Inductive Theorem Proving and Computer Algebra in the Mathweb Software Bus

Reasoning systems have reached a high degree of maturity in the last decade. However, even the most successful systems are usually not general purpose problem solvers but are typically specialised on problems in a certain domain. The MathWeb SOftware Bus (Mathweb-SB) is a system for combining reasoning specialists via a common osftware bus. We described the integration of the lambda-clam systems, a reasoning specialist for proofs by induction, into the MathWeb-SB. Due to this integration, lambda-clam now offers its theorem proving expertise to other systems in the MathWeb-SB. On the other hand, lambda-clam can use the services of any reasoning specialist already integrated. We focus on the latter and describe first experimnents on proving theorems by induction using the computational power of the MAPLE system within lambda-clam.

Place, policy and practitioners: on rehabilitation, independence and the therapeutic landscape in the changing geography of care provision to older people in the United Kingdom

A growing body of literature in geography and other social sciences considers the role of place in the provision of healthcare. Authors have focused on various aspects of place and care, with particular interests emerging around the role of the psychological, social and cultural aspects of place in care provision. As healthcare stretches increasingly beyond the traditional four walls of the hospital, so questions of the role of place in practices of care become ever more pertinent. In this paper, we examine the relationship between place and practice in the care and rehabilitation of older people across a range of settings, using qualitative material obtained from interviews and focus groups with nursing, care and rehabilitation staff working in hospitals, clients’ homes and other sites. By analysing their testimony on the characteristics of different settings, the aspects of place which facilitate or inhibit rehabilitation and the ways in which place mediates and is mediated by social interaction, we consider how various dimensions of place relate to the power-inscribed relationships between service users, informal carers and professionals as they negotiate the goals of the rehabilitation process. We seek to demonstrate how the physical, psychological and social meanings of place and the social processes engendered by the rehabilitation encounter interact to produce landscapes that are more or less therapeutic, considering in particular the structuring role of state policy and formal healthcare provision in this dynamic.

Carbon gold rush and carbon cowboys: a new chapter in green mythology?

Individual and collective efforts to mitigate climate change in the form of carbon offsetting and emissions trading schemes have recently become the focus of much media attention. In this paper we explore a subset of the UK national press coverage centered on such schemes. The articles, selected from general as well as specialized business and finance newspapers, make use of gold rush, Wild West and cowboy imagery which is rooted in deeply entrenched myths and metaphors and allows readers to make sense of very complex environmental, political, ethical, and financial issues associated with carbon mitigation. They make what appears complicated and unfamiliar, namely carbon trading and offsetting, seem less complex and more familiar. A critical discussion of this type of imagery is necessary in order to uncover and question tacit assumptions and connotations which are built into it and which might otherwise go unnoticed and unchallenged in environmental communication.

The grey zone: the 'ordinary' violence of extraordinary times

The article analyses the 'ordinary' violence of revolutionary politics, particularly acts of gendered and sexual violence that tend to be neglected in the face of the 'extraordinariness' of political terror. Focusing on the extreme left Naxalbari movement of West Bengal, it points to those morally ambiguous 'grey zones' that confound the rigid distinctions between victim and victimizer in insurrectionary politics. Public and private recollections of sexual and gender-based injuries by women activists point to the complex intermeshing of different forms of violence (everyday, political, structural, symbolic) across 'safe' and 'unsafe' spaces, 'public' and 'private' worlds, and communities of trust and those of betrayal. In making sense of these memories and their largely secret or 'untellable' nature, the article places sexual violence on a continuum of multiple and interrelated forces that are both overt and symbolic, and include a society's ways of mourning some forms of violence and silencing others. The idea of a continuum explores the 'greyness' of violence as the very object of anthropological inquiry.