Geometry and vision to Galen

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An integration of reduction and logic for programming languages

A new declarative language is presented which captures the expressibility of both logic programming languages and functional languages. This is achieved by conditional graph rewriting, with full unification as the parameter passing mechanism. The syntax and semantics are described both formally and informally, and examples are offered to support the expressibility claim made above. The language design is of further interest due to its uniformity and the inclusion of a novel mechanism for type inference in the presence of derived type hierarchie

Performative architecture

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2011.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Page 233 blank.Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-232).The following thesis explores two central hypotheses. On the one hand it introduces the idea of performative architecture (performance in design), and has done so with the desire to contribute directly to the expansion of design education and practice. It proposes stretch the boundaries of the discipline by challenging current paradigms on architectural theory and practice by conveying an axiom of active engagement between artifacts and their environments with human users/inhabitants forming part of such an environment. Performance is here proposed as the action that mediates the two forces of artifice and environment. The second hypothesis of this thesis has been to offer a distinct point of view regarding analogue relations-as asserted by this work-between the design process-as it relates to pedagogy and practice-and the performance of design (considered through that which is built, materialized and produced) as it engages with its surroundings. Designing requires fundamental ambiguity, imposing both theoretically and empirically, a methodological systematization of two recurrent and consequent processes: mergence and emergence. I will describe how both, explained by Shape Grammars design theory, are complimentary and interdependent processes, mergence in order to produce the essential ambiguity required and emergence in order to embed and operate, and that this processes are present both during the design process (designing) and during the experience of design (inhabiting/using). These two hypotheses temporarily blur the distinction between environment and design artifact, or between natural and artificial, and propose a displacement of these distinctions towards the performance of the interfaces between such conditions, independent of their "natural" or "artificial" transient connotations. I will describe how this manifold notion of performance can be used to understand this displacement in architectural discourse, and its practical implications towards a performative architecture.by Sergio Araya.Ph.D

Here We Don't Speak, Here We Whistle. Mobilizing A Cultural Reading of Cognition, Sound and Ecology in the Design of a Language Support System for the Silbo Gomero.

This thesis presents the study of a whistled form of language known as the Silbo Gomero (Island of La Gomera, Canarian Archipelago). After fifty years of almost total extinction this form of communication has been revived, shifting from the fields where it was once used by peasant islanders and into the space of the classroom. Here, it is integrated into the curriculum of the island’s schools while providing children with a rich cultural platform that instigates linguistic and auditory experimentation. As a response to this transformation, the need to develop didactic materials is presented as one of the main challenges encountered by the community. Taking this condition as the driver of its research, this body of work draws on phonological, bioacoustic and cognitive theories to develop a formal understanding of the Silbo Gomero in a way which aims to complement the whistler’s own experience and mastery of the language by also developing an ethnographic reading of this indigenous body of knowledge and its characteristic auditory perceptual ecology. The investigation has culminated in the design of a digital application, El Laberinto del Sonido, and its active use within the educational community of the island. Finally, emphasising the practice-based nature of the research, this thesis attempts to relocate the question of intangible heritage from a focus on cultural safeguarding and transmission to one of experimentation, where an indigenous body of knowledge not only provides new exploratory paradigms in the design of didactic materials, but also contributes towards the sustainability of culturally situated forms of apprenticeship within contemporary educational contexts

Investigation, Development, and Evaluation of Performance Proving for Fault-tolerant Computers

A number of methodologies for verifying systems and computer based tools that assist users in verifying their systems were developed. These tools were applied to verify in part the SIFT ultrareliable aircraft computer. Topics covered included: STP theorem prover; design verification of SIFT; high level language code verification; assembly language level verification; numerical algorithm verification; verification of flight control programs; and verification of hardware logic

Computations and Computers in the Sciences of Mind and Brain

Computationalism says that brains are computing mechanisms, that is, mechanisms that perform computations. At present, there is no consensus on how to formulate computationalism precisely or adjudicate the dispute between computationalism and its foes, or between different versions of computationalism. An important reason for the current impasse is the lack of a satisfactory philosophical account of computing mechanisms. The main goal of this dissertation is to offer such an account. I also believe that the history of computationalism sheds light on the current debate. By tracing different versions of computationalism to their common historical origin, we can see how the current divisions originated and understand their motivation. Reconstructing debates over computationalism in the context of their own intellectual history can contribute to philosophical progress on the relation between brains and computing mechanisms and help determine how brains and computing mechanisms are alike, and how they differ. Accordingly, my dissertation is divided into a historical part, which traces the early history of computationalism up to 1946, and a philosophical part, which offers an account of computing mechanisms. The two main ideas developed in this dissertation are that (1) computational states are to be identified functionally not semantically, and (2) computing mechanisms are to be studied by functional analysis. The resulting account of computing mechanism, which I call the functional account of computing mechanisms, can be used to identify computing mechanisms and the functions they compute. I use the functional account of computing mechanisms to taxonomize computing mechanisms based on their different computing power, and I use this taxonomy of computing mechanisms to taxonomize different versions of computationalism based on the functional properties that they ascribe to brains. By doing so, I begin to tease out empirically testable statements about the functional organization of the brain that different versions of computationalism are committed to. I submit that when computationalism is reformulated in the more explicit and precise way I propose, the disputes about computationalism can be adjudicated on the grounds of empirical evidence from neuroscience