Evolutionary algorithms combined with local search were named “Memetic Algorithms” (MAs) in [1]. These methods are inspired by models of adaptation in natural systems that combine evolutionary adaptation of populations of individuals with individual learning within a lifetime. Additionally, MAs are inspired by Richard Dawkins concept of a meme, which represents a unit of cultural evolution that...

We propose a protocol for intrusion detection in distributed systems based on a relatively recent theory in immunology called danger theory. Based on danger theory, immune response in natural systems is a result of sensing corruption as well as sensing unknown substances. In contrast, traditional self-nonself discrimination theory states that immune response is only initiated by sensing nonself...

This paper argues that religious institutions have largely been neglected within the study of cultural policy. This is attributed to the inherently secular tendency of most modern social sciences. Despite the predominance of the ‘secularisation paradigm’, the paper notes that religion continues to promote powerful attachments and denunciations. Arguments between the ‘new atheists’, in particula...

In view of this representation, Crandall asked what integers are of the form of xy + yz + xz with x, y, z ≥ 1 and he made a conjecture that every odd integer greater than one can be written as xy + yz + xz. In this manuscript, we shall show that Crandall’s conjecture is indeed true. In fact, we are able to show Theorem 1.1. There are at most 19 integers which are not in the form of xy + yz + xz...

THIS ESSAY PROVIDES A CRITICAL REVIEW OF TWO RECENT BOOKS ON EVOLUTION: Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth, and Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True, as well as a critique of mainstream evolutionary theory and of natural selection. I also suggest a generalization of sexual selection theory that acknowledges mind as pervasive in nature. Natural selection, as the primary theory of how bio...

960 Emerging Infectious Diseases • www.cdc.gov/eid • Vol. 13, No. 6, June 2007 of the evidence for and against these hypotheses, which remain speculative, is evenhanded and up-to-date. His accounts of the human and social effects of epidemic diseases and the origins of public health are full of lively anecdotes and colorful detail. Interspersed throughout are personal asides, clinical pearls, a...

Ever since Darwin a great deal of the conceptual history of biology may be read as a struggle between two philosophical positions: reductionism and holism. On the one hand, we have the reductionist claim that evolution has to be understood in terms of changes at the fundamental causal level of the gene. As Richard Dawkins famously put it, organisms are just ‘lumbering robots’ in the service of ...

High levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS) compared to antioxidant defenses are considered to play a major role in diverse chronic age-related diseases and aging. Here we present an attempt to synthesize information about proximate oxidative processes in aging (relevant to free radical or oxidative damage hypotheses of aging) with an evolutionary scenario (credited here to Dawkins hypotheses)...

During the last few decades, we have seen an explosion in the influx of details about the biology of selfish genetic elements. Ever since the early days of the field, the gene's-eye view of Richard Dawkins, George Williams, and others, has been instrumental to make sense of new empirical observations and to the generation of new hypotheses. However, the close association between selfish genetic...