Complexity Digest 2002.15

15-Apr-2002

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Content

  1. The Cereal of the World's Poor Takes Center Stage, Science
    1. The Importance of Rice, Science
    2. Rice: Boiled Down to Bare Essentials, Science
    3. A Deal for the Rice Genome, Science
  2. An Extensive Network Of Coupling Among Gene Expression Machines, Nature
  3. Genetics: Immaculate Misconception, Nature
  4. Medicine: Danger - Misfolding Proteins, Nature
    1. Inherent Toxicity Of Aggregates Implies A Common Mechanism For Protein Misfolding Diseases, Nature
  5. A Complexity Drain On Cells, Evolution
  6. Organized Assembly Of Carbon Nanotubes, Nature
  7. Order Amidst Turbulence, Science
    1. Long-Lived Vortices As A Mode Of Deep Ventilation In The Greenland Sea, Nature
  8. Luminous Matter May Arise From A Turbulent Plasma State Of The Early Universe, arXiv
  9. The Semantic Web, ITRI, Brighton University
  10. Seeing With Sound, ABC News
    1. Perceiving Patterns In Random Series: Dynamic Processing Of Sequence In Prefrontal Cortex, Nature Neuroscience
  11. Dynamics Of Brain Activation: An Electrophysiological Study, Brain Topography
  12. Simulated Evolution of Language: a Review of the Field, JASSS
    1. The Role Of Oblivion, Memory Size And Spatial Separation In Dynamic Language Games, JASSS
  13. Innovation Trends, Emerald
  14. A Multi-Agent Simulation Platform For Modeling Perfectly Rational And Bounded-Rational Agents In Organizations, JASSS
    1. The Integration of Defectors in a Cooperative Setting, JASSS
  15. Cooperation and Competition Between Relatives, Science
    1. Breeding Together: Kin Selection and Mutualism in Cooperative Vertebrates, Science
  16. Everyone Is A Winner In A Two-Atom Quantum Computer Game, Nature Science Update
    1. Games People Play on Computers, NYTimes
    2. Wanted: Video Game Developers Of Tomorrow, CNN
  17. Accelerated Growth Of Networks, arXiv
  18. Smaller Spiders Are Better Lovers, Nature Science Update
    1. Climbing To Reach Females: Romeo Should Be Small, Evolution
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Transcript of Warren Bass's Visit, NYtimes.com
    2. Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties, NYTimes
    3. Systematic United States Disregard Of Its Treaty Obligations Jeopardizes Nuclear Nonproliferation And Global Security, IEER
    4. Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, IEER/LCNP
    5. A Treaty Bush Shouldn't 'Unsign', NYTimes
    6. Will an International Criminal Court work?, BBC Online
    7. Afghan Officials Arrest Hundreds in Bombing Plot, NYTimes
    8. The War On Terrorism: What Does It Mean for Science?, Audio Files from the AAAS Symposium , 01/12/18
    9. Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security, National Defense University
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Papers
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements

  1. The Cereal of the World's Poor Takes Center Stage, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    conclude that sequencing of the genomes of two rice subspecies will be the first sequencing project to yield tangible results for humankind from the standpoints of food security and combating malnutrition. The draft sequence of the indica rice subspecies by the Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI) and of the japonica subspecies by Syngenta will have a global impact on human health. These drafts will be combined with a complete rice genome sequence being compiled by the public International Rice Genome Sequencing Project (IRGSP) (...)

    1. The Importance of Rice, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The value of having this information in the public domain rests on the hundreds of millions of people who depend on rice (...). Not only are more calories obtained worldwide from rice than from any other single food, but the rice sequence affords entry into the similar but larger genomes of the other cereal grains on which the world depends.

      This publication project has, however, attracted some controversy because of our willingness to allow the authors at Syngenta to make their data available through a means other than GenBank.


    2. Rice: Boiled Down to Bare Essentials, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary: For more than a decade, groups around the world have been working to sequence the rice genome. As with the sequencing of the human genome, these efforts have been marked by rivalries, fears of commercial control over basic genetic data, and a controversy over the conditions under which Science is publishing one of the draft sequences (see "A Deal for the Rice Genome"). This article traces those efforts; the following story relates how a team in China produced a draft sequence in record time.


    3. A Deal for the Rice Genome, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary: For the second time in just over a year, Science is at the center of a debate over public access to the data behind a major genome paper it is publishing. The issue: Should journals refuse to publish any DNA sequence paper unless the authors make the data freely available through a public database such as GenBank?

       


  2. An Extensive Network Of Coupling Among Gene Expression Machines, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:  Gene expression in eukaryotes requires several multi-component cellular machines. Each machine carries out a separate step in the gene expression pathway (...). Recent studies lead to the view that, in contrast to a simple linear assembly line, a complex and extensively coupled network has evolved to coordinate the activities of the gene expression machines. The extensive coupling is consistent with a model in which the machines are tethered to each other to form 'gene expression factories' that maximize the efficiency and specificity of each step in gene expression.

  3. Genetics: Immaculate Misconception, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In mammals, mother and father make an equal genetic, but an unequal 'epigenetic', contribution to offspring. (...).

    A fertilized egg contains two copies of every gene, one from sperm and one from oocyte. Usually, both copies are expressed in relevant cells in the embryo. But some genes are specifically labelled ('imprinted') so that only the maternal or paternal copy is active. So an embryo receives an equal genetic contribution from its parents, but the parental genomes are not functionally equivalent, explaining why both are needed.


  4. Medicine: Danger - Misfolding Proteins, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Protein folding is vital to living organisms because it adds functional flesh to the bare bones of genes. But errors in this process generate misfolded structures that can be lethal.

    The functions of most proteins depend upon the precise three-dimensional structures of their mature, folded forms. Take, for example, the most toxic substances known - proteins such as ricin, found in the seeds of the castor oil plant. (...) ricin is an enzyme that inactivates ribosomes, (...) The enzymatic activities of such toxins depend on their mature three-dimensional forms, (...)


    1. Inherent Toxicity Of Aggregates Implies A Common Mechanism For Protein Misfolding Diseases, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A range of human degenerative conditions, including Alzheimer's disease, light-chain amyloidosis and the spongiform encephalopathies, is associated with the deposition in tissue of proteinaceous aggregates known as amyloid fibrils or plaques. (...). Here we show that species formed early in the aggregation of these non-disease-associated proteins can be inherently highly cytotoxic. This finding provides added evidence that avoidance of protein aggregation is crucial for the preservation of biological function and suggests common features in the origins of this family of protein deposition diseases.


  5. A Complexity Drain On Cells, Evolution Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Contributing Editor's Note: The following work tests a hypothesis that, in evolution, as higher-level entities arise from associations of lower-level organisms the lower-level organisms will tend to lose much of their internal complexity. In other words, in hierarchical transitions, there is a drain on numbers of part types at the lower level. Also, this suggests that a mammal as a whole might have more cell-part types than a Euglena. The author believes that the occurrence of losses, a drain, is consistent with a net gain and also represents data in support of this.

    Excerpts: The hypothesis offered here is significant in that it suggests that this buildup of nonhierarchical complexity in evolution may be partly offset by losses, that is, by a kind of complexity drain. Importantly, the point is not only that complexity decreases occur. Many apparent cases of decrease are well known and routinely cited, especially those thought to have occurred in the evolution of certain parasites. Rather, the suggestion is that decreases occur regularly, in conjunction with hierarchical increases, perhaps in a lawlike way.


  6. Organized Assembly Of Carbon Nanotubes, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Nanoscale structures need to be arranged into well-defined configurations in order to build integrated systems. Here we use a chemical-vapour deposition method with gas-phase catalyst delivery to direct the assembly of carbon nanotubes in a variety of predetermined orientations onto silicon/silica substrates, building them into one-, two- and three-dimensional arrangements. The preference of nanotubes to grow selectively on and normal to silica surfaces forces them to inherit the lithographically machined template topography of their substrates, allowing the sites of nucleation and the direction of growth to be controlled.

  7. Order Amidst Turbulence, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The Sun's magnetic field has profound impacts on our high-tech society. The energetic particles of the solar wind, coronal mass ejections, and explosive flares are all linked to changes in the magnetic fields that pervade the solar atmosphere. Such events can short-circuit satellites in space and darken power grids on the ground. (...)

    The fields can be ordered on some scales and chaotic on others. During 22-year cycles of global magnetic activity, temporary magnetic disturbances (sunspots) erupt according to well-defined rules for field parity and latitudes of emergence.


    1. Long-Lived Vortices As A Mode Of Deep Ventilation In The Greenland Sea, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The Greenland Sea is one of a few sites in the world ocean where convection to great depths occurs (...). Here we present tracer, float and hydrographic observations of long-lived ( 1 year) and compact ( 5 km core diameter) vortices that reach down to depths of 2 km. The eddies form in winter, (...) and rotate clockwise with periods of a few days. (...) We infer that these submesoscale coherent eddies contribute substantially to the input of Atlantic and polar waters to depths greater than 500 m in the central Greenland Sea.


  8. Luminous Matter May Arise From A Turbulent Plasma State Of The Early Universe, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The almost perfect uniformity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965 appears to present clearcut evidence that the universe was uniform and in equilibrium at the decoupling transition when a plasma of protons and electrons condensed into a gas of Hydrogen. COBE indicates that only very small ripples of order 10-5 existed at decoupling. Gravity then caused hydrogen to cluster and possibly reheat parts of the universe to form the luminous matter that we observe today. We suggest an alternative scenario, where a spatially intermittent structure of extremely hot matter already existed in an otherwise uniform plasma state at the decoupling transition. The plasma was not in equilibrium but in a very high Reynolds number turbulent state. The sparse bursts would not affect the uniformity of the CMB radiation. Luminous matter originates from localized hot bursts already present in the plasma state prior to decoupling. No reheating, and no exotic matter is needed to get luminous matter.

  9. The Semantic Web, ITRI, Brighton University Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Contributing Editor's Note: The Semantic Web project is developing technologies for improving the performance and capabilities of the Internet. In this talk, James Hendler gave an overview of the actual developments and perspectives of the Semantic Web. See also ComDig 2001.16.

    Excerpt: ¡K Suppose you are browsing the web and you come across a web page about a meeting. It has the time and place and links to other documents including the home pages of other people involved in organizing and attending the meeting. You decide to attend, and click the "register" button. At this point, you would like your calendar to have an entry at the right date and time, with hypertext links to the details. You would like your in-car navigation system, at that date and time , to be programmed with the coordinates of the location. You would like your Rolodex to seem to contain, until the meeting is over, the contact info for the people involved. You'd like to do all this with one click. ¡K. For data (and the programs that process it) we are still pre-Web!


  10. Seeing With Sound, ABC News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Invented by Peter B. L. Meijer, (...) The vOICe software translates images from the camera on-the-fly into closely corresponding sounds, allowing users to "see" live camera views of their surrounding environment using their ears. (...)The method is not based on sonar or echolocation, but instead uses real visual input from a normal webcam.

    Contributing Editor's Note: Reports from different projects attempting to allow blind people to "see" again are also shedding light into "how do we see". It seems that the feeling of "seeing" is produced more by sensorimotor invariances than by functional eyes.


    1. Perceiving Patterns In Random Series: Dynamic Processing Of Sequence In Prefrontal Cortex, Nature Neuroscience Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: The stimuli consisted of a randomized set of verbal (words vs. non-words) and pictorial items (line drawings of objects vs. scrambled drawings). After each stimulus, subjects had to decide whether it corresponds to a recognizable word or objects. ERP map (...) showed that verbal and pictorial stimuli elicited different field patterns in two time segments between ~190-400 ms. Before and after this period, map patterns were similar (...). These findings suggest that, while sharing an initial common network, recognition of verbal and pictorial stimuli subsequently engage different brain regions during time periods generally allocated to the semantic processing of stimuli.

  11. Dynamics Of Brain Activation: An Electrophysiological Study, Brain Topography Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Contributing Editor's Note: Computer simulations are being used not only to process natural language (e.g. translators, summarizers, voice synthetizers). They are proving to be useful as well for studying and understanding language as a phenomenon, its evolution, and acquisition.

    Abstract: This is an overview of recent computational work done in the simulated evolution of language. It is prefaced by an overview of the broader issues in linguistics that computational models may help to clarify. Is language innate - genetically specified in the human organism in some way, a product of natural selection? Or can the properties of language be accounted for by general cognitive capabilities that did not develop as a consequence of language-specific selective pressures? After a consideration of the intellectual background surrounding these issues, we will examine how recent computational work sheds light on them.


  12. Simulated Evolution of Language: a Review of the Field, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: In this paper we present some multiagent simulations in which the individuals try to reach a uniform vocabulary to name spatial movements. Each agent has initially a random vocabulary that can be modified by means of interactions with the other agents. As the objective is to name movements, the topic of conversation is chosen by moving. Each agent can remember a finite number of words per movement, with certain strength. We show the importance of the forgetting process and memory size in these simulations, discuss the effect of the number of agents on the time to agree and present a few experiments where the evolution of vocabularies takes place in a divided range.

    1. The Role Of Oblivion, Memory Size And Spatial Separation In Dynamic Language Games, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt:  There is no doubt that some firms manage risk more effectively than others. Hattori and Wycoff examine this issue in US firms, asking why much-praised innovation projects such as the Lucent Technologies creativity centre, IdeaVerse, have been closed down, and noting other discontinued projects at Ford, DuPont and Polaroid.

      The authors contrast the old approach to creativity with the new approach that places innovation resources in business units rather than in specialist centres, focuses on business strategy, is customer-oriented and based on teamwork and team rewards.


  13. Innovation Trends, Emerald Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: This paper presents an agent-based simulation framework for the analysis of the equilibria that emerge in a complex structure such as an organization; we can think of some of these equilibria as corporate culture. We concentrate on modeling the effort exerted by heterogeneous agents in an organization, and how the interaction between them may lead to a common level of effort (corporate culture). The simple model we propose is a system in which agents interact in a dynamic, adaptive and evolving way. Such a model encompasses many of the peculiarities which make organization modeling a hard task, because it would involve a difficult mathematical problem with solution highly sensitive to parameters. The computational approach, by contrast, allows us to overcome some of these difficulties and to consider easily both perfectly rational and bounded-rational agents; in this way we are able to study the interactions between different types of agents and interpret them in the relevant economic frame. Consequently we can observe how different compositions of the population may lead the system to different common behaviours; the implications of our findings are both descriptive and normative, and shed light on some core problems of the economics of organization design.

  14. A Multi-Agent Simulation Platform For Modeling Perfectly Rational And Bounded-Rational Agents In Organizations, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: This paper describes a study of the robustness of cooperative conventions. We observe the effect of the invasion of non-cooperating subjects into a community adopting a cooperative convention. The convention is described by an indefinitely repeated prisoner-dilemma game. We check the effects on the robustness of the cooperating convention of two characteristics of the game, namely the size of the prisonner-dilemma groups and the "intelligence" of the players. The relevance for real-world problems is considered. We find that the "intelligence" of the players plays a crucial role in the way players learn to cooperate. The simulation program is written in SWARM (Java version).


    1. The Integration of Defectors in a Cooperative Setting, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Individuals are predicted to behave more altruistically and less competitively toward their relatives, because they share a relatively high proportion of their genes (e.g., one-half for siblings and one-eighth for cousins). Consequently, by helping a relative reproduce, an individual passes its genes to the next generation, increasing their Darwinian fitness. This idea, termed kin selection, has been applied to a wide range of phenomena in systems ranging from replicating molecules to humans. Nevertheless, competition between relatives can reduce, and even totally negate, the kin-selected benefits of altruism toward relatives.

  15. Cooperation and Competition Between Relatives, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In cooperatively breeding vertebrates, nonbreeding helpers raise young produced by dominant breeders. (...) there is increasing evidence that helpers can be unrelated to the young they are raising. (...) It now seems likely that the evolutionary mechanisms maintaining cooperative breeding are diverse and that, in some species, the direct benefits of helping may be sufficient to maintain cooperative societies. The benefits of cooperation in vertebrate societies may consequently show parallels with those in human societies, where cooperation between unrelated individuals is frequent and social institutions are often maintained by generalized reciprocity.


    1. Breeding Together: Kin Selection and Mutualism in Cooperative Vertebrates, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Contributing Editor's Note: While in the classical form players have a stark choice to cooperate or to defect, developers demonstrated that a quantum game can be unwinnable by either of two players if both play rationally, but that both can win if they use quantum strategies. The game with two players compete by choosing one of two possible strategies, say A and B. If played with quantum rules, there are other options where players can interdependently choose mixtures of strategies - partly A and partly B - their choices are said to be entangled. This outcome of mutual defection is known as the Nash equilibrium, after the mathematician John Nash who showed that games like this create stable outcomes if played logically.

      Excerpts: (...) as the amount of entanglement increases from zero, the game switches twice. First, instead of both players doing equally poorly, one does better than the other. Increasing the entanglement still further produces another switch to the fully quantum game in which both players do equally well.
      >It is an organic molecule in which radio waves can switch the nuclei in a pair of atoms between different states. Different nuclear states represent the strategies of the two players (...) can be entangled. The interaction between the nuclei produces a signal which is a measure of the pay-off that different atomic configurations generate.


  16. Everyone Is A Winner In A Two-Atom Quantum Computer Game, Nature Science Update Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: But Quake and Doom are relative anomalies on the best-seller lists. The computer game charts are in fact dominated by a completely different genre: what are called "god-games," or simulators, in which the player manages a complex system of interacting agents. There are games that let you simulate railroad empires, tropical dictatorships, golf resorts and countless other worlds.

    Over the past few years, these remarkably sophisticated games have become increasingly popular.(...) Unlike the rest of popular culture, the most sophisticated games consistently rise to the top.


    1. Games People Play on Computers, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Somewhere, in a darkened bedroom or a cinderblock basement, a kid is sitting at a computer, dreaming of creating the perfect video game.

      In the past, that dream probably would have died.

      But as the market for video games accelerates into a multibillion dollar industry, the need for developers to feed games to the marketplace has grown. (...)

      Students who might have signed up for film classes a decade or two ago are increasingly looking at video games as a means of expression.


    2. Wanted: Video Game Developers Of Tomorrow, CNN Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: In many real growing networks the mean number of connections per vertex increases with time. The Internet, the Word Wide Web, collaboration networks, and many others display this behavior. Such a growth can be called accelerated. We show that this acceleration influences distribution of connections and may determine the structure of a network. We discuss general consequences of the acceleration and demonstrate its features applying simple illustrating examples. In particular, we show that the accelerated growth fairly well explains the structure of the Word Web (the network of interacting words of human language). Also, we use the models of the accelerated growth of networks to describe a wealth condensation transition in evolving societies.

  17. Accelerated Growth Of Networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We develop a statistical mechanics approach for random networks. We construct equilibrium statistical ensembles of random networks, obtain their partition functions and main characteristics. We find simple dynamical construction procedures that produce equilibrium uncorrelated random networks with an arbitrary degree distribution. It follows from our theory that in equilibrium networks, fat-tailed degree distributions may exist only starting from some critical average number of connections of a vertex, in a phase with a condensate of edges.


  18. Smaller Spiders Are Better Lovers, Nature Science Update Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Spiders show some of the most extreme size differences between the sexes in nature. A female black widow, for example, is 100 times heavier than a male. (...) use simple physics to show that an animal's average climbing speed is inversely proportional to its size.which the male has to make a long climb, the team found. The gap is widest for tree-dwellers, smallest for ground-dwellers, and int
    >Male and females differ most in species in ermediate for those living in tall grass and shrubs.
    >The difference is also greater for larger species (...).

    1. Climbing To Reach Females: Romeo Should Be Small, Evolution Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: We argue that smaller males are favored in species in which the male must climb to reach females located in high habitat patches. We show that a simple biomechanical model of animal movement predicts that: (1) selection should favor a comparatively smaller size in the searching sex when searching involves climbing; and (2) this effect should be stronger in larger species than in smaller species. Thus, it appears that the constraint imposed by gravity on climbing males is a selective factor in determining male dwarfism.


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

    Excerpt: Warren Bass, director of the Special Projects/Terrorism Program at the Council on Foreign Relations and editor of the council's new web site at http://www.terrorismanswers.com/, visited the Nation Challenged forum on Wednesday, April 10. Here are excerpts from the discussion.  

    Sorting out the complex issues that have arisen since Sept. 11 is the stated reason for your excellent Web site¡¦s existence, which makes me wonder how you think the Bush administration is doing in this regard. Do you think it is making a convincing case to the American public for the long war that President Bush has described? Are you convinced that the U.S. is headed in the right direction?


    1. Transcript of Warren Bass's Visit, NYtimes.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Disarmament and human rights experts say in a report to be published on Thursday that the United States' rejection or disregard of a range of treaties is undercutting efforts by many other countries to strengthen the international rule of law.

      From nuclear testing and proliferation accords to the land mines ban to agreements on climate change or protecting the rights of women and children, over the last decade Washington has moved steadily away from accepting treaties that would be binding on the United States (...).


    2. Washington Is Criticized for Growing Reluctance to Sign Treaties, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The United States is disregarding crucial treaty obligations and creating a dangerous slide away from the rule of law into a power-based world that is likely to be far more insecure, according to a detailed analysis of U.S. policies and actions in relation to major security-related treaties released today.


    3. Systematic United States Disregard Of Its Treaty Obligations Jeopardizes Nuclear Nonproliferation And Global Security, IEER Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The United States can be credited as one of the founders of the modern system of international law. Its own founding as a country was based on the idea that a system of constitutional law is superior to rule by a king. Nevertheless, the history of the past century reveals that the U.S. desire to participate in and help create a global framework of law that builds national and global security is counteracted by fears that international obligations will injure U.S. interests and sovereignty.


    4. Rule of Power or Rule of Law? An Assessment of U.S. Policies and Actions Regarding Security-Related Treaties, IEER/LCNP Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The treaty will take effect in a few weeks no matter what the United States does, because several countries are ready to be the 60th to ratify it, and 60 ratifications is the threshold.

      The United States has not ratified the Rome treaty and is not likely to do so soon; many in Congress fear the court will expose American citizens to unfair judgment. But a Bush "unsigning" would be a decisive repudiation that would not only devastate America's credibility as the champion of international (...).


    5. A Treaty Bush Shouldn't 'Unsign', NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Editor's Note: The distinction between "freedom fighter" against an oppressive government and "terrorist" often depends on the political perspective. Maybe a globally accepted international criminal court could help in clarifying the issues.

      Excerpts: The first permanent International Criminal Court will become a reality on Thursday when the treaty establishing it is ratified.

      The United Nations expects that the court will be up and running by 2003 and will be responsible for trying cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

      It would take the place of the ad hoc UN tribunals such as those for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

      (...)Supporters of this court see it as pioneering a new era in which countries and individuals will be more easily held accountable for violations of international humanitarian law.


    6. Will an International Criminal Court work?, BBC Online Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Afghan security officials said today that they had arrested hundreds of political opponents, thwarting a conspiracy to mount a bombing campaign whose targets were the government of Hamid Karzai and the former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah.

    7. Afghan Officials Arrest Hundreds in Bombing Plot, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      With details of the plot so sketchy, the fact that the roundup focused on well-known opponents of Mr. Karzai's government seems certain to prompt suspicions that the government fabricated the threat to crush its opponents.


    8. The War On Terrorism: What Does It Mean for Science?, Audio Files from the AAAS Symposium , 01/12/18 Next Article Bookmark and Share

      The War On Terrorism: What Does It Mean for Science?, Audio Files from the AAASymposium , 01/12/18

    9. Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security, National Defense University Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security, Edited by David S. Alberts, Thomas J. Czerwinski, Proceedings of a conference held at the National Defense University, Washington, DC, 96/11/13-14
      >Contributed by Atin Das

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Celestial Billiards Threaten Hit in 2880, Richard A. Kerr, Science Apr 5 2002: 27.
      2. Strength in Numbers, Service, Robert F., Szuromi, Phil, Uppenbrink, Julia , Science 2002 295: 2395-
      3. Hybrid Nanorod-Polymer Solar Cells, Wendy U. Huynh, Janke J. Dittmer,A. Paul Alivisatos, Science 2002 295: 2425-2427.
      4. A Phase Separation Model for the Nanopatterning of Diatom Biosilica, Manfred Sumper, Science 2002 295: 2430-2433.
      5. What Went Wrong For On-Line Media?, In retrospect, most advertising-based Web sites were doomed from the start, Jacques R. Bughin, Stephen J. Hasker, Elizabeth S. H. Segel, Michael P. Zeisser, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2001 Number 4 Web exclusive
      6. Sony Develops Human-Like Robot, KurzweilAI.net, April 7, 2002
      7. Towers' Collapse Raises New Doubts About Fire Tests, Eric Lipton, James Glanz, NYTimes, 02/04/08, The fiery collapse the World Trade Center skyscrapers has raised concerns over the century-old method for testing the heat-resistance of building materials.
      8. Doubts Over Mexican GM Maize Report, Nature wants its readers to judge whether GM crops have contaminated wild maize
      9. Medical Trials Go Mobile', BBC News Online, 02/04/06
      10. Home As Shield From Creditors Is Under Fire, Philip Shenon, NYTimes, 02/04/04, Lawmakers Are Urging Congress To Close A Bankruptcy-Law Loophole That Would Allow Enron's Former Executives To Shield Millions In Assets By Shifting I...
      11. Few Risks Seen to the Children of 1st Cousins, Denise Grady , NYTimes, 02/04/04, Contrary to widely held beliefs, first cousins can have children together without a great risk of birth defects or genetic disease....
      12. U.S. to Back Scientist From India To Replace Global Warming, Expert, Andrew C. Revkin, NYTimes, 02/04/03
        1. State Department Press Release, April 2, 2002
      13. Home Range Formation In Wolves Due To Scent Marking, Briscoe B.K., Lewis M.A., Parrish S.E.Bulletin of Mathematical Biology, Vol. 64, no. 2, pp. 261-284(24), March, 2002
      14. Conductivities Of Three-Layer Live Human Skull, M. Akhtari, H.C. Bryant, A.N. Mamelak, E.R. Flynn, L. Heller, J.J. Shih, M. Mandelkem, A. Matlachov, D.M. Ranken,E.D. Best, M.A. DiMauro, R.R. Lee, W.W. Sutherling, Brain Topography, 14 (3), pp. 151-167, Spring 2002
      15. Neural Correlates Of Successful And Unsuccessful Verbal Memory Encoding,Casasanto D.J, Killgore W.D.S.,   Maldjian J.A., Glosser G.,  Alsop D.C., Cooke A.M., Grossman, M., Detre J.A., Brain and Language, Vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 287-295(9), March 2002
      16. Interpretation Of The Results Of Common Principal Components Analyses, D. Houle, P. Galpern & J. Mezey,Evolution: Vol. 56, No. 3, pp. 433¡V440, March 2002
      17. US Looks To Create Robo-Soldier, Jane Wakefield, BBC, 02/04/10
      18. Closing In on the Cause of the Cosmos's Biggest Blasts, Govert Schilling, Science Apr 5 2002: 41

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. The War On Terrorism: What Does It Mean for Science?, Audio Files from the AAAS Symposium , 01/12/18
      2. Press Coverage and the War on Terrorism, The Impact of September 11 on Public Opinion: Increased Patriotism, Unity, Support for Bush; More Interest in News, A Brookings/Harvard Forum, The Brookings Institution, 02/03/27 (video)
      3. 2002 Complex Systems Lecture Series, University of Alaska Anchorage
        1. Computation Of Chaos, Complexity, And Computability With Applications To Real World Problems, Julian Palmore, 02/04/05 (21:30GMT)
        2. The Particle Swarm Algorithm: Discoveries, Investigations, And New Frontiers, James Kennedy, 02/04/12 (19:00GMT)
      4. The Adaptive Enterprise in Action, The Center for Business Innovation, online until June 2002
      5. Center for Preventive Action Special Event, Kofi Annan, John W. Vessey, Webcast, 02/03/06
      6. Foresight Senior Associate Gathering: "Exploring the Edges", April 26-28, 2002 Palo Alto, California

    3. Conference Announcements Bookmark and Share

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      1. Modeling & Simulation of Microsystems (MSM 2002) & Intl. Conf on Comp Nano Science (ICCN 2002), San Juan, Puerto Rico, 02/04/22-25
      2. 'Introducing Complexity', The University of Liverpool, 02/04/24
      3. International Conference Ethics and Technological Complexity, Louvain-la-Neuve, 02/05/29-31
      4. PROTECTING THE HOMELAND: Lessons Learned and Policy Implications of 9/11, Washington, DC, 02/04/29-05/01
      5. World Conference NL 2002 - Networked Learning in a Global Environment: Challenges and Solutions for Virtual Education, Berlin, Germany, 02/05/01-04
      6. Electronic Conference on Foundations of Information Science: The Nature Of Information: Conceptions, Misconceptions, And Paradoxes, 02/05/06
      7. Managing Complex Organizations In A Complex World, Cambridge, MA, 02/05/09-10
      8. Mass Customisation: Strategies and Enabling Technology, U. Warwick, UK, 02/05/14-15
      9. International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2002), Nashua, NH, 02/06/9-14
      10. Sitges Conference "Statistical Mechanics of Complex Networks", Sitges, Spain, 02/06/10-14
      11. Complex Systems: Control and Modeling Problems, Samara, Russia, 02/06/17
      12. International Conference SocioPhysics, ZIF - Bielefeld, Germany, 02/06/06-09
      13. 2nd International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL'02), Cambridge, Massachusetts USA, 02/06/12-15
      14. International Conference: Emergence in Chemical Systems, University of Alaska Anchorage, 02/06/20-23
      15. Let's Face Chaos Through Nonlinear Dynamics, Maribor, Slovenia, 02/06/30 - 07/14
      16. 7th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition - ICMPC7, Sydney, 02/07/17-21
      17. Complexity and Philosophy, Norwood, Massachusetts, USA, 02/07/29-30
      18. 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
      19. Self-Organisation and Evolution of Social Behaviour, Monte Verità, Switzerland, 02/09/08-13
      20. Complex Systems (CS02) Complexity with Agent-Based Modeling, Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, 02/09/10-12
      21. 3rd Intl NAISO Symposium on Engineering Of Intelligent Systems (EIS 20020), Malaga, Spain, 02/09/24-27
      22. Seminar on Non-equilibrium Phenomena and Phase Transitions in Complex Systems, Avila, Spain, 02/09/24-28.
      23. ACRI 2002, 5th Intl Conf on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry, Geneva, Switzerland, 02/10/09-11 
      24. Dynamical Systems Methods for Advanced Diagnosis and Prognosis, 39th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science, University Park, Pennsylvania, 02/10/13-16
      25. 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
      26. Managing the Complex IV, Naples , FL, Early December 2002
      27. Artificial Life VIII, UNSW, Sydney, Australia, 02/12/09-13
      28. Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences (HICSS-36), Big Island, Hawaii, 03/01/06-09
      29. 21st ICDE World Conference on Open Learning and Distance Education, Hong Kong, 03/06/01-05

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