On staying grounded and avoiding Quixotic dead ends

The 15 articles in this special issue on The Representation of Concepts illustrate the rich variety of theoretical positions and supporting research that characterize the area. Although much agreement exists among contributors, much disagreement exists as well, especially about the roles of grounding and abstraction in conceptual processing. I first review theoretical approaches raised in these articles that I believe are Quixotic dead ends, namely, approaches that are principled and inspired but likely to fail. In the process, I review various theories of amodal symbols, their distortions of grounded theories, and fallacies in the evidence used to support them. Incorporating further contributions across articles, I then sketch a theoretical approach that I believe is likely to be successful, which includes grounding, abstraction, flexibility, explaining classic conceptual phenomena, and making contact with real-world situations. This account further proposes that (1) a key element of grounding is neural reuse, (2) abstraction takes the forms of multimodal compression, distilled abstraction, and distributed linguistic representation (but not amodal symbols), and (3) flexible context-dependent representations are a hallmark of conceptual processing

The effects of thermal capsulorrhaphy of medial parapatellar capsule on patellar lateral displacement

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The effectiveness of thermal shrinkage on the medial parapatellar capsule for treating recurrent patellar dislocation is controversial. One of reasons why it is still controversial is that the effectiveness is still qualitatively measured. The purpose of this study was to quantitatively determine the immediate effectiveness of the medial parapatellar capsule shrinkage as in clinical setting.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Nine cadaveric knees were used to collect lateral displacement data before and after medial shrinkage or open surgery. The force and displacement were recorded while a physician pressed the patella from the medial side to mimic the physical exam used in clinic. Ten healthy subjects were used to test the feasibility of the technique on patients and establish normal range of lateral displacement of the patella under a medial force. The force applied, the resulting displacement and the ratio of force over displacement were compared among four data groups (normal knees, cadaveric knees before medial shrinkage, after shrinkage and after open surgery).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Displacements of the cadaveric knees both before and after thermal modification were similar to normal subjects, and the applied forces were significantly higher. No significant differences were found between before and after thermal modification groups. After open surgery, displacements were reduced significantly while applied forces were significantly higher.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>No immediate difference was found after thermal shrinkage of the medial parapatellar capsule. Open surgery immediately improved of the lateral stiffness of the knee capsule.</p

Characteristics of Different Systems for the Solar Drying of Crops

Solar dryers are used to enable the preservation of agricultural crops, food processing industries for dehydration of fruits and vegetables, fish and meat drying, dairy industries for production of milk powder, seasoning of wood and timber, textile industries for drying of textile materials. The fundamental concepts and contexts of their use to dry crops is discussed in the chapter. It is shown that solar drying is the outcome of complex interactions particular between the intensity and duration of solar energy, the prevailing ambient relative humidity and temperature, the characteristics of the particular crop and its pre-preparation and the design and operation of the solar dryer

Modeling and experimental study on drying of apple slices in a convective cyclone dryer

WOS: 000188962800002The main objective pursued in this paper is to experimentally investigate the single layer drying behavior of apple slices in a convective type cyclone dryer and also to perform the mathematical modeling by using single layer drying models in literature. The experiments were conducted at drying air temperatures of 60, 70 and 80C in drying air velocities of 1 and 1.5 m/s. It was concluded that apple slices with the thickness of 12.5 mm would perfectly dry in the ranges of 280-540 min while those with the thickness of 8 mm would dry in the ranges of 180-320 min in these drying conditions by using convective type cyclone dryer. Additionally, the mathematical model describing the single layer drying curves was determined by nonlinear regression analysis, and the logarithmic model was selected as the most suitable model to obtain the drying curve equation of apple slices. Considering the parameters such as drying time, drying rate, moisture transfer, velocity and drying air temperature it is suggested that the apple slices be dried at the above optimum processing conditions

The first and second law analyses of thermodynamic of pumpkin drying process

WOS: 000232911300002This paper is concerned with the thermodynamic analyses of single layer drying process of pumpkin slices via cyclone type dryer. Using the first law of thermodynamics, energy analysis was performed to estimate the ratios of energy utilization. However, exergy analysis was accomplished to determine the location, type, and magnitude of exergy losses during drying process by applying the second law of thermodynamics. It was concluded that the exergy losses went up with the increase of the energy utilization in both trays and drying chamber. The most exergy losses took place during the drying of pumpkin slices on the first tray. It is emphasized that pumpkin slices are sufficiently dried in the ranges between 60 and 80 degrees C and 20% and 10% of relative humidity at 1 and 1.5 in s(-1) of drying air velocity during 5.66-12 h despite the exergy losses of 0-1.165 kJ s(-1). (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved