Science as a growing system: A cybernetic essay

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Direct and significant narrations of the Human's past subsume so complex a multitude of problems (historical, anthropological, psychological, epistemological, etc) that, taking exception for some few areas, no formal, quantified and predictive theory of historical reconstitutions (understood in the classical, paradigmatic, sense of physical, quasi-physical or engineering disciplines) has, so far, been constructed. A first step towards overcoming this situation is outlined in the essay. The work is primarily (though not exclusively) devoted to historical/ scientific reconstitutions; special emphasis is laid upon the so called "domain of Natural Science". Throughout it a rather unconventional way of looking upon human's past achievements in that area is proposed, discussed and progressively developed: not as a mere repository of inventions and discoveries (as the usual historical approaches do), not as a simple reproduction of the possible cognitive processes which their authors used' (as the logistic reconstitutions seek) but rather as a cybernetic adaptative learning process (in the sense of G. PASK and H. VON FOESTER). The use of this approach allows, in particular: - to demonstrate that Science may be globally regarded as a (time-"space") growing system; - to give expression to this growth in terms, of an evolutionary model binding the approaches of PIAGET, WALLON, FREUD, HARTMANN etc (in which epistemological, contextual (social), psychological (conscious, unconscious) affective and cognitive paradigms are involved); - to describe this evolution in formal and quantifiable terms (using for it fuzzy "conditioned" automata theories); - to reproduce it in a special purpose cybernetic device (PASK's THOUGHTSTICKER system); - to perform historical experimentation (varying the value of the parameters, relationships and constraints by means of which the system is described). The essay ends with a practical application: the construction of an entailment-mesh of the First (or Greek) Image of Nature.Financial support was obtained from NATO's Research Grants, INIC (Instituto Nacional de Investigaccao Cientifica) and GULBENKIAN Foundation

A comparison of methods for the registration of tractographic fibre images

Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and tractography have opened up new avenues in neuroscience and are allowing previously unexplored areas of neuroanatomy and function to be researched

Misunderstanding Models in Environmental and Public Health Regulation

Computational models are fundamental to environmental regulation, yet their capabilities tend to be misunderstood by policymakers. Rather than rely on models to illuminate dynamic and uncertain relationships in natural settings, policymakers too often use models as “answer machines.” This fundamental misperception that models can generate decisive facts leads to a perverse negative feedback loop that begins with policymaking itself and radiates into the science of modeling and into regulatory deliberations where participants can exploit the misunderstanding in strategic ways. This paper documents the pervasive misperception of models as truth machines in U.S. regulation and the multi-layered problems that result from this misunderstanding. The paper concludes with a series of proposals for making better use of models in environmental policy analysis.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Center for Energy, Law, and Busines

Joint registration and synthesis using a probabilistic model for alignment of MRI and histological sections

Nonlinear registration of 2D histological sections with corresponding slices of MRI data is a critical step of 3D histology reconstruction. This task is difficult due to the large differences in image contrast and resolution, as well as the complex nonrigid distortions produced when sectioning the sample and mounting it on the glass slide. It has been shown in brain MRI registration that better spatial alignment across modalities can be obtained by synthesizing one modality from the other and then using intra-modality registration metrics, rather than by using mutual information (MI) as metric. However, such an approach typically requires a database of aligned images from the two modalities, which is very difficult to obtain for histology/MRI. Here, we overcome this limitation with a probabilistic method that simultaneously solves for registration and synthesis directly on the target images, without any training data. In our model, the MRI slice is assumed to be a contrast-warped, spatially deformed version of the histological section. We use approximate Bayesian inference to iteratively refine the probabilistic estimate of the synthesis and the registration, while accounting for each other's uncertainty. Moreover, manually placed landmarks can be seamlessly integrated in the framework for increased performance. Experiments on a synthetic dataset show that, compared with MI, the proposed method makes it possible to use a much more flexible deformation model in the registration to improve its accuracy, without compromising robustness. Moreover, our framework also exploits information in manually placed landmarks more efficiently than MI, since landmarks inform both synthesis and registration - as opposed to registration alone. Finally, we show qualitative results on the public Allen atlas, in which the proposed method provides a clear improvement over MI based registration

The Arcadian Enterprise : an enquiry into the nature and conditions of rural small business

This thesis is a study of rural entrepreneurship which attempts to understand what it is that rural entrepreneurs do within the rural context. Our understanding of entrepreneurship is fragmentary, often narrowly focused and discipline bound. Entrepreneurial theory lacks even a limiting definition of the phenomenon. As Bartlett 1988 claims, it is an intellectual onion; if you keep peeling off the layers you are left with nothing and come away in tears. This seems to suggest that entrepreneurship is a process rather than an entity. Furthermore, a major focus of entrepreneurial research has been the entrepreneur as an individual, yet paradoxically, entrepreneurship is essentially a social act. Accordingly the central argument of this thesis is that in order to understand the entrepreneur we must place entrepreneurial action in its social context, we must study the process of entrepreneurship. This study therefore endeavours to investigate the actions of the entrepreneur in one context, rurality. Consequently this study is a detailed examination of a rural environment and the interrelationships of this environment and entrepreneurs. Its purpose is to try to establish the nature of the relationships between rurality and to specify the conditions of the entrepreneurial process

Computational Intelligence for Modeling, Control, Optimization, Forecasting and Diagnostics in Photovoltaic Applications

This book is a Special Issue Reprint edited by Prof. Massimo Vitelli and Dr. Luigi Costanzo. It contains original research articles covering, but not limited to, the following topics: maximum power point tracking techniques; forecasting techniques; sizing and optimization of PV components and systems; PV modeling; reconfiguration algorithms; fault diagnosis; mismatching detection; decision processes for grid operators