A theory of processes with localities

We study a notion of observation for concurrent processes which allows the observer to see the distributed nature of processes, giving explicit names for the location of actions. A general notion of bisimulation related to this observation of distributed systems is introduced. Our main result is that these bisimulation relations, particularized to a process algebra extending CCS, are completely axiomatizable. We discuss in details two instances of location bisimulations, namely the location equivalence and the location preorder

Cities: Continuity, transformation and emergence

Book synopsis: This book applies ideas and methods from the complexity perspective to key concerns in the social sciences, exploring co-evolutionary processes that have not yet been addressed in the technical or popular literature on complexity. \ud \ud Authorities in a variety of fields – including evolutionary economics, innovation and regeneration studies, urban modelling and history – re-evaluate their disciplines within this framework. The book explores the complex dynamic processes that give rise to socio-economic change over space and time, with reference to empirical cases including the emergence of knowledge-intensive industries and decline of mature regions, the operation of innovative networks and the evolution of localities and cities. Sustainability is a persistent theme and the practicability of intervention is examined in the light of these perspectives. \ud \ud Specialists in disciplines that include economics, evolutionary theory, innovation, industrial manufacturing, technology change, and archaeology will find much to interest them in this book. In addition, the strong interdisciplinary emphasis of the book will attract a non-specialist audience interested in keeping abreast of current theoretical and methodological approaches through evidence-based and practical examples

KLAIM: A Kernel Language for Agents Interaction and Mobility

We investigate the issue of designing a kernel programming language for mobile computing and describe KLAIM, a language that supports a programming paradigm where processes, like data, can be moved from one computing environment to another. The language consists of a core Linda with multiple tuple spaces and of a set of operators for building processes. KLAIM naturally supports programming with explicit localities. Localities are first-class data (they can be manipulated like any other data), but the language provides coordination mechanisms to control the interaction protocols among located processes. The formal operational semantics is useful for discussing the design of the language and provides guidelines for implementations. KLAIM is equipped with a type system that statically checks access rights violations of mobile agents. Types are used to describe the intentions (read, write, execute, etc.) of processes in relation to the various localities. The type system is used to determine the operations that processes want to perform at each locality, and to check whether they comply with the declared intentions and whether they have the necessary rights to perform the intended operations at the specific localities. Via a series of examples, we show that many mobile code programming paradigms can be naturally implemented in our kernel language. We also present a prototype implementaton of KLAIM in Java

Race Audits

The U.S. Supreme Court’s race jurisprudence suffers from a stunning lack of imagination where possibilities for meaningful local government involvement in combating structural racial inequality are concerned. Cases such as Parents. and Ricci limit dramatically the freedom that localities have to address racial inequity within their borders. Instead of constraints on local efforts in the race context, Professor Lenhardt argues that what we need, if persistent racial inequalities are ever to be eliminated, is greater innovation and experimentation. In this article, Professor Lenhardt thus introduces an extra-judicial tool called the race audit, which would permit individual cities or a regional coalition of localities voluntarily to determine the extent to which their governmental systems and policies create, enable, or perpetuate inequitable conditions for racial minorities. This tool, grounded in the tenets of structuralism, breaks from traditional audit mechanisms in the race context by eschewing a singular focus on intentional discrimination. Instead, it seeks to uncover the specific structural mechanisms that generate cumulative racial disadvantage across domains, time and generations by, inter alia, being attuned to the spatial dimensions, meaning, and operation of race in the United States. The race audit’s main goal – which falls outside the reach of most existing tools for measuring discrimination – would be achieved through the work of a “community of inquiry” consisting of academics, philanthropic organizations, non-profits and civil rights groups, governmental agencies, and business leaders charged with assessing the segregative effects of the locality’s policies and programs. The race audit process, whose results might be similar to those produced by truth and reconciliation commissions, would produce a counter-narrative about race in metropolitan areas whose telling would have numerous benefits, including generating more effective remedies for addressing structural discrimination, and promoting democratic conversations about equality and what is necessary to secure belonging at the local level. Most of all, the race audit would make apparent the deep potential cities have for being important “equality innovators.” designed to identify the sources of persistent racial inequality that can be productively deployed by localities. This tool, grounded in the tenets of structuralism, eschews a singular focus on intentional discrimination. Instead, it seeks to uncover the specific structural mechanisms that create cumulative racial disadvantage across domains, time, and generations by, inter alia, being attuned to the spatial dimensions, meaning, and operation of race in the United States. The race audit process, in addition to highlighting the capacity of localities to be important change agents, would help produce a counternarrative about race and the seeming naturalness of the racial segregation and disadvantage now evident in urban and suburban areas alike. The Author contends that, in doing so, the race audit would identify better, more effective strategies for alleviating structural racial inequality. Situating the race audit proposal in a larger project on the commitments underlying civil rights advocacy more broadly, she highlights the potential that the race audit and other innovative tools might have to spur democratic conversations about race and the conditions necessary for belonging at the local level; generate a thicker, more substantive account of equality than has thus far been forthcoming in U.S. Supreme Court cases; and reconcile the perceived tensions between notions of equality and liberty in the area of race

Non-localities in nucleon-nucleus potentials

Two causes of non-locality inherent in nucleon-nucleus scattering are considered. They are the results of two-nucleon antisymmetry of the projectile with each nucleon in the nucleus and the dynamic polarization potential representation of channel coupling. For energies $\sim 40 - 300$ MeV, a g-folding model of the optical potential is used to show the influence of the knock-out process that is a result of the two-nucleon antisymmetry. To explore the dynamic polarization potential caused by channel coupling, a multichannel algebraic scattering model has been used for low-energy scattering.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, submitted to EPJ

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Localities as Equality Innovators

This Article thus argues that instead of regarding cities and localities that, like Seattle and Louisville, try to develop serious solutions to existing racial disparities as bad cities no different from those whose notorious policies spurred the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, we should be regarding them as potential equality innovators.” Their on-the-ground experience with the realities of race and its operation in the twenty-first century arguably places them in a better position than courts to develop innovative approaches to the structural racial inequities with which so many municipalities must grapple. Existing doctrine limits dramatically the ability of courts to confront in any meaningful way how localities and the people that inhabit them actually navigate race