Almost there: Summer 2016

A poster motivating students to push through the finals period

An Annotated List of the Spittlebugs of Michigan (Homoptera: Cercopidae)

Excerpt: Representatives of the family Cercopidae are commonly known as spittlebugs because the nymphs cover themselves with saliva-like frothy masses composed of bubbles of air trapped by motions of the abdomen in fluids discharged from the alimentary canal. Spittle protects nymphs from desiccation, but they are able to abandon it for brief periods while migrating to new feeding sites or to other host plants where new masses are produced. Gas exchange by nymphs immersed in spittle is accomplished through spiraculae situated in a protective chamber formed on the ventral side of the abdomen by extended tergites

"Mugar is open 24 hours" Spring 2017 posters

These posters were created by the Mugar Greene Scholars in order to make BU students aware of the special Mugar Library schedule during exams

"Read for pleasure" Mugar Greene Scholars posters

These posters were created by the Mugar Greene Scholars to promote reading for pleasure

The apparent dilemma - dangerous consequences? : between the lLegal and ethical standards

Democratic rule of law has been struggling with the occurring problem of pluralism of values. It is therefore still faced with the dilemma of ordering the relationship of law and ethics, namely with the question whether in the issue of legal solutions the priority is granted to ethics or to law. In the case of dominance of the positivist paradigm, it is all the more important because the ethical issue is marginalized in it. It turns out that the same authority, deciding on similar issues, at the junction of two areas: ethics and law, can make mutually contradictory decisions: once giving priority to ethics, whereas - at different times - to positive law. On a closer analysis, this contradiction proves illusory because under the guise of protection of a positive paradigm, the hidden fact is that the axiological decision underlies the resolution concerning law. This decision protects the values that have priority in the scale of preferential value of decision-making body. The example considered in the article concerns the interface between ethical and legal norms against selected rulings of the Constitutional Court. The doubts that arise in this context may be in future avoided or perhaps, if necessary, resolved by adopting a two-aspect model of legal norm. This model in its vertical approach has an evaluative element. This allows to deem the seemingly contradictory decision in similar cases as justified one. It also shows that in practice the rightness of the resolution takes precedence both over ethics as well as over law

Design agents and the need for high-dimensional perception

Designed artefacts may be quantified by any number of measures. This paper aims to show that in doing so, the particular measures used may matter very little, but as many as possible should be taken. A set of building plans is used to demonstrate that arbitrary measures of their shape serve to classify them into neighbourhood types, and the accuracy of classification increases as more are used, even if the dimensionality of the space in which classification occurs is held constant. It is further shown that two autonomous agents may independently choose sets of attributes by which to represent the buildings, but arrive at similar judgements as more are used. This has several implications for studying or simulating design. It suggests that quantitative studies of collections of artefacts may be made without requiring extensive knowledge of the best possible measures—often impossible in real, ill-defined, design situations. It suggests a means by which the generation of novelty can be explained in a group of agents with different ways of seeing a given event. It also suggests that communication can occur without the need for predetermined codes or protocols, introducing the possibility of alternative human-computer interfaces that may be useful in design

"JFK Library" -- libraries outside of the BU Bubble posters

These posters were created to help students break out of the BU bubble