In order to frame this question, and as a rhetorical device, I would like to set up a straw target as a caricature of what a closed system could look like. Central to the idea of a closed system is the concept of intellectual property as the equivalent of physical property, understood as owned in terms of some sort of title, either by an individual or corporate group, and available for sale or ...

Silvertown [1] has addressed an important topic and expresses many concerns, some of which are warranted. The paradigm of ecosystem services (ES) divides researchers and therefore debate is welcome. Since paradigms, by their very nature, constrain the way we view things, critiques of what is gained and lost in taking a particular world view is always valuable. The ‘ES paradigm’ is no exception....

1. The parameter glut In a well known paper written a quarter century ago, cosmology was described as a search for two numbers (Sandage 1970). As those of you who have attended any of the parallel sessions of Symposium 167 surely appreciate , today's cosmologists nd more than just two numbers interesting. It is likewise clear from the present symposium that the number of interesting parameters ...

This paper investigates traveling wave solutions of the spatially discrete reaction-diffusion systems whose kinetics are modeled by the McKean caricature of the FitzHugh-Nagumo model. In the limit of a weak coupling strength, we construct the traveling wave solutions and obtain the critical coupling constant below which propagation failure occurs. We report the existence of two different pulse ...

Most applications of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) science and technology are of a type called Expert Systems. An Expert System (ES) is a computer program that reasons using knowledge to solve complex problems. This overly brief caricature will be expanded upon below, but it serves to indicate an alignment of ES with AI’s long term goals. Traditionally, computers solve complex problems by ar...