The Exoplanet Opportunity: Top-Down Planetary Science

Top-down causation without top-down causes

We argue that intelligible appeals to interlevel causes (top-down and bottom-up) can be understood, without remainder, as appeals to mechanistically mediated effects. Mechanistically mediated effects are hybrids of causal and constitutive relations, where the causal relations are exclusively intralevel. The idea of causation would have to stretch to the breaking point to accommodate interlevel ...

A Realistic Dream – a Top-Down Feasibility Study for MEMS Planetary Exploration

We present here a design study for a planetary exploration mission using a myriad of microsensors in place of the single probes used hitherto. The purpose of the study is both to provide an attractive scenario for the promotion of the importance of pervasive microsensing technologies and to inform a continuing research agenda in this area. Some useful general conclusions about the importance of...

Galactic planetary science

Planetary science beyond the boundaries of our Solar System is today in its infancy. Until a couple of decades ago, the detailed investigation of the planetary properties was restricted to objects orbiting inside the Kuiper Belt. Today, we cannot ignore that the number of known planets has increased by two orders of magnitude nor that these planets resemble anything but the objects present in o...

the impact of explicit instruction of top-down reading strategies on reading comprehension of intermediate efl learners

this study investigated (a) the learners’ existing reading strategy repertoire, (b) the effect of instruction in reading strategies on learners’ strategic performance, and (c) the effect of explicit instruction in top-down reading strategies on reading comprehension ability of intermediate learners. the study was conducted with 40 intermediate efl learners in two groups of experimental and cont...

Lunar and Planetary Science