Complexity Digest 2002.13

01-Apr-2002

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Content

  1. 'A Beautiful Mind' Is Best Picture, CNN
    1. Madness In The Garden Or Worm In The Apple?, Trends in Cognitive Sciences
    2. Reelin' in Clues to Schizophrenia, Science Now
    3. Gene Expression Profiling Reveals Alterations of Specific Metabolic Pathways in Schizophrenia, J. Neurosci.
  2. Plectics: The Study Of Simplicity And Complexity, Europhysics News
    1. The Most Seductive Equation In Science: Beauty Equals Truth, NYTimes
  3. Scientific Publishing: Peer Review, Unmasked, Nature
  4. Ancient DNA Untangles Evolutionary Paths, Science
    1. Dynamics of Pleistocene Population Extinctions in Beringian Brown Bears, Science
    2. Rates of Evolution in Ancient DNA from Adélie Penguins, Science
  5. African Skull Points to One Human Ancestor, Science
    1. Unified Erectus: Fossil Suggests Single Human Ancestor, Science News
  6. Excavations In Eastern Europe Reveal Ancient Human Lifestyles, Science Daily Mag, U. Colorado at Boulder
  7. Control of Synaptic Strength by Glial TNFalpha, Science
    1. Materials Science: Breaking The Neural Code, Nature
  8. Neurobiology: Ready To Unlearn, Nature
    1. Signal For The Extinction Of Conditioned Eyelid Responses, Nature
  9. The Psychophysiology of Real-Time Financial Risk Processing, J. Cognitive Neuroscience
    1. The Good, The Bad, And The Anterior Cingulate, Science
    2. The Medial Frontal Cortex and the Rapid Processing of Monetary Gains and Losses, Science
    3. Impulsive Rats Illuminate Decision-Making, Science Now
  10. Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities, IEEE Computer
    1. Finding Networks Within Networks, Science News
    2. Social Networks From The Web To The Enterprise, Internet Computing
    3. The Singularity: A Talk With Ray Kurzweil, Edge.org
  11. Evolution Of An Antiviral RNAse Of Higher Primates, PNAS
  12. Enriched Odor Exposure Improves Odor Memory, J. Neurosci.
  13. Timing Of Chemical Signal Critical For Normal Emotional Development, National Inst. Mental Health
    1. Non-Human Primate Models For Investigating Fear And Anxiety, Neurosc. Behav. Rev.
  14. Molecules, Muscles, And Machines: Universal Performance Characteristics Of Motors, PNAS
  15. An Analysis Of Nest Building In Golden Hamster, Behavioural Processes
  16. Efficient Coding Of Natural Sounds, Nature Neuroscience
  17. Complexity Of Human Immune Response Profiles, Autoimmunity
  18. Statistical Analysis Provides Key Links in Milosevic Trial, Science
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Bombs and Quakes, NYTimes
    2. Grinding Terror or Grand Adventure: Choose Your War, NYTimes
    3. Try Suing Saddam, NYTimes
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Science News
    2. Other Papers
    3. Webcast Announcements

  1. 'A Beautiful Mind' Is Best Picture, CNN Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The best picture winner is a biography of Nobel Prize-winning Princeton mathematician John Nash Jr., who battled schizophrenia throughout his adult life. The film had come under fire in recent weeks for taking liberties with Nash's story. But Academy voters decided to overlook the controversy and honor the film.

    "I am terrified," Goldsman told the audience after winning his screenplay award. "I would like to thank John and Alicia Nash for their extraordinary courage and for entrusting us with their lives." 

    • A Beautiful Mind' Is Best Picture, CNN, 02/03/25
    • See also: A Beautiful Mind: The Life of Mathematical Genius and Nobel Laureate John Nash, Sylvia Nasar,(Simon, Schuster, 1998), Also available as downloadable audible book  

    1. Madness In The Garden Or Worm In The Apple?, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Contributing Editor's Note: Schizophrenia is disease where the patient looses the context of personality, conversation or occurrence of fact; and often superpose them on wrong attributes. The following work, basically being review of a book, put some interesting theory, for example, schizophrenia -from very beginning of mankind, must be beneficial to the individuals who suffer from it, or to their relatives, or to society at large.

      Excerpt: (...) the early years of the Homo sapiens lineage involved a protracted battle for dominance with other highly evolved primates, particularly Homo neanderthalensis. This book claims that the genetic Adam and Eve (...) were the first to develop a particular set of genetic mutations, and that the traits that propelled them to eventual victory - creativity and a touch of paranoia - were also those that sowed the seeds of schizophrenia.

      John Nash, a Nobel laureate in economics (...) suffers from schizophrenia. However, the rate of schizophrenia in the general population is 0.5-1.0%.

       


    2. Reelin' in Clues to Schizophrenia, Science Now Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: People with schizophrenia have abnormally low levels of a protein called reelin in the brain. Now researchers have found that this protein seems to play an important role in guiding newborn neurons to their final homes. They suggest that a lack of this protein could lead to schizophrenia by impoverishing neural circuits important for normal cognition--although they and other researchers caution that this mechanism is still speculative. (...)

      The study "adds to the evidence that reelin may be important for neural cell migration,"


    3. Gene Expression Profiling Reveals Alterations of Specific Metabolic Pathways in Schizophrenia, J. Neurosci. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Dysfunction of the dorsal prefrontal cortex (PFC) in schizophrenia may be associated with alterations in the regulation of brain metabolism. To determine whether abnormal expression of genes encoding proteins involved in cellular metabolism contributes to this dysfunction, we used cDNA microarrays to perform gene expression profiling of all major metabolic pathways (...) These molecular analyses implicate a highly specific pattern of metabolic alterations in the PFC of subjects with schizophrenia and raise the possibility that antipsychotic medications may exert a therapeutic effect, in part, by normalizing some of these changes


  2. Plectics: The Study Of Simplicity And Complexity, Europhysics News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: But there is one concept - what I call effective complexity - that represents most closely what we usually mean in everyday conversation and also in scientific discourse when we use the word. A non-technical definition of effective complexity would be the length of a highly compressed description of the regularities of the entity under consideration. Compression - the elimination of redundancy - is very important; otherwise the length of the message would be of very little concern to us.

    1. The Most Seductive Equation In Science: Beauty Equals Truth, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The pattern most highly prized in recent modern physics has been symmetry. (...) physical laws are considered more beautiful if they keep the same form when we change things by, for example, moving to the other side of the universe, making the clocks run backward, or spinning the lab around on a carousel.

      A good equation, Dr. Farmelo said, should be an economical compression of truth without a symbol out of place. He looks for attributes like universality, simplicity, inevitability, an elemental power and "granitic logic" (...).


  3. Scientific Publishing: Peer Review, Unmasked, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Whether or not open peer review really offers any advantages over traditional techniques should become clearer when The Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) finishes the second of its peer-review experiments. (...), papers that had already been accepted for publication were posted online, together with comments made by referees during the review process. Readers were invited to discuss the papers, and authors had the option of revising their papers before publication in the print version after seeing what the readers had to say.

  4. Ancient DNA Untangles Evolutionary Paths, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Analyzing ancient DNA for clues into the deep past has had a bad rap:Too many false reports of recovered dinosaur DNA have sullied the field's reputation. Now, that's about to change. On pages 2267 and 2270, two independent research groups report that, when studied correctly, genetic material preserved in cold environments can reveal quite a bit about the past.

    1. Dynamics of Pleistocene Population Extinctions in Beringian Brown Bears, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The climatic and environmental changes associated with the last glaciation (90,000 to 10,000 years before the present; 90 to 10 ka B.P.) are an important example of the effects of global climate change on biological diversity. (...) The major phylogeographic changes occurred 35 to 21 ka B.P., before the glacial maximum, and little change is observed after this time. Late Pleistocene histories of mammalian taxa may be more complex than those that might be inferred from the fossil record or contemporary DNA sequences alone.


    2. Rates of Evolution in Ancient DNA from Adélie Penguins, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Well-preserved subfossil bones of Adélie penguins, Pygoscelis adeliae, underlie existing and abandoned nesting colonies in Antarctica. These bones, dating back to more than 7000 years before the present, harbor some of the best-preserved ancient DNA yet discovered. From 96 radiocarbon-aged bones, we report large numbers of mitochondrial haplotypes, some of which appear to be extinct, given the 380 living birds sampled. (...). Our calculated rates of evolution are approximately two to seven times higher than previous indirect phylogenetic estimates.


  5. African Skull Points to One Human Ancestor, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Almost 1.8 million years ago, a new kind of human appeared on the scene in Africa and Eurasia. For 2 decades anthropologists have debated whether the African and Asian fossils were all members of one peripatetic species, Homo erectus, or whether one group belonged to a different species, H. ergaster. A report in this week's issue of Nature concludes that all of the African and Asian fossils belong together in one species, H. erectus, making them all interbreeding members of the same global species that gave rise to living humans.

     


    1. Unified Erectus: Fossil Suggests Single Human Ancestor, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The newfound specimen is younger than most African fossils assigned to H. ergaster and contemporary with some Asian H. erectus specimens, with which it shares striking similarities.

      This is the first time that it's been possible to compare Asian and African fossils from the same period, says W. Henry Gilbert of the University of California, Berkeley, who discovered the fossil. The find may vindicate researchers who argued against dividing the species, he says.


  6. Excavations In Eastern Europe Reveal Ancient Human Lifestyles, Science Daily Mag, U. Colorado at Boulder Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: "It was critical for these people to adapt to cold climates in order to survive," said Hoffecker, an INSTAAR Fellow whose research has been funded by the Leakey Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the National Geographic Society.

    The modern humans at Kostenki also were creating symbols, art and language, as evidenced by decorated and engraved figurines, as well as some supporting anatomical evidence, he said.

    "There may have been a relationship between their ability to formulate and communicate concepts through language and their ability to manipulate their environment through complex technology," he said.


  7. Control of Synaptic Strength by Glial TNFalpha, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Activity-dependent modulation of synaptic efficacy in the brain contributes to neural circuit development and experience-dependent plasticity. Although glia are affected by activity and ensheathe synapses, their influence on synaptic strength has largely been ignored. Here, we show that a protein produced by glia, tumor necrosis factor (TNF ), enhances synaptic efficacy (...). Thus, the continual presence of TNF is required for preservation of synaptic strength at excitatory synapses. Through its effects on AMPA receptor trafficking, TNF may play roles in synaptic plasticity and modulating responses to neural injury.
    • Control of Synaptic Strength by Glial TNFalpha, Beattie, Eric C., Stellwagen, David, Morishita, Wade, Bresnahan, Jacqueline C., Ha, Byeong Keun, Von Zastrow, Mark, Beattie, Michael S., Malenka, Robert C., Science 2002 295: 2282-2285

    1. Materials Science: Breaking The Neural Code, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The precise information that is conveyed between nerve cells remains unknown. Networks of nerve cells grown on silicon chips, using a polyester as a guide, may bring us closer to translating the elusive neural language. (...)

      Now Merz and Fromherz have built on the results of such experiments, and have obtained well-defined, if very small, stable networks of cultured neurons from the pond snail Lymnaea stagnalis. Using microfabrication techniques, they etched a series of pits and grooves in a polyester surface on a silicon substrate.


  8. Neurobiology: Ready To Unlearn, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: After rabbits learn to associate a tone with a small shock near the eye, they blink when they hear the tone. Learning requires activation of nerve fibres known as climbing fibres. Inhibition of these fibres leads to 'unlearning'. (...)

    Just as important as learning an association like this, however, is forgetting it when necessary. So, if the tone is sounded without a shock, the rate and amplitude of blinking gradually decrease until the tone no longer evokes a response. This process is known as extinction (...)


    1. Signal For The Extinction Of Conditioned Eyelid Responses, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A fundamental tenet of cerebellar learning theories asserts that climbing fibre afferents from the inferior olive provide a teaching signal that promotes the gradual adaptation of movements. Data from several forms of motor learning provide support for this tenet. In pavlovian eyelid conditioning, (...), the unconditioned stimulus promotes acquisition of conditioned eyelid responses by activating climbing fibre. (...)

      Here, we show that inhibition of climbing fibres serves as a teaching signal for extinction, where learning not to respond is signalled by presenting a tone without the unconditioned stimulus.


  9. The Psychophysiology of Real-Time Financial Risk Processing, J. Cognitive Neuroscience Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: A longstanding controversy in economics and finance is whether financial markets are governed by rational forces or by emotional responses. We study the importance of emotion in the decision-making process of professional securities traders by measuring their physiological characteristics (e.g., skin conductance, blood volume pulse, etc.) during live trading sessions while simultaneously capturing real-time prices from which market events can be detected. In a sample of 10 traders, we find statistically significant differences in mean electrodermal responses during transient market events relative to no-event control periods (...)

    1. The Good, The Bad, And The Anterior Cingulate, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary: On page 2279, psychologists report that electrical activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC)--an area tucked into the crease between the two cerebral hemispheres--registers financial wins and losses as people play a gambling game. The authors believe this brain activity may represent an immediate emotional reaction to the outcomes. The findings add a twist to theories on the role of the ACC and may provide insight into how decisions are swayed by emotion.

       


    2. The Medial Frontal Cortex and the Rapid Processing of Monetary Gains and Losses, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: We report the observation of neural processing that occurs within 265 milliseconds after outcome stimuli that inform human participants about gains and losses in a gambling task. A negative-polarity event-related brain potential, probably generated by a medial-frontal region in or near the anterior cingulate cortex, was greater in amplitude when a participant's choice between two alternatives resulted in a loss than when it resulted in a gain. (...) It follows that medial-frontal computations may contribute to mental states that participate in higher level decisions, including economic choices.


    3. Impulsive Rats Illuminate Decision-Making, Science Now Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: In this test, the lesioned rats were twice as likely as unlesioned rats to choose the certain, small rewards. The team concludes that the lesioned rats' eagerness to take small, certain, immediate rewards over large, uncertain, delayed rewards indicates a tendency to make impulsive choices.

      (...) it remains to be seen how the OPFC [orbital prefrontal cortex, Ed.] interacts with other areas of the brain, such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, that also play important roles in motivation and emotion.

       


  10. Self-Organization and Identification of Web Communities, IEEE Computer Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:  Millions of individuals operating independently author the Web's information.(...) A Web community is a collection of Web pages in which each member page has more hyperlinks within the community than outside it. (...) the authors describe an approach that retains the transparency of methods such as cocitation and bibliographic coupling in explaining why pages belong to a community,yet can identify Web communities of arbitrary dimensions. Applications of their method include creating improved search engines, content filtering, and objective analysis of Web content and the relationships between Web communities.

    1. Finding Networks Within Networks, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      A new mathematical procedure, or algorithm, picks out those members within a larger network-for instance, related sites on the World Wide Web-that have especially close ties.


    2. Social Networks From The Web To The Enterprise, Internet Computing Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Social network theory can be applied to the Internet, and has become so significant that developers are incorporating it into the design of search engines and enterprise portals. Web portals can be used to model relationships between people, the Web pages they build and access, and the interactions between them. In an adaptive ranking model, the value of a document is raised by the frequency with which it is accessed in previous searches. (...) Overall, the Web will continue to serve as a testing ground for social theory that can be translated to enterprise information management, although the translation is not seamless.

    3. The Singularity: A Talk With Ray Kurzweil, Edge.org Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: We are entering a new era. I call it "the Singularity." It's a merger between human intelligence and machine intelligence that is going to create something bigger than itself. It's the cutting edge of evolution on our planet. One can make a strong case that it's actually the cutting edge of the evolution of intelligence in general, because there's no indication that it's occurred anywhere else. To me that is what human civilization is all about. (...) What human beings are is a species that has undergone a cultural and technological evolution, and it's the nature of evolution that it accelerates, and that its powers grow exponentially, and that's what we're talking about. The next stage of this will be to amplify our own intellectual powers with the results of our technology.

  11. Evolution Of An Antiviral RNAse Of Higher Primates, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: An improved understanding of the evolution of gene function at the molecular level may provide significant insights into the origin of biological novelty and adaptation. With the approach of ancestral protein reconstruction, we here address the question of how a dramatically enhanced ribonucleolytic activity and the related antiviral activity evolved in a recently duplicated ribonuclease (eosinophil-derived neurotoxin) gene of higher primates. (...) Overall, our study illustrates the power of the "paleomolecular biochemistry" approach in delineating the complex interplays of amino acid substitutions in evolution and in identifying the molecular basis of biological innovation.

  12. Enriched Odor Exposure Improves Odor Memory, J. Neurosci. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In the mammalian forebrain, most neurons originate from proliferating cells in the ventricular zone lining the lateral ventricles, including a discrete area of the subventricular zone (SVZ). In this region, neurogenesis continues into adulthood. (...) The olfactory system thus provides an attractive model to investigate neuronal production and survival, processes involving interplay between genetic and epigenetic influences. The present study was conducted to investigate whether exposure to an odor-enriched environment affects neurogenesis and learning in adult mice. (...) neurogenesis could be associated with improved olfactory memory.

  13. Timing Of Chemical Signal Critical For Normal Emotional Development, National Inst. Mental Health Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:  (...) created mice that lacked the protein, which brain cells use to receive signals from the chemical messenger serotonin, by knocking-out the gene that codes for it. As adults, these "knockout" mice were slow to venture into -- or eat in -- unfamiliar environments. By selectively restoring, or "rescuing" certain populations of the receptor proteins, the researchers have now pinpointed when and where they enable the brain to cope with anxiety.

    Serotonin stimulation (...) likely triggers "long lasting changes in brain chemistry or structure that are essential for normal emotional behavior throughout life"


    1. Non-Human Primate Models For Investigating Fear And Anxiety, Neurosc. Behav. Rev. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Non-human primates exhibit similar physiological and behavioral responses to anxiety-inducing situations as humans and have, in fact, been successfully employed in both conditioned (i.e. conflict paradigms) and ethologically based tests of fear/anxiety (i.e. involuntary isolation, social interaction, human threat, predator confrontation). This review focuses on the available non-human primate models for investigating fear/anxiety, addressing their advantages, shortcomings, and conceptual framework on which they are based. Lastly, a new ethologically based model to study anxiety and fear-induced avoidance (...) is discussed.


  14. Molecules, Muscles, And Machines: Universal Performance Characteristics Of Motors, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:  Animal- and human-made motors vary widely in size and shape, are constructed of vastly different materials, use different mechanisms, and produce an enormous range of mass-specific power. Despite these differences, there is remarkable consistency in the maximum net force produced by broad classes of animal- and human-made motors. (...) Remarkably, this finding indicates that most of the motors used by humans and animals for transportation have a common upper limit of mass-specific net force output that is independent of materials and mechanisms.

    Editor's Note: It appears that an independent control parameter of these systems could be the average lifetime of the motors. A human heart can have a life-time of hundred years with billions of work cycles whereas an bomb could be seen as "single use motor" with a lifetime measured in microseconds.


  15. An Analysis Of Nest Building In Golden Hamster, Behavioural Processes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Contributing Editor's Note: While building nests, animals also calculate how much raw materials are to be fetched and from what distance- also thus fix number of trips. Even they do the optimization of such parameters. This is nicely described in the following article dealing with experiments when hamsters build their nest. The researchers also show, from difference in speed when searching for resources and subsequently running back -that the animals sense different environmental pressure.

    Abstract: Nest-deprived animals were submitted to run alleys 30, 90 and 180 cm long to access a source containing paper strips as nest material (Experiment 1) or were submitted to the same travel costs in 24-h experimental sessions (Experiment 2). We noted that increased travel costs were related to a decreased number of trips to the source, larger amounts (cm2) of nest material transported per trip, longer intervals between trips, and increased time spent at the source and in nest building activity.

    We conclude that (...) results are in accordance with the predictions of microeconomic and optimal foraging theories.


  16. Efficient Coding Of Natural Sounds, Nature Neuroscience Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The auditory system encodes sound by decomposing the amplitude signal arriving at the ear into multiple frequency bands whose center frequencies and bandwidths are approximately exponential functions of the distance from the stapes. Here we report that several basic auditory nerve fiber tuning properties can be accounted for by adapting a population of filter shapes to encode natural sounds efficiently. The form of the code depends on sound class (...). These results suggest that auditory nerve fibers encode a broad set of natural sounds in a manner consistent with information theoretic principles.

  17. Complexity Of Human Immune Response Profiles, Autoimmunity Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:  Complex protein antigens contain multiple potential T cell recognition epitopes, which are generated through a processing pathway involving partial antigen degradation via proteases, binding to MHC molecules, and display on the APC surface, followed by recognition via the T cell receptor. We have investigated recognition of the GAD65 protein, one of the well-characterized autoantigens in type I diabetes, among individuals carrying the HLA-DR4 haplotypes characteristic of susceptibility to IDDM. (...)

    Highly variable proliferative and cytokine release profiles were observed, even among T cells specific for a single GAD65 epitope.


  18. Statistical Analysis Provides Key Links in Milosevic Trial, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Science took center stage last week in the war-crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic, Yugoslavia's president and commander of its armed forces during the conflagrations in the Balkans in the 1990s. atrick Ball, a statistician with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (publisher of Science), testified that evidence his team has gathered is consistent with the hypothesis that Yugoslav forces conducted a systematic campaign of killings and expulsions of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in the spring of 1999.

  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks Next Article Bookmark and Share

    International Seminar on Terrorism and Low Intensity Conflict in the South Asian Region Organized by Department of International Relations, Jadavpur University in collaboration with International Law Association, Law Research Institute, Calcutta, India, 02/03/06-08
    • Conference Report contributed by Atin Das

     


    1. Bombs and Quakes, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Could the bombing of Afghanistan have resulted in recent earthquakes there?

      A. There is only a remote possibility of a seismic effect from the reported bombing, said Dr. Arthur Lerner-Lam, an associate director at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.


    2. Grinding Terror or Grand Adventure: Choose Your War, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: I was playing Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis, a game that gives the player a disturbingly realistic vision of war. My reaction to such a game might once have been, (...)

      Starting off as a simple foot soldier, a player will later command squads and tanks and fly fighter planes and helicopters. The game is so real and so comprehensive that the United States Marine Corps is using a modified version called Virtual Battlefield Systems 1 as a tool to train troops.


    3. Try Suing Saddam, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The United States should launch an effort to prosecute Saddam for crimes against humanity. This would destabilize his regime at home, encourage more defections of Iraqi officials and military officers, and increase the prospect of a coup that, in the best-case scenario, would render an invasion unnecessary.

      I came across this idea in references in books by Richard Butler, who led the United Nations inspection effort in Iraq, and by Kanan Makiya, author of the leading account of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.


  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Leave It To Evolution: Duplicated Gene Aids Odd Monkey Diet, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 181, 02/03/23, also available as audio file A duplicated gene that has rapidly evolved helps certain monkey species thrive on a diet of leaves
      2. Cold Hamsters: Wild Species Boosts Immunity For Winter, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 182, 02/03/23, also available as audio file, Hamsters that have to survive winter outdoors in Siberia rev up their immune systems, including their response to psychological stress, when days grow short.
      3. Microbes Fire An Oozie: Slime Engines May Push Bacteria Along, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 180, 02/03/23, also available as audio file, Some bacteria may propel themselves with slime engines: clusters of nozzles at the ends of the microbes that exude viscous goop.
      4. Water for the Rock, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 184, 02/03/23, also available as audio file, A long-popular theory about how Earth got wet-that the oceans are puddles left by an ancient rain of comets-doesn't seem to hold water, and new hypotheses suggest that the celestial pantry is now empty of a key ingredient in the recipe for Earth.
      5. Computer Simulates Full Nuclear Blast, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 189, 02/03/23, also available as audio file, In a classified nuclear-weapon experiment, the world's fastest computer simulated a thermonuclear blast in three dimensions.
      6. When Brains Wring Colors From Words, Science News, Vol. 161, No. 12, p. 189, 02/03/23, also available as audio file, Brain-scan data indicate that one type of synesthesia, in which people involuntarily see vivid colors while listening to spoken words, is more like a color hallucination than an attempt to imagine colors.
      7. Brave New Drug: Compound Stops Cowpox And Smallpox Viruses, Nathan Seppa, , Science News 2002; Vol. 161, No. 12, /03/23, By cloaking an antiviral drug in a fat molecule, scientists have developed a new compound that people might someday swallow to ward off smallpox.

    2. Other Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Brain Imaging Of The Central Executive Component Of Working Memory,  F. Collette and M. Van der Linden , Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews, Vol. 26, Issue 2, pp: 105-125, March 2002
      2. Chaos And Hyperchaos In Shape Memory Systems, M. A. Savi, P. M. C. L. Pacheco, Int. J. Bifur. and Chaos, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 645-657, April, 2002
      3. Generation Of Chaotic Beats, K. Grygiel & P. Szlachetka,  , Int. J. Bifur. and Chaos, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 635-644, March,2002.
      4. Voluntary Action And Conscious Awareness, P. Haggard, S. Clark & J. Kalogeras,  Nature Neuroscience, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp 382 - 385, April 2002
      5. Discussing the Nature of Reality, Between Buffets, Dennis Overbye, NYTimes, 02/03/26
      6. Theory Of Mnd In Patients With Frontal Variant Frontotemporal Dementia And Alzheimer's Disease: Theoretical And Practical Implications, Carol Gregory, Sinclair Lough, Valerie Stone, Sharon Erzinclioglu, Louise Martin, Simon Baron-Cohen, John R. Hodges, Brain 2002 April 1; 125(4): p. 752-764
      7. Don't Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave As Joystick, Anne Eisenberg, NYTimes, 02/03/28
      8. Analysis of Kinetics Using a Hybrid Maximum-Entropy/Nonlinear-Least-Squares Method: Application to Protein Folding, Peter J. Steinbach, Roxana Ionescu, C. Robert Matthews, Biophys. J. 2002 April 1; 82(4): p. 2244-2255

    3. Webcast Announcements Bookmark and Share

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      1. SwarmFest 2002: Sixth Annual Swarm Users Meeting, Seattle, 02/03/29-31
      2. AIS'2002: Towards Component-Based Modeling and Simulation, Lisbon, Portugal, 02/04/07-10
      3. Manufacturing Complexity Network Conference, Cambridge, UK, 02/04/09-10
      4. Modeling & Simulation of Microsystems (MSM 2002) & Intl. Conf on Comp Nano Science (ICCN 2002), San Juan, Puerto Rico, 02/04/22-25
      5. 'Introducing Complexity', The University of Liverpool, 02/04/24
      6. International Conference Ethics and Technological Complexity, Louvain-la-Neuve, 02/05/29-31
      7. PROTECTING THE HOMELAND: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications of 9/11, Washington, DC, 02/04/29-05/01
      8. World Conference NL 2002 - Networked Learning in a Global Environment: Challenges and Solutions for Virtual Education, Berlin, Germany, 02/05/01-04
      9. Electronic Conference on Foundations of Information Science: The Nature Of Information: Conceptions, Misconceptions, And Paradoxes, 02/05/06
      10. Managing Complex Organizations In A Complex World, Cambridge, MA, 02/05/09-10
      11. Mass Customisation: Strategies and Enabling Technology, U. Warwick, UK, 02/05/14-15
      12. International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2002), Nashua, NH, 02/06/9-14
      13. Sitges Conference "Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks", Sitges, Spain, 02/06/10-14
      14. Complex Systems: Control and Modeling Problems, Samara, Russia, 02/06/17
      15. International Conference SocioPhysics, ZIF - Bielefeld, Germany, 02/06/06-09
      16. 2nd International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL'02), Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, 02/06/12-15
      17. International Conference: Emergence in Chemical Systems, University of Alaska Anchorage, 02/06/20-23
      18. Let's Face Chaos Through Nonlinear Dynamics, Maribor, Slovenia, 02/06/30 - 07/14
      19. 7th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition - ICMPC7, Sydney, 02/07/17-21
      20. Complexity and Philosophy, Norwood, Massachusetts, USA, 02/07/29-30
      21. 12th Ann Intl Conf Society For Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences: Chaos and Complexity in a Changing World, Portland, OR, USA, 02/08/01-04
      22. Self-Organisation and Evolution of Social Behaviour, Monte Verità, Switzerland, 02/09/08-13
      23. Complex Systems (CS02) Complexity with Agent-Based Modeling, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, 02/09/10-12
      24. 3rd Intl NAISO Symposium on Engineering Of Intelligent Systems (EIS 20020), Malaga, Spain, 02/09/24-27
      25. ACRI 2002, 5th Intl Conf on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, Geneva, Switzerland, 02/10/09-11 
      26. 4th Asia-Pacific Conference on Simulated Evolution And Learning (SEAL'02), 9th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP'02), International Conference on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery (FSKD'02), Singapore, 02/11/18-22
      27. Managing the Complex IV, Naples , FL, Early December 2002
      28. Artificial Life VIII, UNSW, Sydney, Australia, 02/12/09-13
      29. Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences (HICSS-36), Big Island, Hawaii, 03/01/06-09
      30. 21st ICDE World Conference on Open Learning and Distance Education, Hong Kong, 03/06/01-05

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