Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464) was one of the most original thinkers of the Renaissance. This collection examines, from several viewpoints, his speculative thought and reviews his ideas on dialogue with non- Christians in the light of his theories. The articles originated in papers presented at several conferences sponsored by the American Cusanus Society, 1981-1988. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This article offers the results of emergy analysis used to evaluate four different soybean production systems in Brazil that were divided into two main categories: biological models (organic and ecological farms) and industrial models (green-revolution chemical farms and herbicide with no-tillage farms). The biological models show better environmental, economical, and social performance indicators; however, at the national level, discussion of transgenic soybean seed release considers only industrial models without any mention of biological models. Classic emergy analysis shows biological options are (...) the better alternatives but does not explain why decisions taken by farmers and government in Brazil were in opposition to these options. New research is proposed to identify and quantify the external forces that strongly interfere in the definition of public policy for soybean production. New parameters are proposed to enrich emergy methodology: Renewability of each input was considered in emergy calculations and negative externalities were included as additional services. (shrink)

Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes generate positive externalities for social and economic systems, analogous to biodiversity in biological systems. Although some aspects of biodiversity (e.g., pests, parasites and bacteria) can lead to ecological and economic problems, biodiversity provides flows of beneficial ecological services and is widely regarded as a valuable natural resource and informational asset, whose value increases as we learn more and science progresses (Wilson in Bioscience 35(11):700–706, 1985). Heterogeneous beliefs and decision processes (and heterogeneous behaviors they generate) similarly (...) provide flows of beneficial economic services. Behavioral diversity should therefore be seen as a natural resource and informational asset likely to improve human wellbeing in surprising ways in the future. Paternalistic policies motivated by the goal of “correcting” allegedly suboptimal beliefs and behavior that diverge from expert recommendations jeopardize behavioral diversity at a substantial cost to social welfare. The risk of encroaching on this beneficial behavioral heterogeneity with policies that aim to induce behavioral and belief monocultures should be included explicitly as costs when evaluating nudges and other paternalistic policies. (shrink)

We review some techniques and notions for quantum information theory. It is shown that the dynamical entropies is discussed and some numerical computations of these entropies are carried for several states.

古代西洋より伝わったとされる対称美の分析―黄金比。しかし、本書では葛飾北斎、歌川広重など偉大な日本の先人たちはすでに、黄金比を会得していたことを証明しています。なぜ、北斎がすばらしいのか?なぜ、俳句は 5・7・5なのか?富士山はどの角度から眺めるのが一番美しいのか?すべては黄金比を使い、美の世界を数値化することで見える新たな世界。初めて黄金比を用い、実例を分析した本書は日本初の試み。.

Web-based learning resources provide learners with hyperspace where they can navigate in a self-directed way to learn the contents included in the Web pages. The navigation involves making a sequence of the pages visited, which is called navigation path. However, learners often fail in making the navigation path due to a cognitive overload, which is caused by diverse cognitive efforts at comprehending the contents in Web pages, and monitoring the navigation process such as planning and reflection of navigation path. In (...) the self-directed learning, in particular, it is difficult for learners to maintain the navigation monitoring. Focusing on navigation planning, this paper addresses the issue of how to facilitate learners' navigation monitoring to promote their learning in hyperspace provided by Web-based learning resources. Our approach to this issue is to provide learners with a space, in which they can see through the learning resources to plan a navigation path, apart from hyperspace. In this paper, we also demonstrate an assistant system for the navigation planning, which is composed of hyperspace map, page previewer, and path previewer. These facilities give learners an overview of Web pages and navigation path to help them make a navigation path plan without visiting Web pages in hyperspace. This paper also describes a case study with the assistant system. The results indicate that the system facilitates navigation particularly in a more complicated hyperspace. (shrink)