John Lilly, The Mind of the Dolphin, and Communication Out of Bounds

In this essay I develop a systems-theoretical observation of John Lilly’s cybernetics of communication in his 1967 work The Mind of the Dolphin. The eight-year-old project that The Mind of the Dolphin recounts for public consumption details his aspiration to achieve an unprecedented breakthrough beyond companionate communion to fully abstract linguistic communication across species boundaries. Between 1959 and 1968 Lilly wagered and lost his mainstream scientific career largely over this audacious, ultimately inconclusive bid to establish and document for scientific validation “communication with a nonhuman mind.” In that effort, however, he mobilized the best available tools, a cutting-edge array of cybernetic concepts. He leaned heavily on the information theory bound up with first-order cybernetics and operated with heuristic computational metaphors alongside the actual computers of his era. As I will elicit through some close readings of his texts, in that process Lilly also homed in on crucial epistemological renovations with a constructivist redescription of cognition that may have influenced and motivated his colleague Heinz von Foerster’s more renowned formulations, arriving in the early 1970s, of a second-order cybernetics

An Examination of Railroad Capacity and its Implications for Rail-Highway Intermodal Transportation

After many years of decline in market share, railroads are now experiencing an increasing demand for their services. Service intensive intermodal transportation seems to be an especially promising market area. Since the historic decline in traffic has been accompanied by a reduction in network infrastructure, however, the railroads\u27 ability to handle sizable traffic increases, at least in the short term, is in question. Since rail transportation is critical to the domestic economy of the nation, and is increasingly important in international logistics channels, shortfalls in railroad capacity are not desirable. The published literature on railroad capacity is relatively sparse, especially in comparison to the highway mode. Much of what is available pertains to individual network components such as lines or terminals. Evaluation of system capacity, considering the interactive effects of traffic flowing through a network of lines and terminals, has received less attention. A tool specifically designed for evaluating freight railroad system capacity issues could be a useful addition to the rail analyst\u27s toolbox. The research conducted in this study resulted in the formulation and application of RAILNET, a multicomrnodity, multicarrier network model for predicting equilibrium flows within a railroad network. Designed for strategic planning with a short term horizon, the model assumes fixed external demand. The predicted flows meet the conditions for Wardropian system equilibrium. At completion, the solution algorithm predicts the expected delay per train on each link, allowing the analyst to identify areas of congestion. Following completion of the model, it was applied to a case study examining the railroad network in the southeastern U.S. The public use version of the Interstate Commerce Commission\u27s Commodity Waybill Sample (CWS) provided flow data. The dissertation describes the procedure used to develop the case study and presents some results. The case points to major deficiencies in the CWS data which resulted in substantially less traffic in the network than is actually present. In general, given this limitation, the model behaved well and results appear reasonable, although not necessarily reflective of actual network conditions

The Barometer

Technology and Warship Design: Comment, Overview, and Bibliography of the Economics of Transienc

Guest editors\u27 introduction: active citizenship and social accountability

By active citizenship, we [Oxfam] mean that combination of rights and obligations that link individuals to the state, including paying taxes, obeying laws, and exercising the full range of political, civil, and social rights. Active citizens use those rights to improve the quality of political or civic life, through involvement in the formal economy or formal politics, or through the sort of collective action that historically has allowed poor and excluded groups to make their voices heard. [&hellip; .] At an individual level, active citizenship means developing self-confidence and overcoming the insidious way in which the condition of being relatively powerless can become internalised. In relation to other people, it means developing the ability to negotiate and influence decisions. And when empowered individuals work together, it means involvement in collective action, be it at the neighbourhood level, or more broadly. Ultimately, active citizenship means engaging with the political system to build an effective state, and assuming some degree of responsibility for the public domain. (Green 2008: 12, 19) <br /

A review of knowledge of the potential impacts of GMOs on organic agriculture

The organic movement believes that organic agriculture, by its nature, cannot involve the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). This has been incorporated into EU regulations which state that there is no place in organic agriculture for GMOs. The aim in this review is to consider the ways in which the use of GMOs in agriculture in the UK and internationally might impact on organic farming. It does not address the controversy about the rights or wrongs of GMO’s per se. The subjects covered are based on a set of questions raised at the beginning of the study. The review is based primarily on evidence from peer-reviewed literature. The report is based on a number of themes, as follows: • Fate of DNA in soil • Fate of DNA in livestock feed and possible impact of GM feed • Fate of DNA in slurry, manure, compost and mulch • Impact of herbicide tolerant crops • Impact of pest and disease resistant crops • Safety of promoters • DNA transfer in pollen and seeds • Horizontal gene transfer • Impact of scale The report’s Executive Summary includes summaries of the findings on each of these themes

An electronic colonoscopy record system enables detailed quality assessment and benchmarking of an endoscopic service

Background. Competence in colonoscopy, which is a technically difficult procedure, requires adequate exposure to it and the maintenance of a detailed logbook. Without an electronic record this is difficult to  achieve. By implementing an electronic medical record system we aimed to perform a detailed quality assessment audit of colonoscopy, to benchmark our results and generate accurate logbooks for individual endoscopists.Methods. We reviewed the prospectively maintained Hybrid Electronic Medical Registry (HEMR).  Colonoscopies performed between March 2013 and March 2014 were reviewed, and for competency, quality metrics were derived from the guidelines of the American Society of Gastroenterology.Results. A total of 843 colonoscopies were performed. Seven hundred and seventy procedures were  performed by three staff endoscopists who each performed over the required 150 procedures annually (n=197, 338 and 235). The remaining 73 (8.7%) were performed by other staff. In 105 cases (12.5%), bowel preparation was deemed to be inadequate, which caused the procedure to be abandoned in 34 cases. A total of 64 cases were deemed to be incomplete because of obstructing lesions (n=26), extensive diverticulosis (n=4), technical difficulty (n=31) and patient discomfort (n=3). There were two complications recorded: perforation (n=1) and bleeding (n=1).Conclusions. The HEMR system enabled the audit of experiences with colonoscopy in our institution. Our results are broadly compatible with the international literature and with a number of guidelines. The  development of an electronic record system is a major advance, as it enables meaningful benchmarking and the generation of accurate procedural logbooks

The Metamorphoses of the Quasi-object: Narrative, Network, and System in Bruno Latour and The Island of Dr. Moreau

This paper will shuttle between literature and science studies by reading narratives of bod- ily transformation through Bruno Latour’s philosophy of modernity, and by reading Latour’s sociological writings through literary and narrative appropriations of recent systems theo- ries. After discussing this convergence of narrative theory, science studies, and systems theory, I will address H.G. Wells’s novella The Island of Doctor Moreau some neocybernetic ques- tions about ontology and subjectivity in a post-Darwinian world.Este ensayo conecta la literatura y la ciencia mediante una lectura de narraciones sobre transformaciones corpóreas a la luz de la filosofía de modernidad propuesta por Bruno Latour y, al mismo tiempo, mediante una lectura de los textos sociológicos de Latour a la luz de las dimensiones narrativas y literarias de recientes teorías neo-cibernéticas de sistemas. Tras explicar esta convergencia de la teoría narrativa, los estudios de ciencia y la teoría de sistemas, investigaré la novela de H.G. Wells La isla del Doctor Moreau para plantear algunas cuestiones neo-cibernéticas sobre la ontología y la subjetividad en un mundo post- darwiniano

Initial results from a GIS-based unsupervised classification study of the Martian surface

Maps of thermal inertia-albedo units and thermal inertia-elevation units on Mars’ surface have been generated by choosing thresholds that fit the strongest peaks in the histograms of these datasets. The units thus defined were then interpreted as distinct mixtures of materials on the surface, such as: bright fines, rock + bedrock and ice. We have conducted an initial classification of Thermal Emission Spectrometer (TES) night-time thermal inertia and TES albedo using a hard classifier. The methods used here are largely unsupervised and differ from those of previous studies. The aim of our study is to investigate what information can be obtained by utilising unsupervised classification algorithms to investigate the distribution of thermal materials on the surface of Mars. We find that unsupervised classification reveals additional structure in the clustering and spatial distribution of surface materials with moderate-low albedo and moderate-high thermal inertia. We highlight a number of regions such as Acidalia and Valles Marineris for future detailed studies of this type.National Committee for Space Science (NCSS), National Space Society of Australia (NSSA