Design, Science and Conceptual Analysis

Philosophers expend considerable effort on the analysis of concepts, but the value of such work is not widely appreciated. This paper principally analyses some arguments, beliefs, and presuppositions about the nature of design and the relations between design and science common in the literature to illustrate this point, and to contribute to the foundations of design theory.

Economic Incentives to Conserve Wildlife on Private Lands: Analysis and Policy

Some believe that provision of private property rights in wildlife on private land can provide a powerful economic incentive for nature conservation because it enables property owners to market such wildlife or its attributes. If such marketing is profitable, private landholders will conserve the wildlife concerned and its required habitat. But land is not always most profitably used for exploitation of wildlife, and many economic values of wildlife (such as non-use economic values) cannot be marketed. The mobility of some wildlife (their fugitive nature) adds to the limitations of the private property approach. While some species may be conserved by this approach, it is suboptimal as a single policy approach to nature conservation. Nevertheless, it is being experimented with in the Northern Territory of Australia where landholders have the possibility of harvesting on their properties a quota of eggs and chicks of red-tailed black cockatoos for commercial sale. This scheme is expected to provide an incentive to private landholders to retain hollow trees essential for the nesting of these birds. Aspects of this approach are analysed using this case, and related ones, from Northern Australia. It is noted that the private property rights approach adopted in southern Africa is unlikely to be equally successful everywhere. The long-term survival of some species depends on their ability to use private lands without severe harassment, either for their migration or to supplement their available resources, for example, the Asian elephant in Sri Lanka. Nature conservation on private land is often a useful, if not essential, supplement to conservation on public lands. Community and public incentives for such conservation are outlined.

Design, modelling and analysis of a six component force balance for hypervelocity wind tunnel testing

A combination of modelling and analysis techniques was used to design a six component force balance. The balance was designed specifically for the measurement of impulsive aerodynamic forces and moments characteristic of hypervelocity shock tunnel testing using the stress wave force measurement technique. Aerodynamic modelling was used to estimate the magnitude and distribution of forces and finite element modelling to determine the mechanical response of proposed balance designs. Simulation of balance performance was based on aerodynamic loads and mechanical responses using convolution techniques. Deconvolution was then used to assess balance performance and to guide further design modifications leading to the final balance design. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

An object-oriented designed finite-difference time-domain simulator for electromagnetic analysis and design in MRI - application to high field analyses

This paper presents a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulator for electromagnetic analysis and design applications in MRI. It is intended to be a complete FDTD model of an MRI system including all RF and low-frequency field generating units and electrical models of the patient. The pro-ram has been constructed in an object-oriented framework. The design procedure is detailed and the numerical solver has been verified against analytical solutions for simple cases and also applied to various field calculation problems. In particular, the simulator is demonstrated for inverse RF coil design, optimized source profile generation, and parallel imaging in high-frequency situations. The examples show new developments enabled by the simulator and demonstrate that the proposed FDTD framework can be used to analyze large-scale computational electromagnetic problems in modern MRI engineering. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Economic Incentives to Conserve Wildlife on Private Lands: Analysis and Policy

Some believe that provision of private property rights in wildlife on private land provides a powerful economic incentive for nature conservation because it enables property owners to market such wildlife or its attributes. If such marketing is profitable, private landholders will conserve the wildlife concerned and its required habitat. But land is not always most profitably used for exploitation of wildlife, and many economic values of wildlife (such as non-use economic values) cannot be marketed. The mobility of some wildlife adds to the limitations of the private-property approach. While some species may be conserved by this approach, it is suboptimal as a single policy approach to nature conservation. Nevertheless, it is being experimented with, in the Northern Territory of Australia where landholders had a possibility of harvesting on their properties a quota of eggs and chicks of red-tailed black cockatoos for commercial sale. This scheme was expected to provide an incentive to private landholders to retain hollow trees essential for the nesting of these birds but failed. This case and others are analysed. Despite private-property failures, the long-term survival of some wildlife species depends on their ability to use private lands without severe harassment, either for their migration or to supplement their available resources, for example, the Asian elephant. Nature conservation on private land is often a useful, if not essential, supplement to conservation on public lands. Community and public incentives for such conservation are outlined.