Mysterious Vase

A Greek Bronze Vase

When we think of Greek vases we generally have in mind Greek pottery, which has survived in quantity. Clay, one of the most perishable of materials, becomes one of the most indestructible in the firing. In fact, much of our knowledge of ancient civilizations is derived from the potsherds that are found in successive layers on ancient sites; a pot, once fired, may break into a hundred pieces, bu...

Mysterious Marriage

And Mysterious

" I think you might do something better with the time " , Alice said, " than wasting it in asking riddles that have no answer "-from A Mad Tea-Party Abstract. First year undergraduates usually learn about the classical Rolle's theorem saying that between two consecutive zeros of a smooth function f one can always find at least one zero of f ′. But what happens with the zeros of higher derivativ...

Mysterious origins

A survey of 2 006 U.S. adults last year revealed that 48 % believe the earliest humans lived at the time of the dinosaurs. This survey is often cited as evidence of Americans’ dismal understanding of science. But earlier this year, a television program from the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) told those muddled masses that they could well be right. The program, called The Mysterious Origins...

The VAS Formalism in VASE

This paper discusses the visual algebraic speciication (vas) formalism and its supporting interactive environment (vase). The vas formalism is intended for the deenition of visual syntax and semantics and is aimed at generating language speciic environments. The collection construct of vas is emphasized in that it supports the convenient speciication of language constructs involving arbitrarily...