Radar Tracked Bees Reveal Their Flight Secrets, Nature 
Abstract: Cognitive ethology focuses on the study of animals
under natural conditions to reveal ecologically adapted modes of
learning. But biologists can more easily study what an animal
learns than how it learns. For example, honeybees take repeated
'orientation' flights before becoming foragers at about three
weeks of age. These flights are a prerequisite for successful
homing. Little is known about these flights because orienting bees
rapidly fly out of the range of human observation. Using harmonic
radar, we show for the first time a striking ontogeny to honeybee
orientation flights. With increased experience, bees hold trip
duration constant but fly faster, so later trips cover a larger
area than earlier trips. In addition, each flight is typically
restricted to a narrow sector around the hive. Orientation flights
provide honeybees with repeated opportunities to view the hive and
landscape features from different viewpoints, suggesting that bees
learn the local landscape in a progressive fashion. We also show
that these changes in orientation flight are related to the number
of previous flights taken instead of chronological age, suggesting
a learning process adapted to changes in weather conditions,
flower availability and the needs of bee colonies.
Figure courtesy of Dr. Elizabeth A. Capaldi: The bee (Apis
mellifera) is resting on a white clover flower (Trifolium
repens).
- Ontogeny
Of Orientation Flight In The Honeybee Revealed By
Harmonic Radar ,
Elizabeth A. Capaldi, Alan D. Smith, Juliet L.
Osborne, Susan E. Fahrbach, Sarah M. Farris, Donald R.
Reynolds, Ann S. Edwards, Andrew Martin, Gene E.
Robinson, Guy M. Poppy & Joseph R. Riley, Nature
403, 537 - 540 (2000)
"Pathfinder" Bees Use Optical Odometers, Science
Honeybees rely on visual cues to gauge the distance to a
food source, and new information about their "optical odometers"
may set the stage for pocket-sized surveillance technologies
featuring insect vision, says the author of a 4 February Science
article.
"Our study suggests that honeybees use cues based primarily on
image motion to monitor flight distances of hundreds of meters in
natural outdoor environments," reports Science author Mandyam V.
Srinivasan. Passing many visual landmarks-such as trees or
flowers-makes the insects feel they have traveled a long way, just
as telephone poles whizzing by a car window may enhance a
passenger's sensation of speed, says Srinivasan, a professor with
the Australian National University's (ANU) Centre for Visual
Science within the Research School of Biological Sciences.
When foraging bees locate a meal more than 50 meters from the
hive, it has long been known that they return to the colony and
waggle their abdomens in the direction of the food source. The
longer the dance, the farther the journey to food. If a meal is
located closer than 50 meters, bees simply turn a few circles,
performing what's called a "round dance."
In the late 1960s, other researchers had suggested that bees
determine the distance to food based on the amount of energy
expended during flight, Thomas Collett of the University of Sussex
(U.K.) explains in a related Science "Perspectives" essay on
Srinivasan's work. Then, in 1996, a different team discovered that
bees flying between very tall buildings performed waggle dances
suggesting they had flown half the distance signaled by bees
traveling the same course near street level, presumably because
"as the ground drops away, it doesn't seem to move as quickly by
the bees' eyes," Srinivasan says.
Building on this earlier work, Srinivasan and his
coauthors-Shaowu W. Zhang of ANU and Monika Altwein and
Jüergen Tautz of Germany's Universität
Würzburg-have prompted bees to waggle even when food is close
to the hive, by bombarding their eyes with optical cues during the
journey. The research, sponsored by the U.S. Defense Advanced
Research Project Agency (DARPA) and the Australian Defense,
Science and Technology Organization, ultimately may guide new
military technologies. "We are interested in exploring the
possibility of developing autonomous, flying vehicles that
incorporate some principle of insect vision to avoid obstacles,
perhaps for surveillance applications," Srinivasan says. Such
technologies might include, for example, "microair vehicles," just
six inches long or smaller, adds Alan S. Rudolph, a DARPA program
manager.
To test bees' optical odometers, Srinivasan's group sent Apis
mellifera lingustica Spinola specimens on a search for snacks
inside a narrow tunnel, which was 6.4 meters long, 20 centimeters
high, and only 11 centimeters wide-roughly 21 feet by 8 inches by
4.3 inches. The tunnel entrance was positioned near a specially
designed "bee farm," a hive sandwiched between transparent
observation windows. In a series of experiments, a feeder was then
placed near the tunnel entrance, or 6 meters inside the tunnel, so
that it was between 35 and 41 meters from the hive, a distance
known to prompt only round dances among bees flying outdoors.
Decorating the tunnel's interior with a random, black-and-white
pattern prompted most bees (90 percent) to waggle, although they
danced in circles when flying similar distances between various
outdoor feeders on the ANU campus. When the tunnel was adorned
instead with horizontal black and white stripes, bees mainly
performed round dances (86.7 percent), apparently because they
were flying parallel with the lines, and therefore weren't
receiving an exaggerated amount of optical input.
Flying close to tunnel walls-particularly those decorated with
overly busy wallpaper-amplified the bees' perception of distance,
skewing the insects' optical odometer by as much as a factor of
31, the Science paper concludes. Consequently, 6 meters inside a
tunnel feels to a bee like 186 meters outdoors.
In summary, a bee waggles one millisecond for every 17.7
degrees of image-motion it sees, the researchers found. The
formula isn't absolute because a bee's perception of distance is
"environment dependent," the researchers report. But, the findings
should help scientists better understand the optical mechanisms
that allows bees to locate a promising buffet.
"Pathfinder"
Bees Use Optical Odometers, Suggesting Microsurveillance
Technologies, Science
Author Says, American
Association For The Advancement Of
Science, Science Daily
Magazine, 2/7/00
-
In his book "Ishmael" Dan Quinn claims that civilizations
started when someone had the idea (and manpower) to lock away food
and then sell it. One might wonder why this food-based economy was
never really extended to water. Admittedly in many parts of the
world water is more accessible. On the other hand there is no lack
of historical examples where competition for water was just as
fierce as competition for food. And it is also known that clean
drinking water will be in short supply in many parts of the world.
But in spite of its fundamentally important role, water was never
really treated as marketable commodity (unless sugar and flavor
was added and it was put in bottles or cans with flashy brand
names on their labels).
It is somewhat surprising to see that even in a market oriented
country like the US the response to demands exceeding supply is
not a simple adjustment of the price. Instead one can see public
campaigns for installing "low-flow" showerheads, water-saving
devices in toilets, and other actions much more familiar from
communist countries with centrally planned economies.
Azurix Corp., a Houston-based water company is planning to
change that by launching an exchange on the Internet for buying,
selling, storing and transporting water in the West. Their website
is water2water.com and they will use business-to-business software
but also provide water related information to farmers and other
heavy water users.
Rebecca Smith of the Wall Street Journal seems to try to
explain why it took so long to introduce market economical
principles to an important resource like water. She observes that
water comes in different qualities for instance with regards to
its purity. But this is hardly new in economy where there appears
to be no problem to charge more for fine French gourmet cuisine
than for a McDonald hamburger. It actually might be beneficial for
public education to understand that there is a higher value for
drinking water than for the water used for flushing toilets.
There seems to be some resistance to extending market economy
to water: " State lawmakers say there is more at issue than price
optimization. Some will lose water if others sell it. "You need
more than the market determining whether water goes to farms,
cities, recreation or industry," says Michael Machado, chairman of
the California State Assembly water committee." Maybe lawmakers
could learn from complex systems about more intelligent ways to
regulate markets in the public interest.
Azurix
Is Launching Online Exchange For Buying And Selling Water
In West, Rebecca Smith,
The Wall Street Journal, 2/9/00
The End of the Growth Era?, arXiv
Both the world economy and human population have grown at
a tremendous pace during the last two centuries, raising
increasing worries about the sustainability of this growth as well
as concerns that we humans as a result might cause severe and
irreversible damage to eco-systems, global weather systems etc. At
the other extreme, the optimists expect that the innovative spirit
of mankind will solve the problems associated with a continuing
increase in the growth rate. Specifically, they believe that the
world economic development will continue as a successive unfolding
of revolutions, e.g., the Internet, bio-technological and other
yet unknown innovations, replacing the prior agricultural,
industrial and information revolutions. Irrespective of
interpretation, the important point is the presence of an
acceleration in the rate of growth. Here, we show
that both the acceleration in the growth of the worlds human
population until the 1970's as well as in a proxy for capitalistic
expansion in the United States since its creation as a nation
until present are consistent with a spontaneous singularity at the
same critical time 2053-2063 AD and with the same
characteristic self-similar geometric patterns (defined below as
log-periodic oscillations). As a consequence, even the optimistic
point of view has to be revised, since the acceleration of the
growth rate contains endogenously its own limit in the shape of a
finite-time singularity to be interpreted as an abrupt transition
to a qualitatively new behavior. With a world-wide concern about
the sustainability of this accelerated growth beginning to bud as
well as the very recent slowing down of the population growth
rate, this transition will hopefully be smoothen out.
The
End of the Growth Era?, Anders Johansen (UCLA),
Didier Sornette, arXiv, cond-mat/0002075
5 Billion Web Pages Linked By 19 Clicks Of Separation, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Excerpts: The rapidly expanding Web today has about
1.5 billion pages. But some scientists think its size is best
measured by the average number of connections it takes to link any
two random sites. Thus was born the "19 clicks of separation"
theory of the Web. This scientific effort to size the Web has
helped reveal the organic way in which the global network is
growing. Like the celebrated "six degrees of separation" that
supposedly can connect any two people on the planet, researchers
at the University of Notre Dame recently estimated that any two
randomly selected sites on the Web are connected, on average, by
19 clicks. The original six-degrees notion, based on a
sociological theory popularized in the 1960s, posits that each
person on the planet is linked to any other person through no more
than five mutual acquaintances. Out of the total 6 billion people
on Earth, you can get from one person to anyone else in at most
six people. The Notre Dame team says, on average, you can get from
one site on the Web to any other randomly selected site in about
19 clicks. (…)
Barabasi and his students, Jeong and Reka Albert, last year set
loose a "robot" search engine on portions of the Web to tally
links and measure how far away each of the links encountered were
from one another. The robotic search engine was a computer program
that traveled the Web documenting its encounters. Barabasi said
everyone expected the robot to encounter a simple, exponentially
increasing number of links based on the assumption that the links
on the Web are distributed randomly. Instead, he said, the data
clearly showed the links are distributed according to a more
sophisticated and self-organizing mathematical principle known as
the "power-tail law." Nobody knows why. (…)
Just as the number of branches on a tree limb is greater near
the trunk than out at the tip, growth on the Web takes place so
that links with more associated links (or branches) end up closer
to the Web's "trunk." This cybertrunk is perhaps best thought of
as the main flow of information on the Web. Because the Web does
not exist in physical space and its "branches" always reconnect
rather than spread out into thin air, the tree analogy is not
perfect. But the point is that the Web's growth appears to follow
some of the same natural laws at work in ecological systems.
"What's most interesting is how the Web's structure has evolved
without any central authority," said Steve Lawrence, a computer
scientist at Princeton University and at NEC. He has been
internationally recognized for his work on Web information
distribution and access. (…)
It will not increase as fast as might be expected based on
simple exponential growth, he said. If it operates according to
the power-tail law, Barabasi said, a tenfold increase in the
number of pages on the Web probably would result in just a small
increase in Web size (again, size being the degree of separation
between links).
But again, Etzioni said, so what if it does? The real trick
here is to make more efficient and accurate search engines, he
said. "The typical search engine today only indexes about 16
percent of the Web," Etzioni said. "That fraction keeps getting
smaller as the Web increases in size." The key to getting better
search engines, many of these Web experts say, is to better
understand how the Web is organized -- why it's growing like a
weed -- and how to use that knowledge to improve our ability to
find the information we seek.
1.5
Billion Web Pages Linked By 19 Clicks Of
Separation,
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Excerpts with kind permission from
Tom
Paulson
-
Abstract: The pattern of axonal projections early in
the development of the nervous system lacks the precision present
in the adult. During a developmental process of refinement,
mistargeted projections are eliminated while correct projections
are retained. Previous studies suggest that during development
nitric oxide (NO) is involved in the elimination of mistargeted
retinal axons, whereas brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
may stabilize retinal axon arbors. It is unclear whether these
neuromodulators interact. This study showed that NO induced growth
cone collapse and retraction of developing retinal axons. This
effect was not attributable to NO-induced neurotoxicity. BDNF
protected growth cones and axons from the effects of NO. This
effect was specific to BDNF, because neither nerve growth factor
(NGF) nor neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) prevented NO-induced growth cone
collapse and axon retraction. Exposure to both BDNF and NO, but
not either factor alone, stabilized growth cones and axons.
Stabilized axons exhibited minimal retraction or extension. This
response appears to be a new axon "state" and not simply a partial
amelioration of the effect of NO, because lower doses of BDNF or
NO allowed axon extension. Furthermore, BDNF/NO-induced growth
cone stabilization correlated with the appearance of a
cytochalasin D-resistant population of actin filaments. BDNF
protection from NO likely was mediated locally at the level of the
growth cone, because growth cones or individual filopodia in
contact with BDNF-coated beads were protected from NO-induced
collapse. These findings suggest a cellular mechanism by which
some axonal connections are stabilized and some are eliminated
during development.
Stabilization
of Growing Retinal Axons by the Combined Signaling of
Nitric Oxide and Brain-Derived Neurotrophic
Factor Alan F. Ernst,
Gianluca Gallo, Paul C. Letourneau, and Steven C. McLoon
, The Journal of Neuroscience, February 15, 2000,
20(4):1458-1469
Smells Are Most Effective In Invoking Memories, Chemical Senses
Folk wisdom dictates that odours are especially powerful
reminders of autobiographical experience, an effect which has
become known as the Proust phenomenon. This paper reviews the
relevant literature to determine whether there is any substantive
evidence to support this view. Different methodologies have been
adopted in addressing this issue, but the most revealing and
ecologically valid have been the few studies which have examined
naturally formed autobiographical memories. From these data, there
is at least preliminary evidence that olfactory stimuli can cue
autobiographical memories more effectively than cues from other
sensory modalities. Explanations for these effects can be invoked
from accepted principles in contemporary cognitive psychology.
Odour-evoked
Autobiographical Memories: Psychological Investigations
of Proustian
Phenomena, Simon
Chu and John J. Downes, Chem. Senses 25: 111-116,
2000
A Neuronal Analogue Of State-Dependent Learning, Nature
Abstract: State-dependent learning is a phenomenon
in which the retrieval of newly acquired information is possible
only if the subject is in the same sensory context and
physiological state as during the encoding phase. In spite of
extensive behavioural and pharmacological characterization, no
cellular counterpart of this phenomenon has been reported. Here we
describe a neuronal analogue of state-dependent learning in which
cortical neurons show an acetylcholine-dependent expression of an
acetylcholine-induced functional plasticity. This was demonstrated
on neurons of rat somatosensory 'barrel' cortex, whose tunings to
the temporal frequency of whisker deflections were modified by
cellular conditioning. Pairing whisker stimulation with
acetylcholine applied iontophoretically yielded selective lasting
modification of responses, the expression of which depended on the
presence of exogenous acetylcholine. Administration of
acetylcholine during testing revealed frequency-specific changes
in response that were not expressed when tested without
acetylcholine or when the muscarinic antagonist, atropine, was
applied concomitantly. Our results suggest that both acquisition
and recall can be controlled by the cortical release of
acetylcholine.
A
Neuronal Analogue Of State-Dependent
Learning, D. E.
Shulz, R. Sosnik, V. Ego, S. Haidarliu & E. Ahissar,
Nature 403, 549 - 553 (2000)
Emerging "R&D" Pattern In Genes May Reduce Evolution's Risks, Johns Hopkins University
The genetic blueprint at the heart of life may be divided
into "research and development" and "production" sections,
according to an author of a new study in this week's "Science"
that compares genetic material in yeast, roundworms, insects and
humans.
The distinction may help shunt the random genetic changes that
cause evolution onto areas of the DNA where such changes have a
better chance of benefitting the organism (the "R&D" section)
and away from areas where they would more likely harm it (the
"production" section).
"The great paradox of evolution is that you have many
established functions to maintain in an organism, and how can you
be conservative about those functions while experimenting to
discover new and possibly advantageous gene functions?" says
Edward Hedgecock, biology professor at The Johns Hopkins
University.
If it is confirmed, the theory could aid researchers in their
efforts to analyze genetic information from humans and other
species.
With support from the National Institutes of Health, Hedgecock
and other researchers conducted an extensive computerized
comparison of the sequence of genetic information, known as
genomes, found in yeast, the roundworm C. elegans and other
nematodes, the fruit fly Drosophila, and humans.
New species arise throughout evolution. Comparing their genomes
can therefore provide "snapshots" of the development of DNA at
various points in evolutionary history. Since portions of DNA are
used as instructions for building proteins, researchers can
compare the details of these "snapshots" to get a feel for when
life first developed various proteins.
If, for example, a gene for a protein is common to yeast and to
animals, Hedgecock explains, then the protein's birth date was
before the emergence of multicellular organisms.
Hedgecock and his coauthors focused most of their attention on
proteins involved in the creation of the exterior of the cell.
Examples include the proteins that help cells stick to surfaces,
proteins that help create a sheath that is the outermost boundary
of a cell, and proteins that are emitted by cells. Scientists
grouped the proteins into families and "superfamilies."
"Proteins are in the same family if they have essentially the
same modular organization along their length," Hedgecock explains.
"They're made of the same parts in the same order. Superfamilies
are a higher structural class, and that only means that the
proteins share an individual domain, but they may differ--be
unrelated--outside of that."
While noting that the human genome is not completely sequenced
yet, researchers reported finding some families and superfamilies
of proteins present in C. elegans and other roundworms that are
absent in the human genome. Families and superfamilies, they
concluded, are being created throughout evolutionary history.
(…)
Dividing cells have to make an additional copy of the DNA they
contain, a task that requires them to unpack DNA from structures
known as chromosomes where it is stored. Scientists have noticed
that some portions of the chromosomes appear to get more
thoroughly unpacked than others. The portions of the genome that
are incompletely unpacked might be more susceptible to mutational
processes, Hedgecock theorizes, while the genes that have
established value are in the fully open areas.
"The analogy to industry is that you separate your research and
development facility from your production facility-if you ever
were to combine those two activities, it might be a disaster,"
says Hedgecock.
Emerging
"R&D" Pattern In Genes May Reduce Evolution's
Risks, Johns
Hopkins University,
ScienceDaily Magazine, 2/11/00
Ball Lightning Mystery Solved?, Nature
The phenomenon of a ball lightning has been attracting
the attention and fantasy of people for centuries or even
millennia. It is so bizarre that it often has been put in the
realm of unexplainable phenomena. In non-linear science, however,
the phenomenon of self-organization of transient structures have
been well established and simulations of the fast, transient
plasmas generated in nuclear explosions also show a number of
self-focusing phenomena. Abrahamson and Dinniss propose a new
scientific theory of this effect that is consistent with the
anecdotal reports that a ball lightning most likely is observed
after the strike of a regular lightning.
Abstract: Observations of ball lightning have been
reported for centuries, but the origin of this phenomenon remains
an enigma. The 'average' ball lightning appears as a sphere with a
diameter of 300 mm, a lifetime of about 10 s, and a luminosity
similar to a 100-W lamp. It floats freely in the air, and ends
either in an explosion, or by simply fading from view. It almost
invariably occurs during stormy weather. Several energy sources
have been proposed to explain the light, but none of these models
has succeeded in explaining all of the observed characteristics.
Here we report a model that potentially accounts for all of those
properties, and which has some experimental support. When normal
lightning strikes soil, chemical energy is stored in nanoparticles
of Si, SiO or SiC, which are ejected into the air as a filamentary
network. As the particles are slowly oxidized in air, the stored
energy is released as heat and light. We investigated this basic
process by exposing soil samples to a lightning-like discharge,
which produced chain aggregates of nanoparticles: these particles
oxidize at a rate appropriate for explaining the lifetime of ball
lightning.
Ball
Lightning Caused By Oxidation Of Nanoparticle Networks
From Normal Lightning Strikes On
Soil, John
Abrahamson, James Dinniss, Nature 403, 519 - 521 (2000)
-
Scientists, weather forecasters and the public take
possession of a valuable stream of meteorological and climate
observations this week, as the first calibrated measurements from
NASA's SeaWinds instrument on the Quikscat satellite become
available -- information that can improve weather forecasting
around the world.
Access to daily wind data and animations from the ocean-wind
tracker, managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL),
Pasadena, Calif., is available on the Internet at http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/quikscat
and at http://haifung.jpl.nasa.gov
. "We're opening the tap on this global data to the world," said
Dr. Michael Freilich, principal investigator on SeaWinds and a
professor at Oregon State University, Corvallis. The measurements
and data products show developing weather systems with
unprecedented detail.
"SeaWinds measurements of the direction and strength of the
winds at the ocean surface give us new knowledge that, in
combination with satellite measurements of clouds, temperature and
other data, can be used for understanding how different weather
systems and storms develop, and for predicting weather over the
entire globe," Freilich said. The measurements, he added, also are
crucial for understanding ocean currents, climate patterns, and
the cyclical and anomalous variations that occur in those
patterns.
The heart of SeaWinds is a specially designed spaceborne radar
instrument called a scatterometer. The radar operates at a
microwave frequency that penetrates clouds. This, coupled with the
satellite's polar orbit, makes the wind systems over the entire
world's oceans visible to SeaWinds on a daily basis. The
measurements provide detailed information about ocean winds,
waves, currents, polar ice features and other phenomena, for the
benefit of meteorologists, climatologists, oceanographers and
mariners. SeaWinds was launched June 19, 1999, and engineers and
scientists have successfully calibrated the satellite and verified
the accuracy of its data over the past few months.
"This new knowledge of winds over the oceans is essential for
many oceanographic, meteorological and climate investigations, as
well as for improving regional and global operational weather
predictions," said climate researcher Dr. Ralph Milliff of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, Colo.
"SeaWinds data are eagerly anticipated by these research and
operational communities."
"Near real-time wind-vector measurements from SeaWinds
represent a vast improvement in coverage over the generally data-
sparse oceans," said SeaWinds science team member Dr. Paul Chang
of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National
Environmental Satellite Data and Information Service. "SeaWinds
data will be used operationally by marine forecasters and for
numerical weather prediction models. These data promise to yield
significant improvements in short-term warnings and forecasts and
in medium- to long-range forecasts."
The orbiting SeaWinds radar instrument is managed for NASA's
Office of Earth Science, Washington, D.C., by JPL, which also
oversaw development of the SeaWinds radar instrument and is
providing ground science-processing systems. NASA's Goddard Space
Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., managed development of the
satellite, designed and built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies
Corp., Boulder, Colo. NOAA is contributing to ground system
processing and distributing SeaWinds data in near-real time to the
international operational weather forecasting community. NASA and
NOAA are working together to transition these critical wind
measurements from research to operational missions to improve the
accuracy of current weather forecasts and to extend forecast
projections from three to five days.
NASA's Earth Science Enterprise is a long-term research and
technology program designed to examine Earth's land, oceans,
atmosphere, ice and life as a total integrated system. More
information about the Office of Earth Sciences can be found on the
Internet at http://www.earth.nasa.gov
.
New
Results Show Which Way The Wind Blows Over The Oceans,
NASA/Jet
Propulsion Laboratory,
Science
Daily Magazine,
2/7/00
Book Report: The Predictors, Ralph Abraham
This nonfiction book is the second in a sequence of reports on the
romps of Doyne Farmer and Norman Packard. The first in the sequence,
also by Bass, recounted their attack on Las Vegas, based in Santa
Cruz, and armed with computerized boots. Like their distinguished
predecessor Ed Thorp, they graduated from casinos (where you are
supposed to lose) to the markets (where you are challenged to
win).
This time, once again, the intrepid lads set aside their highly
respected and influential research on the edge of chaos and
complexity, apparently in response to the difficulty in gaining
grants for frontier work. One aspires to be one's own grant source.
And again, it is computational math/physics which is to provide the
advantage to beat the game: this time, the method of attractor
reconstruction.
I found the book much fun to read, and instructive too. In it, two
threads are entwined. One is the step-by-step materalization, in
Santa Fe, of a data gorging trading robot, the "black box", by Doyne
and Norman, along with Jim McGill and a small staff. This is
excellent journalism, a good tale well told.
The other thread is a text on trading. Abstract instruments are
clearly explained. Most useful. Also, Bass sketches a complex
dynamical model for the entire market system itself, in which nodes
(markets) are deployed in hierarchical layers of more and more
abstract instruments: factories, stocks, futures, options, indices,
etc. His idea is, apparently, that the growth of this tree creates
the new space into which the market may evolve.
So you see, complexity theory is involved in both threads. One
might have liked the black box tale to end in victory, as suggested
by the subtitle: it does not. (But the project is not over.) One
might also have liked the textbook on the market system to guess what
would happen if the boys beat the system: it does not.
I recommend the book highly for your amusement.
The
Predictors, How a Band of maverick Physicists Used Chaos
Theory to Trade Their Way to a Fortune on Wall
Street, by Thomas A. Bass (New York: Holt, 1999).
Book review by Ralph
H. Abraham
(abraham@vismath.org)
See also the review by Dean LeBaron (ComDig
2000.0.13)
