Search

Social media cannibalizes its users. Social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are fraught with traps at every turn, which can cause even their most religious adherents to burn out or self destruct. These dangers run the gamut from the irritations of misinterpreted posts to combating those on a sole mission to goad co-users, to the career-ending, offensive statements that users regret for years-- or will seek penance for years from now. The perils of social media are something of a running joke among users who often comment that the best wisdom is to “never tweet” or who reply disapprovingly to a post with a curt “delete your account.” Notwithstanding the ironic title and the severe pitfalls associated with social media use, this essay stands to praise these platforms’ ability to democratize the law and encourages members of the legal community to harness its power to educate the public responsibly. It is the goal of this short symposium contribution to square the ideals associated with legal practice and social media use. The essay will then offer some basic norms for legal professionals’ consideration while using social media to communicate to the public.

We discuss the expansion of Norwegian banks abroad in the post-World War II era. The Norwegian case gives us an opportunity to examine the determinants of the strategies that banks from a small county have followed in their international expansion. At least two issues emerge as important. The first issue is the role of regulation as goad and handicap to internationalization. Regulations influenced when, where, how and why the Norwegian banks expanded abroad. The second issue is the role of the competition and cooperation (including joint ventures) between banks.

AGP is the acronym of APPIA, GULP, and PRODE: respectively, the Portuguese association for Artificial Intelligence, and the associations for Logic and Declarative Programming of Italy and Spain. The three associations have obviously separate lives, and independently started their own annual conferences several years ago. More precisely, the first GULP conference took place in Genova in 1986, followed by the meetings held in Torino, Roma, Bologna, Padova, Pisa, Tremezzo, and Gizzeria Lido from 1987 to 1993. PRODE conferences were held in Torremolinos (1991), then in Madrid (1992) and Blanes (1993). Since 1985, APPIA has been sponsoring the Portuguese conference EPIA-Encontro Portugues de Inteligencia Artificial, whose last meetings took place in Funchal, Madeira (1995), Coimbra (1997), and Evora (1999). APPIA, GULP, and PRODE finally joined their efforts with the aim of creating a wider forum where to friendly share new ideas and spread results among researchers in the area of Declarative Programming from countries that are very close under many respects — the common latin root of languages among the main one. First, GULP and PRODE joined together in 1994 at Peniscola (Spain), and then in 1995 in Marina di Vietri (Italy). Then, the first APPIA-GULP-PRODE Joint Conference on Declarative Programming took place in Donostia-San Sebastian (Spain, 1996), and then in Grado (Italy, 1997), La Coruna, (Spain, 1998), and L'Aquila (Italy, 1999). It was in L'Aquila, finally, during the social dinner of AGP'99, where the idea of extending AGP to Latin America, and to organise AGP 2000 in La Habana (Cuba) was first proposed — and the idea was soon well-liked by everybody. The natural beauty and the history of Cuba seemed to offer an irresistible attraction and surely a strong goad to partecipate. The conference took place in December 4-6, 2000 at the Universidad de La Habana in a munificient palace, and it was really a great success, also thanks to the perfect local organisation. Researchers came to La Habana from Portugal, Italy, and Spain, but also from Austria, Belgium, England, Germany, Mexico, and even from USA, daring the embargo. We had the pleasure to listen to the invited talks by Maurice Bruynooghe, Tomas Eiter, Thom Fruehwirth, and James B. Lipton. We wish here to thank all of them, and we are also glad that one of them also contributed, with a regular referred paper to this volume. This volume contains a selection of the papers presented at the conference, extended and revised for this volume. The call for papers attracted 36 submissions, each of them reviewed by at least three experts. Among the papers accepted for the conference, we selected 13 original papers following both the rewiever ratings and feedbacks from discussions at the conference. Selected contributions were extended and revised by the authors and organized into three groups: • Theoretical Issues in Logic Language ◦ Layered map reasoning: An experimental approach put to trial onsets by Andrea Formisano, Eugenio G. Omodeo, Marco Temperini. ◦ Operational Semantics for Reexecution-based Analysis of Logic Programs with Delay Declarations by Agostino Cortesi, Sabina Rossi, Baudouin Le Charleir ◦ Correct Answers for First Order Logic by Gianluca Amato ◦ On the Relations between Disjunctive and Linear Logic Programming by Marco Bozzano, Giorgio Delzanno, Maurizio Martelli • Program Analysis and Verification ◦ Refining and Compressing Abstract Model Checking by Agostino Dovier, Roberto Giacobazzi, Elisa Quintarelli ◦ Probabilistic Confinement in a Declarative Framework by Alessandra Di Pierro, Chris Hankin, Herbert Wiklicky ◦ Logic programs as specifications in the inductive verification of logic programs by Marco Comini, Roberta Gori, Giorgio Levi ◦ On the Number of Rule Applications in Constraint Programs by Thom Fruehwirth • Logics for Interaction, Concurrency, and Coordination ◦ Design for AJACS, yet another Java Constraint Programming framework by Ligia Ferreira, Salvador Abreu ◦ Formal ReSpecT by Andrea Omicini, Enrico Denti ◦ Modeling concurrent systems specified in a Temporal Concurrent Constraint language—I by Moreno Falaschi, Alberto Policriti, Alicia Villanueva. ◦ Agent Coordination by Constraint optimisation by Sascha Ossowski ◦ Probabilistic behaviours of reactive agents by Antonio Brogi The first is traditionally one of the most prominent research issue in Declarative Programming. The other two fields represent, in our opinion, two of the most promising directions in the Declarative Programming area. First of all we wish to thank Mike Mislove and Catuscia Palamidessi for their prompt and encouraging positive response. Also, it is mandatory to thank all the people that made the conference possible: the local Program Chair Luciano Garcia, the organizing committee, the program committee, and the anonymous referees. In particular we would like to thank all the members of the program committee for their contribution to the control of the scientific level of the conference: Joaquim Aparicio, Puri Arenas-Sanchez, Roberto Bagnara, Pedro Barahona, Michele Bugliesi, Marco Cadoli, Domenico Cantone, Carlos Damasio, Giorgio Delzanno, Alessandra Di Pierro, Agostino Dovier, Jose Antonio Frias, Laura Giordano, Victor Gulias, Miguel Katrib, Jim Lipton, Salvador Lucas Alba, Julio Marino, Juan J. M. Navarro, Alberto Oliart Lania, Andrea Omicini, Sascha Ossowski, Olga Padron, Manuel Palomar, Luis M. Pereira, Ernesto Pimentel, Elvira Pino, Salvador Pinto Abrei, Alberto Policriti, Maurizio Proietti, Fernando Saenz Perez, Maria Sessa, Fernando Silva, and Miguel Toro. A particular “grazie” is due to Gianluca Amato and Francesca Scozzari for their unvaluable contribution to the creation and maintenance of the AGP'00 Web site, and to the electronic management of the revision process. Finally, it is bound to happen that we thank Federica, Giulia, and Enea for their continuous putting pressure on us for we hurried in concluding this volume as soon as possible. Verona, L'Aquila, Bologna - April 16, 2001 Agostino Dovier, Maria Chiara Meo, Andrea Omicini

Wiley-Liss, 1999. £51.95 (389 pages)ISBN 0 471 15706 6This anthology of work on the molecular basis of cell cycle and growth control, compiled by an array of internationally acclaimed scientists, is intense but brilliant. From the mid-20th-century awakening of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ – the study of cell division – by an assemblage of valiant knights, this book documents Beauty’s entrance into the present-day kingdom of cell-cycle research by a fleet of gallant coachmen. The theme of multisystem-integrated regulation of growth control penetrates this book, as it portrays historic and new trends in a field that has expanded well beyond the walls of a culture dish and into the hospital ward. The distinction between regulated and regulatory components of the mechanistic pathways that mediate cell proliferation is appropriately and clearly substantiated.Baserga defines terms, and outlines concepts, in the first chapter of the book, setting the stage for the more complex scenes ahead. Puri et al. render an excellent description of the fundamental or ‘intrinsic’ cell cycle from yeast to man. Although there are only a few passing references to Xenopus, and even fewer references to Drosophila, this chapter nevertheless provides an excellent synopsis of the cell cycle, as it is understood today. The ensuing chapters feature salient stages of the cell cycle: DNA replication and S phase, mitosis and meiosis, and gene- and signal-transduction-mediated regulation of cell growth. Each of these is explicit in detail and encompasses technical approaches and clinical implications, with particular emphasis on cell-cycle checkpoints and restriction points. Stein and colleagues make a remarkable effort in depicting the integrated multidirectional signalling cascades that control cell proliferation. However, I often became entangled in this web, and I would like to suggest (for further editions of this book) that a simplified summary of the temporal profile of gene expression through the cell cycle be presented at the onset of this chapter. Armed with these basic facts, the reader – particularly the student – would then be better prepared to assimilate and appreciate the delicate interconnected nature of the mechanisms regulating cell division and growth. The chapters on differentiation, immortalization, senescence and death do well to capture the fascination of these cellular processes and are illustrated lucidly. The final chapter on antisense strategies for the treatment of leukaemia is the crowning delight of decades of exponentially intensive basic and clinical research. My feeling is that the addition of an appendix of other strategies currently being used – for example, taxol or tamoxifen, or in trials for cancer therapy –would further highlight the promise of victory in the fight against neoplasia and help to goad the student, the laboratory investigator and the clinical researcher on towards new or improved interventions.Overall, although the breadth of this book is enormous, there are certain minor but insightful aspects of cell division and growth, such as the phenomenon of gene amplification, transcriptional dysregulation in tumour cells and the role of the MPM-2 phosphoepitope in mitosis, that have been neglected. Nevertheless, I highly recommend The Molecular Basis of Cell Cycle and Growth Control as a teaching resource for graduate and medical students and as a useful reference book for cell and cancer biologists and clinicians. Some graduate students in the laboratory seemed daunted by the complicated schematics and intensity of this book. I could only remind them of the thorny brambles that enmeshed the castle for 100 years, when alas, Sleeping Beauty was brought to life by a simple kiss!

Attempting to verify the predictions of astrology, John Goad, headmaster of Merchant Taylors' School, kept a 30-year record of epidemics; in his Astro-Meteorologica (1686) he noted — and was perhaps the first to do so — a seasonal variation in the numbers of suicides * . The spring peak in suicide rates has been repeatedly confirmed in many countries (see Fig. 1), but although we no longer account for it, as Goad did, in astrological terms, we still have no satisfactory explanation. Here Edward Hare brings us up to date with research in this area.*‘I have no other proof but what is drawn from the Weekly Bills'; and in the London bills of mortality for 1680 and 1681 Goad found suicide was commonest in April and May. ‘Even the melancholy secrets of Nature may be pryed into, if perhaps we can reach them' (p. 506).