Re: Great Movie Line from an Old Bob Hope Movie

Medical practice, and scientific practice, are full of empirical procedures. I'm no epistemologist, but these are probably valid scientific methods. A scientific method should not require "understanding" (I would be even tempted to say that it rules it out), and a theory does not "explain" either.

Let me be more formal about what I guess was the method in this study (again: I only heard about it for a few minutes, and have no references.) let there be

- a group A of people who you admit have the ability to suffer, and the ability to express that they suffer.

- a group B of people who you admit have the ability to suffer. ( I use the term "people" rather than "person". Put there "patients" or whatever groupname you like that can include preborn babies.)

- a the set P of physical manifestations that can be detected/measured by medical staff.

With statistical work on A, one can get correlations of P to pain. With clinical records, it is possible to verify that those correlations hold true for group B for every cause C (from "a set C of causes of pain" >8-)

By applying that method, one can create a "pain detector" that is good enough for medical purpose. It does not adress the problem of a definition of pain, it does not deal with the problem of wether a foetus has conscience. Pain is here empirically defined by the persons in group A. Wether the foetus has conscience or not, the medical tool is reliable as long as those foetuses have the same physiological reaction to pain as, say, 10 month old babies. For all you know, there may even be a well programmed computer that sneaked into group A and participated in the implicit definition of pain. In the end you have a good-enough "detector", which I would be glad to see happen and be developped in clinical practice before all those steaks I ate give me cancer. Not to mention the radiation dosis I receive from my CRT while flaming on c.c.c !

I read in sci.electronics.design that fogh wrote (in ) about 'still very much offtopic ! (Re: One of My High Technology Contributions to Microchip Design)', on Tue, 20 Jul 2004:

Indeed. Elevated breathing rate (possibly indicative of non-specific stress) and adrenalin/nor-epinephrine levels in blood, and the appearance of heat-shock protein, I believe.

Precisely.

The human perception of pain is quite complex. There is a serious brain condition in which the patient is aware of a pain but does not associate it with him/herself.

--
Regards, John Woodgate, OOO - Own Opinions Only. 
The good news is that nothing is compulsory.
The bad news is that everything is prohibited.
http://www.jmwa.demon.co.uk Also see http://www.isce.org.uk

cat /etc/passwd | grep dorinelu returns:

LTSpice.

[]s

-- Chaos Master®, posting from Brazil. REPLY TO GROUP! "Bring me to life..." visit

MSN: wizard_of snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com

cat /etc/passwd | grep Leon Heller returns:

I second this. I have used SIMetrix Intro, enough for small projects. Very good. Just a few problems (it sometimes gave me access violations, if the AVG anti-virus was running in the background), *but I think they were caused by my PC*.

[]s

--
Chaos Master®, posting from Brazil. REPLY TO GROUP!
              "Bring me to life..." 
visit http://marreka.no-ip.com. MSN: wizard_of_yendor@hotmail.com

Since I see a similar device below listed correctly I presume a typo here and it should be

FI2 7 9 VFI2 -1

This is a current-controlled current source, output is from node 7 to node 9, "current measuring" voltage source is VFI2, and gain is -1

Voltage

Voltage-controlled voltage source, output at nodes 10,0, input at nodes 9,7, gain is 1

Same device type as FI2

Voltage source

Sorry I can't help with the model for an IRF3315, I don't see it in my PSpice libraries at all.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I have used LTSpice for a few months now and it is quite good (and the performance to price ratio is infinite!). It has a good help file and there are lots of information, discussions and help available in their group (LTSpice at groups.yahoo.com). Of course, the S/W to run Spice is just the tip of the iceberg, the biggest problem is to find or construct models for what you need, understand them, refine them... Regards, L2

Hi All,

I was wondering if anybody had any specs or could show me where they could be found for this Nokia Cell phone battery. It's the one used in the 33XX series of phones.

A picture can be seen here.

I'm also looking for the spring loaded contacts that mate with this if anybody knows of them?

pfitz

IIRC, the battery spring contacts can be gotten as spares. Google nokia 3300 spares battery spring

And so it would for me too, unfortunately, such a definition would be arbitrary, and therefore meaningless.

Convince me that you actually hurt when I kick you in the balls. All I hear from you are the screams and whimpering. This proves nothing.

Science provides explanations, essentially by definition.

I agree. Understanding and explanations are not the same. An explanation may be considered the black and white description e.g. mathematical equations that make predictions based on axioms. "Understanding" is that

*emotion* we feel when we go Eureka!

Agreed.

Physics does explains reality, by making explanations based on arbitrary axioms. The axioms, of course are not explainable.

"Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world." - Einstein.

For example, we *invent* the concept of mass. We then "explain" motion with reference to that invention. In principle, we could invent some other quantity and have different explanations.

Agreed. There is no *provable* relation between the electro-chemical construction of the brain with emotions such as pain. However, emotions are indeed only a sole result of such physical construction. This is an example of a Goedal Statement. A relation that is true, but not provable or derivable.

Yes, but not one for foetus that has meaning. There is no way to set up the control system. We simply do not know whether or not 6 month foetuses feel pain at all. They cant tell us. Any result is pure supposition.

It is concerned with pain, which is de-facto consciousness.

My issue is regarding situations where we cannot with any reasonable doubt conclude that something feels pain or not. Most "older" individuals can mutually agree that a kick in the balls hurts. We can discuss it such that, even without absolute proof, we can reasonable conclude that there is no "reasonable" doubt. For a 6 month foetus this is not possible.

Its trivial. Without conscience awareness there can be no pain. Period. Pain is something that is directly attributed to conscience awareness. Consciousness is the ability to "feel" emotions. Its essentially a definition of conscience, although of course, a circular one. One cannot define emotions (pain, laughter etc) without introducing consciousness. If we were not conscious, pain would have zero meaning. That is why consciousness is not derivable from the laws of physics. There is no independent way of defining it without referring to itself in its definition

Kevin Aylward snipped-for-privacy@anasoft.co.uk

SuperSpice, a very affordable Mixed-Mode Windows Simulator with Schematic Capture, Waveform Display, FFT's and Filter Design.

There is an argument about understanding: you state that understanding is necessary before one can come to a proof, a defendable thesis. I would rather say that the a demand of research is to be able to deal with what is not understood. A study that comes from a situation where "pain" has no metaphysical definition and no clinical definition, and arrives at a point where there is at least a clinical definition is AOK in my book. Generally speaking, I would not think that science provides "understanding" or "explanations". Being able to follow a theory, read some specific formalism an jargon, or assess wether a theory has the required properties to be scientific (cartesian reasoning, refutability, etc.) do not bring "understanding". ( It a nice kick sometimes though )

It has been probably stg like 70 years since physicists have agreed that the question of conscience is not relevant to their theories, i.e. physics theories can hold independently of the outcome of philosophical questions of conscience, reality, existence. It is a feelgood fairytale we tell kids that physics explains reality, and that it has thus a strong grasp on technology. But try saying that to a physicist and you ll be confronted to a grin and a long silence, at best. And conversely physics theories have nothing to say about those questions. So you can hold assured that I did not at anytime believe that there is a mechanically provable relation between pain and physical manifestation. The relation between pain and metabolic manifestations that can be defended by a medical thesis is not a "mechanical" relation. The relation does involves conscience: the conscience of all individuals from so-called group A and the conscience of the Phd student. So, indeed, you can not f rom such a study create a machine that detects pain, or a machine that calculates the dosis of opium to give a preborn. Even if you put a well programmed computer in that machine. But you can create a medical procedure, since the procedure involves the conscience of the medical staff.

Medical practice is not too concerned with conscience either. Who ever saw veterinarian having a big dilemma on prescribing a painkiller " Oh, no. Wait ... I can t prescribe these, Fifi is not an alter-ego and it is not proven that it has conscience. OK, lets tear off this slip and put more expensive antibiotics instead." Hence, I still _miss_ the point and so far I keep accepting that a doctor in medicine studies, treats, influences, or causes pain without understanding what it is, and still be considered a scientist.

BTW, why do you find conscience to be so closely related to pain ?

By far, IMHO PSpice is the best.

I am having difficulty performing a transient analysis of 2N2222 phillips transistor (provided by LTspice). This is my 1st time using LTspice ...i successfully simulated the I-V curves and load line of the transistor with a DC sweep but doing the transient has been baffling. I put a similar circuit in ADS and it worked as expected. Does anyone have any ideas? The netlist is below.

Cheerz Deji

-----------spice netlist --------------

• C:Program FilesLTCSwCADIIIdejiaCE_amp_small_signal.asc Q1 Vo N001 0 0 2N2222 Vcc N002 0 5 R1 N002 Vo 1000 Vin N001 0 SINE(0.68071 0.1 10M 10n) ..model NPN NPN ..model PNP PNP ..lib C:Program FilesLTCSwCADIIIlibcmpstandard.bjt ..tran 0 1000n 0n 1n ..backanno ..end

I usually work with Cadence and this is the first time I use spice for years. I have translated and spice model into spectre to simulate it with cadence and I would like to compare the results with the original model.

The file is a *.spi file. What should I do in order to place this transistor into a schematic?

I know it is a very basic question but I tried doing it like I did years ago and something goes wrong. The .slb file is missing.

I am using Orcad 9.2.

Thanks in advance.

This is really a large question. There are many analog and digital simulators, each optimized for a specific market segment.

For instance, IC designers have used Hspice or Smartspice for smaller circuits where accuracy is really important. This class of simulator is analog-only. (There are many others.)

Full chip simulators are now available that use various schemes to reduce simulation time. From what I've seen, these simulators are really expensive and beyond my needs. Nanosim is an example:

There are mixed mode simulators that allow both analog and intermediate sized logic circuits to be simulated simultaneously. Pspice AD is a good example of this. Since Pspice was bought by Orcad and Orcad was bought by Cadence, this simulator has stayed mostly targeted at board work, though I've used it in the past for IC design, as have others. There are many others in this category as well, including SIMetrix SPICE.

Many of these simulators have been created by combining Berkeley spice and a digital simulator called Xspice that was created by Georgia Tech

A high end mixed simulator example might be Cadence's Spectre

Yet another interesting mixed mode simulator is the Smash simulator by Dolphin:

. This one does vhdl and verilog while simultaneously doing detailed analog simulations.

Saber is sort of in a class by itself in that it can easily simulate physical as well as electrical/electronic devices.

It can, for instance, simulate entire car systems where a mechanical device operates a sensor, which then is processed by electronics, then drives a mechanical actuator. It would also be great for modeling MEMs devices since both the physical device and interface circuits can be modeled at once. It also does mixed mode. New models are easily made using its MAST programming language. Since both Saber and Hspice were owned by Avant!, the actual hspice models have been ported to it, making it even more acceptable for low level IC design. I used this program years ago to design IR focal planes. This is a great simulator, but expensive.

I'm not a user of pure digital simulators, but I'm sure others in this group are knowledgeable in this area.

Many here use the free LTspice simulator. It has a great user interface and the support is unusually good. It's primary purpose is for board level work, allowing Linear Technology customers to easily simulate circuits with Linear Technology devices, though the author's intention clearly is beyond this. The user interface is so good I've often wished it would front-end for other simulators I use in my work (hspice, smartspice). To me, however, the simulator itself doesn't quite meet my needs for doing IC design. I'd use it for small circuits and board level work.

Hope any of this helps. Much of this is subjective, and everyone has their own opinion.

Regards, Larry

Thanks a lot Mike. That FIXED the problem!!!! I had thought that M and G prefixes meant Mega and Giga in spice. i may have to double-check that. Deji

Deji,

The "10M" for the frequency of the sine wave is understood as

10 milliHertz. If you change it to "10Meg", you'll probably get want you meant.

--Mike

Probably just change its extension to .LIB and then install as a library; but post the contents of *.SPI here to be sure.

...Jim Thompson

--
|  James E.Thompson, P.E.                           |    mens     |
|  Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
|  Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
|  Phoenix, Arizona            Voice:(480)460-2350  |             |
|  E-mail Address at Website     Fax:(480)460-2142  |  Brass Rat  |
|       http://www.analog-innovations.com           |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.      Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Has anyone been able to crack ExpressSCh's proprietary schematic format? We have some designs trapped in that format and we want them out. We need them in OrCAD or Protel.

If we could extract a standard netlist, that would be enough.

John Nagle Team Overbot

Deji,

G does mean Giga, as M should mean Mega, but SPICE is case insensitive(and predates the convention that metric multipliers greater than 1 should all start with a capital letter so KHz is correct instead of kHz) so Meg is used to mean Mega and m(or M) is milli.

--Mike