Why do some places have much higher diversity than others? Explaining patterns of species diversity on the earth is a problem of long-standing for ecologists. Numerous diversity patterns have been documented [1], but the mechanisms behind these patterns remain poorly understood. If we knew the mechanisms, surer decisions in conservation and management would be possible. Understanding can be sou...

The diagnosis of pain nature is a troublesome task and a wrong attribution often leads to an increase of costs and to avoidable pharmaceutical adverse reactions. An objective and specific approach to achieve this diagnosis is highly desirable. The aim of this work was to investigate urine samples collected from patients suffering from pain of different nature by a metabolomics approach based on...

In South Korea, the Soyang Lake is an important source of drinking water to the metropolitan areas including Seoul. However, water quality problems in the Soyang Lake have still remained due to chemical contaminations attributed to conventional farming practices in the upstream areas. Based on a downstream consumer survey using a contingent valuation method, this study estimated the expected wi...

Logan [1] in his book The Extended Mind developed the hypothesis that language, culture, technology and science can be treated as organisms that evolve and reproduce themselves. This idea is extended by making use of the notion of teleodynamics that Deacon [2] introduced and developed in his book Incomplete Nature to explain the nature of life, sentience, mind and a self that acts in its own in...

The variety of natural patterns makes it difficult to analyze and compare them in a systematic manner. We address this problem by focusing on the computational aspects of pattern formation processes. They are characterized in terms of the number of morphogenetic agents, the computing capability of each agent, and the forms of information transfer between the agents and their environment. This c...

There is a common intuition in biology that strict laws are very difficult to be found. Still, there are recurrent patterns in nature, suggesting broad generalizations and understanding of phenomena. The problem is that many generalizations in biology, especially in the form of correlations, might be decoupled from causality, weakening their power of explanation. Here, I bring an example on the...

J^ D rawing attention to the Kantian aesthetic that underpins Benoit Mandelbrot's [1] argument for 'an art for the sake of science' does not represent a sufficiently critical engagement of fractal geometry's entry into visual discourse (an entry made largely transparent by the suggestion that art acts as a handmaiden to science). Merely pointing to the extent of this aesthetic debt leaves the n...

From swarming bacteria to social interactions among humans, the emergence of patterns in nature is ubiquitous. Pattern formation is often governed by collective dynamics, wherein individual components of a system begin to move or organize in a coherent way. The generation of patterns in nonlinear dynamical systems is found in nearly all subfields of science and provides insight into some of the...

This paper addresses the significance of rare patterns in linguistic typology. In the Georgian nominal system, vowel deletion in the context of hiatus targets low vowels regardless of position. This pattern is extremely unusual (possibly unique) both in that it targets low vowels (Gouskova 2003) and in that the position of the vowel does not play a role in determining which vowel is deleted (Ca...

While organic farming is well established in Europe a nd USA, it is still catching up in Asian countries. The government of South Korea has implemented environmentally friendly farming that encompasses organic farming. Despite the promotion of environmentally friendly farming, it still has a low share in South Korea and partially converted farming has emerged in some districts of South Korea. H...