Few concepts have created more sound and fury than the concepts of development and environment. The difficulty associated with these concepts increases exponentially when one attempts to clarify them by adding some attributes such as concrete definitions and measurements pertaining to the quantity and quality of these concepts. This essay deals with the private, for-profit corporation as the primary agent in the process of satisfying the human struggle for survival. This agent has been the epicenter of the "development-environment" issue for (...) quite some time. Further, this agent has been frequently singled out as the most important, if not the exclusive, contributor to society's inability to achieve the desired "sustainable development," whatever meaning one attaches to it. We present a framework for designing a "new" type of organization which will be environmentally sustainable. This Environmentally Sustainable Organization (ESO) resembles a living organism that pursues its own survival in an environment with finite natural resources and infinite human desires. (shrink)

Unauthorized appropriation of geneticresources has been described by the term``biopiracy.'' Technological breakthroughsincluding biotechnological applications canincrease considerably the instrumental value ofbiodiversity as new products or products withnew properties can be made. Nevertheless, itappears that, in most cases, the properties inquestion were already known to the indigenouspeople and used for centuries. The analysisdiscusses both from an economic and an ethicalperspective whether it is just that traditionalknowledge is rewarded. As the conflictintensifies over questions of ownership andcontrol of biological materials, IntellectualProperty Rights are at (...) the center ofcontroversies. The current global systemgoverning biotechnology has largely been shapedby Western expectations and valuations andconsequently has drawn severe criticism. Thecritics doubt both the stability andsustainability of the current patent system andargue for restructuring through benefit-sharingsystems in order to address some of theexisting inequalities. With the help of a casestudy (US patent no. 5,751 on ayahuasca) thetheoretical notion of biopiracy is applied toreal problems. (shrink)

CHAMELEON is a computational melodic harmonization assistant. It can harmonize a given melody according to a number of independent harmonic idioms or blends between idioms based on principles of conceptual blending theory. Thus, the system is capable of offering a wealth of possible solutions and viewpoints for melodic harmonization. This study investigates how human creativity may be influenced by the use of CHAMELEON in a melodic harmonization task. Professional and novice music composers participated in an experiment where they were asked (...) to harmonize two similar melodies under two different conditions: one with and one without computational support. A control group harmonized both melodies without computational assistance. The influence of the system was examined both behaviorally, by comparing metrics of user-experience, and in terms of the properties of the artifacts that were created between the two experimental conditions. Results suggest that appreciation of the system was expertise-dependent. At the same time, users seemed to adopt more explorative strategies as a result of interaction with CHAMELEON based on the fact that the harmonizations created this way were more complex, diverse, and unexpected in comparison to the ones of the control group. (shrink)

The species concept is one of the oldest and most fundamental in biology. And yet it is almost universally conceded that no satisfactory definition of what constitutes a species has ever been proposed. The present article is devoted to an attempt to review the status of the problem from a methodological point of view. Since the species is one of the many taxonomic categories, the question of the nature of these categories in general needs to be entered into.

Despite the frequent use of the term systems by academicians and management practitioners, there is little agreement as to what the term really means. Experts in different fields talk about accounting systems, production systems, electronic data processing systems, market systems, financial systems, reward and motivation systems, and so on, but the student of management is confused by the nebulous and, at times, seemingly contradictory terms. This article uses the term Systems Approach as a convenient handle to pull together a few (...) basic ideas about the systems concept. Systems Approach organizes one's thinking to understand more clearly the complexity of a real world phenomenon. It consists of two main parts: (1) Systems Thinking (ST), and (2) Information Technology (IT). ST provides the knowledge for developing a Theory of Systems, such as General Systems Theory and Cybernetics, while IT supplies the tools for testing and improving this theory. The relationship between the two parts is a complementary one. Advances in theory lead to the development of better technology, while improvement in technology makes theory development easier and more reliable. (shrink)

Présentation d'un manuscrit du IXe siècle, le Codex Athous, Panteleemon 288, qui contient une collection de 34 homélies ainsi que l'oraison funèbre de l'empereur Léon VI . Au début du manuscrit, on trouve un court poème faisant l'éloge de Léon VI en tant qu'homiliste.