A design model for Open Distributed Processing systems

This paper proposes design concepts that allow the conception, understanding and development of complex technical structures for open distributed systems. The proposed concepts are related to, and partially motivated by, the present work on Open Distributed Processing (ODP). As opposed to the current ODP approach, the concepts are aimed at supporting a design trajectory with several, related abstraction levels. Simple examples are used to illustrate the proposed concepts

Blameworthiness in Strategic Games

There are multiple notions of coalitional responsibility. The focus of this paper is on the blameworthiness defined through the principle of alternative possibilities: a coalition is blamable for a statement if the statement is true, but the coalition had a strategy to prevent it. The main technical result is a sound and complete bimodal logical system that describes properties of blameworthiness in one-shot games

One antimatter --- two possible thermodynamics

Conventional thermodynamics, which is formulated for our world populated by radiation and matter, can be extended to describe physical properties of antimatter in two mutually exclusive ways: CP-invariant or CPT-invariant. Here we refer to invariance of physical laws under charge (C), parity (P) and time reversal (T) transformations. While in quantum field theory CPT invariance is a theorem confirmed by experiments, the symmetry principles applied to macroscopic phenomena or to the whole of the Universe represent only hypotheses. Since both versions of thermodynamics are different only in their treatment of antimatter, but are the same in describing our world dominated by matter, making a clear experimentally justified choice between CP invariance and CPT invariance in context of thermodynamics is not possible at present. This work investigates the comparative properties of the CP- and CPT-invariant extensions of thermodynamics (focusing on the latter, which is less conventional than the former) and examines conditions under which these extensions can be experimentally tested.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1209.198

Some resonances between Eastern thought and Integral Biomathics in the framework of the WLIMES formalism for modelling living systems

Forty-two years ago, Capra published “The Tao of Physics” (Capra, 1975). In this book (page 17) he writes: “The exploration of the atomic and subatomic world in the twentieth century has …. necessitated a radical revision of many of our basic concepts” and that, unlike ‘classical’ physics, the sub-atomic and quantum “modern physics” shows resonances with Eastern thoughts and “leads us to a view of the world which is very similar to the views held by mystics of all ages and traditions.“ This article stresses an analogous situation in biology with respect to a new theoretical approach for studying living systems, Integral Biomathics (IB), which also exhibits some resonances with Eastern thought. Stepping on earlier research in cybernetics1 and theoretical biology,2 IB has been developed since 2011 by over 100 scientists from a number of disciplines who have been exploring a substantial set of theoretical frameworks. From that effort, the need for a robust core model utilizing advanced mathematics and computation adequate for understanding the behavior of organisms as dynamic wholes was identified. At this end, the authors of this article have proposed WLIMES (Ehresmann and Simeonov, 2012), a formal theory for modeling living systems integrating both the Memory Evolutive Systems (Ehresmann and Vanbremeersch, 2007) and the Wandering Logic Intelligence (Simeonov, 2002b). Its principles will be recalled here with respect to their resonances to Eastern thought

A timeband framework for modelling real-time systems

Complex real-time systems must integrate physical processes with digital control, human operation and organisational structures. New scientific foundations are required for specifying, designing and implementing these systems. One key challenge is to cope with the wide range of time scales and dynamics inherent in such systems. To exploit the unique properties of time, with the aim of producing more dependable computer-based systems, it is desirable to explicitly identify distinct time bands in which the system is situated. Such a framework enables the temporal properties and associated dynamic behaviour of existing systems to be described and the requirements for new or modified systems to be specified. A system model based on a finite set of distinct time bands is motivated and developed in this paper