Complexity Digest 2003.03

20-Jan-2003

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Content

  1. Why Do Firms Raise Prices More Readily Than They Reduce Them?, Alphagalileo
    1. Master Curve For Price-Impact Function, Nature
    2. Two-Phase Behaviour Of Financial Markets, Nature
  2. Welfare Reducing Licensing, Games & Econ. Behavior
  3. Over-the-Counter Headache, NYTimes Magazine
    1. The New Face of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Science
  4. In a Game of Serenity, Therapy Trumps Thrills, NYTimes
  5. A Model For The Emergence Of Adaptive Subsystems, Bulletin of Math. Biol.
  6. Expanding The Genetic Code: The World¡¦s First Truly Unnatural Organism, Science Daily
  7. Chemistry Guides Evolution, Claims Theory, New Scientist
  8. Death is an Outrage, KurzweilAI.net
  9. Developmental Biology: A Larval Revelation, Nature
    1. Larval Stages Of A Living Sea Lily (Stalked Crinoid Echinoderm),, Nature
  10. Stick Insect Forces Evolutionary Rethink,, NewScientist
  11. Ancient Tripartite Coevolution in the Attine Ant-Microbe Symbiosis, Science
    1. Group Decision-Making In Animals, Nature
  12. Toward Cultural Oncology: The Evolutionary Information Dynamics of Cancer, CogPrints
  13. How The Brain Processes Emotion, Alphagalileo
  14. Brain Regions Where Nicotine Affects Attention, Other Cognitive Skills,, ScienceDaily
  15. Scientist Bombards Brains With Super-Magnets To Edifying Effect, Boston Globe
  16. Dissecting The Circuitry Of The Auditory System,, Trends in Neurosc.
  17. "Moss In Space" Project To Test How Plants Grow "Up",, ScienceDaily
  18. Understanding Biological Complexity: Lessons From The Past, FASEB J.
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. A Deadly Weapon for Beginners, NYTimes
    2. Bioterrorism: Agriculture Shock, Nature
    3. Electronic Library Provides One Stop Shop For Emergency Staff Facing Biochemical Terrorism, Alphagalileo
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Papers
    2. Coming and Ongoing Webcasts
    3. Conference Announcements
      1. Public Conference Calls
    4. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test

  1. Why Do Firms Raise Prices More Readily Than They Reduce Them?, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) booms typically cause inflation, while recessions mainly reduce output without reducing prices or inflation. (...) explains how this problem emerges through the phenomenon of ¡¥asymmetric price adjustment¡¦ ¡V the fact that firms are far quicker to increase prices than to cut them. The Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas has recently argued that the optimal inflation target may be negative, so that central banks may need to deflate the economy persistently. But Bhaskar¡¦s research on pricing asymmetries shows that deflation would aggravate the negative effects on output and employment considerably. Positive inflation has the effect of raising output, since it prevents the output and employment losses (...).

    1. Master Curve For Price-Impact Function, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The price reaction to a single transaction depends on transaction volume, the identity of the stock, and possibly many other factors. Here we show that, by taking into account the differences in liquidity for stocks of different size classes of market capitalization, we can rescale both the average price shift and the transaction volume to obtain a uniform price-impact curve for all size classes of firm for four different years (1995-98). (...)suggests that fluctuations (...) are governed by the same statistical rule.

    2. Two-Phase Behaviour Of Financial Markets, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Buying and selling in financial markets is driven by demand, which can be quantified by the imbalance in the number of shares transacted by buyers and sellers over a given time interval. (...) surprising existence of a critical threshold (...) equilibrium phase in which neither buying nor selling predominates. (...) two most probable values emerge that are symmetrical around zero demand, corresponding to excess demand and excess supply; (...) phase in which the market behaviour is mainly buying for half of the time, and mainly selling for the other half.

  2. Welfare Reducing Licensing, Games & Econ. Behavior Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: In this paper, we characterize situations where licensing a cost reducing innovation to a rival firm using two-part tariff contracts (a fixed fee plus a linear per unit of output royalty) reduces social welfare. We show that it occurs if (i) the firms compete in prices, (ii) the innovation is large enough but not drastic, and (iii) the goods are close enough substitutes. Moreover, we show that, regardless of the type of competition, first, the optimal contract always includes a positive royalty and, second, even drastic innovations are licensed whenever the goods are not homogeneous.
    • Source: Welfare Reducing Licensing, R. Fauli-Oller, J. Sandonis,, DOI: 10.1016/S0899-8256(02)00513-4, Games & Econ. Behavior, Vol. 41, Issue 2, pp: 192-205, Nov. 2002,
      Contributed by Pritha Das

  3. Over-the-Counter Headache, NYTimes Magazine Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Researchers believe that some recurrent headaches are the result of over-the-counter painkillers interfering with the body's natural pain control mechanisms. One researcher summarized the situation: ''People often ask me, 'Why doesn't my headache go away?' A better question is, 'Why does a headache ever stop?' That, to me, is the crucial issue.''

    1. The New Face of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Asian governments hope that high-volume screening and rigorous clinical trials will unlock the secrets of ancient herbal remedies--and that the results will pass muster with Western scientists. Epidemiologists had long suspected that the low cancer rates in southeast China might be related to coix, a grasslike relative of maize that is a dietary staple in the region and a key ingredient of many traditional Chinese herbal medicines. (...) Twenty years later, Li won government approval to market the fruits of his research, a drug he calls Kanglaite, (...).

  4. In a Game of Serenity, Therapy Trumps Thrills, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) radically different games designed specifically to reward players for being calm and staying that way. Games, in short, like Relax to Win, a race between two friendly looking dragons named George and Georgina created recently by the Mindgames research group at the M.I.T. Media Lab Europe in Dublin. Relax to Win was designed as a tool to help troubled children, including those with anxiety disorders and attention-deficit disorders, gain control over their behavior. But the designers are also excited about hints of broader potential.

  5. A Model For The Emergence Of Adaptive Subsystems, Bulletin of Math. Biol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We investigate the interaction of learning and evolution in a changing environment. A stable learning capability is regarded as an emergent adaptive system evolved by natural selection of genetic variants. We consider the evolution of an asexual population. Each genotype can have `fixed' and `flexible' alleles. Evolution is modelled using genetic algorithms and the changing environment is represented by two optimal synaptic patterns that alternate a fixed number of times during the `life' of the individuals. We find that two types of evolutionary pathways are possible depending upon how difficult (costly) it is to cope with the changes of the environment.

  6. Expanding The Genetic Code: The World¡¦s First Truly Unnatural Organism, Science Daily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: From time immemorial, every living thing has shared the same basic set of building blocks -20 amino acids from which all proteins are made. That is, until now: A group of scientists say they have, for the first time, created an organism that can produce a 21st amino acid and incorporate it into proteins completely on its own. The research should help probe some of the central questions of evolutionary theory. "Would more amino acids give you a better organism -- one that could more effectively adapt if placed under selective pressure?"

  7. Chemistry Guides Evolution, Claims Theory, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: That enduring metaphor for the randomness of evolution, a blind watchmaker that works to no pattern or design, is being challenged by two European chemists. They say that the watchmaker may have been blind, but was guided and constrained by the changing chemistry of the environment, with many inevitable results. The metaphor of the blind watchmaker has been famously championed by Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford. But Robert Williams, also at Oxford, and Joao Jose R. Frausto da Silva of the Technical University of Lisbon in Portugal say that evolution is not strictly random. They claim Earth's chemistry has forced life to evolve along a predictable progression from single-celled organisms to plants and animals.

  8. Death is an Outrage, KurzweilAI.net Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Each year, we allow a destruction of knowledge equivalent to three Libraries of Congress with an average value of about $2 million dollars for each human life lost. The solution: "dechronification"-nanomedicine tools that can arrest biological aging and reduce your biological age.

  9. Developmental Biology: A Larval Revelation, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The stalked crinoids, or sea lilies, are generally accepted as the most ancient of living echinoderms, with a fossil record extending back some 500 million years, almost to the base of the Palaeozoic. (...) authors obtained healthy, gravid individuals that spawned in the lab and produced viable embryos and larvae. The main significance of this discovery lies in the rich evolutionary connections of the phylum Echinodermata and the information that such 'missing' larval forms contain. The larvae of marine invertebrates are delightfully diverse morphologically, and often delicately beautiful.

    1. Larval Stages Of A Living Sea Lily (Stalked Crinoid Echinoderm),, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Here we describe the development of a sea lily from fertilization to larval settlement. (...) We suggest that a dipleurula-type larva is primitive for echinoderms and is the starting point for the evolution of additional larval forms within the phylum. From a wider evolutionary viewpoint, the demonstration that the most basal kind of echinoderm larva is a dipleurula is consistent with Garstang's auricularia theory for the phylogenetic origin of the chordate neural tube.

  10. Stick Insect Forces Evolutionary Rethink,, NewScientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The lowly stick insect has forced a rethink of one of the key rules of evolution - that complex anatomical features do not disappear and reappear over the course of time. Researchers have discovered that on a number of occasions in the past 300 million years, stick insects have lost their wings, then re-evolved them. Entomologists have described the revelation as "revolutionary". (...very first stick insect, which appeared 300 million years ago, had already lost its wings and that stick insects re-evolved the structures at least four times (...).

  11. Ancient Tripartite Coevolution in the Attine Ant-Microbe Symbiosis, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The symbiosis between fungus-growing ants and the fungi they cultivate for food has been shaped by 50 million years of coevolution. Phylogenetic analyses indicate that this long coevolutionary history includes a third symbiont lineage: specialized microfungal parasites of the ants' fungus gardens. (...) ant-microbe symbiosis is the product of tripartite coevolution between the farming ants, their cultivars, and the garden parasites. At recent phylogenetic levels, coevolution has been punctuated by occasional host-switching by the parasite, thus intensifying continuous coadaptation between symbionts in a tripartite arms race.

    1. Group Decision-Making In Animals, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Groups of animals often need to make communal decisions, for example about which activities to perform, when to perform them and which direction to travel in; however, little is known about how they do so. Here, we model the fitness consequences of two possible decision-making mechanisms: 'despotism' and 'democracy'. We show that under most conditions, the costs to subordinate group members, and to the group as a whole, are considerably higher for despotic than for democratic decisions. (...) democracy should be widespread (...).

  12. Toward Cultural Oncology: The Evolutionary Information Dynamics of Cancer, CogPrints Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: 'Racial' disparities among cancers, particularly of the breast and prostate, are something of a mystery. For the US, in the face of slavery and its sequelae, centuries of interbreeding have greatly leavened genetic differences between 'Blacks' and 'Whites', but marked contrasts in disease prevalence and progression persist. 'Adjustment' for socioeconomic status and lifestyle, while statistically accounting for much of the variance in breast cancer, only begs the question of ultimate causality. Here we propose a more basic biological explanation that extends the theory of immune cognition to include elaborate tumor control mechanisms constituting the principal selection pressure acting on pathologically mutating cell clones. The interplay between them occurs in the context of an embedding, highly structured, system of culturally specific psychosocial stress which we find is able to literally write an image of itself onto disease progression. The dynamics are analogous to punctuated equilibrium in simple evolutionary process.

  13. How The Brain Processes Emotion, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Humans have another unique way to express their emotions: speech. Speech can convey emotion in two important ways : by content and by prosody. The content refers to the semantic message of what is said. It's the difference between WHAT is said and HOW it is said. It appeared from our research that when participants were asked to pay attention to and identify the emotional content (the WHAT) of the message their left hemisphere was significantly more active. In contrast, when we asked them to pay attention to the emotional prosody (the HOW) of the message, the right hemisphere kicked in.

  14. Brain Regions Where Nicotine Affects Attention, Other Cognitive Skills,, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Nicotine administration in humans is known to sharpen attention and to slightly enhance memory. Now scientists, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), have identified those areas of the brain where nicotine exerts its effects on cognitive skills. Their findings suggest that nicotine improves attention in smokers by enhancing activation in the posterior cortical and subcortical regions of the brain--areas traditionally associated with visual attention, arousal, and motor activation. This study provides the first evidence that nicotine-induced enhancement of parietal cortex activation is associated with improved attention.

  15. Scientist Bombards Brains With Super-Magnets To Edifying Effect, Boston Globe Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: J ust by pointing his super-magnets at the right spots on your head, Dr. Alvaro Pascual-Leone can make you go momentarily mute or blind. He can disrupt your working memory or your ability to recognize faces. He can even make it harder for you to say verbs while nouns remain as easy as ever. (...) Already, repeated stimulations can apparently produce effects lasting for weeks afterward, by revving up underactive areas or quieting down overactive spots for long enough that the changes linger even after the stimulation stops.

  16. Dissecting The Circuitry Of The Auditory System,, Trends in Neurosc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The brainstem auditory system is a complex system composed of numerous parallel and serial pathways that converge on a common destination in the inferior colliculus (IC). The exact nature of the response transformations that occur in the IC have, however, been elusive ¡V even though the IC has been the subject of numerous studies for more than 30 years. These studies have revealed some of the ways that signals, relayed via many different parallel routes, interact in the IC, and suggest some functional advantages that these interactions might have.

  17. "Moss In Space" Project To Test How Plants Grow "Up",, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: An experiment scheduled for todays Space Shuttle Columbia mission may provide clues about just how plant growth is guided by gravity. The study (...) should test whether the absence of gravity changes how simple plants grow. (...) in the dark, the cells grow in the direction opposite the attraction of gravity. These are exceptional cells. It is rare for gravity to control the direction that single cells grow instead of an entire plant, Sack says. We wanted to know if they were placed in a near gravity-free environment, would the plants grow in a random fashion.

  18. Understanding Biological Complexity: Lessons From The Past, FASEB J. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Advances in molecular biology now permit complex biological systems to be tracked at an exquisite level of detail. The information flow is so great, however, that using intuition alone to draw connections is unrealistic. Thus, the need to integrate mathematical biology with experimental biology is greater than ever. To achieve this integration, obstacles that have traditionally prevented effective communication between theoreticians and experimentalists must be overcome, so that experimentalists learn the language of mathematics and dynamical modeling and theorists learn the language of biology.

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

    1. A Deadly Weapon for Beginners, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: While no treatment or vaccine can counter its deadly effects, it is 1,000 times less poisonous than botulinum toxin. A solid, it is harder to disseminate than a liquid, limiting its spread through the air. And unlike many nerve agents, which tend to be simple chemicals, it is a large protein the skin has difficulty absorbing. (...) Bulgarian intelligence operatives used a specially modified umbrella to shoot a ricin pellet into Georgi I. Markov, a dissident. A tiny pellet (...) filled with about 500 micrograms of ricin (...)

    2. Bioterrorism: Agriculture Shock, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Fears about terrorism usually centre on nuclear or biological weapons. But attackers could cause huge economic damage by spreading plant or animal diseases. (...) The statistics on the 2001 outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Britain make for disturbing reading. Four million cattle were culled to contain the disease, and estimates of the cost to the British economy (...) run as high as ¢G30 billion (US$48 billion). Agriculture is also now more open to attack, as a result of large-scale methods such as the use of factory farms and monoculture cropping systems.

    3. Electronic Library Provides One Stop Shop For Emergency Staff Facing Biochemical Terrorism, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Following recent concerns about possible deliberate releases of chemical or biological agents, (...) has launched a web resource to provide a one stop access to information for emergency health staff in case of a suspected deliberate release of such agents. This includes sources of information to recognise groups of symptoms that may be caused by unusual agents, treatments and wider public health responses. The electronic library¡¦s home page is available at ¡§The web site is increasingly seen as the first place emergency care staff look when needing clinical or managerial information on new developments (...) releases of chemical or biological agents ¡¨

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Anthrax Island, January 12, 2003, Christopher Pala, NYTimes, 03/01/12, In the middle of the Aral Sea, the ruins of an earlier bioweapons threat.
      2. Nanoparticle Assembly and Transport at Liquid-Liquid Interfaces,, Y. Lin, H. Skaff, T. Emrick, A. D. Dinsmore, and T. P. Russell, p. 226
      3. PHYSICS: Relativity Goes Where Einstein Sneered to Tread, p. 185
      4. Quantum Phase Transition in Organic Charge-Transfer Complexes, Sachio Horiuchi, Yoichi Okimoto, Reiji Kumai, and Yoshinori Tokura, p. 229
      5. Bose-Einstein Condensation of Cesium, Tino Weber, Jens Herbig, Michael Mark, Hanns-Christoph Nagerl, Rudolf Grimm, p. 232
      6. Future-Gazing In Las Vegas, January 11, 2003, A giant LCD panel that acts as computer display and TV, does facial recognition for home security; and users connecting to huge remote databases of archive material with massive educational potential linked to advanced, virtual reality technology were among the forecasts at a CES...
      7. Looking to Iraq, military robots focus on lessons of Afghanistan, January 12, 2003, The newest robots range farther from their "masters" than did their forebears in Afghanistan. They can navigate terrain and obstacles more deftly, lay down a cover of smoke, test for chemical weapons and extend a "neck" that can peer around corners. The machines are also learning how to right...
      8. Death is an Outrage, Robert A. Freitas Jr., KurzweilAI.net, 03/01/
      9. Cal Tech announces Turing Tournament, KurzweilAI.net, 03/01/15, designed to "find the best computer programs to mimic human behavior ... and the best computer programs to detect the difference between machine and human behavior."
      10. Future Combat: Part 1, January 13, 2003, The U.S. Army is planning a transformation based on "Future Combat Systems." New technologies will include hybrid electric vehicles, robotics, lasers, mobile network communications, and an array of smart weapons and sensors based on enabling technologies such as micromechanical systems (MEMS),...
      11. Microsoft Eyes Global Radio Network To Support Smart Devices, Bob Brewin, Computerworld, 03/01/10 (...) broadcast this reference signal over the FM subcarrier network, saving it from adding another receiver chip to already complex circuitry (...)
      12. Health: New Ideas Energize Alzheimer's Battle, Gina Kolata, NYTimes, 03/01/14, Many researchers are questioning the old hypothesis about Alzheimer's. If they are right, it may be possible to reverse memory loss.
      13. Isochronal Difference Mapping: An Approach For Mapping Dynamic Changes During Reentrant Ventricular Tachycardia, Ciaccio EJ, Lee T., Pacing Clin Electrophysiol. 2002 Dec;25(12):1737-46, PMID: 12520675
      14. Depth Of Strategic Reasoning In Games, Colman AM. Related Articles, Links, Trends Cogn Sci. 2003 Jan;7(1):2-4, PMID: 12517348
      15. Bouncing Signals Push the Limits of Bandwidth, Ian Austen, NYTimes, 03/01/16, The process that creates dead spots that cut off cellphone calls, known as multipath, is now being used to improve reception and boost the speed of wireless
      16. Repair, Revision, and Complexity in Syntactic Analysis: An, Electrophysiological Differentiation, Edith Kaan, Tamara Y. Swaab, J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2003 January 1; 15(1): p. 98-110
      17. Actions Speak Louder Than Functions: The Importance of Manipulability and Action in Tool Representation, Marion L. Kellenbach, Matthew Brett, Karalyn Patterson, J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2003 January 1; 15(1): p. 30-46
      18. Theoretical Neuroscience: Computational and Mathematical Modeling of Neural Systems, Peter Dayan and L. F. Abbott MIT Press, Cambridge,, 50.00 ISBN: 0-262-04199-5 460 pages, Bruno A. Olshausen, J. Cogn. Neurosci. 2003 January 1; 15(1): p. 154-155
      19. Cal Tech announces Turing, Tournament,, Jan. 15, 2003, Cal Tech has announced the "Turing Tournament," designed to "find the best computer programs to mimic human behavior ... and the best computer programs to detect the difference between machine and human behavior." Two types of submissions will be accepted: an emulator, which generates a dataset...
      20. Regulation Of The Mammalian Cell Cycle: A Model Of The G1-To-S Transition, Zhilin Qu, James N. Weiss, W. Robb MacLellan, AJP: Cell 2003 February 1; 284(2): p. C349-C364
      21. Distributed Metadata: Good For Business Instead of a Centralized Business Directory, What Would a Decentralized Directory Look Like?, David Weinberger, January 15, 2003
      22. Depth Of Strategic Reasoning In Games, Eleanora Bilotta et al. (Eds.), 03/01.
      23. International: Bush Says Shift by North Korea Could Bring Aid,, David E. Sanger, NYTimes, 03/01/15, The president said he would consider a "bold initiative" for North Korea if it abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
      24. MIT's Smart Surface Switches Properties Reversibly, Jan. 16, 2002, MIT engineers and colleagues from the University of California are reporting a unique design of a "smart surface" that can reversibly switch properties in response to an external stimulus. The work paves the way for systems that could, for example, release or absorb cells and chemicals from...
      25. Robots That Suck, Kurzweilai.net, February 2003, Have they finally come out with a robot for the rest of us? iRobot's Roomba, a robot designed for vacuuming, rises above the level of mere...
      26. Grid Computing Good for Business, Kurzweilai.net, 03/01/16, Grid computing is taking off in the corporate world, bouyed by the release this week of a pre-beta version of the next enhancement of the standard grid software, Global Toolkit...
      27. Who Says Science Can't Be Fun?,, Kurzweilai.net, 03/01/16, Commercial applications have come from the fertile imagination of MIT Media Lab researchers, such as composer Tod Machover, whose Etch-A-Sketch-like device lets children compose by drawing lines on a computer screen and is due to be released as a...,
      28. Individual Differences In Subjective And Objective Alertness During Sleep Deprivation Are Stable And Unrelated, Rachel Leproult, Egidio F. Colecchia, Anna Maria Berardi, Robert, Stickgold, Stephen M. Kosslyn, , Eve Van Cauter, AJP: Regu 2003 February 1; 284(2): p. R280-R290,
      29. MEDICINE: What Are the Right Targets for Psychopharmacology?, Steven E. Hyman and Wayne S. Fenton, Science 2003 January 17; 299(5605): p. 350-351,
      30. HISTORY OF LIFE: Just How Pregnant Is the Universe?,, Antonio Lazcano, Science 2003 January 17; 299(5605): p. 347-348,
      31. Robust Judgement Of Inter-Object Distance By An Arthropod, Jan M. Hemmi, Jochen Zeil, Nature 421, 160 - 163 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01247
      32. Intracardiac Fluid Forces Are An Essential Epigenetic Factor For Embryonic Cardiogenesis, Jay R. Hove, Reinhard W. Koster, Arian S. Forouhar, Gabriel, Acevedo-Bolton, Scott E. Fraser, Morteza Gharib, Nature 421, 172 - 177 (2003); doi:10.1038/nature01282
      33. Coulomb Fission: Rayleigh Jets From Levitated Microdroplets, Denis Duft, Tobias Achtzehn, Rene Muller, Bernd A. Huber, Thomas Leisner, Nature 421, 128 (2003); doi:10.1038/421128a, Electrified droplets are generated in thunderstorm clouds, as well as in technological applications such as ink-jet printing
      34. Synthetic Biology: Act Natural,, Steven A. Benner, Nature 421, 118 (2003); doi:10.1038/421118a , This burgeoning field aims to reproduce advanced, dynamic behaviours of biological systems, including genetics, inheritance and evolution.
      35. Materials Science: Bursting Apart,, Leo P. Kadanoff, Nature 421, 124 - 125 (2003); doi:10.1038/421124a , When a low-viscosity fluid is injected into an elastic material, it forces its way through by making slender cracks, in a random, fractal pattern.
      36. Physicist Proposes Deeper Layer Of Reality,, New theory takes the chance out of quantum mechanics.
      37. Ants' Nests Stay Pine-Fresh,, Insects collect resin to keep disease at bay.
      38. Unleashing the Ideavirus, Seth Godin, Hyperion , 2001, "A redefinition of old ideas...a lot of complexity/networking here but with different terms.< (Dean LeBaron) >
      39. Deconstructing Birdsong, JR Minkel, Phys Rev Focus, 03/01/08, Compare < real (80 kb wav)> with birdsongs.
      40. Best of Consumer Electronics Show 2003, CNET Networks, 03/01
      41. Listening To The Universe With Gravitational-Wave Astronomy,, S. A. Hughes, Annals of Physics, Vol. 303, Issue 1, pp:142-178, Jan. 2003, DOI: 10.1016/S0003-4916(02)00025-8
      42. Superconducting Sensor Helps Detecting Gravitation Waves, W. van der Veen - mailto:w.r.vanderveenautwente.nl, , Alphagalileo, 2003/01/15
      43. Wavelength Exchange: A Novel Function For Optical Networks, K. K. Y. Wong, M. E. Marhic, K. Uesaka & L. G. Kazovsky, Information Sc., Vol. 149, Issues 1-3, pp: 161-169, Jan. 2003, DOI: 10.1016/S0020-0255(02)00254-2
      44. Scientists Probe Genetics Of Brain Vulnerability, L. Menzies - mailto: linda.menziesaed.ac.uk, , Alphagalileo, 2003/01/10
      45. Improbable Areas In The Visual Brain,, S. Zeki, Trends in Neurosc., 26:1, pp:23-26, Jan. 2003
      46. Expanding The Genetic Code: The World¡¦s First Truly Unnatural Organism, ScienceDaily, 2003/01/14
      47. Regularities Unseen, Randomness Observed: Levels Of Entropy Convergence, J. P. Crutchfield & D. P. Feldman, Chaos, Vol. 13, Issue 1, pp:25-54, Mar. 2003, doi:10.1063/1.1530990
      48. The Preference Order Of Fuzzy Numbers,, L. H. Chen & H. W. Lu, Comp. & Math. with Appl., Vol. 44, Issues 10-11, pp: 1455-1465, Nov.-Dec. 2002, DOI: 10.1016/S0898-1221(02)00270-5
      49. The Evolution of Cognition A Hypothesis, Holk Cruse., Cognitive Science - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=journalurl&_cdi=6536&_auth=y&_acct=c000050221&_version=1&_urlversion=0&_userid=10&md5=f1c85924604efe43100240627486c862, . 27 (1): 135-155. 2003-01.
      50. Formal Concept Analysis and Resolution in Algebraic Domains, Pascal Hitzler and Matthias Wendt., arXiv - http://arxiv.org/, . 2003-01-09
      51. Time Correlations and 1/f Behavior in Backscattering Radar Reflectivity Measurements from Cirrus Cloud Ice Fluctuations, K. Ivanova, T.P. Ackerman, E.E. Clothiaux, P.Ch. Ivanov, H.E. Stanley, and M. Ausloos., arXiv - http://arxiv.org/, . 2003-01-14
      52. Researchers Seek 'Heart' Of Black Hole Mystery,, ScienceDaily & NASA, 2003/01/10
      53. Interspecific Influence On Mobility And Turing Instability,, Y. Huang & O. Diekmann, Bulletin of Math. Biol., Vol. 65, Issue 1, pp: 143-156, Jan. 2003, DOI: 10.1006/bulm.2002.0328
      54. Competitive Exclusion And Coexistence Of Universal Grammars, W. G. Mitchenera - wmitchenaprinceton.edu, , M. A. Nowakb, Bulletin of Math. Biol., Vol. 65, Issue 1, pp: 67-93, Jan. 2003, DOI: 10.1006/bulm.2002.0322
      55. Limit Cycles In An Optimal Control Problem Of Diabetes,, J. R. Faria, Applied Math. Letters, Vol. 16, Issue 1, pp:127-130, Jan. 2003, DOI: 10.1016/S0893-9659(02)00154-4
      56. Where Are the Hawks on North Korea?,, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay; The American Prospect, 03/01/02
      57. Try To Engage with Pyongyang, James Goodby; International Herald Tribune, 03/01/06
      58. Too Big a Buck for the Bang,, Michael E. O'Hanlon, The Washington Post, 03/01/06, To be blunt, Pentagon efforts to save money by outsourcing are failing.
      59. Why the U.S. Is Focusing on Iraq; Can U.S. Engage Pyongyang Without Rewarding It?,, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay, San Jose Mercury News (03/01/05), But while Washington's sights have been fixed on Baghdad, North Korea is actually coming closer to realizing the nightmare Bush warned against last January: a "rogue" state with nuclear weapons, willing, perhaps, to sell them to the highest bidder.
      60. Hoping to Mend Their Sporting Ways , Karen Young Kreeger, 03/01/13, The Scientist, Vol 17, No 1, 32

    2. Coming and Ongoing Webcasts Next Article Bookmark and Share


      1.The Center for Business Innovation Bi-Monthly Web Cast , 03/01/15, TOPIC: CBI Future Scan Version 6.0, WHO: David McIntosh, Director of the CBI Network

      2..Annual Video Game Report Card, Speakers: Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT); Rep. Betty McCollum (D-MN); David Walsh, President, National Institute on Media & the Family, c-span.org, 12/19/2002, clip11782 (50 min.)

      3.. Artificial Life Conference (A-Life 8) , Sydney, Australia, 02/12/09-13

      4..Universes, Edge Video, 02/11

      5..Novel Properties of Nano-Materials Symposium , Natl Taiwan Normal Univ, 02/12/13-14

      6..Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary Ongoing Since February 1998

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share


      1. Conference on Swarming and Network Enabled Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C4ISR), McLean, VA, 03/01/13-14

      2. Sackler Colloquium on "Chemical Communication in a Post-Genomic World" , Irvine, CA, 03/01/17-19

      3.Plexus Ontario Fractal Meeting , Toronto, Canada, 03/01/23

      4.3rd Gathering of the Center for Self-Organizing Leadership , St. George, Utah, 03/01/24-26

      5.INSC 2003, International Nonlinear Sciences Conference Research and Applications in the Life Sciences ,Vienna, Austria, 03/02/07-09

      6.Complexity Science In Practice: Understanding & Acting To Improve Health and Health Care, Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota USA, 03/03/21-22

      7.Fourth International Conference on Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL'03) , Hong Kong, 03/03/21-23

      8.2003 AAAI Spring Symposium Series, Computational Synthesis: From Basic Building Blocks To High Level Functionality , Stanford, 03/03/24-27

      9.Jahrestagung 2003 des AKSOE (Physics of Socio-Economical Systems), Dresden, Germany, 03/03/24-28

      10.Uncertainty and Surprise: Questions on Working with the Unexpected , U. of Texas at Austin, Texas, 03/04/10-12

      11.Agent-Based Simulation 4, Montpellier, France, 03/04/28-30

      12.SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise , Santa Fe, NM, 03/06/01-04

      13.21st ICDE World Conf on Open Learning and Distance Education , Hong Kong, 03/06/01-05

      14.17th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS 2003) , San Diego, California, 03/06/10-13

      15.2003 Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC '03) , Montreal, Canada, 03/06/20-24

      16.5th Intl Conf "Symmetry in Nonlinear Mathematical Physics" , Kiev, Ukraine, 03/06/23-29, Mirror

      17.9th International Conference on Auditory Display , Boston, MA, 03/07/07-09, Wkshp on Assistive Technologies for the Blind, 03/07/06

      18.2003 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2003) ,sazChicago, IL,03/07/12-16

      19.2nd Intl Joint Conf on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS-2003) , Melbourne, Australia, 03/07/14-18

      20.7th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2003) , Orlando, Florida, 03/07/27-30

      21.2003 IEEE/WIC Intl Joint Conf. Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, Beijing, China, 03/10/13-17

      22.2nd International Workshop on the Mathematics and Algorithms of Social Insects, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 03/12/15-17

      1. Public Conference Calls Next Article Bookmark and Share


        1. PlexusCalls - Pat Rush & Bob Lindberg in health concern conversation with Keith McCandless and Linda Rusch, 03/01/10, Audio File Available Now , mp3 (28mb)

        PlexusCalls - John Holland in Conversation - Audio File Available Now , mp3 (28mb)

        3. Are Disease and Aging Information/Complexity Loss Syndromes? , PlexusCalls, 02/11/08, 1 - 2 pm EST (To learn more about Ary Goldberger's work and HeartSongs , Music of the Heart. ) Audio File Available Now , mp3 (27mb)

        4. Brenda Zimmerman in Conversation - Audio File Available Now , mp3 (24mb)

        5. The Complexity of Entrepreneurship: A Launchcyte Story , PlexusCalls, 02/11/22, 1 - 2 pm EST

    4. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test Bookmark and Share

      We are in the process of upgrading the Complexity Digest archives to a format with improved search capabilities. Also, we will finally be able to adequately publish the valuable feedback and comments from our knowledgable readers. You are cordially invited to become a beta tester of our new ComDig2 archive .

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