System dynamics is a mathematical modeling approach widely used in environmental studies as a tool for representing and simulating ecological systems, giving support to prediction and decision making. The knowledge sources for model design are, essentially, ecological data and human expertise. Interestingly, however, the direct influence of data properties on model design has been little explor...

Little emphasis to date has been placed on this ecological approach within mobile robotics research, although some related research has been conducted in the recent past in tile context of the artificial life community. All too often, however, these approaches lack both a strong biological basis for their working assumptions and any formal underpinnings (neural, behavioral, and computational) f...

Per the preceding paper, it has been established that despite the public health platform, the family unit is seeking better answers regarding the efficacy and safety of childhood immunizations. Though it is collectively declared by pediatricians, public health officials and often members of our social network “the benefits outweigh the risks,” this paper utilizes sociological approaches to exam...

[1] Cognitive science is ready for a major reconceptualization.(1) This is not at all because efforts by its practitioners have failed, but rather because so much progress has been made. The need for reconceptualization arises from the fact that this progress has come at greater cost than necessary, largely because of more or less philosophical (at least metatheoretical) straightjackets still w...

Because determining a child's educational program usually takes into consideration the child's cognitive functioning, it is vital that those who are involved in this enterprise recognize that many variables contribute to and explain performance. Thus, careful consideration, assessment, and planning are mandatory to plan a child's individual educational program. This article emphasizes that cogn...

The problem of maintaining a desired number of mobile agents on a network is not trivial, especially if what is required is a completely decentralized solution. Decentralized control makes a system more robust and less susceptible to partial failures. The problem of agent population management is exacerbated on wireless ad hoc networks where host mobility can result in significant changes in th...

The role of natural selection in promoting reproductive isolation has received substantial renewed interest within the last two decades. As a consequence, the study of ecological speciation has become an extremely productive research area in modern evolutionary biology. Recent innovations in sequencing technologies offer an unprecedented opportunity to study the mechanisms involved in ecologica...

Worldwide more food than ever is produced these days. It would be enough to feed everybody by far. However, only a limited group of the global population enjoys an adequate food supply. About 854 million people are undernourished worldwide. The global situation shows that hunger cannot be fought by just producing enough food. The socio-cultural complex of nutrition and food habits cannot be red...

Following the ecological approach to visual perception, this paper presents a framework that emphasizes the role of vision on referring actions. In particular, affordances are utilized to explain gestures variability in a multimodal human-computer interaction. Such a proposal is consistent with empirical findings obtained in different simulation studies showing how referring gestures are determ...