8,136 research outputs found
Speculative Machines and Technical Mentalities. A philosophical approach to designing the future
âBeyond their instrumental functions,â writes Rivka Oxman in an article about design, creativity and innovation (2013), âadvanced digital and computational environments are also becoming tools for thinking designâ. At the leading edge of creativity and innovation design does not only speculate the plausible, possible or potential, but pragmatically inserts such futures into the present (as Whitehead says any âimmediate existenceâ (1962) must). Using concepts mainly from Deleuze, Guattari, Spinoza and Simondon, I will position such design speculation as pragmatic, divergent, complex and emergent. That is, as manifesting the technical mentalities (Simondon) that provide the milieu in which we can show what we âmight be capable ofâ (Stengers)
Very High Multiplicity Hadron Processes
The paper contains a description of a first attempt to understand the
extremely inelastic high energy hadron collisions, when the multiplicity of
produced hadrons considerably exceeds its mean value. Problems with existing
model predictions are discussed. The real-time finite-temperature -matrix
theory is built to have a possibility to find model-free predictions. This
allows to include the statistical effects into consideration and build the
phenomenology. The questions to experiment are formulated at the very end of
the paper.Comment: 76 pp., 4 fig
Mathematics of Gravitational Lensing: Multiple Imaging and Magnification
The mathematical theory of gravitational lensing has revealed many generic
and global properties. Beginning with multiple imaging, we review
Morse-theoretic image counting formulas and lower bound results, and
complex-algebraic upper bounds in the case of single and multiple lens planes.
We discuss recent advances in the mathematics of stochastic lensing, discussing
a general formula for the global expected number of minimum lensed images as
well as asymptotic formulas for the probability densities of the microlensing
random time delay functions, random lensing maps, and random shear, and an
asymptotic expression for the global expected number of micro-minima. Multiple
imaging in optical geometry and a spacetime setting are treated. We review
global magnification relation results for model-dependent scenarios and cover
recent developments on universal local magnification relations for higher order
caustics.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figures. Invited review submitted for special issue of
General Relativity and Gravitatio
From the production of rules to seed production: global intellectual property and local knowledge.
This paper analyzes the links and overlappings between traditional knowledge and biodiversity in the context of ecological family farming in southern Brazil. The data presented are part of an ethnographic study carried out among a network of ecological farmers, Ecovida, in the west of Santa Catarina state. The current global patent regime, most prominently the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) of the World Trade Organization (WTO), has had direct effects on seed production and agricultural food crops. In a scenario of increasing creation of patents, patent regulations, provisions on cultivars (plant varieties and seed breeding) and a number of other global trade control mechanisms, family farmers and other related social actors have rejected the multilateral development agencies' notion of life as "resource". This study has a two-fold aim: first, it approaches the international context of the intellectual property regime on biodiversity and knowledge production; second, it examines the actions taken by farmers participating in the Ecovida network toward creating alternative ways of managing knowledge to produce "free" seeds. As an outcome, there is a parallel political action of criticism and resistance to the current narrowing of agriculture's genetic base, and organized efforts to multiply seeds, know-how and knowledge through networks, banks and centers of agro-biodiversity. Our central argument is that all these social actors - who make up the so-called ecological network and who seek, in their activities, to carry on the multiplication and variability of seeds and promote the diversity of knowledge to produce diverse seeds - are also creating collective strategies of social resistance vis-Ă -vis the prevailing global modes of controlling knowledge, seeds and food production
Gromov-Witten theory and cycle-valued modular forms
In this paper, we proved generating functions of Gromov-Witten cycles of the
elliptic orbifold lines with weights (3,3,3), (4,4,2), and (6,3,2) are
cycle-valued quasi-modular forms. This is a generalization of Milanov and
Ruan's work on cycle-valued level. First we construct a global cohomology field
theory (CohFT) for simple elliptic singularities (modulo an extension problem)
and prove its modularity. Then, we apply Teleman's reconstruction theorem to
prove mirror theorems on cycled-valued level and match it with a CohFT from
Gromov-Witten theory of a corresponding orbifold.This solves the extension
property as well as inducing the modularity for a Gromov-Witten CohFT
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