The Future of General Systems Research: Obstacles, Potentials, Case Studies

This paper attempts to provide an evaluative and prescriptive overview of the young field of systems science as exemplified by one of its 'specialties' general systems theory (GST). Subjective observation and some data on seven vital signs are presented to measure the progress of the field over the last two decades. Thirty-three specific obstacles inhibiting current research in systems science are presented. Suggestions for overcoming these obstacles are cited as a prescription for improved progress in the field. A sampling of some of the potential near-term developments that may be expected in the three rather distinct areas of research on systems isomorphics, improvement of systems methodologies, and the utility of systems applications are illustrated with mini-case studies. Throughout, there is an attempt to identify 'key' questions and practical mechanisms that might serve as a stimulus for research. Finally, a set of criteria defining a general theory of systems is suggested and illustrated with a case study. The paper concludes with a projection of the long-term contributions that systems science may make toward a resolution of the growing chasm between high-tech solutions and high-value needs in human systems

Enzymatic competition: Modeling and verification with timed hybrid petri nets

International audienceThe formalism of hybrid functional petri nets (HFPN) has proved its convenience for simulating biological systems. The drawback of the noticeable expressiveness of HFPN is the difficulty to perform formal verifications of dynamical properties. In this article, we propose a model-checking procedure for timed hybrid petri nets (THPN), a sub-class of HFPN. This procedure is based on the translation of the THPN model and of the studied property into real-time automata. It is applied to model enzymatic competitions existing in amphibian metamorphosis

Semiconductor nanostructures engineering: Pyramidal quantum dots

Pyramidal quantum dots (QDs) grown in inverted recesses have demonstrated over the years an extraordinary uniformity, high spectral purity and strong design versatility. We discuss recent results, also in view of the Stranski-Krastanow competition and give evidence for strong perspectives in quantum information applications for this system. We examine the possibility of generating entangled and indistinguishable photons, together with the need for the implementation of a, regrettably still missing, strategy for electrical control

Content-Based Instruction, Cooperative Learning, and CALP Instruction: Addressing the Whole Education of 7-12 ESL

Much more than content-based instruction (CBI) is necessary to meet the needs of 7-12 ESL students. Cooperative learning and cognitive academic language instruction (CALP) instruction should be incorporated into CBI in order for middle and high school students to become self-directed learners capable of advancing to higher education. All teachers who work with language-minority students, not just ESL teachers, must play a part in helping their students to gain the linguistic ability, content knowledge and academic skills necessary to succeed in their classes and beyond high school

Content-Based Instruction, Cooperative Learning, and CALP Instruction: Addressing the Whole Education of 7-12 ESL Students

Much more than content-based instruction (CBI) is necessary to meet the needs of 7-12 ESL students. Cooperative learning and cognitive academic language instruction (CALP) instruction should be incorporated into CBI in order for middle and high school students to become selfdirected learners capable of advancing to higher education. All teachers who work with language-minority students, not just ESL teachers, must play a part in helping their students to gain the linguistic ability, content knowledge and academic skills necessary to succeed in their classes and beyond high school

Garry Winogrand, Family Intimacies

We are pleased to present this exhibition of photographs by Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984). A photographer of New York City and of American life from the 1950s through the early 1980s, the content and dynamic style of his images placed him among the most influential photographers of the period. The legendary curator and critic John Szarkowski called him the central photographer of his generation, and Winogrand is widely considered one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century

The Space of Freedom

The exhibition, The Space of Freedom: Apartment Exhibitions in Leningrad, 1964-1986, invites visitors directly into the carefully re-created interior of a Soviet communal apartment. Within the kind of environment where the paintings first breathed freely, visitors have the opportunity to experience works by unofficial artists of the Soviet era who boldly executed and exhibited art that did not conform to the ideological prescriptions of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. These artists had to substitute the private space of their apartments for the public space controlled and denied them by the Party. Planning and staging these exhibitions, the artists defied the cultural impositions of an authoritarian regime that repeatedly demonstrated its resolve to suppress them

From Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square to the Midnight Sun of Adi Da Samraj

The signature works of Kazimir Malevich and Adi Da Samraj provide the basis of a comparison between the two artists and bring into focus the drive and original intentions of the modernists of the early twentieth century and of a new “avant-garde” of the twenty-first century. For both artists the language of abstraction serves as a liberation from dominant conventional narratives that distract from rather than engender aesthetic ecstasy. Both invite the viewer’s participation in their works to be carried beyond the points of view of such narratives. Through the irony of his work, Malevich leaves his viewers stranded on a desert of incomprehensibility with a vision of reality only in the distance. Adi Da Samraj encourages and enables a demonstrable image-assisted subjective process through his work for the viewer to become Reality Itself

An Introduction to the Brotherhood of Free Culture and the Cultural Center of Pushkinskaya Ten

The exhibition, The Brotherhood of Free Culture: Recent Art From St. Petersburg, Russia represents a significant moment in the history of exhibitions of Russian nonconformism in painting. Like all Russian nonconformist art, this exhibition and these artists trace their roots back directly to 1863 and to the tradition of unofficial art, which, one might say, began with the refusal of those fourteen artists to remain under the yoke of the academy. The bold move of those young artists in the nineteenth century precipitated the formation of a more permanent group of painters into the Brotherhood of Traveling Art Exhibitions, or the Peredvizhniki, often mistakenly referred to in English as the itinerant painters. This is a misnomer. In fact, the point of the exhibitions organized by the members of that brotherhood - and a very important point at that - was not that the painters themselves would travel, but that their paintings would travel around the country, giving the population greater access to art and, in particular, to contemporary art. Interestingly enough, the majority of the population, to whom these paintings were traveling, could not afford even the four-ruble admission to see them