The growth of organic farming practices in the last few decades is continuing to stimulate the international debate about this alternative food market. As a p art of a PhD project r esearch about embeddedness in Alternative Food Networks (AFNs), this paper focuses on the promotional aspects of organic farms websites from the Madrid region. As a theoretical tool, some knowledge categories drawn ...

A study was carried out over a two year period (2009/2010 and 2012/2013) on an experimental farm in the Alentejo region (Beja), in southern Portugal where rainfed malt barley (Hordeum distichum L.) is sown at the end of autumn or beginning of winter (November–December). The aim of this experiment was to study the efficiency of the herbicide iodosulfuron-methyl-sodium to control post-emergence b...

Modeling of nature’s complexity is among the outstanding challenges we are faced with in the geophysical sciences. Although many ideas have been proposed throughout the years, the most common approaches, being based on notions related to chance, turn out to be insufficient to study, on an individual basis, the vast variety of patterns seen in nature. To this end, a novel deterministic fractal g...

The six articulatory parameters of a three-dimensional tongue model were adjusted to replicate linguopalatal contact patterns measured with Electropalatography (EPG). The tongue model is based on artificially sustained articulations measured with MRI and the EPG data provides one possibility to tune the parameters to dynamic speech. A 3D model was generated of the palate and the electrode distr...

We review and summarize Terrence Deacon’s book, Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter.

Biodiversity-friendly farming is a growing area of discussion among farmers, as well as in government departments and non-government organizations interested in conservation on private land. Those seeking to encourage biodiversity on farms must understand the production challenges presented by wildlife. Such species destroy agricultural commodities or present threats to family, pets, or infrast...

Terrence Deacon’s (2012) notion developed in his book Incomplete Nature (IN) that living organisms are teleodynamic systems that are self-maintaining, self-correcting and self-reproducing is extended to human social systems. The hypothesis is developed that culture, language, organization, science, economics and technology (CLOSET) can be construed as living organisms that evolve, maintain and ...

Fractals have experienced considerable success in quantifying the complex structure exhibited by many natural patterns and have captured the imagination of scientists and artists alike [Mandelbrot]. With ever widening appeal, they have been referred to both as "fingerprints of nature" [Taylor et al 1999] and "the new aesthetics" [Richards]. Recently, we showed that the drip patterns of the Amer...

An intelligent agent uses known facts including statistical knowledge to assign degrees of belief to assertions it is un certain about We investigate three principled techniques for doing this All three are applications of the principle of indi erence because they assign equal degree of belief to all basic situations consistent with the knowledge base They di er because there are competing intu...