Conservation, Creation, and Evolution: Revising the Darwinian Project

There is hardly anything more central to our universe than conservation. Many scientific fields and disciplines view the law of conservation as one of the most fundamental universal laws. The Darwinian model pivots the process of evolution on variability, reproduction, and natural selection. Conservation plays a marginal role in this model and is not really universal, as the model allows exceptions to conservation, i.e. non-conservation, to play an equally important role in evolution. This anomalous role of conservation in the Darwinian model raises questions: What is the reason for this anomaly? Is conservation really universal, as we tend to believe or is it not, as the Darwinian model suggests? This contribution proposes a new model of evolution that focuses on levels of organization, rather than of species, organisms, or populations. It argues that conservation is central to evolution. Not only does this new model restores the universal status of conservation but it also makes possible to resolve some outstanding problems and controversies that continue to plague the Darwinian model. The article tries to advance the broad Darwinian project that seeks to explain the process of evolution as a product of the spontaneous processes in nature

Reuse Mechanisms and Concurrency: From Actors to Agent-Oriented Programming

La presente tesi è dedicata al riuso nel software. Eccettuata un'introduzione organica al tema, l'analisi è a livello dei meccanismi offerti dai linguaggi di programmazione e delle tecniche di sviluppo, con speciale attenzione rivolta al tema della concorrenza. Il primo capitolo fornisce un quadro generale nel quale il riuso del software è descritto, assieme alle ragioni che ne determinano l'importanza e ai punti cruciali relativi alla sua attuazione. Si individuano diversi livelli di riuso sulla base dell'astrazione e degli artefatti in gioco, e si sottolinea come i linguaggi contribuiscano alla riusabilità e alla realizzazione del riuso. In seguito, viene esplorato, con esempi di codice, il supporto al riuso da parte del paradigma ad oggetti, in termini di incapsulamento, ereditarietà, polimorfismo, composizione. La trattazione prosegue analizzando differenti feature – tipizzazione, interfacce, mixin, generics – offerte da vari linguaggi di programmazione, mostrando come esse intervengano sulla riusabilità dei componenti software. A chiudere il capitolo, qualche parola contestualizzata sull'inversione di controllo, la programmazione orientata agli aspetti, e il meccanismo della delega. Il secondo capitolo abbraccia il tema della concorrenza. Dopo aver introdotto l'argomento, vengono approfonditi alcuni significativi modelli di concorrenza: programmazione multi-threaded, task nel linguaggio Ada, SCOOP, modello ad Attori. Essi vengono descritti negli elementi fondamentali e ne vengono evidenziati gli aspetti cruciali in termini di contributo al riuso, con esempi di codice. Relativamente al modello ad Attori, viene presentata la sua implementazione in Scala/Akka come caso studio. Infine, viene esaminato il problema dell'inheritance anomaly, sulla base di esempi e delle tre classi principali di anomalia, e si analizza la suscettibilità del supporto di concorrenza di Scala/Akka a riscontrare tali problemi. Inoltre, in questo capitolo si nota come alcuni aspetti relativi al binomio riuso/concorrenza, tra cui il significato profondo dello stesso, non siano ancora stati adeguatamente affrontati dalla comunità informatica. Il terzo e ultimo capitolo esordisce con una panoramica dell'agent-oriented programming, prendendo il linguaggio simpAL come riferimento. In seguito, si prova ad estendere al caso degli agenti la nozione di riuso approfondita nei capitoli precedenti

Philanthropy Insights

The Philanthropy Insights Report is based on research aimed at furthering the overall understanding of philanthropy in South Africa.The report was written in collaboration with various philanthropic experts from different fields.The different subsections will provide you with a deeper insight into philanthropy and guidance on starting your philanthropic journey

Non-Perturbative Yang-Mills from Supersymmetry and Strings, Or, in the Jungles of Strong Coupling

I summarize some recent developments in the issue of planar equivalence between supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory and its orbifold/orientifold daughters. This talk is based on works carried out in collaboration with Adi Armoni, Sasha Gorsky and Gabriele Veneziano.Comment: Based on talks delivered at Planck-05/Mohapatra-Fest, ICTP, Trieste, May 23-28, 2005, and PASCOS-05, Gyeongju, Korea, May 30 - June 4, and the Cracow School of Theoretical Physics, Zakopane, Poland, June 3-12, 2005. 24 pages, 6 figure

Brane World Susy Breaking from String/M Theory

String and M-theory realizations of brane world supersymmetry breaking scenarios are considered in which visible sector Standard Model fields are confined on a brane, with hidden sector supersymmetry breaking isolated on a distant brane. In calculable examples with an internal manifold of any volume the Kahler potential generically contains brane--brane non-derivative contact interactions coupling the visible and hidden sectors and is not of the no-scale sequestered form. This leads to non-universal scalar masses and without additional assumptions about flavor symmetries may in general induce dangerous sflavor violation even though the Standard Model and supersymmetry branes are physically separated. Deviations from the sequestered form are dictated by bulk supersymmetry and can in most cases be understood as arising from exchange of bulk supergravity fields between branes or warping of the internal geometry. Unacceptable visible sector tree-level tachyons arise in many models but may be avoided in certain classes of compactifications. Anomaly mediated and gaugino mediated contributions to scalar masses are sub-dominant except in special circumstances such as a flat or AdS pure five--dimensional bulk geometry without bulk vector multiplets.Comment: Latex, 83 pages, references adde

The Root of Excellence: An Interpretive Approach to Understanding Elder Care within Transnational Chinese Families in Canada

Situated at the intersection between globalization and demographic aging, this dissertation seeks to add a critical and interdisciplinary voice to the vibrant conversation on the topic of elder care. It weaves the complex conceptual threads of aging, transnational migration, and the ethics of care into a phenomenological inquiry into the lived experiences of the elderly and their adult children in the intimate space of seven transnational Chinese families in Canada. The research conceptualizes old age as a matter out of place in a neoliberal system marked by growth and productivity, and formulates a theoretical framework of sticky ambiguity as a way to reveal the tensions inherent in the discourse on elder care as a social, cultural, and intercultural phenomenon. In order to resist essentialist narratives of Chinese Canadian families, I emphasize the importance of cultural translation as a responsibility and an important means to unsettle meanings and cultural differences. An interpretive and reflexive methodology is used to analyze qualitative data in an attempt to move beyond a surface reading of the texts. In contrast to typical narrative analysis that aims to code, characterize, and thematize qualitative data, this method treats narrative as the subjects attempt to reconcile the divided self as he or she searches for a good way of representing the problem. The analysis makes observable the subjects orientation to values and idealization, and reveals the hidden struggles and conflicts that are often concealed in speech. Through three case studies on the themes of ambivalence, death, and filial piety, I try to understand how the subject orients to each phenomenon as a problem-solving situation in order to produce a dialogue about the meaning and sticky ambiguity of aging and elder care. My analysis shows that the meaning of aging and elder care is far from stable and singular. It is constructed through an evolving process of moral reasoning that is entangled in a continuous struggle with cultural identities, selfhood, gender, class, heritage, intimacy, and morality

The Disease Model of Alcoholism: A Kuhnian Paradigm

Despite the fact that the disease model of alcoholism has lost its status as paradigm in international circles, the alcoholism research and treatment community in the United States maintains steadfast allegiance to the tenets of the disease model. The disease model and the related treatment goal of abstinence continue to overwhelmingly dominate the treatment of alcoholism in the U.S. Critics have suggested that financial and political motives have served to maintain the dominance of the disease model, despite findings that violate its basic tenets. This paper presents an alternative explanation of the reluctance of the alcoholism treatment community to relinquish the disease model by utilizing Kuhn\u27s (1996) model of scientific progress in an historical analysis of the disease model. To support this position, evidence of the emergence of the disease model as a paradigm, alcoholism research as normal science, and the appearance of anomaly followed by crisis in the alcoholism research and treatment community are presented