This paper aims at optimizing the parameters involved in stress analysis of perforated plates, in order to achieve the least amount of stress around the square-shaped holes located in a finite isotropic plate using metaheuristic optimization algorithms. Metaheuristics may be classified into three main classes: evolutionary, physics-based, and swarm intelligence algorithms. This research uses Ge...

ness is that it allows one to skirt the question of critical reflec­ tion. Since affect is typically presented in somatic and noncognitive terms, it often serves as a safe solution within a critical climate that has become suspicious not only of the perceived impersonality of abstract­ ness, but also of the forms of rationality that many of the abstract the­ ories themselves denounce. While the...

letter is a report of a re-evaluation of the results obtained in an earlier study of ours (Balldin et al., 1994) of platelet monoamine oxidase (MAO)-B activity in alcoholics with reduced dopamine (DA) D 2 receptor function, as assessed by the growth hormone (GH) response to the D 1 /D 2 agonist apomorphine (APO), which was published in this journal. The reason for the re-evaluation of the resul...

Toward the end of his recent study of the ideas used by tribal peoples, La Pensée Sauvage, the French anthropologist LéviStrauss remarks that scientific explanation does not consist, as we have been led to imagine, in the reduction of the complex to the simple. Rather, it consists, he says, in a substitution of a complexity more intelligible for one which is less. So far as the study of man is ...

The article by Montini and Bero in this issue of Tobacco Control provides sound insights and sane counsel for tobacco control advocates. There are also intriguing hints of benevolent bias, which bodes well for advocates in sympathetic societies, but a cautionary note for those seeking strong regulation in more tobacco industry friendly political environments. Let me begin with the good news for...

The first International Conference on the Scientific Basis of Health Services was held in London in 1995 under the leadership of Sir Michael Peckham. A multinational cross-section of health service scientists at that meeting heard a clear call for research that would inform public and clinical policy with the aim of achieving betterquality and more efficient health care. At the time and subsequ...

Flow through circular orifices with thickness-to-diameter ratios varying from 0.015 to 1.2 is studied experimentally and numerically with kinetic and continuum approaches. Helium and nitrogen gases are used in the range of Reynolds numbers from 0.02 to over 700. Good agreement between experimental and numerical results is observed for mass flow and thrust corrected for the experimental facility...

An experimental investigation was conducted on a 5-degree half-angle cone and a 5-degree half-angle flared cone in a conventional Mach 6 wind tunnel to examine the effects of facility noise on boundary layer transition. The influence of tunnel noise was inferred by comparing transition onset locations determined from the present test to that previously obtained in a Mach 6 low disturbance quiet...

By combining theoretical modelling with experimental data on CaF2, we studied the interactions responsible for atomic resolution in this system; we discuss the general significance of these results for imaging other insulators. Theoretical modelling was used to calculate the tip–surface interactions in noncontact atomic force microscopy (NC-AFM) imaging of a charged and neutral CaF2 (111) surfa...

Introduction.-Chemical and biological warfare has been increasing in the news. There are numerous issues. Among these are research and development and especially open-air testing, Congressional appropriations, ratifying the 1925 Geneva Protocol, using tear gas in Vietnam, Presidential policy reviews, and the chemical-biological disarmament treaty recently proposed by the Soviets. All of us seek...