Determination of mechanical properties of historical paper based on NIR spectroscopy and chemometrics - a new instrument

Due to sampling restrictions in the analysis of cultural heritage materials, non-destructive approaches are intensively sought for. While NIR spectrometry has rarely been used for this purpose due to the complexity of the spectra, chemometric methods can be used to extract the necessary information. For the purpose of determination of mechanical properties of historical paper, partial least squares approach was used and it is shown that tensile strength, and tensile strength after folding, can be estimated based on NIR spectra. As the mechanical properties of paper-based objects define their accessibility, a new dispersive portable instrument was built, which will enable us to rapidly survey the condition of library and archival collections

Capturing the sublimity of a free radical gas

Free Radical Research316619-629FRAR

Aggregating expert judgement

In a paper written some 25 years ago, I distinguished three contexts in which one might wish to combine expert judgements of uncertainty: the expert problem, the group decision problem and the textbook problem. Over the intervening years much has been written on the first two, which have the focus of a single decision context, but little on the third, though the closely related field of meta-analysis has developed considerably. With many developments in internet technology, particularly in relation to interactivity and communication, the textbook problem is gaining in importance since data and expert judgements can be made available over the web to be used by many different individuals to shape their own beliefs in many different contexts. Moreover, applications such as web-based decision support, e-participation and e-democracy are making algorithmic ‘solutions’ to the group decision problem attractive, despite many results showing we know that such solutions are, at best, rare and, at worst, illusory. In this paper I survey developments since my earlier paper and note some unresolved issues. Then I turn to how expert judgement might be used within web-based group decision support, as well as in e-participation and e-democracy contexts. The latter points to a growing importance of the textbook problem and suggests that Cooke’s principles for scientific reporting of expert judgement studies may need enhancing for such studies to be used by a wider audience