Using an IBM PC to network Walter/Palya experiment controllers

A communications module that provides for the convenient use of the Walter/Palya experiment controller with an IBM PC is discussed. Following the user’s responses to prompts for apparatus and experimental procedure, the module appropriately loads the controller. It also automatically uploads and stores experimental data. Error checking is transparent to the user. Personal getting-started experiences with the experiment controller are also discussed.     

Development and operating environments for a network of Walter/Palya experiment controllers on the Macintosh computer

A program development and an operating environment for using the Walter/Palya experiment controller with a Macintosh are discussed. The importance in maintaining the productivity and intuitive aspects of the Macintosh’s user interface is stressed. With this environment, simple choices using the mouse control most aspects of developing and debugging programs and the day-to-day conduct of research.     

An introduction to pentecostalisms

Pentecostalism is the result of an interesting amalgamation of different traditions: black and oral cultures, middle‐class and proletarian languages, catholic and evangelical spiritualities. These traditions are contextualized in Western, Latin American, Asian and African contexts which produce a bewildering pluralism. This “post‐modern religion” is not only a challenge to Pentecostal theologians but also to the ecumenical community.     

An introduction to the phenomenology of religion

This article examines how a secular lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ) community choir in New Zealand negotiates a relationship with sacred repertoire, and the church in which the choir is located. A mixed-methods study included semi-structured interviews with 26 current and past members, musical directors and a church representative. Themes that emerged included tensions between religion and an LGBTQ cultural secularism, intersections of reconciliation and affirmation and the identity constitutive uses of space. Findings suggest that although, as LGBTQ-identified people, secularism is an important identity, sacred music is pleasurable. The choir provides church-like functions, through a sense of community, ritual and an environment for spiritual reflection and the practice of values. The church location offers reconciliation for those with Christian backgrounds. Benefitting each other, the choir gives St. Andrew’s legitimacy in its identity as an LGBTQ-inclusive church, and the church space has a queering effect on the presentation of the choir.     

An introduction to the UCSD PASCAL system

This paper provides an introduction to the UCSD PASCAL system: a nearly machine-independent software system for micro- and minicomputers. The system is designed to run as a single-user interactive system. It is written almost entirely in the PASCAL programming language and consists of: a single-user operating system, PASCAL pseudomachine interpreter, PASCAL compiler, screen- and line-oriented editors, file manager, debugger, utility programs, and a BASIC compiler. A CAI package is also available.     

An introduction to the PLATO CAI system

The PLATO interactive computer system is discussed as a fully developed large-scale CAI system. Both the hardware and software aspects of the system are discussed. The discussion of hardware includes the necessary equipment to operate a PLATO system and the flow of control during an interactive session on that system. The discussion of the software on the PLATO system focuses on the TUTOR lesson-authoring language. The aspects of the TUTOR language that facilitate display of material, student input and judging of input, and either student-initiated or author-initiated branching in the program are discussed.     

An introduction to the reading of Bion

The author suggests that a good deal of the confusion that arises in the course of reading Bion derives from the fact that Bion's analytic writing is comprised of two periods of work that involve markedly different conceptions of psychoanalysis. These two periods require of the reader very different ways of reading and generate contrasting experiences in reading. Bion, in passages in Learning from experience (1962) and Attention and interpretation (1970), offers advice to the reader regarding how he would like his 'early' and 'late' work to be read. The author treats the experience of reading these passages as ports of entry into the fundamental tenets underlying Bion's widely differing conceptions of the psychoanalytic enterprise. The experience of reading early Bion generates a sense of psychoanalysis as a never completed process of clarifying obscurities and obscuring clarifications, which enterprise moves in the direction of a convergence of disparate meanings. Incontrast, the experience of reading Bion's later work conveys a sense of psychoanalysis as a process involving a movement toward infinite expansion of meaning. The author offers a detailed account of an analytic experience which he discusses from a point of view informed by Bion's work, particularly his late work.     

An introduction to research ethics

Practical issues throughout scientific research can be found to have an ethical aspect. There is a gray area in which scientific error (“honest error”) may be difficult to distinguish from unacceptably poor research practice or an unethical failure to follow scientific norms. Further, there is no clear margin between deceptive practices which are widely accepted and those which must be considered fraudulent. Practical problems arise in matters of data management and presentation, authorship, publication practices, “grantsmanship”, and rights of research trainees, as well as the well-recognized areas of human and animal experimentation. Beyond the gray areas, the legal definition of research misconduct is discussed in relation to research fraud, and the latest proposed definition of the Commission on Research Integrity is briefly reviewed. It is noted that the standards of ethical research are changing. Finally, there is a comment on the idea of institutional integrity in research, and the critical role of the mentor in transmitting research standards to the next generation.     

An introduction to structured programming

Structured programming (SP) is a technique devised to improve the reliability and clarity of programs. In SP, control of program flow is restricted to three structures, sequence, IF THEN ELSE, and DO WHILE, or to a structure derivable from a combination of the basic three. Thus, a structured program does not need to use GO TOs or branches (unless it is written in a language that does not have statement forms corresponding to the SP structures, in which case, GO TOs may be used to simulate the structures). The result is a program built of modules that are highly independent of each other. In turn, this allows a programmer to be more confident that the code contains fewer logic errors and will be easier to debug and change in the future. However, SP may be less efficient than an unstructured counterpart. Another disadvantage is the relative difficulty of using SP with a language that doesn’t support it, although this situation is changing as languages are updated (e.g., FORTRAN 77).     

An introduction to natural computation

by Dana H. Ballard, MIT Press, 1997. $45.00 (xxii+307 pages) ISBN 0 262 02420 9.     

An inexpensive CRT terminal controller/computer

An inexpensive CRT terminal controller/computer is described. The board integrates virtually any keyboard and CRT monitor into a work station with firmware-governed intelligence. The system is designed to fill the cost/functionality niche below the Apple microcomputer. It can be configured as a dumb or smart terminal (approximately $100 plus keyboard and CRT monitor), as a self-contained computer that runs ROM-based software such as a small BASIC or an assembler/disassembler fan additional $100 in chips), or as a word processor if aa audio cassette ($50) or dual digital cassettes with controller ($125) are added.     

An introduction to state notation and SKED

SKED is a minicomputer operating system based on the functional use of state notation as a programming language. An overall view of the operating system, state notation, and the hardware necessary to simultaneously control as many as 12 experimental stations is provided.