基于网格化拉马克学习机制的差分进化算法

引入拉马克进化理念,提出一种基于网格化拉马克学习机制的差分进化算法。该算法在网格划分机制建立起的分布式搜索框架下,采用单元格最优解保护机制、学习步长机制、解空间同仁机制和定矢变异机制组成拉马克学习模式。仿真结果表明,所提算法可以充分发挥拉马克学习的局部搜索能力,又可有效避免早熟收敛,其求解精度明显优于其他比较算法。将所提算法应用于电力系统最优潮流计算问题,获得了良好的优化效果。     

iPhone City

Is the iPhone and a whole new generation of mobiles and PDAs eclipsing the physical city? Whereas once the metropolis alone brought together people, markets, goods, transport and information, the iPhone and similar handheld devices are changing spatial interaction. From Los Angeles, Benjamin H Bratton ruminates on the full impact of this technological shift. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The (sexual) politics of evolution: Popular controversy in the late 20th-century United Kingdom.

This article outlines the major threads of controversy around the emerging subject of evolutionary psychology in the U.K. mass media during the 1990s. Much of this controversy centered on the role of evolution in shaping human gender roles and sexualities, contributing to the subject's mass appeal. This case is used to illustrate the argument that in theorizing about evolution and humans, "human nature" and "human origins" both provide a flexible resource for making arguments about how people do and should relate to one another and that such theorizing is therefore reflective of how power is held (and contested) in society. In the case of popular evolutionary psychology, shifts in the U.K. political landscape during the 1990s combined with changes in gender and sexual politics to create a situation where evolutionary theorizing about humans became more acceptable than it had been in the past. This was particularly true in left-liberal media, where a newfound compatibility between certain aspects of Darwinism and feminism created a very different space for debating gender, sexuality, and the role of human nature in today's society. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physical Organic Chemistry and the Origin of Life Problem: A Personal Perspective

The origin of life (OOL) question might be considered physical organic chemistry’s ultimate challenge, yet despite continuing efforts over close to a century, the problem remains unresolved. In this personal perspective, I discuss some aspects of that challenge, and argue that notwithstanding the general perception that physical organic chemistry is a research area in decline, the discipline was, and continues to be, the most relevant one for tackling the OOL problem. Systems chemistry, a newly emergent branch of physical organic chemistry, which, inter alia, deals with replicating chemical systems and the networks they establish, reveals that physical organic chemistry, though in different guise, is alive and kicking. The broad direction ahead seems illuminated.     

Review of Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology.

Reviews the book, Alas poor Darwin: Arguments against evolutionary psychology by Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (2000). Recent years have seen a veritable explosion of books (both professional and popular) and articles trumpeting the ability of genetics and evolutionary psychology to explain human behavior. However, as the contributions in this provocative volume clearly attest, many biologists, social scientists, and philosophers have begun to rebel against this explanatory trend. Despite the wide variety of disciplinary backgrounds and interests reflected in this volume, a common and clear perspective emerges that not only challenges the reductionism of evolutionary psychology but also offers a deeper and more engaging understanding of the biosocial nature of human existence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Darwin on race, gender, and culture.

Darwin's theories of natural selection and sexual selection are significant scientific achievements, although his understanding of race and gender was defined and limited by his own life circumstances and the sociohistorical context within which he worked. This article considers the ways in which race, gender, and culture were represented and explained by Darwin and the ways in which his observations and opinions on gender and race were taken up by others and, more often than not, misapplied. Whereas the challenge of race (for Darwin) was to demonstrate the fundamental similarity and, hence, the common origin, of human races, the challenge of gender (for Darwin) was to identify a mechanism that could account for differences between women and men that, to him, were obvious, fundamental, and significant. The article concludes by considering the implications of Darwin's views for contemporary scientific psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Ebb and Flow of Digital Innovation: From Form Making to Form Finding - and Beyond

Architectural historian and theorist Mario Carpo examines the status quo of digital innovation. Whereas the espousal of animation software in the 1990s placed architects conspicuously at the forefront of new technologies as early adopters and adapters, in the new millennium they have less enthusiastically embraced the participatory opportunities of Web 2.0 and open-source modes of working. Could the desire for single authorship be holding designers back?     

Directing Public Interest: Danish Newspaper Science 1900-1903

Abstract.   The growing historical literature on science in the written media between 1789 and 1914 has mainly focused on magazines, journals and periodicals. By comparison studies of science in daily newspapers of the nineteenth century have received much less attention. This disparity has also characterised the Danish context where science in nineteenth-century periodicals and popular science journals, unlike science in newspapers, has attracted the attention of historians. In this article we aim to do away with this imbalance by exploring science in three Danish newspapers in the period 1900-1903. The article suggests that newspapers served as key mediators between users and producers of science in Copenhagen at that time. We argue that the significance of newspapers owed less to the scattered articles they carried on scientific topics, and more to the newspapers' important function of directing public interest. By this we mean that newspapers were directing readers' attention to specific science events such as lectures, excursions and celebrations; to scientific literature through adverts and reviews; to new scientific electrical wonder cures of ailments ranging from baldness to arthritis; and to the latest news about communication technologies such as trams and telephones which increasingly became part of everyday life in Copenhagen.