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 ...

Natural systems harbor complex interactions that are fundamental parts of ecology and evolution. These interactions challenge our inclinations and training to seek the simplest explanations of patterns in nature. Not least is the likelihood that some complex processes might be missed when their patterns look similar to predictions for simpler mechanisms. Along these lines, theory and empirical ...

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 ...

We introduce a method for characterizing the expressive power of rst-order description logics. The method is essentially model-theoretic in nature in that it gives preservation results uniquely identifying a wide range of description logics as fragments of rst-order logic. The languages studied in the paper all belong to the well-known FL ? and AL hierarchies.

We introduce a method for characterizing the expressive power of concept expressions in rst-order description logics. The method is essentially model-theoretic in nature in that it gives preservation results uniquely identifying a wide range of description logics as fragments of rst-order logic. The languages studied in the paper all belong to the well-known FL and AL hierarchies.