SUBJECTS 283 ponderable

A short dissertation upon almost any extensive subject such as this subject is usually blessed by the reader s understanding that generalizations are not only justifiable but also mandatory in order to cover the scope of the subject. However, a learned treatise of ponderous bulk can be readily exempted from criticism for tedious passages devoted to details in that the authors are attempting to present a full and uncompromised assay of the subject. Somewhere in between lies this... 

It was much easier to discuss regulation in prokaryotes, in which so much of what is known comes from work on E. coli and related bacteriophages. In eukaryotes the important information comes from many quarters, and the array of processes is wider by far. We, therefore, needed to be brief and had to leave out a great deal. In so doing we pondered what was most important for students to know. To compensate for the necessary omissions we included an extensive reference list. Consult this for topics we left out or discussed only briefly. The supplements on immunobiology and carcinogenesis are also of value on those subjects. 

Study Methodology. The study leader (who bears a lot of responsibility) divides the process into a series of blocks or sections. Each section is then subjected to a brainstorming exercise when the team ponders issues of (essentially) fire, explosion, toxic release and mechanical energy release, how they might arise and the control measures required either to stop the event or cater for its consequences. The starting point for the examination of each section is a prompt from the table below. 

I was honoured and pleased by the invitation from Professor Bassani to give this introductory talk. But I must confess that as I pondered upon the task I had undertaken, my heart began to sink. I have lived through the last forty years of the story, but the active history of the subject takes us back another hundred and forty years, so I went to that great source-book, KAYSER s Handbuch der Spectroscopie [1] and that is where most of my early references come from. 

As taught in a classroom setting, probability and statistics were uneventful subjects. Only accounting comes to mind when I try to recall my least desirable academic subject. There were moments filled with visions of jelly beans orbiting overhead, pondering the probability of one dropping from the sky to land squarely in the center of the room. 

Successful experimental work is enlivened and fixed in mind by intelligent use of the best books. A chemical library should be in every laboratory pupils should have free access to books, and should be encouraged to consult them frequently at all stages of the work. The following list contains only a portion of the books which the author regards as useful to both teacher and pupil in elementary work. The starred ( ) titles indicate books which are intended for the teacher s use. In most cases the book which is accurate and simple in statement, full but not ponderous, and new, is first in its own list such a discrimination is, of course, largely personal. The prices in some cases are subject to discount. Special books, monographs, and pamphlets are noted under separate chapters in the Teacher s Supplement. 

In a recent experiment (Becharaetal. 1997) it Is also shown that normal subjects "began to generate anticipatory skin conductance responses (SCKs) whenever they pondered a choice that turned out to be risky, before they knew explicitly that it was risky, whereas patients Iwith prefrontal damage] never developed anticipatory SCRs, although some eventually realized which choices were risky." In other words, conscious awareness of costs and benefits is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for rational choice. 

Wislicenus returned to the same subject once more in 1873, reviewing all that was then known about the various isomers of lactic acid, including the now-well-established identity in structural formulas of "milk" and "meat" lactic acid. Once again he wrote that the difference in the two isomers must somehow relate to a "different spatial arrangement of the atoms which are bound together in the same order." It will be necessary in the future, Wislicenus opined, to look to the "geometric arrangement of chemically structurally-identical molecules." It was this article that van t Hoff pondered on his walk outside the Utrecht University library, in the late summer or fall of 1873. 

Given the advances that have been made over the last 15 years in image processing, analysis, and understanding, this article has been very difficult for us to revise. After completing the revision, we paused to ponder what has been achieved in these fields over the last 50 years. Based on our combined perspectives, we have formulated the following observations that encapsulate the excitement that we still feel about the subject. 

The relational content leads one to ponder whether it is true or false or partially true or false. No need to say that the content of any proposition is subject to philosophical debate for possibly new idea generations, and hence, the overall meaning of a proposition becomes clearer after each discussion. Controversy is an imbedded property that may exist in any proposition with imprecise and vague information content. Only a set of assumptions cuts the way of controversy, because any proposition coupled with assumptions is regarded as absolute truth, which is never the case especially in scientific and engineering disciplines. The words statement and sentence are also used in the same sense of proposition subject to interpretations. Belief, desire, sense, etc. based configurations also lead to propositions, which are for exposed critical view for mote general acceptance by folks. Hence, they can be interpreted as mental content of attitudes. 

---