A chemosystematic study of the phylogenetic position of Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) heynh. (Brassicaceae) employing numerical methods

The Brassicaceae, Mustard Family, is a well marked natural family, whose tetramerous flowers, tetradynamous stamens, and distinctive bi- carpellary fruits, clearly distinguish it from related families. It is a large family of some 3, 000 recognized species and over 300 genera. Although numerous attempts have been made over the past two centuries to develop a taxonomic system that would organize the family into natural, or at the least convenient, groupings, no proposal has met with general acceptance. This investigation is a new attempt to understand intergeneric relationships. To scale this effort to a manageable scope, I selected the genus Arabidopsis, in particular the species A. thaliana, as the focus of all investigations. An important aspect of this thesis is that it introduces research techniques that have evolved since the family was last examined. Chemical methods used include protein electrophoresis and thin-layer chromatography of flavonoid and related compounds. A variety of computer-assisted numerical analyses were performed on both chemical and morphological data sets. A total of 54 species were investigated, representing 37 genera. The electrophoresis survey showed that many of the bands of the enzyme fructose 1, 6- diphosphate aldolase (1.U.B. No. 4.1.2.13) did not represent true isozymes, but were the results of secondary interactions between the enzymes and phenolic compounds. These artifacts were eliminated when a number of precautions were exercised during the extraction process, notably the washing of the plant extracts with synthetic phenolic-binding compounds (XAD-4 and polyclar-AT). Neither the electrophoresis nor the TLC surveys generated data sets that produced rational phenograms when clustering strategies were applied. Counter to expectations, each species was characterized by unique flavonoid idiogram patterns. Similarly, the electrophoretic phenotypes failed to generate reasonable phenograms although they support recognized intrageneric groupings. A correlation was observed between flavonoid distribution and plant habit. A significant quality of the 37 genera analyzed was their failure to form consistent groupings. The plants were shown to be widely scattered in the multidimensional character space, and clusters were markedly influenced by algorithm choice. However, two distinct groupings did emerge when the several numerical approaches were compared. The groups are separated by differing attitudes of the cotyledons with respect to the seed radicle. This single character difference was reinforced by weak but consistent correlations with chemical data. This finding sustains the method devised by de Cando lle and popularized by Schulz, who relied on cotyledonary position as a primary criterion for delimiting the tribes of the Brassicaceae. As a corollary, my numerical results place Arabidopsis near Sisymbrium and remote from its historical allies, Arabis and Cardamine. The limits of the genus Arabidopsis and a natural classification system for the Brassicaceae were not resolved by this work. However, the problems inherent in these tasks were identified

“The Pondering Repose of If”: Herman Melville’s Literary Exegesis

This study examines how Herman Melville’s oeuvre interacts with Old Testament (OT) wisdom literature (the Books of Job, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes). Using recent historical findings on the rise of religious skepticism and the erosion of Biblical authority in both Europe and the United States, I read Melville as an author steeped in the theological controversies of the eighteenth-century. Specifically, I am interested in teasing out the surprising disavowals of overt religious skepticism in Melville’s writing. By tracing the so-called Solomonic wisdom tradition throughout Melville’s oeuvre, I argue that Melville had developed an epistemology of contemplation towards that body of Biblical texts. Scholarship has traditionally painted Melville as a subversive if not downright skeptical religious thinker. Most studies have produced authorial readings, using texts as forensic evidence to make assertions about the author’s psychology. Incidentally, such assessments have confirmed the narrative of Herman Melville as a grand failed author of the nineteenth century, while ignoring the ambivalent attitudes toward Biblical authority, textual history, and skepticism that emerge in Melville’s writing. The present study intervenes by re-addressing several procedural questions about Melville’s literary dealings with the Bible: How does Melville deal with the distinct topics of religion, theology, religious skepticism, and doubt? How does he think through the relationship between science and religion as well as that of personal religion and theology? I claim that Melville’s work can be read as a continuous contemplation of Biblical wisdom. His writing, I argue, deals productively rather than a destructive with the Bible, its textual history, and authority. Melville’s thinking on theological and religious subjects was not merely subversive but constructive. In mounting this argument, I contradict current scholarship that reads Melville as trying to invent a new American Bible. In contrast, I show how Melville’s philosophical forays, even when critical, are dependent on the ethics, language, and thinking of the OT

Livro de atas do XVI Congresso da Associação Portuguesa de Investigação Operacional

Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FC

Fuzzy Techniques for Decision Making 2018

Zadeh's fuzzy set theory incorporates the impreciseness of data and evaluations, by imputting the degrees by which each object belongs to a set. Its success fostered theories that codify the subjectivity, uncertainty, imprecision, or roughness of the evaluations. Their rationale is to produce new flexible methodologies in order to model a variety of concrete decision problems more realistically. This Special Issue garners contributions addressing novel tools, techniques and methodologies for decision making (inclusive of both individual and group, single- or multi-criteria decision making) in the context of these theories. It contains 38 research articles that contribute to a variety of setups that combine fuzziness, hesitancy, roughness, covering sets, and linguistic approaches. Their ranges vary from fundamental or technical to applied approaches