11th International Conference on Neural Information Processing, Conference Webcast 
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Neurobiological Foundation For The Meaning Of Information, Walter
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Neural Information Processing Efforts To Restore Vision In The Blind,
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Patterns, Clusters, And Components- What Data Is Made Of, Erkki
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Caves, Clusters, and Weak Ties: The Six Degrees World of Inventors, HBS Working Knowledge
Excerpts: Your company's scientists and investors can be antennas that bring great ideas into your company. The key, says HBS professor Lee Fleming, is understanding small-world networks.(...) Agglomeration also happened here in Boston (the illustration shows the beginning of Boston's agglomeration in the mid-1990s), but it lagged, mainly because DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) was falling apart. And so with the largest component failing, inventors and local universities like MIT could not coalesce around DEC, as they did out in Silicon Valley with IBM and Stanford.
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Excerpts: Although the pursuit of opportunity promises outsized rewards to entrepreneurs and established enterprises, it also entails great uncertainty. The critical task of entrepreneurship lies in effectively managing the uncertainty inherent in trying something new. Some entrepreneurs foolishly try to ignore uncertainty; others go to the opposite extreme of attempting to avoid it altogether. Rather than ignore uncertainty or attempt to avoid it in the naive belief that every contingency can be anticipated, entrepreneurs should instead manage uncertainty by taking a disciplined approach.
Are Animals As Irrational As Humans?, ScienceDaily
Excerpts:
The European starling, more rational than it seems. (Photo author: Cynthia Schuck Paim)
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Animals in the wild are constantly confronted with decisions where to nest, who to mate, where the best forage is. Mainstream models of choice in both economics and biology predict that preferences will be rational, or consistent across contexts, as a result of being motivated by self interest or, in the case of animals, reproductive success. Yet many studies report that when making decisions people often take shortcuts, using cognitive heuristics that may lead to economically irrational decisions, with similar claims now showing up in animal behavior studies. (...) question whether irrational decisions have been correctly demonstrated in animals. (...)
The Dream Factory, Wired
Excerpts: A fab lab is a miniature factory for the digital age. (...) Set it up, turn it on, and you can crank out not only solid objects like eyeglass frames and action figures but, thanks to Gershenfeld's research, electronic devices like radios and computers, too. The professor recently installed one at a technical institute in southwestern Ghana, where it has proven hugely popular. His success suggests that manufacturing - like publishing, coding, music and film distribution, and communications before it - is about to bust out of its industrial confines.
The Role Of The State In Evolutionary Economics, Cambridge J. Econ.
Excerpt: From an evolutionary perspective, the role of public policy extends far beyond the mere correction of market failures emphasised by neoclassical economics. Public policy may facilitate the market process. It may also guide the market process (in the case of multiple equilibria). The state can finally play a more creative role by allowing private agents to satisfy individually or collectively certain goals unattainable through market forces alone. However, this paper shows that although the scope of useful public policies is broader in an evolutionary approach than in neoclassical economics, the government's ability to direct the evolution of the economic system is highly limited. (...)
Reported And Secret Interventions In The Foreign Exchange Markets, Finance Res. Lett.
Except: Using a new approach relying on news wire reports, we estimate the proportion of secret interventions (i.e., unreported official interventions) in the foreign exchange markets that have been conducted by the three major central banks since 1985. We therefore revisit the estimation of conditional probabilities of secret operations (...). The proportion of secret interventions is found to be lower for concerted operations and to display a great deal of variability over time as well as across the three major central banks. Our analysis reveals that the Bank of Japan has recently adopted an intervention policy more based on secret operations.
Good News About Poverty, NY Times
Excerpts: Developing countries are seeing their economies expand by 6.1 percent this year - an unprecedented rate - and, even if you take China, India and Russia out of the equation, developing world growth is still around 5 percent. As even the cautious folks at the World Bank note, all developing regions are growing faster this decade than they did in the 1980's and 90's.
This is having a wonderful effect on world poverty, because when regions grow, that growth is shared up and down the income ladder.
Two-Factor Model of Income Distribution Dynamics, SFI Working Papers
Abstract: This paper analyzes empirical income distributions and proposes a simple stochastic model to explain the stationary distribution and deviations from it. Using the individual tax returns data in the U.S. and Japan for 40 years, we first summarize the shape of income distribution by an exponential decay up to about the 90th percentile of income and a power decay for the top 1 percent. We then propose a minimal stochastic process of labor and asset income to reproduce the empirical characteristics. In particular, the Pareto exponent is derived analytically and matched with empirical statistics.
Vast Borrowing Seen in Altering Social Security, NY Times
Excerpts: The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush's plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, (...).
The White House says it has made no decisions about how to pay for establishing the accounts, (...). Many Democrats say that the costs associated with setting up personal accounts just make Social Security's financial problems worse, and that the United States can scarcely afford to add to its rapidly growing national debt.
When Weakness Is a Strength, NY Times
Excerpts: America's consumption binge has its mirror image in excess savings elsewhere in the world - especially in Asia and Europe. For now, America draws freely on this reservoir, absorbing about 80 percent of the world's surplus savings. Just as the United States has moved production and labor offshore in recent years, it is now outsourcing its savings.
This is a dangerous arrangement. The day could come when foreign investors demand better terms for financing America's spending spree (and savings shortfall). That is the day the dollar will collapse, (...).
Computers as Authors? Literary Luddites Unite!, New York Times
Excerpts: For some people, writing a novel is a satisfying exercise in self-expression. For me, it's a hideous blend of psychoanalysis and cannibalism that is barely potent enough to overcome a series of towering avoidance mechanisms -- including my own computer. Writers and computers nowadays are locked in such an enduringly (...).
Waving Hello, From a Distance, NY Times
Excerpts: "We're finding that my 4-year-old son knows how to use the videophone," he said. "Even his grandmother knows how to use the videophone, which is impressive. This is not just for early adopters, geeks and techno folks like myself."
Convinced that almost anyone who can use a telephone can use his videophones, Mr. Martin said he planned to set up call centers in the coming weeks, including at hospitals where children can talk to (and see) hired "Santas at the North Pole."
Hi, I'm Your Car. Don't Let Me Distract You., NY Times
Excerpts: The study concluded that in most cases, drivers "overestimated the ease of use afforded by hands-free phone interfaces."
Drivers can be easily distracted, even when they have both hands on the wheel. "In many cases, it's the amount of brain power you're using," said David Champion, the senior director of auto tests for Consumer Reports. "Even if you're using a hands-free phone, you're using quite a bit of brain power to actually have a discussion."
(...), state laws are silent on other distracting technology inside a car.
Transparent Transistor: See-Through Component For Flexible Displays, Science News
Excerpts:  Now You See It. Transparent transistors on a sheet of plastic can be seen only at certain angles. Such circuitry could find its way into computer displays in car windshields and other curved surfaces. Nature |
Imagine a car windshield that suddenly lights up to reveal a map of the city and directions to your next destination. Or picture a computer display that you can not only see through but also roll into a tube and slip into your coat pocket. Scientists in Japan have taken a major step to fulfilling such visions with the creation of a transparent transistor deposited on plastic. (...)
(...) transparent circuitry could make existing displays brighter by increasing the amount of light reaching the viewer's eyes, (...).
Concentration Hampers Simple Tasks, Nature News
Excerpts: Why would increased frontal lobe activity make it harder to learn the pattern? (...) the frontal lobes are valuable in a crisis, when it is necessary to make a quick decision about which course of action to take. But this conscious processing might actually inhibit the automatic learning of simpler tasks, (...).
So should we give our brains a break and stop trying to learn? It depends on the type of task, (...). For example, people who are learning to ski should try to relax as they go down the slope.
Patterns: Pain and the Downsized Brain, New York Times
Excerpts: People with chronic back pain showed measurable shrinkage of their brains when they were given M.R.I. scans, researchers reported yesterday.
(...) the gray matter of the brain was 5 percent to 11 percent smaller than it was in other volunteers used for comparison. "The magnitude of this decrease is equivalent to the gray matter volume lost in 10 to 20 years of normal aging," they wrote.(...)
"Chronic pain patients, and specifically chronic back pain patients, seem to have impairment in emotional decision making,"(...).
Protein Mends Broken Hearts, Science Now
Excerpts:  Heart helper. The hearts of mice treated with protein thymosin b4 (right panels) before a simulated heart attack have less scar tissue (blue) and more healthy muscle (red) than the hearts of untreated mice (left panels). Credit: I. Bock-Marquett Et Al., Nature 432, 466 (25 NOVEMBER 2004) |
A protein that normally plays a role in heart development shows early promise in mice for helping the heart heal after a heart attack.
"This compound is one of the best leads for how one might reduce the size of heart attacks," (...). (...) works five times better than stem cells--the next best experimental option--at keeping heart cells alive. If the compound works as well in humans as in mice, Schneider says, eventually emergency personnel might give it to people who have just had a heart attack.
Convincing Results: Stopping The Spread Of Cancer In The Body, Alphagalileo
Excerpt: A team of Danish researchers have discovered that by blocking a specific enzyme, it is possible to check the spread of cancer in the body. This finding may be the first step towards preventing deaths due to cancer spreading to other parts of the body. The discovery may also help reduce the amount of chemotherapy used. (...) "What is special about the enzyme - urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) - is that the cancer needs the enzyme in order to spread throughout the body, but the body does not need the enzyme to function normally. This means that we should be able to block the enzyme (...).
Endurance Running Is In East Africans' Genes, New Scientist
Excerpts: The long-distance running prowess of Ethiopia's elite male athletes is partly dictated by their genes.
Researchers have established that such athletes are more likely to have certain variants of four Y chromosome genes compared with other Ethiopians. No one knows what the genes do, or how influential they are, but they are the first to be linked to east Africans' outstanding ability for endurance events.
Ethiopian and Kenyan athletes have run 37 of the 40 fastest times recorded over 10,000 metres.
A Two-Way Bioinformatic Street, Science
Excerpts: The rapid emergence of Web-based bioinformatics systems reflects the research community's attempts to embrace the biological complexity uncovered by high-throughput genome, transcriptome, and proteome data acquisition and the sheer size of the modern scientific endeavor. If information systems can match this complexity, biology will be enriched as a result. If not, scientific excitement may paradoxically be dampened by data flow. The question is, how should biological information systems and the relationship between those who use them and contribute to them further evolve?
Building a Medical Data Network, NY Times
Excerpts: Digital patient records could become building blocks in a nationwide biomedical computer network for assembling and distributing up-to-the-minute studies of disease.(...)
IN health care, the most exhilarating technology always seems to be on the clinical side of medicine -- sophisticated scanners that can peer inside arteries, gadgets that enhance life-saving microscopic surgery and biotechnology that promises to cure disease and extend ... But medical experts are also talking with excitement about...
The Never-Ending Search, BBC News
Excerpts:
Fascination with the Holy Grail has lasted for centuries, and now the Bletchley Park code-breakers have joined the hunt. But what is it that's made the grail the definition of something humans are always searching for but never actually finding?
Could an obscure inscription on a 250-year-old monument (...) point the way to the Holy Grail - the jewelled chalice reportedly used by Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper? (...)
The monument, built around 1748, features an image (...), and beneath it the letters "D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M."
Editor's Note: Well, the author of the "DaVinci code" offers a different interpretation.
Common Signaling Themes, Science
Excerpts: The Connections Maps, Science's freely accessible database of information on signal transduction featured at Science's online Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE), continues to grow. This issue of Science features Viewpoints in which authorities who have constructed new Connections Map pathways provide overviews of the biological and medical processes that are regulated and briefly look ahead to future developments. That signaling mechanisms are shared across distantly related organisms is readily apparent. (...)
(...) how a limited set of similar or even identical components is assembled in different ways in distinct cell types to control completely different biological responses.
Pheromone Signaling Mechanisms in Yeast: A Prototypical Sex Machine, Science
Excerpts: The actions of many extracellular stimuli are elicited by complexes of cell surface receptors, (...). Analysis of haploid yeast cells and their response to peptide mating pheromones has produced important advances in our understanding of (...) signaling mechanisms. Many of the components, their interrelationships, and their regulators were first identified in yeast. Current analysis of the pheromone response pathway (...) will benefit from new and powerful genomic, proteomic, and computational approaches that will likely reveal additional general principles that are applicable to more complex organisms.
Jekyll and Hyde in the Microbial World, Science
Excerpts: Fungi are nonmotile organisms that obtain carbon from compounds in their immediate surroundings. Confronted with nutrient limitation, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae undergoes a dimorphic transition, switching from spherical cells to filaments of adherent, elongated cells that can invade the substratum. A complex web of sensing mechanisms and cooperation among signaling networks (including a mitogen-activated protein kinase cascade, cyclic adenosine monophosphate- dependent protein kinase, and 5?-adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase) elicits the appropriate changes in physiology, cell cycle progression, cell polarity, and gene expression to achieve this differentiation. Highly related signaling processes control filamentation and virulence of many human fungal pathogens.
Emergence of Complex Dynamics in a Simple Model of Signaling Networks, arXiv
Abstract: A variety of physical, social and biological systems generate complex fluctuations with correlations across multiple time scales. In physiologic systems, these long-range correlations are altered with disease and aging. Such correlated fluctuations in living systems have been attributed to the interaction of multiple control systems; however, the mechanisms underlying this behavior remain unknown. Here, we show that a number of distinct classes of dynamical behaviors, including correlated fluctuations characterized by 1/f-scaling of their power spectra, can emerge in networks of simple signaling units. We find that under general conditions, complex dynamics can be generated by systems fulfilling two requirements: i) a ``small-world'' topology and ii) the presence of noise. Our findings support two notable conclusions: first, complex physiologic-like signals can be modeled with a minimal set of components; and second, systems fulfilling conditions (i) and (ii) are robust to some degree of degradation, i.e., they will still be able to generate 1/f-dynamics.
Stable and Unstable Attractors in Boolean Networks, arXiv
Abstract: Boolean networks at the critical point have been a matter of debate for many years as, e.g., scaling of number of attractor with system size. Recently it was found that this number scales superpolynomially with system size, contrary to a common earlier expectation of sublinear scaling. We here point to the fact that these results are obtained using deterministic parallel update, where a large fraction of attractors in fact are an artifact of the updating scheme. This limits the significance of these results for biological systems where noise is omnipresent. We here take a fresh look at attractors in Boolean networks with the original motivation of simplified models for biological systems in mind. We test stability of attractors w.r.t. infinitesimal deviations from synchronous update and find that most attractors found under parallel update are artifacts arising from the synchronous clocking mode. The remaining fraction of attractors are stable against fluctuating response delays. For this subset of stable attractors we observe sublinear scaling of the number of attractors with system size.
Magnetic Field Benefits Bacteria, Nature News
Excerpts: The bacterium contains a pair of chlorophyll molecules, which allow it to harvest energy from light. But the process relies on a cascade of chemical reactions that can also turn oxygen from the air into a highly reactive form called singlet oxygen, which can damage DNA or proteins in a cell. A magnetic field slightly changes this sequence of reactions (...).
(...) a magnetic field of 20 millitesla, just 400 times the Earth's magnetic field, was enough to cut singlet oxygen production by up to 50%.
A Magnetic Attraction to Home, Science Now
Excerpts:  Pigeon powers. Homing pigeons can use their beaks to detect magnetic fields--an ability that could help them find their way back to the roost. Credit: Iain Macdonald |
The pigeons chose correctly between 55% and 65% of the time in 24 tries.
Previously, researchers had found magnetite crystals in the upper beaks of pigeons. To determine whether this region is the seat of the birds' magnetic sense, Mora attached tiny magnets to each pigeon's beak to impair its field detection ability. The birds' test accuracy plunged below 50%, then improved as they acclimated to the disturbance. Attaching nonmagnetic brass to their beaks did not impair their accuracy, however, nor did snipping the olfactory nerve leading from this area.
Color At Night: Geckos Can Distinguish Hues By Dim Moonlight, Science News
Excerpts:  Twilight Zone. In dim light, the helmet gecko can tell blue from gray, even when people can't. Inset: Pupil nearly closed in bright light (left) and wide open in dim light (right). Roth |
Of all the vertebrates, a gecko has just become the first to ace behavioral tests for seeing color in very low illumination.
People, for example, go color-blind in light equivalent to dim moonlight, but helmet geckos, Tarentola chazaliae, don't. They can still tell a blue from a gray of the same intensity (...).
In low light, Roth couldn't distinguish the cards, but the geckos snapped at crickets associated with blue cards more than twice as often as at those tagged with gray ones.
Complexity And Ecosystem Management: The Theory And Practice Of Multi-Agent Systems, Ecol. Econ.
Book Announcement: The quality of ecosystems is affected by the actions of different stakeholders who use them in a variety of ways. In order to understand this complex relationship between humans and nature, it is vital to understand the complexity of the interacting agents. The authors in this book attempt to do this by applying multi-agent systems to the problems of ecosystem management. The multi-agent approach to ecosystem management is a relatively new and rapidly developing field which takes a formal computational approach towards the interaction of humans with their environment. The authors highlight some of the promising new methodologies (...).
Bison Shed Light On Big Wipeout, BBC News
Excerpts:  The human hunting theory has been left out in the cold |
New evidence casts doubt on the theory that sabre-toothed cats, mammoths and other big North American mammals were driven to extinction by human hunting.
Genetic analysis of bison remains shows their populations started to crash around 37,000 years ago - long before humans arrived in the New World.
Researchers claim that climate change and other factors are more likely culprits in the extinction. (...)
Until as recently as 20,000 years ago, North America had a range of large mammals to rival the wildlife of present-day Africa.
Cicada Invasion Feeds Forests, Nature News
Excerpts:  Hundreds of cicadas can emerge from each square metre of ground. c Louie H. Yang |
Insect broods kick-start forest ecosystems every 17 years.
A huge troop of cicadas known as Brood X emerges in the eastern United States every 17 years, (...). (...), the nutrients from the Magicicada carcasses provide a valuable boost to forest ecosystems, says a California ecologist.
When the insects appear, the adults burrow up from the soil to mate, then lay their eggs inside trees, allowing newborn larvae to travel back underground. Once the mating season ends, these adults die and their bodies litter the forest floor.
Panda Handstand Makes Its Mark, BBC News
Excerpts:  The panda goes high to put down its scent |
Remarkable new film of wild pandas shows how the rare bears engage in some gymnastics to mark their territory. Pandas can adopt four distinct postures to deposit scent, with probably the strangest being the handstand. The bear goes upside down on its front paws with the aim of pushing its urine as high up a tree trunk as possible.
Balancing Food And Predator Pressure Induces Chronic Stress In Songbirds, Proc. Biol. Sc.
Excerpts: The never-ending tension between finding food and avoiding predators may be the most universal natural stressor wild animals experience. The 'chronic stress' hypothesis predicts: (i) an animal's stress profile will be a simultaneous function of food and predator pressures given the aforesaid tension; and (ii) these inseparable effects on physiology will produce inseparable effects on demography because of the resulting adverse health effects. (...). We conducted a 2 × 2, manipulative food addition plus natural predator reduction experiment on song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) that was, to our knowledge, the first to demonstrate comparable synergistic effects in a bird (...).
Identifying The Role That Animals Play In Their Social Networks, Biol. Lett.
Excerpts: Techniques recently developed for the analysis of human social networks are applied to the social network of bottlenose dolphins living in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. We identify communities and subcommunities within the dolphin population and present evidence that sex- and age-related homophily play a role in the formation of clusters of preferred companionship. We also identify brokers who act as links between sub-communities and who appear to be crucial to the social cohesion of the population as a whole. The network is found to be similar to human social networks in some respects but different in some others, (...).
Sensor Network Mimics Synchronized Calling By Frogs, ScienceDaily
Excerpts: The modern world is filled with the uncoordinated beeping and buzzing of countless electronic devices. (...) an electronic network with the ability to synchronize dozens of tiny buzzers, in much the same way that frogs and cicadas coordinate their night-time choruses. (...)
"There is a great deal that we do not yet know about the group behavior of such systems," says Frampton. "So, in addition to being a lot of fun, the synchronized calling experiment is adding to our understanding of the behavior of this kind of network."
Crystal-Clear View of Planet Building, Science Now
Excerpts: Building planets is easier than cooking a turkey: Take a lot of gas and dust, stir gently, allow clumps to form, then leave alone for 10 million years. The result is a young star surrounded by a small family of planets. At least, that's how our own Earth supposedly came to be, some 4.6 billion years ago. Now, astronomers have witnessed the onset of the process close-up for the first time.(...)
The discovery may also help solve a nagging problem regarding the makeup of planetary systems.
Law May Prohibit Iraqi Farmers from Replanting Seeds, NPR ME
Excerpts: The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq laid down a host of laws covering everything from stock markets to the ownership of new kinds of agricultural crops. An order on agricultural plant varities has provoked protests from activist groups. The law may prohibit farmers from replanting seeds from their own harvest, and it's more restrictive than American laws.
U.N. Tackles Issue of Imbalance of Power, NY Times
Excerpts: The Security Council is action central at the United Nations, the one body that can pass resolutions binding on all 191 members and cut through the delay and obfuscation that can thwart decision-making elsewhere in the ranks.
Yet its composition is indisputably out of date. Its definitive authority - (...) - is in the hands of the post-World War II powers of the United States, Britain, France and Russia, as well as China, and out of reach for countries like Brazil, Germany, India and Japan (...).
Congress Seeks to Curb International Court, The Washington Post
Excerpts: The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the criminal court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to nations that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.
The move marks an escalation in U.S. efforts to ensure that the first world criminal court can never judge American citizens for crimes committed overseas. (...), which cut millions of dollars in military assistance to many countries that would not sign the Article 98 agreements, (...).
Was Nov. 2 Realignment -- Or a Tilt?, Washington Post
Excerpts: "If the war on terror is such a realigning issue, how come Bush only got 51 percent of the vote?" he asked. By Teixeira's lights, the president took advantage of the natural power of incumbency, which is accentuated in wartime, and gave scant emphasis to his second-term policy agenda on such issues as overhauling Social Security, which polls show leaves many voters uneasy. "It's hard to read [the results] in a serious way as a mandate for much of anything," Teixeira said.
Complex Challenges: Global Terroist Networks
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Excerpts: Given what is emerging in the streets of Iraq and the battlefields of Afghanistan, the answer is far from a resounding yes. (...)
Indeed, more questions are likely to pop up about the wisdom of investing billions of dollars for fighting a network-centric warfare while America's chief adversary - global terrorist groups - is primarily low-tech based, and might be best tackled by enhancing the effectiveness of the United States' intelligence-gathering capabilities worldwide and disseminating them just in time to the fighting forces. (...)
UN Recommends New Definition Of Terrorism, ABC Online
Excerpts: On the eve of a landmark report into reform at the United Nations, Osama bin Laden's top lieutenant has warned that his al-Qaeda terror network will continue its fight against the United States. Over the last 30 years, the UN has been wrestling with the question of how it should deal with terrorism, (...).
The panel is reported to be about to recommend a new definition of terrorism, along with reforms which will allow the UN to intervene in failing states more easily,(...).
Terror Case Hinges on a Wobbly Key Player, NY Times
Excerpts: By setting himself on fire outside the White House, a Yemeni man with a checkered past has damaged what may be the biggest terrorism financing case in this country. (...) The question now casting a cloud over the case, lawyers say, is how much damage may have been done by the revelations about his past. (...) the same prosecutors who were relying on Mr. Alanssi quietly filed federal charges against him when they learned that, despite having been paid $100,000 as an informer, he had continued writing bad checks.
Links & Snippets
Other Publications
- Scientists Propose Conservation Parks On Mars, Mark Peplow,
 The caldera at the top of Olympus Mons is three kilometres deep, and could provide some of the finest mountaineering in the Solar System. c ESA |
Nature News, 04/11/26 International agreement could preserve important sites. - Politics and the C.I.A., 04/11/18, NYTimes, The country deserves a C.I.A. where intelligence operatives feel free to tell the administration that policies are based on wrong or incomplete information.
- Cameraman Details Marine's Role in Mosque Shooting, James Glanz, Edward Wong, 04/11/22, NYTimes, The marine who appears to shoot and kill an unarmed Iraqi prisoner was not aware that the incident was being recorded, according to cameraman Kevin Sites.
- Jailhouse Blues, 04/11/22, NYTimes, The system of counting prisoners as "residents" of the places where they are incarcerated clashes with the principle of one person, one vote.
- Smallest 'Test Tube' Scoops World Record, Will Knight, 04/11/23, New Scientist, Scientists have produced a stable chemical reaction within an inert carbon nanotube - the smallest "test tube" in history
- Obesity Linked To Dementia In Women, Gaia Vince, 04/11/25, New Scientist, Women obese for many years are more likely to suffer abnormal brain cell loss than their slimmer peers, suggests new research
- Ocean Census Reveals Hidden Depths, Fred Pearce, 04/11/25, New Scientist, A major attempt to map Earth's oceans has now logged almost a quarter of a million species, report researchers
- Telling Genuine Art From Fakes At A Stroke, Katharine Davis, 04/11/25, New Scientist, A new digital technique can identify paintings by the same artist, reveal fakes, and even spot brush strokes from contributing proteges
- Pollsters Debate Hispanics' Presidential Voting, 04/11/26, Darryl FearsThe Washington Post, Discrepancy In Estimates vs. Results Examined
- When the Stress of Your Environment Makes You Go HOG Wild, Patrick J. Westfall, Daniel R. Ballon, Jeremy Thorner, 04/11/26, Science : 1511-1512
- A Reversible Synthetic Rotary Molecular Motor, Jose V. Hernandez, Euan R. Kay, David A. Leigh, 04/11/26, Science : 1532-1537.
- A Probabilistic Functional Network of Yeast Genes, Insuk Lee, Shailesh V. Date, Alex T. Adai, Edward M. Marcotte, 04/11/26, Science : 1555-1558
- Foreign Interest Appears to Flag as Dollar Falls, Edmund L. Andrews, 04/11/27, NYTimes
- Quiet Time, Khalid Al-Dakhil, 04/11/27, NYTimes
- Con Artist: Scanning Program Can Discern True Art, 04/11/27, Science News, A new mathematical tool distills painting style into an array of statistics as a potential means to spot forgeries.
- Neural Feel For Seeing: Emotion May Mold Early Visual Activity In Brain, 04/11/27, Science News, The amygdala, an inner-brain structure that coordinates reactions to fearful sights, influences early stages of visual perception in far-removed brain regions.
- Seminal Discovery: Promiscuous Females Speed Sperm Evolution, 04/11/27, Science News, A gene responsible for semen viscosity has evolved more rapidly in primate species with promiscuous females than in monogamous species.
- Damp Sandcastles, 04/11/27, Science News, What keeps the 500-meter-tall dunes of China's Badain Jaran desert immobile, despite arid, windy conditions, is a previously unknown source of groundwater.
- Flightless Feathered Friends, 04/11/27, Science News, New finds of fossil penguins, as well as analyses of the characteristics and DNA of living penguins, are shedding light on the evolution of these flightless birds.
- Lead's A Moving Target At Rifle Ranges, 04/11/27, Science News, The lead used in bullets and shotgun pellets can be a threat to the environment near rifle ranges but many of its hazards are manageable.
- Dead Zones May Record River Floods, 04/11/27, Science News, Microorganisms that live in seafloor sediments deposited beneath periodically anoxic waters near the mouths of rivers could chronicle the years when those rivers flooded for extended periods.
- Pompeii's Burial Not Its First Disaster, 04/11/27, Science News, Recent excavations reveal that the city of Pompeii, famed for its burial by an eruption of Italy's Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79, experienced several devastating landslides in the centuries preceding its demise.
- U.S. Gets Another Reprieve on Use of Pesticide by Farms, 04/11/27, The Washington Post, Exemption Granted From Ban Set For '05 Under Pact on Ozone Layer
- Hydrogen Production Method Could Bolster Fuel Supplies, Matthew L. Wald, 04/11/28, NYTimes, Researchers say they have found a way to produce hydrogen with far less energy than other methods, a development that would move the country closer to the goal of a "hydrogen economy."
- Electronic Voting 1.0, and No Time to Upgrade, James Fallows, 04/11/28, NYTimes, The more you know about the operations of today's widely trusted commercial computer networks, the more concerned you become about most electronic-voting systems.
- Must C-Span TV, Daniel Radosh, John Fulbrook III, 04/11/28, NYTimes, If the shows inspired by "The 9/11 Commission Report" are a success, the networks may want to turn to other government sources for programming ideas.
- Fractal Imaginator (Fi), Jules J.C.M. Ruis, 04/11/29
- Survival Of The Pinheads, 04/11/29,
 (...) this is one of the few documented examples of adaptive change in response to an invasive species. (IMAGE: Ben Phillips ) |
Science Now - Preface from the Editorial Board, 2004, International Journal of Unconventional Computing 1(1):1-2
- Investigation Of Patterns In Food-Away-From-Home Expenditure For China, Insik M., Cheng F., Qi L - qi
econmail.tamu.edu, 2004/09/02, China Economic Review, DOI: 10.1016/j.chieco.2004.06.008 - How Far Away Is the Next Earthquake?, Jörn Davidsen, Maya Paczuski, 2004/11/11, arXiv, DOI: cond-mat/0411297
- Scale Free Networks from Self-Organisation, T.S.Evans, J.P.Saramaki, 2004/11/15, arXiv, DOI: cond-mat/0411390
- Modelling Strategies For Minimizing The Impact Of An Imported Exotic Infection, M. G. Roberts, 2004/11/24, Proceedings: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2865
- Fitness Cost Of Extended Lifespan In Caenorhabditis Elegans, N. L. Jenkins, G. McColl, G. J. Lithgow, 2004/11/24, Proceedings: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2004.2897
- Study Shows Stem Cells Can Preserve Vision, 2004/11/24, ScienceDaily & Schepens Eye Research Institute
- What Color Is That Sound?, 2004/11/24, ScienceDaily & McMaster University
- Genetic Discovery Paves Way To Decode Sense Of Smell In Mammals, 2004/11/24, ScienceDaily & Duke University Medical Center
- Europe's New Role In The World: An Ethical Power, A. Paulsson - agneta.paulssoneks.su.se, 2004/11/25, Alphagalileo & The Swedish Research Council
- Scientists Develop 'Electronic Eye' For The Blind, J. Bealing - j.a.bealingsussex.ac.uk, 2004/11/26, ScienceDaily & Institute Of Physics
- Scientists Achieve Self-assembly Of Spider Silk Fiber In Insect Cells, 2004/11/26, ScienceDaily & Hebrew University Of Jerusalem
- Evolutionary Dynamics of Cellular Automata-based Self-replicators in Hostile Environments, Chris Salzberg, Antony Antony, Hiroki Sayama, 2004/12, Biosystems 78(1-3):119-134, DOI: 10.1016/j.biosystems.2004.07.004
- Popular Communication After Globalization, J. Gunn - jgunnlsu.edu., B. Brummett, Dec. 2004, Journal of Communication, DOI: 10.1093/joc/54.4.705
- BioRAT: Extracting Biological Information From Full-Length Papers, D. P. A. Corney - d.corneycs.ucl.ac.uk, B. F. Buxton, W. B. Langdon, D. T. Jones - dtjcs.ucl.ac.uk, Nov. 2004, Bioinformatics, DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/bth386
- Defectors' Niches: Prisoner's Dilemma Game On Disordered Networks, M. Tomochi - mtomochifps.chuo-u.ac.jp, Oct. 2004, online 2004/10/01, Social Networks, DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2004.08.003
- Influential Publications In Ecological Economics: A Citation Analysis, R. Costanza - robert.costanzauvm.edu, D. Stern - sterndrpi.edu, B. Fisher - brendan.fisheruvm.edu, L. He - helrpi.edumailto:helrpi.edu, C. Ma - mac2rpi.edu, Oct. 2004, online 2004/10/01, Ecological Economics, DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2004.06.001
- Principles Relating Social Regard To Size And Density Of Personal Networks, With Applications To Stigma, W. C. Carter, S. L. Feld, Oct. 2004, online 2004/10/18, Social Networks, DOI: 10.1016/j.socnet.2004.08.004
Webcast Announcements
Neurobiological Foundation For The Meaning Of Information, Kolkata, India, Conference Webcast, 04/11/22-25- ALife 9: Ninth International Conference on Artificial Life, Boston, MA, 04/09/12-15
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The 4th Intl Workshop on Meta-synthesis and Complex System, Beijing, China, 04/07/22-23
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Intl Conf on Complex Networks: Structure, Function and Processes, Kolkata, India, 04/06/27-30
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From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
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ECC8 Experimental Chaos Conference, Florence, Italy,
04/06/14-17
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Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
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International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
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Life, a Nobel Story, Brussels, Belgium, 04/04/28
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Nonlinear Dynamics and Statistical Mechanics Days, Brussels, Belgium, 04/04/26-27
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Science Education Forum for Chinese Language Culture, Panel Discussion, Taipei, Taiwan, 04/05/01
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Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology, , Lausanne,Switzerland, 04/01/29-30
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Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
- World Economic Forum 2004, Davos, Switzerland
- Riding the Next Democratic Wave, Al-Thani, Khan, Vike-Freiberga, Wade, Soros, Zakaria, World Economic Forum, 04/01/25
- The Future of Global Interdependence, Kharrazi, Held, Owens, Shourie, Annan, Martin, Schwab, World Economic Forum, 04/01/25
- Why Victory Against Terrorism Demands Shared Values
- CODIS 2004, International Conference On Communications, Devices And Intelligent Systems, 2004 Calcutta, India, 04/01/09-10
- 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 Po tential and Practicalities, Bucharest, Romania, 03/07/28-08/08
- ECAL 2003, 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, Dortmund, Germany, 03/09/14-17
- 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
- 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
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Improving Health of the Chronically Ill: Insights from Complexity Science, Rockville,巠MD USA, 04/12/07-08
- The 7th Asia-Pacific Complex Systems Conference, Queensland, Australia, 04/12/06-10
- 17th Australian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Queensland, Australia, 04/12/06-10
- Cellular Computing Symposium, U Warwick
(UK), 04/12/09-10
- International Conference On Computational Intelligence (Icci 2004) , Istanbul, Turkey, 04/12/15-17
- Kondratieff Waves, Warfare And World Security, NATO Advanced Research Workshop
, Covilh? Portugal, 05/02/14-17
- 2005 Meeting Arbeitskreis
Physik sozio-onomischer Systeme, AKSOE (Socio-Economic-Physics), Physik seit Einstein,
Berlin, Germany, 05/03/04-09
- 2005 World Exposition "
Nature's Wisdom, Aichi, Japan, 05/03/25-09/25
- FINCO 2005: Foundations Of Interactive Computation, Edinburgh, Scotland, 05/04/09
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5th Creativity And Cognition Conference, London.UK, 05/04/12-15
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Social Intelligence and Interaction in Animals, Robots and Agents, Hatfield, UK, 05/04/12-15
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2005 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show
Nanotech 2005, Anaheim, California, U.S.A., 05/05/08-12
- 2ndShanghai Intl Symposium on Nonlinear Science and Applications, Shanghai, 05/06/03-07
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IEEE Swarm Intelligence Symposium
Pasadena, California, USA, 05/06/08-10
- Powders & Grains 2005, Stuttgart, Germany, 05/06/18-22
- 6th Intl Conf Symmetry in Nonlinear Mathematical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine, 05/06/20-26
- Workshop on Complexity and Policy Analysis, Cork, Ireland, 05/06/22-24
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2005 Genetic And Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2005), Washington, DC, USA, 05/06/25-29
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5th Gathering on?Biosemiotics, Urbino, Italy, 05/07/22-24
- ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK, 05/09/05-09
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Complexity, Science and Society Conf 2005, Liverpool, UK, 05/09/11-14
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18th International Conference on Noise and Fluctuations (ICNF 2005), Salamanca, Spain, 05/09/19-23
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CSDS-2005 Intl Conf onControl And Synchronization Of Dynamical Systems,, Leon, Guanajuato, MEXICO, 05/10/04-07
