Decomposing The Will

There is growing evidence from the science of human behavior that our everyday, folk understanding of ourselves as conscious, rational, responsible agents may be mistaken. The new essays in this volume display and explore this radical claim. folk concept of the responsible agent after abandoning the image of a central executive and "decomposing" the notion of the conscious will into multiple interlocking aspects and functions.

Forensic Microbiology focuses on newly emerging areas of microbiology relevant to medicolegal and criminal investigations: postmortem changes, establishing cause of death, estimating postmortem interval, and trace evidence analysis. Recent developments in sequencing technology allow researchers, and potentially practitioners, to examine microbial communities at unprecedented resolution and in multidisciplinary contexts. This detailed study of microbes facilitates the development of new forensic tools that use the structure and function of microbial communities as physical evidence. Chapters cover: Experiment design Data analysis Sample preservation The influence of microbes on results from autopsy, toxicology, and histology Decomposition ecology Trace evidence This diverse, rapidly evolving field of study has the potential to provide high quality microbial evidence which can be replicated across laboratories, providing spatial and temporal evidence which could be crucial in a broad range of investigative contexts. This book is intended as a resource for students, microbiologists, investigators, pathologists, and other forensic science professionals.

This book is a venture in the worlds of modeling and of metamodeling. At this point, I will not reveal to readers what constitutes metamodeling. Suf fice it to say that the pitfalls and shortcomings of modeling can be cured only if we resort to a higher level of inquiry called metainquiry and metadesign. We reach this level by the process of abstraction. The book contains five chapters from my previous work, Applied General Systems Theory (Harper and Row, London and New York, First Edition 1974, Second Edition 1978). More than ten years after its publication, this material still appears relevant to the main thrust of system design. This book is dedicated to all those who are involved in changing the world for the better. In a way we all are involved in system design: from the city manager who struggles with the problems of mass transportation or the consolidation of a city and its suburbs to the social worker who tries to provide benefits to the urban poor. It includes the engineer who designs the shuttle rockets. It involves the politician engaged in drafting a bill to recycle containers, or one to prevent pesticide contamination of our food. The politician might even need system design to chart his or her own re-election campaign.

This book includes a set of rigorously reviewed world-class manuscripts addressing and detailing state-of-the-art research projects in the areas of Computing Sciences, Software Engineering and Systems. The book presents selected papers from the conference proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Computing Sciences and Software Engineering (SCSS 2006). All aspects of the conference were managed on-line.