We develop a theory to explain the transition from stagnation to modern growth. We focus on the forces that shaped the evolution of total factor productivity in agriculture and manufacturing across history. More specifically, we build a multisector model of…

Much psychological research on argumentation focuses on persuasion and pragmatics. However, one strand investigates how average people understand the nature of knowledge and knowing, and how these epistemological orientations underlie skilled argumentation. The research reviewed addresses the question whether the…

In this paper we present different error measurements with the aim to evaluate the quality of the approximations generated by the GNG3D method for mesh simplification. The first phase of this method consists on the execution of the GNG3D algorithm,…

Enzymes that catalyze carbon-carbon bond formation can be exploited as biocatalyst for synthetic organic chemistry. However, natural enzymes frequently do not possess the required properties or specificities to catalyze industrially useful transformations. This mini-review describes recent work using knowledge-guided site-specific…

In a defeasible argumentation formalism, an argument is used as a defeasible reason for supporting conclusions. A conclusion q will be considered valid only when the argument that supports it become a justification. Building a justification involves the construction of…

In this paper, we present an approach to student's evaluation in a well-defined domain based on a semantic network. A similarity matrix based on the semantic memory structure of humans is used to build a semantic distance model in order…

This article aims to reveal the structure of the academic field of communication by portraying the people at its dominant pole. The study is based on the sociology of Bourdieu and 57 personal interviews with International Communication Association (ICA) fellows.…

Collaborative systems are becoming a widely used tool particularly among professional communities and research groups. They provide a suitable context for distributed people working on the same subject to concentrate their work in a shared place to which everyone has…

Freud's theory of jokes explains how they overcome the mental "censors" that make it hard for us to think "forbidden" thoughts. But his theory did not work so well for humorous nonsense as for other comical subjects. In this essay…

In this work we analyze the problem of knowledge representation in a collaborative multi-agent system where agents can obtain new information from others through communication. Namely, we analyze several approaches of belief revision in multi-agent systems. We will describe different…