Locke on measurement

Like many virtuosi in his day, the English philosopher John Locke maintained an active interest in metrology. Yet for Locke, this was no mere hobby: questions concerning measurement were also implicated in his ongoing philosophical project to develop an account of human understanding. This paper follows Locke's treatment of four problems of measurement from the early Drafts A and B of the Essay concerning Human Understanding to the publication of this famous book and its aftermath. It traces Locke's attempt to develop a natural or universal standard for the measure of length, his attempts to grapple with the measurement of duration, as well as the problems of determining comparative measures for secondary qualities, and the problem of discriminating small differences in the conventional measures of his day. It is argued that the salient context for Locke's treatment of these problems is the new experimental philosophy and its method of experimental natural history.     

Human growth hormone in urine: development of an ultrasensitive radiometric assay

An immunoradiometric assay for human growth hormone (HGH) has been developed which has a detection limit of 1 ng/l and can measure HGH in unextracted urine from normal children and adults. The assay is based on a two-step procedure, using a solid-phase goat-anti-HGH immunosorbent for immunoextraction and [125I]-labeled monoclonal HGH-antibody for detection and quantification. The assay is not affected by urea, NaCl or changes of pH from 5-8. The mean urine HGH concentration in normal children is 6.78 +/- 7.6 (SD) pg/ml, in patients with HGH-deficiency 1.3 +/- 0.9 pg/ml which increases to 11.7 +/- 13.4 pg/ml on the day of growth hormone injection.     

Quantification, Mandated Science and Judgment

In his Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life, Ted Porter asks how to account for the prestige and power of quantitative methods in the modern world. His answer involves two theses. One reverses a standard claim by asserting that quantification in basic sciences can often be driven by quantification in more applied areas such as government and business. The second thesis, which I call judgment replacement, asserts that quantification overcomes lack of trust in humans by replacing human judgment in scientific communities and public life. Some aspects of the latter thesis are insightful and convincing. However, as a general claim, the judgment replacement thesis says that quantification and objectivity imply shallowness, superficiality and lack of subtlety. I examine one of Porter's key examples and show that as a general proposition the judgment replacement thesis gives a warped account of governmental decisions that involve a great deal of scientific input, an activity that colleagues and I have called mandated science. I show that Porter obfuscates the very features of mandated science that need the most clarification. The quantitative mentality can be superficial but it can also be complex and profound, and quantification can actually increase human judgment. The virtues of quantitative methods help account for their prestige and power.     

On the Virtues and Disadvantage of Quantification for Democratic Life

In this paper, a response to Ed Levy's discussion of medical quantification, I reflect on the ambitions of my book Trust in Numbers. I explore the idealized method of randomized clinical trials, revealed in his case study, as a social technology, one endowed with a persuasive scientific rationale but shaped also by political and social demands. The scholarly study of quantification requires not a choice between blind admiration and sweeping rejection, but a nuanced understanding. This should take into account not only the cognitive aspects of science, but also its role in relation to institutions and customs, examined with some specificity. While history is narrowed and distorted when it is written to support a position on some present issue, historical and social studies of science should at least provide tools of criticism. For this, the historian of science must look beyond narrow communities of specialists, and seek a wider perspective on science as an administrative tool and a bearer of cultural and political values.     

Low pH in fungal bud initials

Summary Quenching of fluorescence of the pH probe, 4-methylesculetin, in bud initials ofAllomyces hyphae and yeast (Saccharomyces) vegetative cells confirms the cytoplasmic acidity (pH not more than 5) in such amitochondrial structures.     

湿地甲烷排放研究进展

甲烷是一种仅次于二氧化碳的重要温室气体,对全球变暖的贡献率为25%。近年来大气中甲烷浓度显著增加,湿地甲烷释放量约占全球甲烷通量的20%,是大气甲烷的主要自然来源之一。甲烷主要通过产甲烷菌在厌氧条件下产生,在氧化条件下,甲烷通过土壤中的甲烷氧化菌氧化,并通过气泡、扩散和植物传输三种途径释放到大气。湿地甲烷通量在时间和空间两个方面有较大的变化,这与甲烷产生、氧化和传输过程有关,同时受到不同环境因素的影响,如:土壤质地、氧化还原电位、有机物、土壤酸碱度、植被条件、气候因素、农业管理措施等。文章还对湿地甲烷排放的观测方法和排放模型进行了简单介绍,并对今后的研究提出了几点建议。     

The acidic microenvironment as a possible niche of dormant tumor cells

Although surgical excision, chemo-, and radio-therapy are clearly advanced, tumors may relapse due to cells of the so-called “minimal residual disease”. Indeed, small clusters of tumor cells persist in host tissues after treatment of the primary tumor elaborating strategies to survive and escape from immunological attacks before their relapse: this variable period of remission is known as “cancer dormancy”. Therefore, it is crucial to understand and consider the major concepts addressing dormancy, to identify new targets and disclose potential clinical strategies. Here, we have particularly focused the relationships between tumor microenvironment and cancer dormancy, looking at a re-appreciated aspect of this compartment that is the low extracellular pH. Accumulating evidences indicate that acidity of tumor microenvironment is associated with a poor prognosis of tumor-bearing patients, stimulates a chemo- and radio-therapy resistant phenotype, and suppresses the tumoricidal activity of cytotoxic lymphocytes and natural killer cells, and all these aspects are useful for dormancy. Therefore, this review discusses the possibility that acidity of tumor microenvironment may provide a new, not previously suggested, adequate milieu for “dormancy” of tumor cells.     

The Ontology of the Questionnaire: Max Weber on Measurement and Mass Investigation

Although contemporary sociologists of science have sometimes claimed Max Weber as a methodological precursor, they have not examined Weber's own writings about science. Between 1908 and 1912 Weber published a series of critical studies of the extension of scientific authority into public life. The most notable of these concerned attempts to implement the experimental psychology or psycho-physics laboratory in factories and other real-world settings. Weber's critique centered on the problem of social measurement. He emphasized the discontinuities between the space of the laboratory and that of the factory, showing how several qualitative and historically conditioned differences between the two settings rendered the transfer of instruments and methods between them highly problematic. Weber's critical arguments prepared the ground for his greatest foray into empirical sociology, a survey he directed for the Verein für Sozialpolitik investigating the conditions and attitudes affecting the lives and performance of industrial workers. Using a different measuring instrument — the questionnaire — Weber tried to implement a concept of social measurement which implied a different ontology, drawn not from natural sciences but from the historical sciences.     

Zur Frage des pH-Optimums des Pepsins

Summary Natural and purified proteins were split by crystallized pepsin. The break down of substrates was followed by a turbidimetric method. pH optima were found from 1.5 to 3.8. Only unpurified egg albumin had two optima, crystallin had one in the acid range. Ovomucoid not being split by pepsin, the second peak at pH 3.79 is referred to conalbumin. While the disintegration of caseinogen becomes slow with decreasing acidity, this is not true for casein (paracasein) which is well split up to pH 3.28 (cows casein) or 3,73 (womens casein). Nevertheless, the optimum is in the range of 1.5–2.0, like most proteins. Above this limit, the following optima were found: fibrinogen 2.93, thrombin 2.78, edestin 3.08, crystallized hemoglobin 3.19, conalbumin 3.79.     

Models and perspectives on stage: remarks on Giere’s Scientific perspectivism

Ron Giere’s recent book Scientific perspectivism sets out an account of science that attempts to forge a via media between two popular extremes: absolutist, objectivist realism on the one hand, and social constructivism or skeptical anti-realism on the other. The key for Giere is to treat both scientific observation and scientific theories as perspectives, which are limited, partial, contingent, context-, agent- and purpose-dependent, and pluralism-friendly, while nonetheless world-oriented and modestly realist. Giere’s perspectivism bears significant similarity to earlier ideas of Paul Feyerabend and John Dewey. Comparing these to Giere’s work not only uncovers a consilience of ideas, but also can help to fill out Giere’s account in places where it is not fully developed, as well as helping us understand the work of these earlier authors and their continuing relevance to contemporary concerns in philosophy of science.     

Measurement,coordination, and the relativized a priori

The problem of measurement is a central issue in the epistemology and methodology of the physical sciences. In recent literature on scientific representation, large emphasis has been put on the “constitutive role” played by measurement procedures as forms of representation. Despite its importance, this issue hardly finds any mention in writings on constitutive principles, viz. in Michael Friedman׳s account of relativized a priori principles. This issue, instead, was at the heart of Reichenbach׳s analysis of coordinating principles that has inspired Friedman׳s interpretation. This paper suggests that these procedures should have a part in an account of constitutive principles of science, and that they could be interpreted following the intuition originally present (but ultimately not fully developed) in Reichenbach׳s early work.     

Molecular mimicry: a critical look at exemplary instances in human diseases

Molecular mimicry, the concept that antigenic determinants of microorganisms resemble antigenic determinants of the host, is frequently cited as a plausible mechanism to account for the association of infection and autoimmune disease. Based on analogous sequences of amino acids or on cross-reactions of monoclonal antibodies, numerous examples of such mimicry have been reported. There are, however, no clear examples of a human disease caused by molecular mimicry.     

An inexpensive and sensitive method for measuring and classifying activity in small animals

Summary A vibration-sensitive device which is useful in the quantification of activity in small animals is described. In addition to measurement ot total energy expenditure for activity, this transducer also allows identification of types of activity (sleeping, eating, active movement).     

Solubilization of unconjugated bilirubin by bile salts.

Freshly precipitated unconjugated bilirubin (UCB) is solubilized rapidly and to a large extent by the sodium salts of di- and trihydroxy bile acids. The solubilization effect depending on bile salt concentration, pH and ionic strength is based on micellar mechanisms.     

What Do We Measure When We Measure Aggression?

Biological research on aggression is increasingly consulted for possible answers to the social problems of crime and violence. This paper reviews some contrasting approaches to the biological understanding of behavior—behavioral genetic, social-environmental, physiological, developmental—as a prelude to arguing that approaches to aggression are beset by vagueness and imprecision in their definitions and disunity in their measurement strategies. This vagueness and disunity undermines attempts to compare and evaluate the different approaches empirically. Nevertheless, the definitions reveal commitments to particular metaphysical views concerning behavior. Alternative understandings of aggression suggest even different research approaches than those most commonly found in the literature.     

Making sense of absolute measurement: James Clerk Maxwell,William Thomson,Fleeming Jenkin,and the invention of the dimensional formula

During the 1860s, the Committee on Electrical Standards convened by the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) attempted to articulate, refine, and realize a system of absolute electrical measurement. I describe how this context led to the invention of the dimensional formula by James Clerk Maxwell and subsequently shaped its interpretation, in particular through the attempts of William Thomson and Fleeming Jenkin to make absolute electrical measurement intelligible to telegraph engineers. I identify unit conversion as the canonical purpose for dimensional formulae during the remainder of the nineteenth century and go on to explain how an operational interpretation was developed by the French physicist Gabriel Lippmann. The focus on the dimensional formula reveals how various conceptual, theoretical, and material aspects of absolute electrical measurement were taken up or resisted in experimental physics, telegraphic engineering, and electrical practice more broadly, which leads to the conclusion that the integration of electrical theory and telegraphic practice was far harder to achieve and maintain than historians have previously thought. This ultimately left a confusing legacy of dimensional concepts and practices in physics.     

Solubilization of unconjugated bilirubin by bile salts

Summary Freshly precipitated uncojugated bilirubin (UCB) is solubilized rapidly and to a large extent by the sodium salts of di- and trihydroxy bile acids. The solubilization effect depending on bile salt concentration, pH and ionic strength is based on micellar mechanisms.     

The total cost of misclassification in credit scoring: A comparison of generalized linear models and generalized additive models

This study examines whether the evaluation of a bankruptcy prediction model should take into account the total cost of misclassification. For this purpose, we introduce and apply a validity measure in credit scoring that is based on the total cost of misclassification. Specifically, we use comprehensive data from the annual financial statements of a sample of German companies and analyze the total cost of misclassification by comparing a generalized linear model and a generalized additive model with regard to their ability to predict a company's probability of default. On the basis of these data, the validity measure we introduce shows that, compared to generalized linear models, generalized additive models can reduce substantially the extent of misclassification and the total cost that this entails. The validity measure we introduce is informative and justifies the argument that generalized additive models should be preferred, although such models are more complex than generalized linear models. We conclude that to balance a model's validity and complexity, it is necessary to take into account the total cost of misclassification.     

A remark on Fuchs’ Bayesian interpretation of quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is a theory whose foundations spark controversy to this day. Although many attempts to explain the underpinnings of the theory have been made, none has been unanimously accepted as satisfactory. Fuchs has recently claimed that the foundational issues can be resolved by interpreting quantum mechanics in the light of quantum information. The view proposed is that quantum mechanics should be interpreted along the lines of the subjective Bayesian approach to probability theory. The quantum state is not the physical state of a microscopic object. It is an epistemic state of an observer; it represents subjective degrees of belief about outcomes of measurements. The interpretation gives an elegant solution to the infamous measurement problem: measurement is nothing but Bayesian belief updating in a analogy to belief updating in a classical setting. In this paper, we analyze an argument that Fuchs gives in support of this latter claim. We suggest that the argument is not convincing since it rests on an ad hoc construction. We close with some remarks on the options left for Fuchs’ quantum Bayesian project.