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The 'Goldilocks Hypothesis' : A Political Ecology Of The Land-Sparing/Wildlife-Friendly Farming Debate, M. Jahi Chappell

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Proposals for biodiversity conservation as related to the dominant form of human land use, agriculture, have broadly coalesced around two paradigms: "Land sparing" and "Wildlife-friendly farming." Neither paradigm is sufficiently grounded in the more complex socioeconomic realities of the food system with regards to another paramount problem of our time: widespread malnutrition. However, the "land sparing" paradigm's simplistic approach to food, policy, and ecosystem dynamics is arguably more egregiously out of sync with current knowledge. The talk will present a conceptual view of food systems, hunger, and biodiversity conservation, with the goal of generating discussion on how to systematically integrate …

Gender And The Social Structure Of Collaboration, Kjersten Bunker Whittington

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Previous research demonstrates that individuals’ network positions in their surrounding social structure of relations influence the extent of their output and performance. The unique situation of minority groups complicates the relationship, however, as issues of status, legitimacy, and marginality influence the flow and interpretation of information and resources. While several scholars have addressed differences in male and female networks in the workplace, the association between macro-level work arrangements and the micro-level interaction mechanisms of minority groups is unclear. Greater insight into stratification processes can be gained by studying how organizational forms affect the way men’s and women’s networks are structured …

The Limits Of Control, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Regulation (Discussion), Joshua Hughes

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

When we want to solve a problem, we talk about how we might manage or regulate—control it. Control is a a central concept in systems science, along with system, environment, utility, and information. With his information-theoretic Law of Requisite Variety, Ashby proved that to control a system we need as much variability in our regulator as we have in our system (“only variety can destroy variety”), something like a method of control for everything we want to control. For engineered systems, this appears to be the case (at least sometimes). But what about for social systems? Does a group of …

Focal Point, Volume 24, Portland State University. Regional Research Institute

Research and Training Center - Focal Point

The articles included in this inaugural issue of the "new" Focal Point address "Transitions to Adulthood" from the perspectives of researchers, youth, family, and professionals. [This is the first issue of Focal Point as published by the Research and Training Center for Pathways to Positive Futures; previous issues had been published under the preceding RTC for Family Support and Children's Mental Health.]

The Hydro-Ecology Of Everyday Life: Assessing The Social And Environmental Determinants Of Water Use In The Portland Region, Vivek Shandas

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Driven in part by the imminent threats of population growth and climate destabilization, recent studies suggest that urban areas face severe water scarcity, with some areas in Australia and the United States already instituting moratoria on water use. While water managers traditionally avoid such crises by developing demand forecasts based on population estimates, technological developments, and weather predictions, their analysis are often at a regional scale with aggregate measures of water consumption. To date, there exists limited empirical evidence about how urban spatial structure and concomitant socio-demographic and temperature characteristics mutually interact to affect water demand at the scale of …

Road Pricing, Anthony M. Rufolo

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Fuel taxes are an important source of funds for roads. However, increasing fuel efficiency and the potential for alternative fueled vehicles have raised questions about the long-term viability of this revenue source. Oregon conducted an experiment to evaluate the potential to replace fuel taxes with mileage fees. The findings from that experiment will be presented along with some discussion of current research on the cost associated with implementing different types of mileage fees.

What Makes A Meaningful Universe?, Todd Duncan, James Butler

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

A common line of thinking says that although we feel subjectively that our thoughts and actions matter in some way, this perception is an illusion. According to this view, an honest look around at the universe shatters this myth and reveals that our lives are ultimately meaningless. If we are to be hard-nosed realists, limiting ourselves to scientific, evidence-based reasoning, then we must accept that human existence is an inconsequential accident of no ultimate significance in the grand scheme of things. Is this attitude really justified by the evidence? We'll explore this question by taking a step back and asking …

Holism And Human History, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

This paper uses a systems-theoretic model to structure an account of human history. According to the model, a process, after its beginning and early development, often reaches a critical stage where it encounters some limitation. If the limitation is overcome, development does not face a comparable challenge until a second critical juncture is reached, where obstacles to further advance are more severe. At the first juncture, continued development requires some complexity-managing innovation; at the second, it needs some event of systemic integration in which the old organizing principle of the process is replaced by a new principle. Overcoming the first …

Sociology Of Islam & Muslim Societies, Newsletter No. 5, Tugrul Keskin

Sociology of Islam & Muslim Societies Newsletter

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Tugrul Keskin and Najm al-Din Yousefi
• Reflections on Democracy, Non-Violence and Political Change in Iran by Nader Hashemi - Page 3
• An Interview with Iranian Political Scientist Hossein Bashiriyeh by Danny Postel - Page 6
• The role of religious agents in modern Iran by Wladimir van Wilgenburg - Page 24
• Identity Narratives among Second-Generation Iranians in the United States by Sahar Sadeghi - Page 28
• Writers’ Inferno, Ivayla Datseva - Page 32
• Iran-Yemen Relations and Regional Implications by Ladan Yazdian - Page 39
• Reconstructions, Reform and Ahmadinejad: Iran’s Political Revolutions 1989-2009 by Marcus W. Dorsen …

Reconstructability Analysis Of Elementary Cellular Automata, Martin Zwick, Hui Shi

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

Reconstructability analysis is a method to determine whether a multivariate relation, defined set- or information-theoretically, is decomposable with or without loss (reduction in constraint) into lower ordinality relations. Set-theoretic reconstructability analysis (SRA) is used to characterize the mappings of elementary cellular automata. The degree of lossless decomposition possible for each mapping is more effective than the λ parameter (Walker & Ashby, Langton) as a predictor of chaotic dynamics.

Complete SRA yields not only the simplest lossless structure but also a vector of losses of all decomposed structures, indexed by parameter, τ. This vector subsumes λ, Wuensche’s Z parameter, and Walker …

Vehicle Routing Problems In Congested Urban Areas, Miguel Figliozzi

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

This talk will discuss vehicle routing problems in congested urban areas. Modeling approaches, data collection issues, and solution algorithms to solve real-world problems will be described and analyzed.

Kibrisli Rumlarin Turk Kurtulus Savasi'ndaki Etkinlikleri (Greek Cypriots Turkish Liberation Events In War), Engin Berber

Center for Turkish Studies Occasional Paper Series

In this paper, Dr. Engin Berber discusses the history and politics of Cyprus.

The text of the paper is in Turkish.

Criticisms Of Systems Science, Joshua Hughes

Systems Science Friday Noon Seminar Series

A new year often begins with a sense of optimism, but we (ever the contrarians) will begin it with a healthy dose of pessimism. This week's seminar will be a discussion about criticisms of systems science. As Winston Churchill said, "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." Is the systems project in an unhealthy state? Since its emergence in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of people have believed that to be the case, and a few have …