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This chapter describes non legato as an articulation whereby each note receives its own pressure and whose sound duration is strictly defined. The physical means of attaining this are described as in the model for the same effect when played by the violin or orchestra. It is argued that non legato is most appropriate in early music: in contrapuntal writing the individual notes had equal function. By contrast, the larger motivic units — a result of the synthesis in later music — require legato playing.

Again the quantity to watch is the ‘seat product’. The inverse square law of cabinet durations says that the mean cabinet duration in a country is approximately forty-two years divided by the square of the effective number of parties. In institutional terms, mean cabinet duration is approximately the inverse of the cube root of the seat product. This quantitatively predictive logical model agrees with the world averages. The results are approximate, because other factors enter.

An electoral system helps determine the number and size distribution of parties in a country, as well as cabinet duration. Electoral systems are expressed in electoral laws. Their impact depends on the way politicians and voters make use of these laws. Flawed electoral laws can lead to breakdown of democracy or to staleness.

Starting with the characteristics of the electoral systems, the ‘Duvergerian agenda’ aims at predicting the average seat and vote share distributions of parties, the effective number of parties, and deviation from proportional representation. In the case of simple electoral systems, prediction of seat shares of parties and cabinet duration has become possible. Simple electoral systems are those that use a usual proportional representation formula or First-Past-The-Post, so that assembly size and district magnitude tell most of the story.

The federal copyright that the Framers envisioned and enacted was a narrow, short‐term right in printed matter. Current copyright holders enjoy a capacious bundle of rights in many more uses of many more types of published works for a far greater time and with fewer preconditions. Yet, until recent decades, copyright law's basic contours still evinced an understanding of copyright as a decidedly limited grant. It has been largely since Congress enacted the Copyright Act revision of 1976 that copyright's scope and duration have burst from their moorings, growing with unwonted precipitousness and force. This chapter details the most troublesome areas of copyright's expansion and conceptual metamorphosis from narrow government grant to Blackstonian property right. It discusses copyright duration, creative appropriation, the turgid waters of the substantial similarity test and the idea/expression dichotomy, the constriction of fair use, “paracopyright,” technological protection measures, personal uses, and new media.

Interlocking networks of equations, based on logical models, are possible in social sciences. Partial evidence is offered by a sequence of models that ties mean duration of governmental cabinets first to the number of parties and then to the number of seats in the electoral district and the entire representative assembly.

The number of communication channels may well turn out to be a major building block in constructing quantitatively predictive logical models in social sciences. This number does determine representative assembly sizes and mean durations of cabinets. Some physical and social processes involve minimization or maximization of some quantities. Models for various processes can be formulated as differential equations, especially those that express rates of change in time, space, etc. Quantities that are conserved during changes play an important role in physics and might do so in social sciences.

Models are tested with data, but also data are tested by agreement with conceptual models. When competing indices exist to measure the same phenomena, one should use the ones that agree with logically supported prediction. These indices need not be philosophically “truer” measures of the underlying concepts, but they are more useful for prediction. The choice between two accepted ways to measure cabinet duration and three ways to measure the number of parties illustrates this advice. Clearest results emerge when symmetric regression is used for testing.

Virgins can indeed give birth, and not only in Greek mythology. In biology, the word partheno appended by genesis (meaning origin) describes the clonal process by which a female procreates without assistance from males. She does so by producing special eggs cells that require no sperm or fertilization before initiating the development of offspring who, in most cases, are genetically identical to their virgin mother. This phenomenon exists in nature as a constitutive reproductive mode in several unisexual (all-female) “species” of reptile, and sporadically in several additional groups. This chapter describes all known cases of parthenogenesis in vertebrate animals, and includes details about cellular and genetic mechanisms, evolutionary origins and durations, and potential ecological or adaptive significance.

This essay is a historical and philological investigation of reproduction as it was understood in ancient Near East societies. It explores the differences in embryology as conceived by various cultures in the ancient Near East (primarily among the Babylonians, Assyrians, and Israelites) and their points of similarity. Embryological theories run the gamut from “high” science, with truths still accepted, to superstitions that said that female fetuses were carried on their mother’s left sides, required a longer pregnancy, and drained their mothers’ strength more than did male fetuses.

‘Patent design’ is the discipline which studies the substantive features of the patent system (subject matter, inventive step, scope, duration) from the point of view of their economic effects. From an economic perspective, a ‘good patent system’ is one which encourages inventions and does not hamper their diffusion. This dual test is applied when evaluating any particular feature of a patent system from the point of view of ‘economic quality’. The chapter offers a critical and comprehensive economic analysis of each of these aspects of patent design.

This chapter describes the various routes that can be chosen to obtain patent protection in some or all of the European countries. The EPO offers a centralized granting process, which includes various stages from the search for prior art, to the substantive examination and the final decision to grant the application. A typology of four broad filing strategies is developed to characterize the applicants' behaviour: a good will with fast track, a good will with slow track, a bad will with slow track, and a deliberate abuse of the system. It is shown that the chosen strategy will affect the patenting route, the drafting style, and the interaction with the EPO. Some of these filing strategies may induce an unwanted burden on the patent office; a disproportionate degree of uncertainty to competitors; and an unclear published prior art.

Time is a topic that many philosophers have found enigmatic. This chapter suggests resolutions to some of the enigmas, specifically time's flow, its direction, and its duration. One key is shown to unlock all these problems: an application of the techniques of Chapter 12 to time itself.

This chapter describes a variety of current synthesis systems, including formant and concatenative systems, and the problems associated with unit selection. The success of these systems is discussed in terms of the standard parameterizable features of speech: acoustic formants, amplitude, timing and rate, fundamental frequency, etc. The cognitive constructs to which the physical parameters are related are described: voice quality, loudness, rhythm, duration, and pitch. Variability in speech, the obverse process, and automatic speech recognition are also discussed.

The manner in which the hand makes contact with the environment constrains or enhances the type of information that can be manually extracted and the actions that can be performed. This chapter expands the discussion of hand function to consider the impact of the site and area of contact, the number of digits and hands involved, and the use of probes and other intermediate links on human hand function. Each of these end-effector constraints is considered as they relate to the hand-function continuum proposed in Chapter 1.