Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userInterrelations among scientific fields and their relative influence revealed by input-output analysis
299
0
0.0
(
0
)
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
In this paper, we try to answer two questions about any given scientific discipline: First, how important is each subfield and second, how does a specific subfield influence other subfields? We modify the well-known open-system Leontief Input-Output Analysis in economics into a closed-system analysis focusing on eigenvalues and eigenvectors and the effects of removing one subfield. We apply this method to the subfields of physics. This analysis has yielded some promising results for identifying important subfields (for example the field of statistical physics has large influence while it is not among the largest subfields) and describing their influences on each other (for example the subfield of mechanical control of atoms is not among the largest subfields cited by quantum mechanics, but our analysis suggests that these fields are strongly connected). This method is potentially applicable to more general systems that have input-output relations among their elements.
rate research
Read More
A comprehensive input-output theory is developed for Fermionic input fields. Quantum stochastic differential equations are developed in both the Ito and Stratonovich forms. The major technical issue is the development of a formalism which takes account of anticommutation relations between the Fermionic driving field and those system operators which can change the number of Fermions within the system.
Allometric scaling can reflect underlying mechanisms, dynamics and structures in complex systems; examples include typical scaling laws in biology, ecology and urban development. In this work, we study allometric scaling in scientific fields. By performing an analysis of the outputs/inputs of various scientific fields, including the numbers of publications, citations, and references, with respect to the number of authors, we find that in all fields that we have studied thus far, including physics, mathematics and economics, there are allometric scaling laws relating the outputs/inputs and the sizes of scientific fields. Furthermore, the exponents of the scaling relations have remained quite stable over the years. We also find that the deviations of individual subfields from the overall scaling laws are good indicators for ranking subfields independently of their sizes.
We propose and develop a Lexicocalorimeter: an online, interactive instrument for measuring the caloric content of social media and other large-scale texts. We do so by constructing extensive yet improvable tables of food and activity related phrases, and respectively assigning them with sourced estimates of caloric intake and expenditure. We show that for Twitter, our naive measures of caloric input, caloric output, and the ratio of these measures are all strong correlates with health and well-being measures for the contiguous United States. Our caloric balance measure in many cases outperforms both its constituent quantities, is tunable to specific health and well-being measures such as diabetes rates, has the capability of providing a real-time signal reflecting a populations health, and has the potential to be used alongside traditional survey data in the development of public policy and collective self-awareness. Because our Lexicocalorimeter is a linear superposition of principled phrase scores, we also show we can move beyond correlations to explore what people talk about in collective detail, and assist in the understanding and explanation of how population-scale conditions vary, a capacity unavailable to black-box type methods.
Despite the apparent cross-disciplinary interactions among scientific fields, a formal description of their evolution is lacking. Here we describe a novel approach to study the dynamics and evolution of scientific fields using a network-based analysis. We build an idea network consisting of American Physical Society Physics and Astronomy Classification Scheme (PACS) numbers as nodes representing scientific concepts. Two PACS numbers are linked if there exist publications that reference them simultaneously. We locate scientific fields using a community finding algorithm, and describe the time evolution of these fields over the course of 1985-2006. The communities we identify map to known scientific fields, and their age depends on their size and activity. We expect our approach to quantifying the evolution of ideas to be relevant for making predictions about the future of science and thus help to guide its development.
We propose a simple experiment to explore magnetic fields created by electric railways and compare them with a simple model and parameters estimated using easily available information. A pedestrian walking on an overpass above train tracks registers the components of the magnetic field with the built-in magnetometer of a smartphone. The experimental results are successfully compared with a model of the magnetic field of the transmission lines and the local Earths magnetic field. This experiment, suitable for a field trip, involves several abilities, such as modeling the magnetic field of power lines, looking up reliable information and estimating non-easily accessible quantities.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
