Complexity Digest 2004.31

02-Aug-2004

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Content

  1. Do You See a Pattern Here?, Wired
  2. What Is Life? Can We Make It?, Prospect Magazine
    1. Craig Venter's Epic Voyage to Redefine the Origin of the Species, Wired
  3. New Views On Mind-Body Connection, The Scientist
    1. Deception Detection, Psychologists Try To Learn How To Spot A Liar, Science News
  4. Musically Speaking, CBN 60 Minutes
    1. When Remembering Might Mean Forgetting, The Scientist
    2. Crayfish Catch a Nap, Science Now
  5. Does The Brain Oscillate? The Dispute On Neuronal Synchronization, Neurol. Sc.
    1. The Scaling Of Motor Noise With Muscle Strength And Motor Unit Number In Humans, Experi. Brain Res.
  6. Sensorimotor Control of Navigation in Arthropod and Artificial Systems, Arthropod Structure & Development
  7. Synthetic Biology Applies Engineering Approach to Biological Components, MIT News Office
  8. An End to the Prion Debate? Don't Count on It, Science
    1. Synthetic Mammalian Prions, Science
    2. Study Lends Support to Mad Cow Theory, NY Times
    3. Lab-Made Prions Trigger Mad Cow Symptoms, Nature
  9. Pop Goes the Mitochondrion, Science
  10. Building A Cluster Of Intelligent, Adaptive Web Sites, Neural Comp. & Appl.
    1. Filtering Multilingual Web Content Using Fuzzy Logic And Self-Organizing Maps, Neural Comp. & Appl.
    2. Microsoft Deploys Newsbot To Track Down Headlines, Washington Post
  11. An Ensemble Of Neural Networks For Weather Forecasting, Neural Comp. & Appl.
  12. Diversity, Complexity, and Persistence in Large Model Ecosystems, SFI Working Papers
    1. Modeling Food-Web Dynamics: Complexity-Stability Implications, SFI Working Papers
  13. Parasites: Small Players With Crucial Roles In The Ecological Theater, EcoHealth
    1. Insecticide Resistance: A Constraint On Evolutionary Change, ScienceDaily
  14. Objects That Make Objects: The Population Dynamics of Structural Complexity, SFI Working Papers
    1. Electric Fields Assemble Devices, Technology Research News
  15. Photonic Chips Go 3D, Technology Research News
    1. Nanotech Leads Way To Quantum Computing, vnunet.com
    2. IEEE Virtual Museum, HBS Working Knowledge
  16. Stepping on Big Brother's Toes, Wired News
  17. Betting on the President, Science Now
  18. The Faulty Premise of Pre-emption, NYTimes
    1. Taking Action in Darfur, NPR TOTN
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Manipulating US Elections is Not an Al-Qaeda Goal, The Daily Star
    2. Al Qaeda Seeks to Disrupt U.S. Economy, Experts Warn, NY Times
    3. Seriousness of Threat Defended Despite Dated Intelligence, Washington Post
    4. Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency, NY Times
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference & Call for Papers Announcements

  1. Do You See a Pattern Here?, Wired Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    An open letter to the wizards of Wall Street from Benoît Mandelbrot, father of the fractal.
    In the April 2003 settlement of postbubble fraud charges, the biggest Wall Street firms agreed to cough up $432.5 million to fund "independent" research. (...)

    I suggest just a small fraction of that sum - say, 5 percent - be set aside for fundamental research in financial markets. (...)

    A well-managed corporation devotes some portion of its research and development budget to basic research, in fields of science that underlie its main business. Isn't understanding the market as important to the economy as understanding solid-state physics is to IBM?

  2. What Is Life? Can We Make It?, Prospect Magazine Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Two years ago American scientists created life. Or did they? (...) Viruses have genes, and they replicate, mutate and evolve, all of which sounds lifelike enough. And in August 2002, a team at the State University of New York (SUNY) announced that it had made a virus from scratch, by chemistry alone.

    What this meant was that, for the first time since life began over 3.5bn years ago, a living organism had been created with genetic material that was not inherited from a progenitor.

    1. Craig Venter's Epic Voyage to Redefine the Origin of the Species, Wired Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Leaving colleagues and rivals to comb through the finished human code in search of individual genes, he has decided to sequence the genome of Mother Earth.

      (...) The great majority of Earth's species are bacteria and other microorganisms. (...) They are the dark matter of life. They may also hold the key to generating a near-infinite amount of energy, developing powerful pharmaceuticals, and cleaning up the ecological messes our species has made. But we don't really know what they can do, because we don't even know what they are.

  3. New Views On Mind-Body Connection, The Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Revealing the complexities of the pain experience may offer a window into the mind-body interaction. Several recent studies into the placebo effect, human empathy, and their apparent interconnectedness are providing insight into the human subjective experience.

    Such investigations, (...), help scientists understand the intersection of physical and emotional states. "The placebo effect gets at the core of how individuals react and modulate environmental events, whether positive or negative in nature," he says. If harnessed, the regulatory mechanisms involved could point to better treatments for pain, depression, and stress.

    1. Deception Detection, Psychologists Try To Learn How To Spot A Liar, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "Is he lying?" Odds are, you'll never know. Although people have been communicating with one another for tens of thousands of years, more than 3 decades of psychological research have found that most individuals are abysmally poor lie detectors. (...) scientists asked more than 2,000 people from nearly 60 countries, "How can you tell when people are lying?" From Botswana to Belgium, the number-one answer was the same: Liars avert their gaze.

      "This is . . . the most prevalent stereotype about deception in the world,"(...)

  4. Musically Speaking, CBN 60 Minutes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) musical savant whose incredible piano talent coexists with blindness and severe mental impairment (...).

    "The first conversations I had with Rex were through the keyboard. He would play a phrase, I would play a phrase. And it was a game," (...). He would try to force me into a corner. And then he would laugh and laugh and laugh."

    Mehnert thinks he was trying to outwit him: "(...) He's 100 times more musical than I am … He's more musical than anybody I've ever met in my life."

    1. When Remembering Might Mean Forgetting, The Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Dynamic Duo: The amygdala and hippocampus are two of the various brain structures thought to underlie learning and memory, including fear conditioning.
      Recall a memory under certain circumstances, and the brain might erase it, recent rodent research suggests. If that possibility seems like science fiction, consider other weird tricks played by the mind's memory machinery. False recollections, for example, can occur during a déjà vu experience or after hypnosis. And true recollections which can reconstruct experiences from decades earlier, often seem almost supernatural, even to those fully aware of the brain's complexity.(...)

      The other camp argues that retrieved memories persist without undergoing reconsolidation, though various treatments might temporarily disrupt access to them.

    2. Crayfish Catch a Nap, Science Now Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Crayfish catch z's much like mammals do, a new study finds. (...), their brains emit slow waves of electricity surprisingly similar to those seen in the brains of slumbering mammals.

      In terms of behavior, sleep is characterized by an animal's indifference to the outside world and its need to compensate for doze deficits. In mammals and other vertebrates, sleep also evokes slow, regular waves of electrical activity in the brain. However, although studies in fruit flies and bees hint at proper sleep, slow waves have not been found in these animals.

  5. Does The Brain Oscillate? The Dispute On Neuronal Synchronization, Neurol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The present essay concisely analyses the contemporary neurobiological debate concerning the hypothesis of the temporal correlation advanced to solve the perceptual problem of linking different features in a unitary object or visual scene. Although fascinating and grounded on simulations and brain models, in addition to important electrophysiological findings on the sensory systems, this hypothesis is regarded as not conclusive, and it still excites numerous critical observations from different approaches. Nevertheless, it has contributed to an innovative use of the idea of cortical oscillations, as regards its usual employment in reference to the electrical activity of the brain. (...)

    1. The Scaling Of Motor Noise With Muscle Strength And Motor Unit Number In Humans, Experi. Brain Res. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Understanding the origin of noise, or variability, in the motor system is an important step towards understanding how accurate movements are performed. Variability of joint torque during voluntary activation is affected by many (...). To investigate the relationship between the peripheral factors and motor noise, the maximum voluntary torque produced at a joint and the coefficient of variation of joint torque were recorded from six adult human subjects for four muscle/joint groups in the arm. It was found that the coefficient of variation of torque decreases systematically as the maximum voluntary torque increases. (...)

  6. Sensorimotor Control of Navigation in Arthropod and Artificial Systems, Arthropod Structure & Development Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Arthropods exhibit highly efficient solutions to sensorimotor navigation problems. They thus provide a source of inspiration and ideas to robotics researchers. At the same time, attempting to re-engineer these mechanisms in robot hardware and software provides useful insights into how the natural systems might work.
    This paper reviews three examples of arthropod sensorimotor control systems that have been implemented and tested on robots. (...)

  7. Synthetic Biology Applies Engineering Approach to Biological Components, MIT News Office Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Work in synthetic biology has progressed for two decades, but researchers are only at the preliminary stages of being able to engineer biological systems, said Endy (Fellow: Division of Biological Engineering & Department of Biology). He compared synthetic biology today to mechanical engineering in the 1800s, when machine components had yet to be standardized. Thanks to the eventual completion of that process, "we no longer have to think about the direction of the threading on a screw," said Endy. Similarly, biological engineers at MIT and elsewhere are working to standardize biological parts, such as ribosomes and other cell components. (...) For instance, he ( Thomas F. Knight Jr., senior research scientist in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) described his work on rewriting the genome of a microorganism called mesoplasma. One way to do this is to "take stuff out until it breaks. An alternative to understanding complexity is to remove it," he said to laughter from the audience. He added that this approach could lead to "new science and novel engineering."

  8. An End to the Prion Debate? Don't Count on It, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A bold set of prion experiments in mice may have proven that the misshapen proteins are, by themselves, infectious. If the work holds up, it will be a watershed in prion biology, validating the belief that these proteins alone are the culprits in "mad cow disease" and similar illnesses.

    (...) many scientists express reservations about the study (...). For years, biologists have tried to prove that a protein called PrP can misfold and become an infectious prion by purifying protein clumps from diseased brains and injecting them into healthy animals.

    1. Synthetic Mammalian Prions, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Recombinant mouse prion protein (recMoPrP) produced in Escherichia coli was polymerized into amyloid fibrils that represent a subset of ß sheet-rich structures. Fibrils consisting of recMoPrP(89-230) were inoculated intracerebrally into transgenic (Tg) mice expressing MoPrP(89-231). The mice developed neurologic dysfunction between 380 and 660 days after inoculation. Brain extracts showed protease-resistant PrP by Western blotting; these extracts transmitted disease to wild-type FVB mice and Tg mice overexpressing PrP, with incubation times of 150 and 90 days, respectively. Neuropathological findings suggest that a novel prion strain was created. Our results provide compelling evidence that prions are infectious proteins.
      • Source: Synthetic Mammalian Prions , Giuseppe Legname, Ilia V. Baskakov, Hoang-Oanh B. Nguyen, Detlev Riesner, Fred E. Cohen, Stephen J. DeArmond, Stanley B. Prusiner, Science : 673-676, 04/07/30

    2. Study Lends Support to Mad Cow Theory, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Scientists are reporting that, for the first time, they have made an artificial prion, or misfolded protein, that can, by itself, produce a deadly infectious disease in mice and may help explain the roots of mad cow disease. The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, are strong evidence for the "protein-only hypothesis," the controversial idea that a protein, acting alone without the help of DNA or RNA, a cousin of DNA, can cause certain kinds of infectious diseases.

    3. Lab-Made Prions Trigger Mad Cow Symptoms, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Synthetic prion proteins can infect mice.
      (c) Science
      Researchers have created a synthetic protein that makes mice display symptoms similar to those of mad cow disease.

      The protein, called a prion, helps to resolve a long-standing debate on the cause of certain degenerative brain conditions, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in humans and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle. Being able to manufacture the rogue protein in the lab may also aid the development of new therapies and speedy diagnostic tests.

      (...) infectious agent must also contain genetic material, (...) in order to instruct the healthy proteins to turn bad.

  9. Pop Goes the Mitochondrion, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Summary: In cells undergoing apoptosis or cell death, mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell, often have a key role. Not only is cellular metabolism shut down, but mitochondria release molecules into the cytoplasm that further promote cell death. Substantial controversy has surrounded the mechanisms by which these processes occur. Green and Kroemer (p. 626) review the role of mitochondria in cell death. Permeabilization of the mitochondria can be the point-of-no-return that seals the fate of a cell, and numerous strategies are envisioned to alter these processes therapeutically to benefit patients suffering from a range of illnesses from cancer and heart failure to neurodegeneration.

  10. Building A Cluster Of Intelligent, Adaptive Web Sites, Neural Comp. & Appl. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Many attempts have been made to track web usage patterns and provide dynamic suggestions that might help users reach the information they seek more quickly. These mechanisms rely on mining the web log files for usage patterns. While this is easy for a single server, it would be much more difficult for multiple servers. We propose a mechanism that uses agent-based technologies and dynamic self-organizing maps to combine usage patterns in multiple web server logs and structures of multiple web sites to provide a more efficient and informative set of suggested links. This paper includes results of an ongoing project, (...).
    • Source: Building A Cluster Of Intelligent, Adaptive Web Sites, R. Amarasiri - rasika.amarasiriainfotech.monash.edu.au, D. Alahakoon, DOI: 10.1007/s00521-004-0417-0, Neural Computing & Applications, Jun. 2004, online 2004/05/20
    • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

    1. Filtering Multilingual Web Content Using Fuzzy Logic And Self-Organizing Maps, Neural Comp. & Appl. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Effective multilingual information filtering is required to alleviate users burden of information overload resulting from the increasing flood of multilingual textual content available extensively over the World-Wide Web. This paper proposes a content-based self-organizing approach to multilingual information filtering using fuzzy logic and the self-organizing map. This approach screens and evaluates multilingual documents based on their semantic contents. Correlated multilingual documents are disseminated according to their corresponding themes or topics, thus enabling language-independent content-based information access efficiently and effectively. A Web-based multilingual online news-filtering system is developed to illustrate how the approach works.

    2. Microsoft Deploys Newsbot To Track Down Headlines, Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: MSN Newsbot (newsbot.msnbc.msn.com) looks a lot like Google News, another automatically generated headline-gathering service. Google News continually scans 4,500 online sources to find fresh news articles; Microsoft scans 4,800 sites and updates its summary pages every 10 minutes.

      Like Google, MSN Newsbot groups together headlines about the same topic from a variety of sources, making it easier to compare alternate accounts.

      MSN Newsbot, however, also remembers what you read (using browser cookies to track use instead of requiring you to sign in (...).

  11. An Ensemble Of Neural Networks For Weather Forecasting, Neural Comp. & Appl. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: This study presents the applicability of an ensemble of artificial neural networks (ANNs) and learning paradigms for weather forecasting in southern Saskatchewan, Canada. The proposed ensemble method for weather forecasting has advantages over other techniques like linear combination. Generally, the output of an ensemble is a weighted sum, which are weight-fixed, with the weights being determined from the training or validation data. In the proposed approach, weights are determined dynamically from the respective certainties of the network outputs. The more certain a network seems to be of its decision, the higher the weight. (...)

  12. Diversity, Complexity, and Persistence in Large Model Ecosystems, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Research on how vast numbers of interacting species manage to coexist in nature reveals a deep disparity between the ubiquity of complex ecosystems and their theoretical improbability. Here, we show how integrating models of food-web structure and nonlinear bioenergetic dynamics bridges this disparity and helps elucidate ecological complexity. (...)

    1. Modeling Food-Web Dynamics: Complexity-Stability Implications, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: We discuss theoretical aspects of the broader food-web research agenda, particularly the background and various approaches used for modeling food-web dynamics in abstract systems with more than two taxa. Much of this type of modeling has oriented itself around the classic and enduring complexity-stability debate in ecology, especially those aspects which relate to the theoretical and associated empirical food-web research into the relationships between ecosystem complexity, often characterized as number of links and/or number of species in a community, and various aspects of ecosystem stability. (...)

  13. Parasites: Small Players With Crucial Roles In The Ecological Theater, EcoHealth Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Effective management of our natural resources requires an understanding of ecosystem structure and function; effectively, an ecosystem-based approach to management. Parasites occur, albeit cryptically, in almost all ecosystems, yet they are usually neglected in studies on populations and communties of organisms. Parasites can have pronounced or subtle effects on hosts affecting host behavior, growth, fecundity, and mortality. Furthermore, parasites may regulate host population dynamics and influence community structure. Many parasites have complex life cycles and depend for transmission on the presence of a variety of invertebrate and vertebrate intermediate hosts. Often transmission involves predator-prey interactions. (...)

    1. Insecticide Resistance: A Constraint On Evolutionary Change, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers have identified that a specific point in the genetic code appears not only to control an organism's resistance to a class of pesticides but also to significantly influence the ability of an organism to evolve such resistance at all. Identifying such specific and strong constraints on short-term evolutionary change are likely to help ecologists and public-health experts understand, and potentially predict, the ability of particular species to quickly develop resistance to substances such as insecticides. The new work also illuminates the kind of genetic technicality that can shape evolution. (...)

  14. Objects That Make Objects: The Population Dynamics of Structural Complexity, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: To analyze the evolutionary emergence of structural complexity in physical processes we introduce a general, but tractable, model of objects that interact to produce new objects. Since the objects-epsilon-machines-have well-defined structural properties, we demonstrate that complexity in the resulting population dynamical system emerges on several distinct organizational scales during evolution-from individuals to nested levels of mutually self-sustaining interaction. The evolution to increased organization is dominated by the spontaneous creation of structural hierarchies and this, in turn, is facilitated by the innovation and maintenance of relatively low-complexity, but general individuals.

    1. Electric Fields Assemble Devices, Technology Research News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The easiest way to assemble a device is to provide an environment that causes it to self-assemble. (...)

      In contrast, today's electronic devices are generally put together using tiny equivalents of assembly line robots that pick up and place components on chips. This approach can be scaled down only so far because at a certain point natural forces cause components to stick to assembly mechanisms.

      Researchers from the National Microelectronics Research Centre (NMRC) in Ireland have sidestepped the problem by using electric fields to direct the assembly process

  15. Photonic Chips Go 3D, Technology Research News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:

    Source: MIT
    The dream of building computer chips that use light signals rather than electricity has entered the realm of serious research in recent years with the advent of photonic crystal, a material that blocks and channels light within extremely small spaces.

    Producing practical photonic crystal chips, however, includes several challenges: making three-dimensional devices that emit light from specific points, emit at the wavelengths used by today's optical telecommunications equipment and can be manufactured using processes suited to mass production.

    1. Nanotech Leads Way To Quantum Computing, vnunet.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Plastic chips and quantum computing could be among the new ways of keeping up with Moore's Law in the future, according to a new study on nanotechnology, the science of manipulating matter on a molecular level.

      The report from the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, entitled Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties, said that advances are likely to bring the semiconductor and chemical industries closer together as researchers strive to cram ever more storage and processing power into increasingly tiny spaces.

    2. IEEE Virtual Museum, HBS Working Knowledge Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: We're suckers for good museums about technology, although it must be said that many of the things we grew up with, like the record player, are now considered museum pieces. Nevertheless, this collection focusing on technology developments around electricity is fun and informative. Exhibits include: "How Electricity Came to Be"; "Let's Get Small: The Shrinking World of Microelectronics"; "Powering the Electrical Revolution: Women and Technology"; "The Beat Goes On: How Sounds are Recorded and Played"; and "World War II: How War Impacted Technology, How Technology Impacted War." This site was developed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, better known as the IEEE.

  16. Stepping on Big Brother's Toes, Wired News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Big Brother Awards are now held as an annual event in 17 countries. Each event typically focuses on privacy violations in the host country.

    But Privacy International opted to make an exception this year by including in the U.K. awards a U.S. initiative, US-Visit. This security program requires that most foreign visitors traveling to the United States on a visa have their index fingers digitally scanned and a digital photograph taken, so that immigration officers can verify their identity before the visitors are allowed entry into the United States.

  17. Betting on the President, Science Now Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Now, thanks to the Internet, so-called "prediction markets" are booming again--and drawing serious attention from economists. (...)

    But the current betting markets--led by Web sites such as www.intrade.com, tradesports.com, and fairbet.com--may outperform opinion polls. In the last four presidential elections (...), the University of Iowa's Iowa Electronic Market has averaged an error margin of ±1.5% in the week before the vote, compared with ±2.1% for the Gallup polls. More recently, traders picked John Edwards as John Kerry's running mate 2 months before Kerry did.

  18. The Faulty Premise of Pre-emption, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The Bush administration took a new approach to North Korea this month: it suggested that Kim Jong Il follow the example set by Muammar el-Qaddafi. John R. Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, urged North Korea to follow Libya's "strategic choice" and voluntarily dismantle its nuclear weapons programs.

    But if this approach is based on the assumption that Libya acted to avoid a pre-emptive attack, then its premise is flawed. The United States' pre-emptive invasion of Iraq did not play a large role in bringing about Libya's rapprochement.

    1. Taking Action in Darfur, NPR TOTN Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: World leaders said "never again" after atrocities in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Join NPR's Neal Conan and his guests to discuss the future of Darfur and what can be done to stop the ethnic fighting in western Sudan.

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

    1. Manipulating US Elections is Not an Al-Qaeda Goal, The Daily Star Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The warning by the US Department of Homeland Security that Al-Qaeda may be preparing to disrupt the presidential election has been sounded with little assessment of the terrorist organization's aims.

      Some have questioned the extent to which the Bush administration may be using such warnings for political reasons, but few have challenged the notion that Al-Qaeda seeks to replicate its Madrid attack on the eve of the Spanish election for the presumed goal of defeating President George W. Bush.(...)

      By this measure, it is difficult to imagine that Al-Qaeda would view the record of the past three years as having been anything but successful.

    2. Al Qaeda Seeks to Disrupt U.S. Economy, Experts Warn, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Osama bin Laden has implored terrorists on several occasions to strike targets that will harm the economy in the United States and elsewhere. But a man claiming to be Mr. bin Laden went even further in a tape-recorded statement released April 29, saying that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks devastated the American economy and the United States government's budget. For the first time, it appeared, Mr. bin Laden estimated the economic impact by citing specific statistics.

    3. Seriousness of Threat Defended Despite Dated Intelligence, Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Bush administration officials acknowledged yesterday that the latest terrorism alert was based primarily on information that is three to four years old, but they aggressively defended the decision to warn financial sectors in Washington, New York and Newark because of the continuing threat posed by al Qaeda.

      Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said (...) that while much of the intelligence that led to the alert was dated, authorities were alarmed by evidence that al Qaeda computer files obtained last week had been updated as recently as January.

    4. Another F.B.I. Employee Blows Whistle on Agency, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: o in early 2002, when Mr. German got word that a group of Americans might be plotting support for an overseas Islamic terrorist group, he proposed to his bosses (...): go undercover and infiltrate the group.

      But Mr. German says F.B.I. officials sat on his request, botched the investigation, falsified documents to discredit their own sources, then froze him out and made him a "pariah."

      (...) F.B.I. whistle-blowers who claim they were retaliated against after voicing concerns about how management problems had impeded terrorism investigations since the Sept. 11 attacks.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Renormalizing the Schwinger-Dyson Equations, Fred Cooper, Bogdan Mihaila, John Dawson, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 04-07-023
      2. Writing DNA: First Synthetic Biology Conference Held at MIT, Lauren J. Clark, MIT's Biological Engineering Division
      3. Gutless Wonder: New Symbiosis Lets Worm Feed On Whale Bones, Science News, A newly discovered genus of marine worm can take nourishment from sunken whale skeletons, thanks to a previously unknown form of symbiosis.
      4. Chimps Mature With Human Ancestor, Science News, The Stone Age human ancestor Homo erectus grew at about the same pace as wild chimpanzees today do.
      5. Early Life Forms Had A Modular Structure, Science News, Fossils recently discovered in northeastern Newfoundland reveal that some of Earth's earliest large organisms had modular body plans whose main architectural element was a branching, frondlike structure.
      6. Brain Development Disturbed In Autism, Science News. A brain-imaging study suggests that autism is characterized by disturbances in the development of the amygdala and the hippocampus, two inner-brain structures.
      7. It's the Conversations, Stupid! The Link between Social Interaction and Political Choice , Valdis Krebs, 04/05, Orgnet
      8. New Japanese Video Games Promote Dance, Physical Activity, Mike O'Sullivan, 04/07/21, Voice of America,
      9. Monster Waves Rule the Seas, XAVIER BOSCH, 04/07/26, Science Now
      10. Panel Sees No Unique Risk From Genetic Engineering, Andrew Pollack, 04/07/28, NYTimes
      11. Attacks Outpace Iraqis' Ability to Restore Order, Nick Simeone, 04/07/28, Voice of America
      12. Hologram Makes Fast Laser Tweezer, , 04/07/28, Technology Research News
      13. Parting the Oils , 04/07/28, Science Now, An irregular electric field separates mixed liquids
      14. Branching Gene Could Beautify Bushes , Michael Hopkin, 04/07/28, Nature News, Genetic discovery shows how plants organize their shape.
      15. Neurobiology: Odorant Receptors Make Scents, Rainer W. Friedrich, 04/07/29, Nature 430, 511 - 512 , DOI: 10.1038/430511a
      16. Wave Device Boon To Swimmers, Jacqueline Ali, 04/07/30, BBC News Online,
        The design will enable a more efficient swim
        Image: Padraig Murphy
      17. Apple Attacks RealNetworks Plan to Sell Songs for iPod, Laurie J. Flynn, 04/07/30, NYTimes
      18. Graceful, Beautiful, and Perilous, Erik Stokstad, 04/07/30, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5684, 641-642. As gymnastics routines grow ever trickier, experts worry that children are being pushed beyond their limits--and are paying with their health
      19. Mighty Mice: Inspiration for Rogue Athletes?, Gretchen Vogel, 04/07/30, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5684, 633
      20. Do Pool Sharks Swim Faster?, Kim Krieger, 04/07/30, Science, Vol 305, Issue 5684, 636. New swimsuits with tiny ridges modeled on sharkskin are all the rage. Experts are split, though, about whether the high-tech suits reduce drag
      21. Entropy, Holography, and the Second Law, Daniel R. Terno, 04/07/30, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 051303. The geometric entropy in quantum field theory is not a Lorentz scalar and has no invariant meaning, while the black hole entropy is invariant.
      22. Hawking's Black Hole Reversal , 04/07/30, NPR, TOTN. We get an update on Stephen Hawking's revised theory about the inner workings of black holes.
      23. Einstein, Bohr and the Nature of Light, Ira Flatow, Shahriar S. Afshar, 04/07/30, Talk of the Nation, Friday. Is it a wave or a particle, both, or neither? Well, maybe it depends on who is looking. In this hour we take a new look at an old quantum question about the nature of light. We'll talk with one physicist who says he has a new take on an age old quantum question.
      24. KIF1A Alternately Uses Two Loops to Bind Microtubules, Ryo Nitta, Masahide Kikkawa, Yasushi Okada, Nobutaka Hirokawa, 04/07/30, Science : 678-683. Kinesin motor proteins move along microtubules by rapidly alternating between tightly bound and detached states.
      25. Fish Stew: Species Interplay Makes Fisheries Management Tricky In The Long Run, 04/07/31, Science News, Annual fluctuations in certain fish populations can be best understood and controlled by accounting for ecological factors, such as predation by other fish, in addition to fisheries harvests.
      26. Status Syndrome: How Your Social Standing Directly Affects Your Health And Life Expectancy by M. Marmot, A. Brew - a.brewaucl.ac.uk, 2004/06/07, Alphagalileo
      27. The Complexity Of Agreement, S. Aaronson - aaronsonacs.berkeley.edu, 2004/07/06, Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity TR04-061
      28. Competition and Adaptation in an Internet Eevolution Model, M. Angeles Serrano, Marian Boguna, Albert Diaz-Guilera, 2004/07/12, arXiv, DOI: cond-mat/0406765
      29. Rational Competition and Cooperation in Ubiquitous Agent Communities, Jiming Liu, Chunyan Yao, 2004/07/20, Knowledge-Based Systems, Article in Press, Uncorrected Proof, DOI: 10.1016/j.knosys.2004.06.002
      30. Novelty in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) Dynamics: A Computational Theory of Actor Innovation, Sheri M. Markose, 2004/07/23, Physica A, Article in Press, Uncorrected Proof, DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2004.06.085
      31. Complexity vs Stability in Small-world Networks, Sitabhra Sinha, 2004/07/24, arXiv, DOI: nlin.AO/0407053
      32. Warning Signals And Predator-Prey Coevolution, D. W. Franks, J. Noble, 2004/07/26, Alphagalileo & Proceedings B (Biological Sciences)
      33. Changing Partners In The Dark: Isotopic And Molecular Evidence Of Ectomycorrhizal Liaisons Between Forest Orchids And Trees, M. I. Bidartondo, B. Burghardt, G. Gebauer, T. D. Bruns, D. J. Read, 2004/07/26, Alphagalileo & Proceedings B (Biological Sciences)
      34. Double-Link Expandohedra: A Mechanical Model For Expansion Of A Virus, F. Kovacs, T. Tarnai, S. D. Guest, P. W. Fowler, 2004/07/26, Alphagalileo & Proceedings A (Mathematical, Physical & Engineering Sciences)
      35. Closer Cooperation With Chinese Scientists: The Helmholtz Association Extends Its Strategic Research Partnership - Opening Of The Helmholtz Beijing Office, E. Peerenboom - ellen.peerenboomahelmholtz.de, 2004/07/26, Alphagalileo
      36. Wasp Researcher Doesn't Mind An Occasional Sting, 2004/07/26, ScienceDaily & University Of Wisconsin-Madison
      37. Researchers Find That Color Perception Is Not Innate, But Acquired After Birth, 2004/07/27, ScienceDaily & Cell Press
      38. One Taste Of Growth Protein And Nerve Cells Want More, 2004/07/28, ScienceDaily & Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
      39. A First Glance At The Gene Networks Of Human Aging, joao@genetics.med.harvard.edu, 2004/07/29, Alphagalileo & Harvard Medical School
      40. Each White Whale Has Its Individual Voice, S. Komarov - textmasterainformnauka.ru, 2004/07/30, Alphagalileo
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      1. The 4th Intl Workshop on Meta-synthesis and Complex System, Beijing, China, 04/07/22-23
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      27. International Conference On Computational Intelligence (Icci 2004) , , Istanbul, Turkey, 04/12/15-17
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      31. 18th International Conference on Noise and Fluctuations (ICNF 2005), Salamanca, Spain, 05/09/19-23


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