climates of colonial spaces were made known and dealt with in fields such as forestry, agriculture and human health. These heretofore rather disparate areas of historical research carry great contemporary relevance of studies of how climates and their changes have been understood, debated and adapted to in the past