The Viscosity and Thermal Conductivity Coefficients of Dilute Neon, Krypton, and Xenon

Viscosity and thermoconductivity coefficients of dilute neon, krypton, and xeno

Improving regulatory standards for clearing facilities

Clearinghouses (Banking) ; Payment systems

Viscosity and thermal conductivity coefficients of gaseous and liquid oxygen

Equations and tables are presented for the viscosity and thermal conductivity coefficients of gaseous and liquid oxygen at temperatures between 80 K and 400 K for pressures up to 200 atm. and at temperatures between 80 K and 2000 K for the dilute gas. A description of the anomalous behavior of the thermal conductivity in the critical region is included. The tabulated coefficients are reliable to within about 15% except for a region in the immediate vicinity of the critical point. Some possibilities for future improvements of this reliability are discussed

What Caused the Bhopal Gas Tragedy? The Philosophical Importance of Causal and Pragmatic Details

In cases where many causes together bring about an effect, it is common to select some as particularly important. Philosophers since Mill have been pessimistic about analyzing this reasoning due its variability and the multifarious causal and pragmatic details of how it works. I argue Mill was right to think these details matter, but wrong that they preclude philosophical analysis of causal selection. I show that analyzing the pragmatic details of scientific debates about the important causes of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy can illuminate causal reasoning about disasters, and shed new light on causality and causal selection

Measure of agreement between experts on apple damage assessment

Quoique l'évaluation des dommages soit un exercice important et fréquent en entomologie appliquée, il n'y a pas d'études publiées concernant le degré de concordance des évaluations de dommages par les experts. Au cours de cette étude, effectuée lors de la 50e Conférence en lutte intégrée des vergers de l'État de New York, de la Nouvelle-Angleterre et du Canada, quatre équipes d'experts ont évalué, de façon indépendante, les dommages causés sur 200 pommes. Les participants ont identifié 22 types de dommages causés par les insectes, 8 par des maladies et 8 reliés à d'autres causes. Nous avons calculé un degré de concordance pour chaque type de dommage. Les degrés de concordance les plus bas concernaient les dommages du charançon de la prune (Conotrachelus nénuphar) [Coleoptera : Curculionidae] (71,8%), de la punaise terne (Lygus lineolaris) [Hemiptera : Miridae] (83,2 %) et les dommages causés par les larves de lépidoptères en début de saison (87,1 %). On discute de l'utilité de l'usage du degré de concordance dans le contexte de plusieurs situations de lutte intégrée.Although damage evaluation is an important and frequent exercise in economic entomology, there are no quantitative studies on inter-rater agreement of experts. In this experiment conducted during the 50th New York, New England and Canadian Pest Management Conference, four teams of experts independently estimated the damage on 200 apples at harvest. The participants identified 22 types of damage caused by insects, 8 by diseases, and 8 related to other causes. For each type of damage an average measure of agreement was calculated. The lowest average agreements were found in plum curculio (Conotrachelus nenuphar) [Coleoptera : Curculionidae] damage (71.8%), tarnished plant bug (Lygus lineolaris) [Hemiptera : Miridae] damage (83.2%), and by early lepidoptera damage (87.1%). The usefulness of inter-rater agreement experiments is discussed in the context of many situations pertaining to crop protection

The predictive receiver operating characteristic curve for the joint assessment of the positive and negative predictive values

Binary test outcomes typically result from dichotomizing a continuous test variable, observable or latent. The effect of the threshold for test positivity on test sensitivity and specificity has been studied extensively in receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. However, considerably less attention has been given to the study of the effect of the positivity threshold on the predictive value of a test. In this paper we present methods for the joint study of the positive (PPV) and negative predictive values (NPV) of diagnostic tests. We define the predictive receiver operating characteristic (PROC) curve that consists of all possible pairs of PPV and NPV as the threshold for test positivity varies. Unlike the simple trade-off between sensitivity and specificity exhibited in the ROC curve, the PROC curve displays what is often a complex interplay between PPV and NPV as the positivity threshold changes. We study the monotonicity and other geometric properties of the PROC curve and propose summary measures for the predictive performance of tests. We also formulate and discuss regression models for the estimation of the effects of covariates

Categorical perception effects reflect differences in typicality on within-category trials

Many studies have shown better discrimination of two stimuli that cross a category boundary than of two stimuli belonging to the same category. This finding, known as categorical perception, is generally assumed to reflect consistently good performance on cross-category trials, relative to within-category trials. However, Roberson, D., Damjanovic, L., and Pilling, M. (Memory & Cognition, 35, 1814-1829, 2007) revealed that performance on within-category pairs of morphed facial expressions matched performance on cross-category trials when the target was a good exemplar of its category. Here, we investigate the generality of that finding by conducting new analyses of data from a series of studies of categorical perception in facial identity and color domains with speakers of different languages. Consistent with Roberson et al. (2007), the new analyses demonstrate that performance for central targets on within-category trials is as good as performance on cross-category trials. Participants perform badly on within-category items only when the target is closer to the category boundary than is the distractor. These results provide no support for the view that categorical perception is associated with increased perceptual sensitivity at category boundaries. © 2010 Psychonomic Society, Inc