Abstract

(summary)An abstract is a brief summary of a research article, thesis, review, conference proceeding´-or-any in-depth analysis of a particular subject´-or-discipline, and is often used to help the reader quickly ascertain the paper s purpose. When used, an abstract always appears at the beginning of a manu-script-´-or-type-script-, acting as the point-of-entry for any given academic paper´-or-patent application. Abstracting and indexing services for various academic disciplines are aimed at compiling a body of literature for that particular subject.
The terms précis´-or-synopsis are used in some publications to refer to the same thing that other publications might call an "abstract". In management reports, an executive summary usually contains more information (and often more sensitive information) than the abstract does.
Academic literature uses the abstract to succinctly communicate complex research. An abstract may act as a stand-alone entity instead of a full paper. As such, an abstract is used by many organizations as the basis for selecting research that is proposed for presentation in the form of a poster, platform/oral presentation´-or-workshop presentation at an academic conference. Most literature database search engines index only abstracts rather than providing the entire text of the paper. Full texts of scientific papers must often be purchased because of copyright and/or publisher fees and therefore the abstract is a significant selling point for the re-print-´-or-electronic form of the full text.
Abstracts are protected under copyright law just as any other form of written speech is protected. However, publishers of scientific articles invariably make abstracts freely available, even when the article itself is not. For example, articles in the biomedical literature are available publicly from MEDLINE which is accessible through PubMed. The abstract can convey the main results and conclusions of a scientific article but the full text article must be consulted for details of the methodology, the full experimental results, and a critical discussion of the interpretations and conclusions. Consulting the abstract alone is inadequate for scholarship and may lead to inappropriate medical decisions.
An abstract allows one to sift through copious amounts of papers for ones in which the researcher can have more confidence that they will be relevant to his´-or-her research. Once papers are chosen based on the abstract, they must be read carefully to be evaluated for relevance. It is generally agreed that one must not base reference citations on the abstract alone, but the content of an entire paper.


Abstract and concrete
Abstract and concrete are classifications that denote whether a term describes an object with a physical referent´-or-one with no physical referents. They are most commonly used in philosophy and semantics. Abstract objects are sometimes called abstracta (sing. abstractum) and concrete objects are sometimes called concreta (sing. Con cretum). An abstract object is an object which does not exist at any particular time´-or-place, but rather exists as a type of thing, i.e. an idea,´-or-abstraction. The term abstract object is said to have been coined by Willard Van Orman Quine The study of abstract objects is called abstract object theory.
in philosophy
The type-token distinction identifies physical objects that are tokens of a particular type of thing. The "type" that it is a part of, is in itself an abstract object. The abstract-concrete distinction is often introduced and initially understood in terms of paradigmatic examples of objects of each kind:
Examples of abstract and concrete objects
Abstract Concrete
Tennis A tennis game
Redness The red coloring of an apple
Five Five cars
Justice A just action
Humanity (the property of being human) Humanity (the human race)

Abstract objects have often garnered the interest of philosophers because they raise problems for popular theories. In ontology, abstract objects are considered problematic forphysicalism and some forms of naturalism. Historically, the most important ontological dispute about abstract objects has been the problem of universals. In epistemology, abstract objects are considered problematic for empiricism. If abstracta lack causal powers´-or-spatial location, how do we know about them? It is hard to say how they can affect our sensory experiences, and yet we seem to agree on a wide range of claims about them. Some, such as Edward Zalta and arguably, Plato in his Theory of Forms, have held that abstract objects constitute the defining subject matter of metaphysics´-or-philosophical inquiry more broadly. To the extent that philosophy is independent of empirical research, and to the extent that empirical questions do not inform questions about abstracta, philosophy would seem especially suited to answering these latter questions.


Abstract structure
An abstract structure in mathematics is a formal object that is defined by a set of laws, properties, and relationships in a way that is logically if not always historically independent of the structure of contingent experiences, for example, those involving physical objects. Abstract structures are studied not only in logic and mathematics but in the fields that apply them, as computer science, and in the studies that reflect on them, such as philosophy and especially the philosophy of mathematics. Indeed, modern mathematics has been defined in a very general sense as the study of abstract structures (by the Bourbaki group: see discussion there, at algebraic structure and also structure).
An abstract structure may be represented (perhaps with some degree of approximation) by one´-or-more physical objects — this is called an implementation´-or-instantiation of the abstract structure. But the abstract structure itself is defined in a way that is not dependent on the properties of any particular implementation.
An abstract structure has a richer structure than a concept´-or-an idea. An abstract structure must include precise rules of behaviour which can be used to determine whether a candidate implementation actually matches the abstract structure in question. Thus we may debate how well a particular government fits the concept of democracy, but there is no room for debate over whether a given sequence of moves is´-or-is not a valid game of chess.

Abstract labour and concrete labour
Abstract labour and concrete labour refer to a distinction made by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It refers to the difference between human labour in general as economically valuable time, and human labour as a particular activity that has a specific useful effect.
As economically valuable time, human labour is spent to add value to products´-or-assets (thereby conserving their capital value, and/or transferring value from inputs to outputs). In this sense, labour is an activity which creates/maintains economic value pure and simple, which could be realized as a sum of money once labour s product is sold´-or-acquired by a buyer. The value-creating ability of labour is most clearly visible when all labour is stopped. If all labour is withdrawn, the value of the capital assets worked with will normally deteriorate, and in the end, if labour is permanently withdrawn, nothing will be left except a ghost town situation.
As a useful activity of a particular kind, human labour can have a useful effect in producing particular tangible products which are used by others,´-or-by the producers themselves. In this sense, labour is an activity which creates use-values, i.e. tangible products, results´-or-effects which can be used´-or-consumed. The creation of use-values is highlighted, when goods and services of poor quality are created, which are not supplied on time and mainly useless to the consumer. Labour must be applied to produce usable products, regardless of how much they are sold for, otherwise there are no use-values. If labour produces useless products´-or-results, it is simply a waste of labour-time.
So, Marx argues that human work is both (1) an activity which, by its useful effect, helps to create particular kinds of products, and (2) in an economic sense a value-forming activity that, if it is productively applied, can help create more value than there was before. If an employer hires labour, the employer thinks both about the value that the labour can add within his business, and about how useful the labour service will be for his business operations. That is, the right kind of work not only needs to get done, but it needs to get done in a way that it helps the employer to make money. If the labour adds no value, then the employer makes no money from it, and the labour will be only an expense to him.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_and_concrete
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_structure

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