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Welcome, I'm glad you've dropped in.... David Soul (aka Bricoleur)
Paul Pangaro, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
To speak ‘Biological Computer Laboratory’ also speaks ‘Heinz von Foerster.’ To invoke von Foerster also invokes the BCL community that he gathered through his unerring identification of original thinkers and his unparalleled clarity about second-order cybernetics. Having chosen well his lab’s collaborators, von Foerster contributed seminal thinking that became foundations and superstructures for practitioners in the generations that followed.
Department of Information Engineering, University of Illinois, Box 4348, Chicago,
Illinois, 60680, U.S.A.
and W. Ross Ashby
Biological Computers Laboratory, University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois 61801,
U.S.A.2
[Received 3 June 1970]
The design of a complex regulator often includes the making of a model of the system to be regulated. The making of such a model has hitherto been regarded as optional, as merely one of many possible ways.
[dhcs: May 2010 | note that this is essentially a mirror of a Squidoo Lens constructed while I was involved in their beta program. It has not been kept up-to date since early 2006; with my recent “rediscovery” of it I will be bringing it up to date here, refreshing it, including fixing or striking any connections that have suffered from “web link rot” and perhaps this refurbishment might even lead to reflecting it back to its original site to see if it can fulfill the original design intent….)
In Antarctica in January, 2013 – the summer at the South Pole – scientists released 20 balloons, each eight stories tall, into the air to help answer an enduring space weather question: when the giant radiation belts surrounding Earth lose material, where do the extra particles actually go? This NASA-funded mission is called BARREL, for Balloon Array for Radiation belt Relativistic Electron Losses. Each balloon launched by the BARREL team floated for anywhere from three to 40 days, measuring X-rays produced by fast-moving electrons high up in the atmosphere.BARREL works hand in hand with another NASA mission called the Van Allen Probes, which travels directly through the Van Allen radiation belts. The belts wax and wane over time in response to incoming energy and material from the sun, sometimes intensifying the radiation through which satellites orbiting Earth must travel. Scientists need to understand this process better, and even provide forecasts of such space weather, in order to protect our spacecraft.› Read MoreImage Credit: NASA Read More