In this brief position paper I highlight a number of issues relevant to the evolvability of arti cial life systems. These issues became apparent over the course of my doctoral research which involved studying the evolutionary dynamics of a Tierra-like system (Taylor 1999a). The rst two issues (multifunctional phenotypic components and semantic closure) relate to the representation and function ...

It is evident from many recent analyses that the world’s population will increase significantly in the near future. As a result, the demand for healthy, affordable food will also grow. Given that the area of available arable land required to produce food will not expand, new and environmentally sound technologies allowing farmers to produce more on the same amount of land must be developed. The...

This paper explores the ethical underpinnings found in Christianity and Daoism which can be applied to an ecological attitude. The purpose of this project is to shed some light on the contributing or undermining relationship that religious beliefs have toward environmental ethics. As shown in the paper, this relationship is diverse, and at times ambiguous due to the diversity of positions taken...

The vagina is one organ of the body which has not been studied exhaustively. Moreover, most of the studies found in the contemporary literature have been performed on women affected by a variety of genital diseases. In the present study the vaginal epithelium was examined with a histological method, morphometry, whereby cyclical changes related to hormonal variation during the menstrual cycle w...