The social construction of the disciplines as intellectual arenas that was made in the 19th century has outlived its usefulness and is today a major obstacle to serious intellectual work. Although the institutional framework of the disciplines remains strong, there are cracks in the structures of knowledge that make them less solid than most participants imagine. If the social sciences are to p...

We study the joint recognition problem, which asks for the identification and classification of kinematic joints from a geometric constraint system. By laying the foundation for a rigidity-theoretic study of flexible body-and-cad frameworks, we obtain an O(n) algorithm for identifying prismatic and revolute joints relative to a specific body and an O(n) algorithm for finding all pair-wise joint...

The paper deals with the Supply Function Equilibrium (SFE) as a model of competition in electricity markets. It introduces theoretical advancement through relaxing traditional assumptions of continuity of supply functions and provides a foundation for efficient computational algorithms. Two special examples are considered. One demonstrates that continuous equilibrium could be impossible while a...

As we race each other to close increasingly smaller holes in the catheterization laboratory, we would do well to remember these wise words of Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, and philosopher who laid the foundation for the modern theory of probability. In this editorial, we aim to look at the existing evidence surrounding the closure of the isolated small ventricular septal defect (VSD), ...

Increased disease resistance through improved immune capacity would be beneficial for the welfare and productivity of farm animals. To identify genomic regions responsible for immune capacity traits in swine, a genome-wide association study was conducted. In total, 675 pigs were included. At 21 days of age, all piglets were vaccinated with modified live classical swine fever vaccine. Blood samp...