INTRODUCTION In 1956, when I began doing theoretical physics, the study of elementary particles was like a patchwork quilt. Electrodynamics, weak interactions, and strong interactions were clearly separate disciplines, separately taught and separately studied. There was no coherent theory that described them all. Developments such as the observation of parity violation, the successes of quantum...

On July 3, 2015, Nalini Nadkarni, a world-renowned ecologist who had been studying the biologic processes of ecosystem disturbance and recovery, sustained a catastrophic 50-foot free-fall from the top of the rainforest canopy to the forest floor at her remote field research site. She lost consciousness in shock and sustained life-threatening injuries. Her accompanying students hiked out, radio-...

While this volume has been structured around three key themes, reflecting key research interests of Colin’s over the years, what has clearly emerged is the enormous influence Colin has had, at a range of levels and degrees of pervasiveness, on the thinking of many people. Our title, Taxonomic Tapestries, evokes Colin’s legacy in a number of ways with Kelley and Sussman’s (2007) paper on academi...

Artificial Intelligence has received the attentions and contributions of workers in many varied disciplines .. and of many varied interests. As a result there has arisen a large and diverse body of research literature in the field. The task of sorting out and comparing some threads of continuity through this rich and variegated tapestry presents a. tempting prospect. In this article we define a...

Despite many debates in the first half of the twentieth century, it is now largely a truism that humans and other animals build models of their environments and use them for prediction and control. However, model-based (MB) reasoning presents severe computational challenges. Alternative, computationally simpler, model-free (MF) schemes have been suggested in the reinforcement learning literatur...

Algebraic geometry is a mixture of the ideas of two Mediterranean cultures. It is the superposition of the Arab science of the lightening calculation of the solutions of equations over the Greek art of position and shape. This tapestry was originally woven on European soil and is still being refined under the influence of international fashion. Algebraic geometry studies the delicate balance be...

Microstructural examination can provide a rich tapestry of information about the processing and application history of a metal component. For this reason, microstructural characterization is a fundamental tool for failure analysis of these components. To reduce costs and accommodate demands for smaller packaging, many applications currently use metallic components where the critical dimensions ...