Session 3: Natural Selection as a Causal Theory

Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Workshop in History and Philosophy of Biology, Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, March 23-24 2001 Session 3: Natural Selection as a Causal Theor

Symplectic homology and the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms

We give a definition of symplectic homology for pairs of filled Liouville cobordisms, and show that it satisfies analogues of the Eilenberg-Steenrod axioms except for the dimension axiom. The resulting long exact sequence of a pair generalizes various earlier long exact sequences such as the handle attaching sequence, the Legendrian duality sequence, and the exact sequence relating symplectic homology and Rabinowitz Floer homology. New consequences of this framework include a Mayer-Vietoris exact sequence for symplectic homology, invariance of Rabinowitz Floer homology under subcritical handle attachment, and a new product on Rabinowitz Floer homology unifying the pair-of-pants product on symplectic homology with a secondary coproduct on positive symplectic homology. In the appendix, joint with Peter Albers, we discuss obstructions to the existence of certain Liouville cobordisms.Comment: v3: corrected Lemma 7.11. Various other minor modifications and reformatting. Final version to be published in Algebraic and Geometric Topolog

Unifying multilevel modelling through ontologies

In the last decades, the multilevel problem has received increasing attention in the conceptual modelling and semantic web communities. Recently, we proposed a solution to this problem in the context of ontological modelling which consists in extending the Web Ontology Language OWL with a new multilevel constructor that equates instances to classes. In this work we highlight the advantages of exploiting the reasoning capabilities of OWL ontologies with the proposed multilevel constructor by analizing requirements from a real-world application on the accounting domain

On Structure and Organization: An Organizing Principle

We discuss the nature of structure and organization, and the process of making new Things. Hyperstructures are introduced as binding and organizing principles, and we show how they can transfer from one situation to another. A guiding example is the hyperstructure of higher order Brunnian rings and similarly structured many-body systems.Comment: Minor revision of section

Logical Foundations of Multilevel Databases

International audienceIn this paper, we propose a formal model for multilevel databases. This model aims at being a generic model, that is it can be interpreted for any kind of database (relational, object-oriented...). Our model has three layers. The first layer corresponds to a model for a non-protected database. The second layer corresponds to a model for a multilevel database. In this second layer, we propose a list of theorems that must be respected in order to build a secure multilevel database. We also propose a new solution to manage cover stories without using the ambiguous technique of polyinstantiation. The third layer corresponds to a model for a MultiView database, that is, a database that provides at each security level a consistent view of the multilevel database. Finally, as an illustration, we interpret our 3-layer model in the case of an object-oriented database

Outline of a multilevel approach of the network society

Social and media networks, the Internet in particular, increasingly link interpersonal, organizational and mass communication. It is argued that this gives a cause for an interdisciplinary and multilevel approach of the network society. This will have to link traditional micro- and meso-level research of social and communication ties (Rogers, Granovetter a.o.) to the macro-level research of the network society at large (Castells a.o.).\ud Systems theory linked to a theory of communicative action establishes a potential basis for a multilevel theory. The systems theory described uses elements of a biologically inspired analysis of networks as complex adaptive systems and the mathematically inspired theory of random and scale-free networks recently elaborated by Barabási, Strogatz and Watts. The outline of the multilevel theory is summarized in ten statements about changing relationships in the network society: an information society with structures and modes of organization primarily shaped by social and media networks. \ud In the last section an inventory is made of the theoretical and methodological changes communication science will have to make to develop a general theory of the information and the network society in the perspective of communication

A system of relational syllogistic incorporating full Boolean reasoning

We present a system of relational syllogistic, based on classical propositional logic, having primitives of the following form: Some A are R-related to some B; Some A are R-related to all B; All A are R-related to some B; All A are R-related to all B. Such primitives formalize sentences from natural language like `All students read some textbooks'. Here A and B denote arbitrary sets (of objects), and R denotes an arbitrary binary relation between objects. The language of the logic contains only variables denoting sets, determining the class of set terms, and variables denoting binary relations between objects, determining the class of relational terms. Both classes of terms are closed under the standard Boolean operations. The set of relational terms is also closed under taking the converse of a relation. The results of the paper are the completeness theorem with respect to the intended semantics and the computational complexity of the satisfiability problem.Comment: Available at http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10849-012-9165-