M uch media attention has been directed to the May 2002 release of Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. What has not been particularly highlighted is that this book is the latest shot in an ongoing dispute between the hard physical sciences and the " soft " social sciences such as sociology, anthropology, and other observation-based studies of human affairs. Wolfram (2002: 9) writes: One wi...

In the late 1940’s while he was trying to construct a model for self-reproduction, a machine equivalent to biological systems, von Neumann invented a class of discrete mathematical systems called cellular automata [1]. Almost thirty years after the invention cellular automata underwent a radical reformation when, in the early 1980’s, Wolfram considered them as general mathematical representatio...

The Wolfram syndrome (MIM 222300) is a disease of unknown origin consisting of diabetes insipidus, diabetes mellitus, optic atrophy, and deafness. Here we report on a generalized deficiency of the mitochondrial respiratory enzyme activities in skeletal muscle and lymphocyte homogenate of a girl suffering from the Wolfram syndrome. In addition, we provide evidence for a 7.6-kilobase pair heterop...

Ever since von Neumann [Burks 1969], the question of modeling continuous physics with a discrete set of cellular automata has been raised, whether they handle discrete or continuous values. Many answers have been brought forth through, for instance, the work of Stephen Wolfram [Wolfram 1983] summarized in a recent book [Wolfram 2002]. This problem has been mostly tackled by rightfully consideri...

Wolfram syndrome 1 is a very rare monogenic disease resulting in a complex of disorders including diabetes mellitus. Up to now, insulin has been used to treat these patients. Some of the monogenic forms of diabetes respond preferentially to sulphonylurea preparations. The aim of the current study was to elucidate whether exenatide, a GLP-1 receptor agonist, and glipizide, a sulphonylurea, are e...