Formal rules governing signed edges on causal directed acyclic graphs are described in this paper and it is shown how these rules can be useful in reasoning about causality. Specifically, the notions of a monotonic effect, a weak monotonic effect and a signed edge are introduced. Results are developed relating these monotonic effects and signed edges to the sign of the causal effect of an inter...

Social and biological systems consist of many levels, typically hierarchically arranged, with different mechanisms and rules for organizing information and decision-making at each level. This multi-level flow of information processing is obvious in perceptual systems, where simple feature elements are aggregated into more complex groupings using Gestalt-like associations. Likewise, in social do...

Like many researchers, we want to know the rules that govern the formation of human social networks, their persistence and disappearance, and their effects (if any) on human behavior and thought. Even if it turns out that the rules governing social network formation and decay are relatively simple, the outcome of those rules is very complex. It is so complex, in fact, that at this stage of the ...

Organisms are hierarchically organized, both structurally and behaviorally, where one level is defined to be above another level if the objects from the latter are combined together to make objects of the former level. I say that such a pair of levels is a combinatorial system. To understand organisms will require appreciating the relationships between all pairs of adjacent hierarchical levels ...

the protection of fundamental human rights at the time of war or peace is an obligation that should be observed at anytime by the states and international organizations. after the second world war, the non-peaceful situations such as occupation and economic sanctions have occurred numerously, which in some cases lasted for more than a decade. unfortunately, the laws governing these situations a...

in the french law, the properties of public entities and at the head of them, the properties of state are divided into public domain of public entities and private domain of public entities. the criterion of distinguishing of public properties of public entities is a procedural matter that has been taken from french doctrine, however the recent law of public entities ownership passed in 2006 ha...