Injuries produced by contact with electric circuits

This paper discusses the results of a series of experimental investigations that have been conducted at The Johns Hopkins University on the effects of electric shock. Rats and dogs were used as the experimental animals. They were completely anesthetized before the experiments. Studies of the effects produced by electric current upon the nervous system and upon the heart are reported. Three types of circuits were used in the work, namely, direct current, alternating current, and the discharge of an impulse generator.In the first series of experiments, the effect of voltage was studied and it was found that low voltage alternating current circuits are much more deadly than direct current circuits of the same voltage. At voltages of 1,000 and higher the reverse is the case. In this work, the importance of the size of the animal as related to the injury was definitely established, larger animals being able to withstand a greater current than those small in size.The resistance offered by a body in an electrical circuit was determined. The resistance is made up of two parts—the contact resistance, and the ohmic resistance of the body proper. The resistances offered at the contacts are of the nature of a voltage drop and are largely independent of the current flowing. The importance of contact resistances in industrial accidents is emphasized.In a second series of experiments the effect of the current path through the     

An algorithm for Pareto set reduction using fuzzy information on decision-maker’s preference relation

In the present paper, a model of the multicriteria choice is considered; the model includes a set of feasible variants, a numerical vector criterion, and the fuzzy binary preference relation of a decision maker. The problem of the multicriteria choice is to choose one “best” variant (or several best variants) from the Pareto set, i.e., to reduce this set using fuzzy information on the decision-maker’s preference relation. The reduction is performed in accordance with the axiomatic approach. An algorithm for the Pareto set reduction based on an arbitrary finite collection of “quanta” of fuzzy information on the decision-maker’s preference relation is presented.