Dec. 08, 2003
Kinship Systems: A Culturally Constructed Reality, Complexity 
Excerpts: The complexity of human societies is due, I argue, not just to the number and variety of the constituent elements of human societies, but to this multilayered interrelationship (...). But even macro forms of cultural change take place (...) over a time scale of 100s of years, with more microcultural changes within a society taking place on a time scale of 10s of years. The complexity of an organism, for example, is not specified through merely listing the alleles encoded in its DNA. The famous 2.5% difference in DNA between Homo sapiens and the species included within the genus Pan (...).
Hospitals Say They're Penalized for Improving Care, NYTimes
Excerpts: By better educating doctors about the most effective pneumonia treatments, Intermountain Health Care, a network of 21 hospitals in Utah and Idaho, says it saves at least 70 lives a year. By giving the right drugs at discharge time to more people with congestive heart failure, Intermountain saves another 300 lives annually and prevents almost 600 additional hospital stays.
But under Medicare, none of these good deeds go unpunished.
Intermountain says its initiatives have cost it millions of dollars in lost hospital admissions and lower Medicare reimbursements.
Evolutionary Policies For Sustainable Development: Adaptive Flexibility And Risk Minimising, Ecol. Econ.
Abstract: An evolutionary perspective on policies to foster sustainable development is presented. It is argued that policies suggested by the traditional economic theory of environmental policy can stimulate unsustainable socio-economic structures and patterns. In addition, they are unable to remove undesired locked-in systems and technologies. Drawing on evolutionary thinking, characterised by diversity, selection, innovation, path-dependence and bounded rationality, an alternative, partly complementary theory of environmental policy is suggested. Specific attention is given to the role of strategies that are aimed at increasing diversity and adaptive flexibility, and at reducing risk.
Rickshaws Connect India's Poor, BBC News
Excerpts:
The rickshaw drivers are free to go anywhere in the state
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The company came up with the idea of its mobile public calling office, dubbed Chalta Flirta PCO, as a solution. The hand-pedalled rickshaws are equipped with a battery, a billing machine and a printer.
Through these mobile payphones, some drivers are now able to support a family of five people, says the company.
Of the women drivers, Mr Vohra said: "We want them to be self sufficient, we want them to take pride in themselves and we want them to revel in the glory of being financially independent."
Grasping at the Statistics on the Self-Employed, NYTimes
Excerpts: The self-employed came to the rescue last month, and the result was that the unemployment rate came down even as companies were hiring fewer people than most economists had expected.
The self-employed are a group that statisticians have a hard time dealing with, and the apparent growth in that group may or may not be a good sign for the economy. Some people who say they are self-employed may really be out of work and trying to bring in money as consultants or freelance workers.
The Productivity Paradox, NYTimes
Excerpts: For example, in financial services, the Labor Department tells us that the average workweek has been unchanged, at 35.5 hours, since 1988. That's patently absurd. Courtesy of a profusion of portable information appliances (laptops, cell phones, personal digital assistants, etc.), along with near ubiquitous connectivity (hard-wired and now increasingly wireless), most information workers can toil around the clock. The official data don't come close to capturing this cultural shift.
As a result, we are woefully underestimating the time actually spent on the job.
Gains in Houston Schools: How Real Are They?, NYTimes
Excerpts: Texas has trumpeted the achievements of millions of its students, but an examination of student performance in Houston raises serious doubts about those gains. (…)
The improvements in middle and elementary school were a fraction of those depicted by the Texas test and were similar to those posted on the Stanford test by students in Los Angeles.
Over all, a comparison of the performance of Houston students who took the Stanford exam in 2002 and in 1999 showed most did not advance in relation to their counterparts across the nation.
Backing Down on Steel Tariffs, U.S. Strengthens Trade Group, NYTimes
Excerpts: In fact, what the W.T.O. accomplished when it forced the Bush White House into a rare 180-degree turn was exactly what its American champions envisioned and its opponents warned about during the first big globalization debates of the 1990's. Acting as the final arbiter of the world's trade rules, it reversed the politics of protectionism, making sure that nations that protect their markets - in the name of saving jobs - are forced to pay a steep price. (…)
It was left to the Europeans to design the penalties, (…)
Why Tech Is Still the Future, Fortune
Excerpts: The strength of the American economy over the next 20 years depends largely on our ability to keep our productivity growing. And productivity grows when a large set of novel technologies changes business practices and creates new industries. Interest rates, deficits, Federal Reserve policies-those will all make a difference, of course, but they won't be the driving force. That force will be technology and its ability to transform the economy. It's too early for biotech and nanotech to transform anything-their time has not yet arrived. So the main hope for future economic golden eras remains that tarnished cluster of technologies we call information technology.
The Long Memory of the Efficient Market, SFI Working Papers
Abstract: Using data from the London Stock Exchange we demonstrate that the signs of orders obey a long-memory process. The autocorrelation function decays roughly as $tau^{-alpha}$ with $alpha approx 0.6$, corresponding to a Hurst exponent $H approx 0.7$. The time $tau$ is measured in terms of the number of intervening events. This is true for market orders, limit orders, and cancellations. Although the values for $alpha$ vary from stock to stock, in the range 0.36 - 0.77, in most cases the exponents for different stocks are quite similar, and they are always less than one. This implies that the signs of future orders are quite predictable from the signs of past orders; all else being equal, this would suggest a very strong market inefficiency. We demonstrate, however, that fluctuations in signs are compensated for by anti-correlated fluctuations in transaction size and liquidity. For example, when buy orders become more likely, buy orders tend to be smaller than sell orders and buy liquidity tends to be higher than sell liquidity. By breaking down the data by institutional codes we show that some institutions display long-range memory and others don't.
Will December Make Or Break The Internet?, The Register
Excerpts: The World Summit on the Information Society, organised by the International Telecommunications Union, will see the heads of over 60 governments get together, discuss and hopefully agree on where we go from here.
It's been a very long time coming. In fact, it is a year or two late, with the result that the topics to be covered have outgrown the meeting. It doesn't help that there are several topics of great import but huge controversy. The chief among these is Internet governance. In short: who gets to run the Internet?
The Redefinition of Memes, Emergence
Excerpts: Memetics has reached a crunch point. If, in the near future, it does not demonstrate that it can be more than merely a conceptual framework, it will be selected out. While it is true that many successful paradigms started out as such a framework and later moved on to become pivotal theories, it also true that many more have simply faded away. A framework for thinking about phenomena can be useful if it delivers new insights but, ultimately, if there are no usable results academics will look elsewhere. Such frameworks have considerable power over those that hold them for these people will see the world through these _theoretical spectacles_ (Kuhn, 1969)_to the converted the framework appears necessary. The converted are ambitious to demonstrate the universality of their way of seeing things; more mundane but demonstrable examples seem to them as simply obvious. However such frameworks will not continue to persuade new academics if it does not provide them with any substantial explanatory or predictive _leverage._ Memetics is no exception to this pattern.
Games Made for Remaking, NYTimes
Excerpts:
Creative Allan Norico, left, assessing an image he created last week at a multimedia training center in Florida.
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Imagine buying the latest "Lord of the Rings" DVD and discovering that the cameras, lights, special effects and editing tools used in its making had been included at no extra charge. Or finding your favorite CD's crammed with virtual recording studios, along with implicit encouragement from the producer to remix the music, record your own material and post it all on the Internet.
It might seem far-fetched - except to computer game developers.
For Little Fingers, an Array of Digital Tutors, NYTimes
Excerpts: The talking book called LeapPad has some new competitors and a few new tricks of its own. (…)
Educational technology has taken some interesting twists since Patrick Suppes, a Stanford professor, predicted in 1966, "In a few more years, millions of schoolchildren will have access to what Philip of Macedon's son Alexander enjoyed as a royal prerogative: the personal services of a tutor as well informed and as responsive as Aristotle." It's fun to imagine that such access might be as close as your local toy store.
The Love Machine, Building Computers That Care, Wired
Excerpts:
Robyn Twomey
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What kinds of bonds can people form with their machines, Bickmore wants to know. To find out, he'll test 100 participants to gauge the impact of a month of daily sessions with a computerized exercise coach named Laura. Laura, an animated software agent with bobbed chestnut hair and a flinty voice, has been designed to remember what we talk about, then use that information in subsequent conversations. "I was interested not just in establishing a relationship with a computer buddy for the bond itself but as a way of somehow benefiting the user, like getting them to exercise more," (…).
Intel's Tiny Hope for the Future, Wired
Excerpts: Sensors can't become the next big thing until a host of mundane technical issues are resolved: How to get the chipset radios off the crowded 900-MHz spectrum? How to program the networks to not just spew reams of information but be intelligent enough to figure out which measurements are vital and which are junk? "The challenge in tiny sensors is doing some computation at the level of the motes," says Hellerstein. "It's just too expensive to ship out all the data."
Then there's the power issue.
Information Theory of Complex Networks: On Evolution and Architectural Constraints, SFI Working Papers
Abstract: Complex networks are characterized by highly heterogeneous distributions of links, often pervading the presence of key properties such as robustness under node removal. Several correlation measures have been defined in order to characterize the structure of these nets. Here we show that mutual information, noise and joint entropies can be properly defined on a static graph. These measures are computed for a number of real networks and analytically estimated for some simple standard models. It is shown that real networks are clustered in a well-defined domain of the entropy-noise space. By using simulated annealing optimization, it is shown that optimally heterogeneous nets actually cluster around the same narrow domain, suggesting that strong constraints actually operate on the possible universe of complex networks. The evolutionary implications are discussed.
The Connectivity of Large Genetic Networks: Design, History, or Mere Chemistry?, SFI Working Papers
Abstract: I review evolutionary explanations of broad-tailed connectivity or degree distributions observed in metabolic networks and protein interaction networks. Self-assembled chemical reaction networks show degree distributions similar to those observed for metabolic networks, which argues against the postulated role of natural selection in maintaining this degree distribution. In addition, metabolic networks contain traces of their ancient history in the form of highly connected metabolites. Similarly to the degree distribution of metabolic networks, that of protein interaction networks can be explained without resorting to natural selection on the network level. I present data suggesting that highly connected proteins are not distinguishably older than other proteins, and explain this finding with a simple model of how a protein's degree changes in evolutionary time.
Dusty Disc May Mean Other Earths, BBC News
Excerpts:
The clumps rotate around the star approximately once every 300 years
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Astronomers say they have evidence for Earth-like planets orbiting a nearby star, making it more like our own Solar System than any yet discovered.
The clumps rotate around the star approximately once every 300 years
The star, Vega, is one of the brightest in the sky, only 25 light-years away.
It is three times larger than our Sun and, at 350 million years old, much younger as well.
Vega has a disc of dust circling it, and at least one large planet which could sweep debris aside allowing smaller worlds like Earth to exist.
Sea Creature Turns Up as Oldest Male Fossil, NPR
Excerpts:
A computer recreation of a 425-million-year-old ostracode fossil.
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Scientists in England have come across an astonishingly well-preserved fossil of a shrimp-like animal. They say what's amazing about it is that even its soft body parts have been imprinted in rock for 425 million years. That makes it far older than the dinosaurs.
In fact, its discoverers say it's so well preserved, they can even determine the creature's gender -- it's a male. (…)
Ostracodes are among the most successful animals on Earth, with 30,000 known species of the crustacean, living and extinct.
Contributions Of Microbial Biofilms To Ecosystem Processes, Nature
Excerpts: In many aquatic ecosystems, most microbes live in matrix-enclosed biofilms and contribute substantially to energy flow and nutrient cycling. Little is known, however, about the coupling of structure and dynamics of these biofilms to ecosystem function. Here we show that microbial biofilms changed the physical and chemical microhabitat and contributed to ecosystem processes in 30-m-long stream mesocosms. Biofilm growth increased hydrodynamic transient storage-streamwater detained in quiescent zones, which is a major physical template for ecological processes in streams, -by 300% and the retention of suspended particles by 120%.
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Excerpts: The POU transcription factor Oct3/4 maintains the pluripotent state of inner cell mass cells-at the blastocyst stage of preimplantation development-that develop into the fetus after implantation.(…)
Germ cell tumors (GCTs) account for a high proportion of malignancy in young men, and (…) report not only that Oct3/4 expression is found almost exclusively in GCTs, but also that the level of expression is related to the immaturity-and hence the malignancy-of the tumor.
Age Related Alterations In The Complexity Of Respiratory Patterns, J. Integrative Neurosc.
Abstract: The objective of this study is to investigate the relative contributions of maturation to the dynamic behavior of respiration during ontogeny in the neonate. The inter-breath interval (IBI) time series were reconstructed (...). Therefore, these findings suggest that a decrease in the complexity values is unique to the 12-19 days age groups. This could be due to a reduction in the number of dendritic terminals per cell for the 12-19 days age groups. The results of these preliminary experiments also indicate that the behavior of the respiratory pattern generator in the neonate fluctuates during the early maturation period.
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Excerpts: Now that scientists say they've identified the first gene mutation responsible for heart attacks, doctors have to decide how best to use this information. Although the mutation has only been isolated in one family with roots in Iowa, the finding may shed light on the genetic pathways involved in early coronary artery disease and heart attacks, researchers say. It also offers a new risk factor to consider, and a way to decide who needs to be extra vigilant about heart health. "Until we have gene therapy, we are left with getting more aggressive with risk factors, isolating who's at higher risk and trying to change the course of the disease," says Dr. Daniel Fisher, a clinical assistant professor of medicine at New York University School of Medicine. "This is just something else that we're going to say let's get more aggressive." (...) When the researchers did a genetic analysis of 13 family members (nine of whom had had a heart attack), they identified a region on chromosome 15 that includes a gene thought to be involved in blood vessel development. They hit pay dirt when they discovered that family members with heart disease all carried a mutated version of the gene MEF2A. Those without the disease didn't have the mutation. The mutated version of the gene MEF2A "at birth sets up an artery wall that is not intact and then predisposes the person to a heart attack," Topol explains.
An Optimal Treatment Strategy for Diabetes, J. Biol. Systems
Abstract: Consider a system on n variables involved in the regulation of glucose in the body, whose concentrations are given by stochastic differential equations driven by m-dimensional Brownian motion. We formulate a stochastic control problem and give sufficient conditions for the existence of an optimal treatment strategy. We study the following problem: what treatment strategy for the n variables, maximizes the expected benefit from treatment.
Meaning In Perception Part III: Multiple Cortical Areas Synchronize, Int. Bifur. & Chaos
Abstract: Information transfer and integration among functionally distinct areas of cerebral cortex of oscillatory activity require some degree of phase synchrony of the trains of action potentials that carry the information prior to the integration. In order to determine how synchrony is achieved despite dispersion, we recorded EEG signals from multiple electrode arrays on five cortical areas in cats and rabbits, that had been trained to discriminate visual or auditory conditioned stimuli. Three operations were identified to account for the sustained correlation (...) enable continuous linkage of multiple cortical areas by activity in the gamma range (...).
Meaning In Perception Part IV: Multicortical Patterns Of Amplitude Modulation, Int. Bifur. & Chaos
Abstract: The aim of this study is to find spatial patterns of EEG amplitude in the gamma range of the EEGs from multiple sensory and limbic areas that demonstrate multisensory convergence and integration. 64 electrodes spread in small arrays were fixed on or in the olfactory, visual, auditory, somatomotor and entorhinal areas of cats and rabbits. The results showed that the gamma activity in all five areas formed global patterns of amplitude modulation (AM) in time windows lasting ~100-200 ms (...). In conclusion, multisensory integration took place over the greater part of the hemisphere (...).
Spike Timing In Auditory Cortex, Nature
Excerpts: Neurons in the primary auditory cortex are tuned to the intensity and specific frequencies of sounds, but the synaptic mechanisms underlying this tuning remain uncertain. Inhibition seems to have a functional role in the formation of cortical receptive fields, because stimuli often suppress similar or neighbouring responses, and pharmacological blockade of inhibition broadens tuning curves. Here we use whole-cell recordings in vivo to disentangle the roles of excitatory and inhibitory activity in the tone-evoked responses of single neurons in the auditory cortex.
Cell Biology: Thanks For The Memory, Nature
Excerpts: In response to a transient hormonal cue, a developing egg commits irreversibly to a mature state. Surprisingly, this irreversible switch is composed of intrinsically reversible components. (…)
Yet there are times when it's crucial not to turn back - during the development of multicellular organisms, (…). This process, called differentiation, is well known, but it's not really clear how a cell 'remembers' its commitment long after the signal, frequently a hormone, has disappeared. (…) brief exposure to the hormone progesterone triggers an irreversible switch in cell fate in developing frog eggs.
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Excerpts: "People trust antibiotics to cure almost any kind of disease. Unfortunately, as recent outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome show, this is not the case," European Research Commissioner Philippe Busquin said in a statement. "More research for the benefit of patients is needed to make use of the wealth of information provided by more than 140 bacterial genomes known today. We must also make sure that the pharmaceutical industry continues its research into the development of new antibiotics."
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Abstract: One key advantage of eusociality is shared defense of the nest, brood, and stored food; nest defense plays an important role in the biology of eusocial bees. Recent studies on honey bees, Apis mellifera, have focused on the placement of defensive activity in the overall scheme of division of labor, showing that guard bees play a unique and important role in colony defense. Alarm pheromones function in integrating defensive responses; honey bee alarm pheromone is an excellent example of a multicomponent pheromonal blend. The genetic regulation of defensive behavior is now better understood from the mapping of quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with variation in defensiveness. Colony defense in other eusocial bees is less well understood, but enough information is available to provide interesting comparisons between A. mellifera and other species of Apis, as well as with allodapine, halictine, bombine, and meliponine bees. These comparative studies illustrate the wide variety of evolutionary solutions to problems in colony defense in the Apoidea.
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Abstract: With the advent of significant collaborations between researchers who study insect walking and robotics engineers interested in constructing adaptive legged robots, insect walking is once again poised to make a more significant scientific contribution than the numbers of participants in the field might suggest. This review outlines current knowledge of the physiological basis of insect walking with an emphasis on recent new developments in biomechanics and genetic dissection of behavior, and the impact this knowledge is having on robotics. Engineers have begun to team with neurobiologists to build walking robots whose physical design and functional control are based on insect biology. Such an approach may have benefits for engineering, by leading to the construction of better-performing robots, and for biology, by allowing real-time and real-world tests of critical hypotheses about how locomotor control is effected. It is argued that in order for the new field of biorobotics to have significant influence it must adopt criteria for performance and an experimental approach to the development of walking robots.
New Research Finds Some Animals Know Their Cognitive Limits, ScienceDaily
Excerpts: One of the important questions in the field of animal and human psychology is whether this metacognitive capacity is uniquely human, or whether nonverbal, nonhuman animal species have a level of metacognition that approaches that of humans. "The key innovation in this research also was to grant animals an 'uncertain' response so that they could decline to complete any trials of their choosing. Given this option, animals might choose to complete trials when they are confident they know, but decline them when they feel something like uncertainty. To show this behavioral pattern, though, animals would have to monitor some psychological signal (...)."
Largest Known Prime Number on World-Wide Volunteer Computer Grid, Mersenne.org
Excerpt: Michael Shafer, a 26 year-old volunteer in the Mersenne.org research project called the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search (GIMPS), has discovered the largest known prime number. Shafer used a Michigan State University lab PC and free software by George Woltman and Scott Kurowski as part of an international grid of 211,000 networked computers in virtually every time zone of the world.
The new number, expressed as 2 to the 20,996,011th power minus 1, has 6,320,430 decimal digits and was discovered November 17th.
Shifts in States May Give Bush Electoral Edge, NYTimes
Excerpts: In 2000, after Florida's 25 electoral votes were awarded to Mr. Bush, he won the presidency with 271 - 5 more than Al Gore's 266.
"In a race that's very close, those small readjustments in the electoral map will have significance."
(…)
"The map is destiny for both campaigns."
The Republican electoral cushion by no means guarantees Mr. Bush a victory. After all, Mr. Gore outpolled him by nearly 550,000 votes in 2000. More important, voting patterns may not repeat themselves. And notable demographic shifts are occurring within the states.
Hack the Vote, NYTimes
Excerpts: (...) investigative report on U.S. touch-screen voting. But while the mainstream press has reported the basics, the Diebold affair has been treated as a technology or business story - not as a potential political scandal.
The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. (...)
I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.
Pentagon and Bogus News: All Is Denied, NYTimes
Excerpt: Early last year Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld disbanded the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence after it became known that the office was considering plans to provide false news items to unwitting foreign journalists to influence policymakers and public sentiment abroad.
But a couple of months ago, the Pentagon quietly awarded a $300,000 contract to SAIC, a major defense consultant, to study how the Defense Department could design an "effective strategic influence" campaign to combat global terror, according to an internal Pentagon document.
Editor's Note: What would be the first news item released by such an agency -if it ever existed? Most likely the announcement that all rumors about its existence are completely unfounded.
U.S. Sees Lesson for Insurgents in an Iraq Battle, NYTimes
Excerpts: But on the streets of Samarra, (...), the lessons of the battle, and even its precise nature, seemed far from clear. (...)
As it steps up the pressure on the insurgents who are killing Americans and Iraqis in growing numbers, the very Iraqis they are trying to win over may be alienated.
"If I had a gun, I would have attacked the Americans myself," said Satar Nasiaf, 47, a shopkeeper who said he had watched two Iraqi civilians fall to American fire. "The Americans were shooting in every direction."
U.S. Considers Turning Scooters Into War Robots, ctv.ca/Associated Press
Excerpts: It's called the Segway Human Transporter, but the Pentagon is drafting the two-wheeled scooter as part of a plan to develop battlefield robots that think on their own and communicate with troops.(...)
So far, university researchers armed with Pentagon funding have programmed Segway robots that can open doors, avoid obstacles, and chase soccer balls -- all without human control.
Researchers say potential applications for the robots include performing search missions on the battlefield, transporting injured soldiers to safety, or following humans around while hauling their gear.
Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
Fresh Legal Row Over Guantanamo, BBC News
Excerpts:  None of the detainees have yet been charged |
The UK's Guardian newspaper says that a team of lawyers was dismissed after complaining that the rules for forthcoming trials were unfair. New York's Vanity Fair magazine reports that some of the lawyers say their ethical obligations are being violated. The Pentagon has strongly denied the media reports. About 660 prisoners are being held at the US military base in Cuba, including nine Britons. They have not been charged or allowed access to lawyers, and their detention has been condemned both by human rights groups and allies of the US. Most were picked up two years ago following the fall of the Taleban regime in Afghanistan.
Links & Snippets
Other Publications
- Power-Law Species-Area Relationships and Self-Similar Species Distributions Within Finite Areas, Arnost Sizling, David Storch, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 03-11-065
- Multi-information in the Thermodynamic Limit, Ionas Erb and Nihat Ay, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 03-11-064
- A Statistical Framework for Combining and Interpreting Proteomic Datasets, Michael Gilchrist, Laura Salter, Andreas Wagner, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 03-11-063
- FFTs on the Rotation Group, Peter Kostelec, Daniel N. Rockmore, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 03-11-060
- God and Man in Baghdad, Thomas L. Friedman, The essential debate for the first post-Saddam democratic government in Iraq will be how far to extend religious authority.
- Sudden Shift on Detainee, NEIL A. LEWIS The Pentagon's decision to let a detainee meet a lawyer may be a calculated gesture to help the administration shield its policies from reversal by the courts.
- Wasp Parasitoid Disruption Of Host Development, Nancy E. Beckage, Dale B. Gelman, Annual Review of Entomology; Volume 49, Page 299 - 330
- A Ruling for Democratic Principles, The Colorado Supreme Court decision striking down Republican gerrymandering in the state is an affirmation of respect for democracy.
- Genetic and Cultural Evolution of Cooperation, edited by Peter Hammerstein, 03/11, MIT Press, Current thinking in evolutionary biology holds that competition among individuals is the key to understanding natural selection.
- Comin' In on a Wheel and a Prayer, Kari L. Dean, 03/11/29, Wired
- Exploding Black Holes Rain Down On Earth, 03/12, New Scientist, Mini black holes could explain mysterious observations from mountain-top experiments, and unveil hidden dimensions
- Microbeams Have Big Impact On Cancer Cells, 03/12/02, Scientists microbeams have discovered that targeting just a few cells with a "microbeam," which launches streams of helium... KurzweilAI.net,
- Nanotubes are Best Semiconductors, 03/12/03, Researchers have fabricated a semiconducting nanotube transistor that shows a mobility (and thus conductivity) more than 70... KurzweilAI.net,
- Rolling Thunder: Truckers Go Online , 03/12/05, NYTimes, A growing number of truckers enjoy Wi-Fi connections, or hot spots, spreading to truck stops across the United States and Canada.
- Guantanamo Chaplain and His Wife Speak Out, Sarah Kershaw,, 03/12/05, NYTimes, Capt. James J. Yee, a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who was arrested in September on suspicion of spying, spoke publicly for the first time.
- Looting the Future, Paul Krugman, 03/12/05, NYtimes, With a long-term budget gap of at least 25 percent of federal spending, the Bush administration governs like there's no tomorrow.
- Returned to Life, Bob Herbert, 03/12/05, NYTimes, Using the techniques of investigative journalism, David Protess and his students have addressed the enormous and insufficiently recognized problem of wrongful convictions.
- Competition between Diffusion and Fragmentation: An Important Evolutionary Process of Nature, Jesper Ferkinghoff-Borg, Mogens H. Jensen, Joachim Mathiesen, Poul Olesen, Kim Sneppen, 2003-10-17, arXiv, DOI: cond-mat/0310419
- Introduction to Statistical Physics outside Physics, Dietrich Stauffer, 2003-10-2, arXiv, DOI: cond-mat/0310037
- Arnold Tongues In Human Cardiorespiratory Systems, M. McGuinness, Y. Hong, D. Galletly, P. Larsen, 2003/10/23, Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science
- Uncertainty As Wealth, G. Ainslie - george.ainslie
med.va.gov, 2003/10/31, Behavioural Processes, DOI: 10.1016/S0376-6357(03)00138-4 - Testosterone Decreases The Potential For Song Plasticity In Adult Male Zebra Finches, H. Williams - hwilliamswilliams.edu, D. M. Connor, J. W. Hill, 2003/11/06, Hormones and Behavior, DOI: 10.1016/j.yhbeh.2003.06.005
- Daily Energy Expenditure Of Male Barn Swallows Correlates With Tail-Streamer Length: Handicap-Mediated Foraging Strategies, R. L. Nudds, K. A. Spencer, 2003/12/01, Alphagalileo & Biology Letters
- North Atlantic Right Whales (Eubalaena Glacialis) Ignore Ships But Respond To Alerting Stimuli, D. P. Nowacek, M. P. Johnson, P. L. Tyack, 2003/12/01, Alphagalileo & Proceedings Biological Sciences
- Realized Heritability And Repeatability Of Risk-Taking Behaviour In Relation To Avian Personalities, K. van Oers, P. J. Drent, P. De Goede, A. J. Van Noordwijk, 2003/12/01, Alphagalileo & Proceedings Biological Sciences
- Artificial Tissue From The Test Tube, J. Ehrlenspiel - joh.ehrzv.fraunhofer.de, 2003/12/01, Alphagalileo
- Brain Study Shows Some Animals Crave Exercise, 2003/12/01, ScienceDaily & Univ. Of Wisconsin-Madison
- "Chickens Are Us" And Other Observations Of Robotic Art, 2003/12/03, ScienceDaily & Univ. At Buffalo
- Biological Ageing Simulations And Your Retirement Funding, D. Stauffer, Dec. 2003, Fractal 2004: Complexity and Fractals in Nature, 8th Int. Multidisc. Conf., Canada
- The Fractal Properties Of Active Regions On The Sun And Their Association With Solar Activity, I. I. Salakhutdinova, A. A. Golovko, Dec. 2003, Fractal 2004: Complexity and Fractals in Nature, 8th Int. Multidisc. Conf., Canada
- Software Paraphrases Sentences, December 3/10, 2003, Technology Research News, Researchers at Cornell University have combined on-line journalism and computational biology to make it possible to automatically paraphrase whole sentences. The method could eventually allow computers to more easily process natural language, produce paraphrases that could be used in machine...
- A Four-Wing Butterfly Attractor From A Fully Autonomous System, A. S. Elwakil, S. Ö. Uz, M. P. Kennedy, Oct. 2003, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127403008405
- A Study Of Prebiotic Evolution, A. Corbet, online 2003/12/01, Complexity, DOI: 10.1002/cplx.10105
- A Study On Research Performance In Japanese Universities: Which Is More Efficient - A Professor Who Is Leading His Research Group Or One Who Is Working Alone? The Multi-Agent Simulation Knows, J. Tanimoto - tanimotocm.kyushu-u.ac.jp, H. Fujii, Spl. Issue, Sep. 2003, Advances in Complex System, DOI: 10.1142/S0219525903000943
- Complex Dynamics And Financial Fragility In An Agent-Based Model, M. Gallegati - gallegatidea.unian.it, G. Giulioni, N. Kichiji, Spl. Issue, Sep. 2003, Advances in Complex System, DOI: 10.1142/S0219525903000888
Webcast Announcements
- Presentation Webcasts from Scientific Sessions 2003,
American Heart Association
- EVOLVABILITY & INTERACTION: Evolutionary Substrates of
Communication, Signaling, and Perception in the Dynamics of Social
Complexity, London, UK, 03/10/08-10
- The Semantic Web
and Language Technology - Its Potential and Practicalities,
Bucharest, Romania, 03/07/28-08/08
- ECAL 2003, 7th
European Conference on Artificial Life, Dortmund, Germany,
03/09/14-17
- IMA International
Conference Bifurcation 2003, Univ. Southampton, UK, 27-30 July,
2003
- New Santa
Fe Institute President About His Vision for SFI's Future Role,
(Video, Santa Fe, NM, 03/06/04)
- SPIE's 1st Intl Symp
on Fluctuations and Noise, Santa Fe, NM, 2003/06/01-04
- NAS Sackler
Colloquium on Mapping Knowledge Domains, Video/Audio Report,
03/05/11
- Uncertainty and
Surprise: Questions on Working with the Unexpected and Unknowable,
The University of Texas Austin, Texas USA, 2003/04/10-12
- 13th Ann Intl Conf,
Soc f Chaos Theory in Psych & Life Sciences, Boston, MA, USA,
2003/08/08-10
- CERN
Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and
Live Events
- Dean
LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since
February 1998
- Edge Videos
Conference & Call for Papers Announcements
- Intl Wkshp Networks
of Interacting Machines: Industrial Production Systems and
Biological Cells, Berlin, Germany, 03/12/11-13
- 2nd
International Workshop on the Mathematics and Algorithms of
Social Insects, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia, USA;
03/12/15-17
- 2nd
WSEAS Intl Conf on Non-linear Analysis, Non-linear
Systems and Chaos, Athens, Greece, 03/12/29-31
- Complex
Physical, Biological and Social Systems, MIT,
Cambridge, MA, 04/01/05-09
- 2nd
Biennial Seminar on the Philosophical, Epistemological, and
Methodological Implications of Complexity Theory,
Havana, Cuba, 04/01/07-10
- 2004
Western Simulation MultiConference (WMC'04), San Diego,
CA., USA, 04/01/18-24)
- 1st
International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to
Advanced Information Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland,
04/01/29-30
- Physics
of Socio-Economic Systems, 1st Intl Winter School
2004, Konstanz, Germany, 04/02/16-20
- Advances in Molecular Electronics: From molecular materials to single molecule devices, Dresden, Germany, 04/02/23
- Leadership in
Rapidly Changing Business Environments -Learning and Adapting
in Time, Cambridge, MA, 04/02/26-27
- 4th
Intl ICSC Symposium Engineering Of Intelligent Systems (EIS
2004), Island of Madeira, Portugal, 04/02/29-03/02
- Conference on Longevity , Sydney, Australia, 04/03/05-07
- Arbeitskreis
Physik sozio-ökonomischer Systeme Jahrestagung
(AKSOE), Regensburg, Germany, 04/03/08-12
- Capital
Science 2004, Washington, 04/03/20-21
- Fractal
2004, "Complexity and Fractals in Nature", 8th Intl
Multidisciplinary Conf, Vancouver, Canada, 04/04/04-07
- The
9th IEEE Intl Conf on Engineering of Complex
Computer Systems, Florence, Italy, 04/04/14-16
- 2004
Advanced Simulation Technologies Conference (ASTC'04),
Arlington, VA., USA, 04/04/18-22
- Urban
Vulnerability and Network Failure: Constructions and
Experiences of Emergencies, Crises and Collapse,
Manchester, UK, 04/04/29-30
- 5th
International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2004),
Boston, MA, USA, 04/05/16-21
- 3rd Intl Conf
on Systems Thinking in Management (ICSTM 2004) "Transforming
Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Success",
Philadelphia, Pa, USA, 04/05/19-21
- 9th
Annual Workshop on Economics and Heterogeneous Interaction
Agents (WEHIA04),, Kyoto, Japan, 2004/05/27-29
- 13th
International Symposium on HIV & Emerging Infectious
Diseases, Toulon, France, 04/06/03-05
- From Animals To
Animats 8, 8th Intl Conf On The Simulation Of
Adaptive Behavior (SAB'04), Los Angeles, USA,
04/07/13-17
- 8th
World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and
Informatics, Orlando, Florida, USA, 04/07/18-21
- 2004
Summer Simulation MultiConference (SummerSim'04), San
Jose Hyatt, San Jose, California, 04/07/25-29
- ANTS
2004, 4th International Workshop on Ant Colony
Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, Brussels, Belgium,
04/09/05-08
- Dynamic
Ontology, An Inquiry into Systems, Emergence, Levels of
Reality, and Forms of Causality, Trento, Italy,
04/09/08-11
- 9th
Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
(ALIFE9), Boston, Massachusetts, 04/09/12-15
- The
8th Intl Conf on Parallel Problem Solving from
Nature (PPSN VIII), Birmingham, UK, 04/09/18-22
- XVII
Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Sao
Luis, Maranhao - Brazil, 04/09/22-24
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