To be means to communicate

The main idea underpinning the position outlined in this paper is a very common one. In fact, it is also quite old: the notion that structure facilitates. The paper attempts to sketch a picture of the human as a sign. In doing so, it also attempts to negotiate an understanding of the human as constituted by ‘selfhood’ on the one hand and by what has become known as ‘subjectivity’, on the other. it attempts to provide one way of approaching the nature/nurture, biology/culture or, also, the structure/agency debates through the investigation of semiosis

Enhancing survival by not enhancing survival: Sebeok’s semiotics and the ultimate paradox of modelling: 9th Sebeok Fellow Address

Tom Sebeok lives in recent memory partly because of his phenomenal networking, administration, editing and promotion of individuals in semiotics as well as the disciplinary field in general. Yet this must not be allowed to obscure a body of published writings that is as original as it is eloquent. The current paper will discuss one of Sebeok’s most penetrating insights arising from his consideration of a fundamental paradox in modern intellectual life, one that traverses the bridge between the ‘hard’ and ‘human’ sciences. This paper will argue that Sebeok’s 1979 review of investigations into animals’ aesthetic behaviour, originally cast as an early chapter of a much larger book, contains the key observation which drives contemporary, 21st century semiotics. Sebeok’s abduction of the riddle posits that “aesthetic sensibility plays the part of a delicate sieve” among animals. In so doing, this paper will argue, it not only clarifies the modelling process as a whole, across verbal and averbal modes, but also provides an agenda for re-thinking tertiary modelling, the humanities and global arts policy

Frequency stability of a self-phase-locked degenerate continuous-wave optical parametric oscillator

The properties of a self-phase-locked by-2-divider optical parametric oscillator are presented. A locking range of up to 156 MHz is measured, and the divider's relative frequency stability is shown to be better than 6/spl times/10/sup -14/

The connection between the initial and unique solutions of domain equations in the partial order and metric approach

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, we show in which way the initial solution of a domain equation for cpo’s and the unique solution of a corresponding domain equation for metric spaces are related. Second, we present a technique to lift a given domain equation for cpo’s to a corresponding domain equation for metric spaces

Expressing Measurement Uncertainty in OCL/UML Datatypes

Uncertainty is an inherent property of any measure or estimation performed in any physical setting, and therefore it needs to be considered when modeling systems that manage real data. Although several modeling languages permit the representation of measurement uncertainty for describing certain system attributes, these aspects are not normally incorporated into their type systems. Thus, operating with uncertain values and propagating uncertainty are normally cumbersome processes, di cult to achieve at the model level. This paper proposes an extension of OCL and UML datatypes to incorporate data uncertainty coming from physical measurements or user estimations into the models, along with the set of operations de ned for the values of these types.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Parallel Evaluation of Multi-join Queries

A number of execution strategies for parallel evaluation of multi-join queries have been proposed in the literature. In this paper we give a comparative performance evaluation of four execution strategies by implementing all of them on the same parallel database system, PRISMA/DB. Experiments have been done up to 80 processors. These strategies, coming from the literature, are named: Sequential Parallel, Synchronous Execution, Segmented Right-Deep, and Full Parallel. Based on the experiments clear guidelines are given when to use which strategy. This is an extended abstract; the full paper appeared in Proc. ACM SIGMOD'94, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 24–27, 199