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Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Mechanica is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The use of social science in formulating and evaluating social policy has been of interest to sociologists ever since the discipline was established. Applied sociology, the term ordinarily reserved for this burgeoning enterprise, has taken three main forms, researching of policy questions and of the institutions and professional groups responsible for policy-implementation, teaching sociological concepts, theories, and methods of research to students and practitioners in applied fields of work and advising policy-making groups in developing, implementing, and evaluating social action programs. The precise use made of sociological theory, knowledge and methods of research vary according to the problem, the setting, and the sociologist. A policy analysis focuses on the study of empirical relationships between outcome variables of high policy salience and conditioning variables that are amenable to manipulation and control in the context of an operating program. Variables that have been termed intractable are not ignored, since knowledge about their relationships to the policy variables can be put to use in qualifying findings and therefore in the administrative planning of social action program. However, both types of variables are measured only in certain ways, since the cost of collecting data and the utility of the data are important considerations in a policy analysis.

Sociological interest in collective behavior is not surprising because it involves intriguing and theoretically central aspects of social life, the dynamic and emergent features sociologists need so badly to understand. The importance of the field and its possible contributions to sociology generally, the author have discussed in detail. That is not the concern here, rather the present interest is in the often made criticisms of this specialty. Whether in spite of, or because of its longstanding as a sociological specialty, its saliency in turbulent times, and its theoretical importance, there have been persistent complaints that the field is not viable. The visibility of a section would encourage sociologists with manifest interest in other specializations but only a current latent interest in collective behavior to make a lateral movement into the field. For example, while some of the recent writings on civil disturbances and environmental problems is informed by a framework and orientation emphasizing collective behavior. Specialists in collective behavior appear, in traditional sociological terms, to be more members of a category than they are of a group. If they had intensive social ties and collective group identity, one would expect among other things. The structural problem of the collective behavior specialty is not confined to its internal relationships. Perhaps, a more fundamental problem is in the relationship between the specialty and the discipline as a whole.

If the flood of government reports, newspaper articles, books and movies involving American organized crime is any indication of citizen awareness, then surely Americans are currently very conscious of this phenomenon. Numerous popular books on the subject, have been published in recent years. Several have been made into movies. Although there is some variation from source to source, the central image is that of a multibillion dollar-a-year conspiracy of Sicilian origin called either the Mafia or Cosa Nostra in which a code of secrecy, called Omerta, is enforced, if necessary, by violence. This conspiracy purportedly is international in scope yet organized around 24 families in the United States largest urban areas. This view of American organized crime is supported by the research of the eminent criminologist, Donald R. Cressey, who collected information on organized crime. These results reflect a heavy reliance among authors of criminology textbooks on journalistic and especially official documents for information about organized crime, apparently because such sources often contain information dealing most directly with this subject. This dependence on journalistic and official documents to understand the nature of organized crime is at least partially a consequence of the limitations of traditional social science research techniques.

There are several reasons to believe that white southerners have not been active in research on topics about black Americans. Blacks themselves have certainly not been accepted with open arms when calling attention to problems of blacks. For example, in 1927, E. Franklin Frazier, a writer wrote an article in which he used an analogy comparing the mental processes of racially prejudiced persons with insane persons. Subsequently, he was chased out of Atlanta, Georgia. A study was conducted on origins of researchers on Black Americans. One of the most interesting findings is that obtaining the highest college degree in a southern state of the U.S. does not produce as much of a tendency to study blacks as do childhood socialization or institutional affiliation in the South. One hypothesis is that graduate programs neutralize a tendency to deal with blacks that other socially connected experiences seem to enhance. What seems more likely is that the restrictive social climate of the South may be responsible for the relatively meager opportunities for academic specialization at the research level in southern graduate schools. It is likely, however, that the long trend is reversing. Southern sociologists, who have been criticized for not doing enough research on blacks, have actually been doing proportionately more research in this field than in other fields as compared with their northern, including western counterparts.

The recent monograph on the status of women in Sociology, has empirically confirmed many of the suspicions about the predoctoral and postdoctoral careers of women in the discipline. However, while pointing an accusing finger or two, the study offers only a short-term perspective on institutional and interpersonal barriers to professional recognition. A perspective spanning a longer period of time and relating primarily to the research role is employed in this paper. Tracing two cohorts of American sociologists from academic origins to destinations allows to observe sex differences in research performance, visibility in the literature, and jobs subsequently attained. Present findings invite speculation about the denial of professional recognition to women. This study has delineated a more balanced approach implemented in a methodology that yields a more empirically differentiated picture of sociology than previously admitted.

The November, 1973, issue of "The American Sociologist," a periodical is as good an illustration of contrasting ideologies within a field as the author could imagine occurring outside a contrived debate. At first glance there appear to be only a couple of specific differences of opinion, but a closer look shows a more general and more basic difference in outlook. What are the ideologies, and can they be summarized into coherent positions. The author have tried left vs. right, radical vs. conservative, modern vs. classical, with it vs. out of it, active vs. passive, hard line vs. soft line, none seems to do the job, yet in a way all of them do. But why do all of them seem to work after considerable thought an answer comes up. The thing they all have in common is that what one side considers sociology to be is what is wrong with sociology. Their notion of what sociology is precisely what they think sociology ought not be. In short, sociology is wrong, and the sociological enterprise needs to be corrected.

The rodent superfamily Muroidea represents a group of animals with much potential for comparative behavioral study as they are readily acquired, easy to maintain, and exist with sufficient ecological and behavioral diversity to enhance the likelihood of significant results. The superfamily includes Old World rodents, gerbils, hamsters, and a considerable variety of New World rats, mice, and voles which inhabit all 48 adjacent United States. Potential uses of muroid rodents, their taxonomy, and their husbandry are described with particular reference to the 28 species that have been maintained in the author's laboratory. Although research on muroid behavior is just beginning, available data already support the proposed utility of these animals in behavioral research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Violation of the exhaustiveness postulate of Levine's (1965) hypothesis model is shown to produce large errors in the estimation of the proportions of problems mediated by the various hypotheses. In two cases, when stat-subject simulations satisfied the postulates, estimates were reasonably close to actual values. One interpretation proposes that negative values of estimates are an indication that the exhaustiveness assumption is violated. An alternative computational method is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A system for the on-line graphic quantification of alpha frequencies (or other frequency bands extracted from EEG signals) is described. Alpha-frequency components (8 to 13 Hz) are actively filtered from complex EEG waveforms and presented to a laboratory-developed solid state integrator. The high-level output of the integrator, which is compatible with all popular EEG and polygraph recorders, is in the form of an ascending analog voltage ramp, reset at a predetermined level, to provide a rapid quantitative determination of alpha activity and variability. The design of the integrator permits an alternate mode of operation where time-synchronized resets, in lieu of voltage-dependent resets, produce variable height voltage ramps, whose amplitude is a direct function of the accumulated alpha activity per unit time. This method of preprocessing and signal conditioning the alpha components of the EEG waveform provides a simple analog registry of on-line real-time correlation of alpha activity with various physiological and behavioral activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An electrode for peripheral nerve stimulation and surgical procedures for implantation are described. Results indicating its effectiveness are provided with discussion of durability and applicability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circuit diagrams and theoretical perspective are given for phase-locked strobe light, compound alpha spindle, and phase coherence EEG for biofeedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Palmar sweat measurements were obtained under resting-state conditions using both the newly developed sweat bottle technique and the frequently employed sweat print method. Measurement reliability was high for both approaches. The two methods, at least under generally nonstressful conditions, appear to reflect essentially different aspects of palmar sweating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method is described for providing an on-line bar graph display of physiological data. A conventional servo recorder is coupled with an 8-bit digital-to-analog converter, and provides a low-cost, hard-copy graphic display peripheral that can be added to any laboratory type minicomputer system with buffered output data lines. The graphic display technique requires minimal memory allocations and a simple software algorithm to provide a flexible graphic system that can accommodate various types of biological data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Anaesthetists' Society Journal is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Canadian Anaesthetists' Society Journal is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We investigate the ergodic properties of a general class of infinite systems of independent particles which undergo nontrivial 'collisions' with an external field, e.g. fixed convex barriers (the Lorentz gas). We relate the ergodic properties of these systems to the ergodic properties for a single particle moving in a finite box (with periodic boundary conditions) with the same dynamics. We prove that when the one particle system is mixing or a K-system for a sequence of boxes approaching infinity so is the infinite particle system with an equilibrium measure obtained as a Poisson construction over the one particle phase space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is shown, using the BPHZ renormalization program and Zimmermann's normal product algorithm, that a strictly renormalizable effective Lagrangian for the Abelian massive Higgs model does exist: Ward identities are fulfilled, and normalization conditions, defining a theory in an indefinite metric Fock space, may be implemented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is shown that naked 'shell crossing' singularities can occur in the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric ball of perfect fluid for a large family of equations of state in which the pressure has an (arbitrarily large) upper bound, and, moreover, that this behaviour is stable with respect to spherically symmetric perturbations of the initial data, as well as with respect to perturbations of the equation of state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the uniqueness of the association of a classical statistical mechanical state and its sequence of modified correlation measures by studying a cyclic representation of the canonically associated Börchers algebra of the system. We show that semi-analyticity of the cyclic vector for a particular family of symmetric operators is sufficient for uniqueness while analyticity of the cyclic vector permits us to recover the state from the modified correlation measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Path integrals techniques are derived from a new definition [1] of Feynman path integrals. These techniques are used to establish that Feynman-Green functions for a given physical system are covariances of pseudomeasures suitable for its path integrals. The variance of a pseudomeasure is a more versatile tool than the Feynman-Green function it defines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A renormalization method originally proposed by Ashmore is reformulated and shown to be, in fact, a renormalization. The method involves use of different complex dimensions associated with various subgraphs of a graph, and appears to combine the best features of complex dimensional and analytic renormalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stress-threshold model (Wolpert, 1965; Brown and Moore, 1970) assumes that people do not consider moving unless they experience residential stress. This paper develops a similar model of residential mobility in which residential satisfaction acts as an intervening variable between individual and residence variables and mobility. The model is tested with data from a panel study of Rhode Island residents. The results indicate that residential satisfaction at the first interview is related to the wish to move and to mobility in the year following the interview. Individual and residence characteristics such as age of head duration of residence, home ownership, and room crowding are shown to affect mobility through their effect on residential satisfaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A goal of publicly subsidized family planning programs in the United States is to prevent unwanted births, and the primary means being used to achieve this goal is to increase coverage with physician-administered contraception, with priority being given to persons from low-income families. We analyzed data from families living in low-income neighborhoods to determine whether that means would contribute to that goal, and if so, how much unwanted fertility might be decreased through increased coverage with physician-administered methods. The results indicate that increased coverage with those methods would decrease unwanted fertility by 80 percent (79 percent among blacks, 83 percent among whites). Increasing the ratio of sterilization to pill and TUD makes the effect of the increased coverage even more dramatic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bogue and Palmore's technique for estimating direct fertility measures from indirect indicators is applied to the 95 counties of Tennessee,, 1960 and 1970. Findings based on these data tentatively suggest that this technique may be better suited for cross-national research than for analysis of small population units. It is recommended that the "own child" method is more appropriate for estimating fertility when utilizing data on counties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]