Chaos Theory: The Essential for Military Applications

I take great pleasure in presenting a remarkable addition to our Newport Papers series. While Major Glenn E. James, the author, received support and assistance from sources within his own service, the U.S. Air Force, the final research and the paper itself are the products of his term in the Advanced Research Program at the Naval War College. This paper typifies the quality of work and capabilities of our students from all the services here at the College. It is an excellent example of the benefits we derive from the close collaboration between our academic and research departments.https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/usnwc-newport-papers/1009/thumbnail.jp

Dynamical Systems

Complex systems are pervasive in many areas of science integrated in our daily lives. Examples include financial markets, highway transportation networks, telecommunication networks, world and country economies, social networks, immunological systems, living organisms, computational systems and electrical and mechanical structures. Complex systems are often composed of a large number of interconnected and interacting entities, exhibiting much richer global scale dynamics than the properties and behavior of individual entities. Complex systems are studied in many areas of natural sciences, social sciences, engineering and mathematical sciences. This special issue therefore intends to contribute towards the dissemination of the multifaceted concepts in accepted use by the scientific community. We hope readers enjoy this pertinent selection of papers which represents relevant examples of the state of the art in present day research. [...

Using MapReduce Streaming for Distributed Life Simulation on the Cloud

Distributed software simulations are indispensable in the study of large-scale life models but often require the use of technically complex lower-level distributed computing frameworks, such as MPI. We propose to overcome the complexity challenge by applying the emerging MapReduce (MR) model to distributed life simulations and by running such simulations on the cloud. Technically, we design optimized MR streaming algorithms for discrete and continuous versions of Conway’s life according to a general MR streaming pattern. We chose life because it is simple enough as a testbed for MR’s applicability to a-life simulations and general enough to make our results applicable to various lattice-based a-life models. We implement and empirically evaluate our algorithms’ performance on Amazon’s Elastic MR cloud. Our experiments demonstrate that a single MR optimization technique called strip partitioning can reduce the execution time of continuous life simulations by 64%. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to propose and evaluate MR streaming algorithms for lattice-based simulations. Our algorithms can serve as prototypes in the development of novel MR simulation algorithms for large-scale lattice-based a-life models.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/scs_books/1014/thumbnail.jp

Wild NYC: Building Biodiversity in Fresh Kills and City Parks

This dissertation is an anthropological field study of the work of urban ecological maintenance being conducted in New York City through the analysis of the reclamation and biotic restoration of the Fresh Kills landfill, located in the borough of Staten Island. This landfill was once the largest urban dump in the United States. Its 2,200 acres of trash buried in four mounds have polluted an area historically noted for its natural beauty as a collection of marshes and woodlands bordering the Kill Van Kull, a tidal strait that flows into the New York Harbor. The current plan for park and nature reserve introduces rolling grassland habitats otherwise extirpated in the region and re-introduces native plants to enhance the area\u27s biotic diversity. The site\u27s large acreage will also link up with and expand the Staten Island Greenbelt. Fresh Kills, once transformed, will become one of the largest urban nature preserves in the city. This dissertation also explores the essential maintenance work performed by researchers, city workers, and volunteers alike for creating and preserving wild spaces in New York City. Despite the ecological benefits envisioned in the Fresh Kills conversion, there are challenges ahead for implementing sustainability. Chief among them is the scarce funding for land reclamation in light of competing urban priorities. The substantial commitment to convert the world\u27s largest landfill into an urban park and nature preserve, however, holds important lessons for public and non-profit agencies interested in urban environmental improvement

Toward a theory of the evolution of business ecosystems : enterprise architectures, competitive dynamics, firm performance & industrial co-evolution

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Engineering Systems Division, 2009.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. Vita.Includes bibliographical references (v. 4, p. 698-745).This dissertation contributes toward the building of a theory of the evolution of business ecosystems. In the process, it addresses a question that has been posed by evolutionary theorists in the economics and sociology literatures for decades: "Why do firms in the same industry vary systematically in performance over time?" Seeking a systematic explanation of a longitudinal phenomenon inevitably requires characterizing the evolution of the industrial ecosystem, as both the organization (firm) and its environment (industry, markets and institutions) are co-evolving. This question is therefore explored via a theoretical sample in three industrial ecosystems covering manufacturing and service sectors, with competitors from the US, Europe and Japan: commercial airplanes, motor vehicles and airlines. The research is based primarily on an in depth seven-year, multi-level, multi-method, field-based case study of both firms in the large commercial airplanes industry mixed duopoly as well as the key stakeholders in their extended enterprises (i.e. customers, suppliers, investors and employees). This field work is supplemented with historical comparative analysis in all three industries, as well as nonlinear dynamic simulation models developed to capture the essential mechanisms governing the evolution of business ecosystems.(cont.) A theoretical framework is developed which endogenously traces the co-evolution of firms and their industrial environments using their highest-level system properties of form, function and fitness (as reflected in the system sciences of morphology, physiology and ecology), and which embraces the evolutionary processes of variation, selection and retention. The framework captures the path-dependent evolution of heterogeneous populations of enterprise architectures engaged in symbiotic inter-species competition and posits the evolution of dominant designs in enterprise architectures that oscillate deterministically and chaotically between modular and integral states throughout an industry's life-cycle. Architectural innovation - at the extended enterprise level - is demonstrated to contribute to the failure of established firms, with causal mechanisms developed to explain tipping points.by Theodore F. Piepenbrock.Ph.D

Mind the Screen

Mind the Screen pays tribute to Thomas Elsaesser, a pioneering and leading scholar in the field of film and media studies. The contributions present a close-up of media concepts developed by Elsaesser, providing a mirror for all types of audiovisual screens, from archaeological pre-cinematic screens to the silver screen, from the TV set to the video installation and the digital e-screen, and from the city screen to the mobile phone display. The book is divided into three 'Acts': Melodrama, Memory, Mind Game; Europe-Hollywood-Europe; and Archaeology, Avant-Garde, Archive