The osmotic swelling of intact erythrocytes in hypotonic solutions was measured using microhematocrit tubes, Van Allen tubes, and a calibrated Coulter counter. In agreement with earlier workers the intact cells did not behave as perfect osmometers, the cells swelling less than predicted by the Boyle-van't Hoff law. Erythrocyte ghosts were prepared from fresh intact erythrocytes by one-step hemo...

Well prior to the invention of the term ̳biology‘ in the early 1800s by Lamarck and Treviranus, and also prior to the appearance of terms such as ̳organism‘ under the pen of Leibniz in the early 1700s, the question of ̳Life‘, that is, the status of living organisms within the broader physico-mechanical universe, agitated different corners of the European intellectual scene. From modern Epicureanis...

A regular language L is said to be cellular if there exists a 1-dimensional cellular automaton CA such that L is the language consisting of the finite blocks associated with CA. It is shown that cellularity of a regular language is decidable using a new characterization of cellular languages formulated by Freiling, Goldstein and Moews and implied by a deep result of Boyle in symbolic dynamics.

The body of research linking competition and productivity has been growing in recent years and there appears to be a strong positive association. This chapter sets out the economic evidence in support of the thesis that strong competition supports productivity gains by encouraging innovation activity, more efficient business practices and technological diffusion. By way of example, the chapter ...