Complexity Digest 2005.01

03-Jan-2005

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Content

  1. America's Creativity Crisis, Thoughts from the Frontline
    1. Bush Immigration Plan Meets GOP Opposition, The Washington Post
  2. In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to Old Projections, NY Times
    1. The Meek Shall Inherit the Bill, NY Times
    2. Reacting to a Dollar With No Muscle, NY Times
    3. We Have Met The Other And We're All Nonlinear: Ethnography As A Nonlinear Dynamic System, Complexity
  3. Devastating Quake Redraws Map, Nature News
    1. December 26 Tsunami in Indian Ocean, Natl Inst of Adv Industrial Science & Technology
    2. The Future of Calamity, NY Times
    3. Shake Down: Deep Tremors Observed At San Andreas Fault, Science News
  4. Feeding Behaviour: Hydrothermal Vent Crabs Feast On Sea 'Snow', Nature
    1. Fallout Feast: Vent Crabs Survive On Victims Of Plume, Science News
    2. Hidden Canyons, Science News
  5. Early Sleep Marks The End Of Adolescence, Nature News
  6. Novel Calendar System Creates Regular Dates, New Scientist
  7. Technology Research Advances of 2004, Technology Research News
    1. The Shape Of Things To Come, Indendpendent
    2. Reinventing the Wheel (and the Tire, Too), NY Times
    3. Ambulances May Get Virtual Doctors, AP/e-week
  8. You, Robot, Scientific American
    1. The Invisible Fighter, Technology Review
    2. Major Advance Made In Transparent Electronics, EurekAlert
  9. China Launches Next-Generation Internet, NewsFactor Network
  10. Robustness, Evolvability, and Neutrality, SFI Working Papers
    1. Human Brain Result Of 'Extraordinarily Fast' Evolution, The Guardian
    2. First 'Atlas' Of Key Brain Genes Could Speed Research On Cancer, Neurological Diseases, Innovations Report
  11. Mathematics And The Mind, British J. Phil. Sc.
    1. Turning Memory Development Inside Out, Dev. Rev.
    2. Magnesium May Reverse Middle-age Memory Loss, ScienceDaily
  12. The Gap in Testing Drugs for Children, NPR ATC
    1. Lilly Shares Fall on Report About Prozac Documents, NY Times
    2. Meditation Gives Brain a Charge, Study Finds, Washington Post
  13. Temperature-Dependent Sex Ratio In A Bird, Biol. Lett.
  14. Concrete Nation, Bright Future For Ancient Material, Science News
    1. The Song of the Dunes as a Self-synchronized Instrument, arXiv
    2. Asymmetric Diffusion, SFI Working Papers
    3. Snowflakes Made Easy, Nature News
  15. Alcoholism And Excessive Food Intake May Share Chemical Pathways In The Brain, ScienceDaily
  16. Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural Behavior within Multiple Games, SFI Working Papers
  17. Middle and Long Distance Athletics Races Viewed from the Perspective of Complexity, Journal of Theoretical Biology
  18. The Partisan Paradox Religious Commitment And The Gender Gap In Party Identification, Public Opin. Quart.
    1. Experiences Make People Happier Than Material Goods, ScienceDaily
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terroist Networks
    1. An Easier, but Less Deadly, Recipe for Terror, The Washington Post
    2. Success Without Victory [A "Containment" Strategy For The Age Of Terror], The Atlantic Monthly
    3. Terror Suspects in U.S. Face Indefinite Detentions, NPR ATC
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference & Call for Papers Announcements

  1. America's Creativity Crisis, Thoughts from the Frontline Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: "Students are a leading indicator of global talent flows. The countries that attract them often retain them. For decades, international students have flocked to the U.S. to take advantage of its world-class education. Recently, however, a report by the Council for Graduate Schools found that international student applications for fall 2004 admission had dropped sharply at 90 percent of the schools in its survey. The total decline was 32 percent.

    (...) The number of workers with advanced degrees or exceptional skills who were admitted to the U.S. fell 65 percent last year. For the first time in modern history, top scientists and intellectuals are choosing not to come to the U.S.

    1. Bush Immigration Plan Meets GOP Opposition, The Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The key prong in Bush's plan is a temporary-worker program that would offer the nation's estimated 10 million illegal immigrants a chance to earn legal status that would allow them to stay in the country as long as six years. Once they register as temporary workers, they would be eligible to begin the long process of applying for citizenship or permanent residency.

      (...) "There are some people -- there are some jobs in America that Americans won't do and others are willing to do."

  2. In Plan to Reduce Deficit, White House Turns to Old Projections, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: To show that President Bush can fulfill his campaign promise to cut the deficit in half by 2009, White House officials are preparing a budget that will assume a significant jump in revenues (...).

    To make Mr. Bush's goal easier to reach, administration officials have decided to measure their progress against a $521 billion deficit they predicted last February rather than last year's actual shortfall of $413 billion.

    By starting with the outdated projection, Mr. Bush can say he has already reduced the shortfall by about $100 billion (...).


    Editor's Note: Arguments based on predictions instead of facts seem to be a popular method to fabricate desired interpretations of reality. This seems to work from optical illusions and magic tricks, to "creative accounting" in the style of Enron all the way to government fiscal policies.

    1. The Meek Shall Inherit the Bill, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Administration officials say that these and other measures would stimulate savings, which are crucial to increasing long-term growth. (...).

      But other analysts are skeptical. (...) personal savings plunged during the last four years even though tax subsidies for retirement accounts increased modestly over the same period. The reason, he theorized, is that many people do not use tax-advantaged accounts to save more money. Instead, they simply move their existing savings into new tax-advantaged accounts when the opportunity arises.

    2. Reacting to a Dollar With No Muscle, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The currency movements also mean that for American investors overseas markets generally did better than American ones. While leading European markets were up less than 10 percent in euro terms, because of the euro's appreciation they showed double-digit gains when measured in dollars.

      Even so, American investors were less interested in European stocks in the past year than in Chinese ones - or at least in companies that could claim to benefit from the Chinese boom. (...) there is little indication that the urge to buy Chinese will stop.

    3. We Have Met The Other And We're All Nonlinear: Ethnography As A Nonlinear Dynamic System, Complexity Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Just as complexity changes notions of what "science" is, ethnography offers an alternative model for "social science." Particularly striking for ethnography is the family resemblance between its social research tradition and complex adaptive systems. In fact, if ethnography is seen as a CAS, several key issues appear in a new light. In this article, ethnographic research is looked at in terms of its algorithmic complexity, its sensitivity to initial conditions, the presence of an ethnographic agent, the fractal structure of method and results, and the problem of representation. (...)

  3. Devastating Quake Redraws Map, Nature News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    This image shows how the wave moved towards the surrounding coasts. Click here to see the animation. ? Animation provided by Kenji Satake, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan?
    Sunday's destruction was unleashed by a 'megathrust' - a huge, sudden juddering movement beneath the ocean floor. Here, a buildup of pressure caused the Indian Ocean floor to lurch some 15 metres towards Indonesia, burrowing under its tectonic plate and triggering the ferocious swells that smashed the surrounding shores.

    The movement is likely to have altered the geography of neighbouring islands such as Simeulue, the Nicobar and Andaman islands, and Sumatra itself, says Bill McGuire, a geophysicist at University College London, UK.

    "The tsunami propagation is also animated (up to 5 hours) from a 1200 km fault. The red color means that the water surface is higher than normal, while the blue means lower. It indicates that initial tsunami to the east (e.g., Phuket) began with receding wave, while to the west (e.g., Sri Lanka) large wave suddenly reached. The darker the color, the larger the amplitude.? The tsunamis were larger in the east and west directions. "
    Kenji Satake

    1. December 26 Tsunami in Indian Ocean, Natl Inst of Adv Industrial Science & Technology Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The great earthquake (Mw 9.0) of December 26 off Sumatra generated the tsunami in the Indian Ocean.  According to U.S.G.S., the aftershocks extended as far as 1,000 km toward north (the red circles indicate aftershocks occurred within 24 hours).  Assuming that the aftershock area represents the tsunami source, the tsunami propagation was computed.

    2. The Future of Calamity, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: In seven hours last week, great ocean waves scoured shores from Thailand to Somalia, exacting a terrible price in wealth and human lives. But unimaginable as it may seem, future catastrophes may be far grimmer. Many more such disasters - (...) - are likely to devastate countries already hard hit by poverty and political turmoil.

      The world has already seen a sharp increase in such "natural" disasters - from about 100 per year in the early 1960's to as many as 500 per year by the early 2000's, (...).

    3. Shake Down: Deep Tremors Observed At San Andreas Fault, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Patterns of deep, prolonged tremors newly revealed beneath the San Andreas fault zone may offer scientists a way to foretell earthquake activity there.

      The small tremors don't produce typical seismic vibrations that indicate a sudden slip along a fault, (...).

      In the past 2 years, scientists have observed similar long-duration tremors along subduction zones at the edges of the Pacific Ocean. In these regions, the convergence of tectonic plates pushes one plate-usually, dense ocean crust topped with water-soaked sediment-beneath another one.

  4. Feeding Behaviour: Hydrothermal Vent Crabs Feast On Sea 'Snow', Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The crab Xenograpsus testudinatus lives at enormously high densities around the sulphur-rich hydrothermal vents found in shallow waters off Taiwan, even though this acidic environment is low in nutrients. Here we show that these crabs swarm out of their crevices at slack water and feed on the vast numbers of zooplankton that are killed by the vents' sulphurous plumes, and that rain down like marine 'snow'. This opportunistic feeding behaviour explains how the crabs are able to survive in the adverse toxic environment of these shallow hydrothermal vents.
    • Source: Feeding Behaviour: Hydrothermal Vent Crabs Feast On Sea 'Snow', M.-S. Jeng, N. K. Ng, P. K. L. Ng, DOI: 10.1038/432969a, Nature 432, 969, 04/12/23

    1. Fallout Feast: Vent Crabs Survive On Victims Of Plume, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers in Taiwan propose an explanation for how so many crabs can survive at shallow-water hydrothermal vents.

    2. Hidden Canyons, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Among Earth's unsung geological masterpieces are undersea canyons, some of which stretch hundreds of kilometers and can be deep enough to hold skyscrapers.

  5. Early Sleep Marks The End Of Adolescence, Nature News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Teenagers can't help sleeping late. Punchstock
    A European survey of the sleeping habits of 25,000 people now provides powerful evidence that biology is indeed to blame. Whereas children sleep later and later as they get older, we undergo an abrupt shift at age 20, after which we start sleeping earlier again.

    The change is so sudden that researchers suggest it should be used to officially mark the end of adolescence.(...)

    "Do teenagers sleep late because they go to the disco, or do they go to the disco because they sleep late?"(...).

  6. Novel Calendar System Creates Regular Dates, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A US physicist is lobbying for people to adopt his novel calendar in which every date falls on the same day of the week each year. The current calendar, which runs for 365 days, was instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582 to bring the length of the year in line with the seasons. But because the Earth actually orbits the Sun every 365.24 days, a 366-day "leap year" must be added every four years to account for the extra fraction of a day. In this Gregorian system, a given date (such as New Year's Day) falls on different days of the week in different years because 365 is not evenly divisible by seven.

  7. Technology Research Advances of 2004, Technology Research News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Biotechnology tools include microfluidic devices, laser tweezers and sensors used for engineering biological molecules, medical diagnostics, and security. Biotechnology tools advances include a nanowire-based biochip developed by Harvard University researchers that detects single viruses , and a biochip developed by University of Texas researchers that uses water droplets as tiny test tubes.

    1. The Shape Of Things To Come, Indendpendent Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: And How Can You Survive 2005?
      • Go wireless. With broadband, get a wireless router that sits between you and the link: it's harder to hack and it's easier to move the computer around. But ensure you password-protect your network and, if possible, the router. (...)
      • If you're buying a new computer, factor in the extra ongoing cost of anti-virus and anti-spyware required for a Windows machine, and see whether it still works out cheaper than an Apple computer, or switching to Linux (the latter costs time rather than money).

    2. Reinventing the Wheel (and the Tire, Too), NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Michelin
      The Tweel, an experimental tire and wheel combination developed by Michelin, is designed to replace today's air-filled tires. Flexible polyurethane spokes deflect over obstacles.
      The first automobile to use air-filled tires was a racecar built by André and Édouard Michelin in the early 1890's. (...)

      Now, after decades spent persuading the world to ride on air, the company has begun work on an innovation that could render the pneumatic tire obsolete. Engineers at Michelin's American technology center here envision a future in which vehicles would ride on what they call the Tweel, a combined tire and wheel that could never go flat because it contains no air.

    3. Ambulances May Get Virtual Doctors, AP/e-week Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers are developing technology for ambulances to improve communications and perhaps more importantly, place virtual doctors inside in transit. Mountains, valleys, bad weather and long distances between hospitals make communication with emergency room physicians spotty at best and nonexistent at worst.

  8. You, Robot, Scientific American Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: He says humans will download their minds into computers one day. With a new robotics firm, Hans Moravec begins the journey from warehouse drones to robo sapiens (...)

    Nearly everything sold has to be warehoused at some point, and at some point it also has to be rerouted and shipped. (...). Seegrid's first prototype devices automate that work, turning wheeled carts into seeing-eye machines that can be loaded and then walked through various routes to teach them how to navigate on their own.

    • Source: You, Robot, Chip Walter, Scientific American, 05/01

    1. The Invisible Fighter, Technology Review Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "There are huge technical challenges involved in creating really effective adaptive or active camouflage for use in MOUT -- Military Operations in Urban Terrain," (...). "Any such technology would have to be able to consistently fool the eye at close range in a constantly changing battlespace."

      The biggest challenge: working out how to accurately project a scene onto an entire surface and have it look correct from any angle -- not just from the front -- because there will always be multiple viewers in multiple positions (...).

    2. Major Advance Made In Transparent Electronics, EurekAlert Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers at Oregon State University and Hewlett Packard have reported their first example of an entirely new class of materials which could be used to make transparent transistors that are inexpensive, stable, and environmentally benign. This could lead to new industries and a broad range of new consumer products, scientists say. The possibilities include electronic devices produced so cheaply they could almost be one-time "throw away" products, better large-area electronics such as flat panel screens, or flexible electronics that could be folded up for ease of transport.

  9. China Launches Next-Generation Internet, NewsFactor Network Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: China says it will launch the first Internet Protocol Version 6 network. CERNET2 initially links 25 universities in 20 cities, with plans to expand to 100 universities. IPv6 greatly expands the number of available IP addresses, overcoming a potential shortcoming of current Internet technology

  10. Robustness, Evolvability, and Neutrality, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Biological systems, from macromolecules to whole organisms, are robust if they continue to function, survive, or reproduce when faced with mutations, environmental change, and internal noise. I focus here on biological systems that are robust to mutations and ask whether such systems are more or less evolvable, in the sense that they can acquire novel properties. The more robust a system is, the more mutations in it are neutral, that is, without phenotypic effect. I argue here that such neutral change - and thus robustness - can be a key to future evolutionary innovation, if one accepts that neutrality is not an essential feature of a mutation. That is, a once neutral mutation may cause phenotypic effects in a changed environment or genetic background. I argue that most, if not all, neutral mutations are of this sort, and that the essentialist notion of neutrality should be abandoned. This perspective reconciles two opposing views on the forces dominating organismal evolution, natural selection and random drift: Neutral mutations occur and are especially abundant in robust systems, but they do not remain neutral indefinitely, and eventually become visible to natural selection, where some of them lead to evolutionary innovations.

    1. Human Brain Result Of 'Extraordinarily Fast' Evolution, The Guardian Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Emergence of society may have spurred growth

      (...) humans evolved their cognitive abilities not owing to a few sporadic and accidental genetic mutations - as is the usual way with traits in living things - but rather from an enormous number of mutations in a short period of time, acquired though an intense selection process favoring complex cognitive abilities. (...)

      But with humans, the relative size of the brain does not fit the trend - our brains are disproportionately big, much bigger even than the brains of other non-human primates, including our closest relatives, chimpanzees.

    2. First 'Atlas' Of Key Brain Genes Could Speed Research On Cancer, Neurological Diseases, Innovations Report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Scientists link gene 'switches' to specific brain locations Researchers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have compiled the first atlas showing the locations of crucial gene regulators, or switches that determine how different parts of the brain develop - and, in some cases, develop abnormally or malfunction. The scientists say the map will accelerate research on brain tumors and neurological diseases that result from mutations in these switch genes - called "transcription factors." When these genes are altered, the genes they control can go awry, causing abnormalities in the development or function of nerves and related structures.

  11. Mathematics And The Mind, British J. Phil. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Granted that truth is valuable we must recognize that certifiable truth is hard to come by, for example in the natural and social sciences. This paper examines the case of mathematics. As a result of the work of Gödel and Tarski we know that truth does not equate with proof. This has been used by Lucas and Penrose to argue that human minds can do things which digital computers can't, viz to know the truth of unprovable arithmetical statements. The argument is given a simple formulation in the context of sorites (Robinson) arithmetic, avoiding the complexities of formulating the Gödel sentence. (...)
    • Source: Mathematics And The Mind, M. Redhead - mlr1000ahermes.cam.ac.uk, DOI: 10.1093/bjps/55.4.731, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 2004 55(4):731-737
    • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

    1. Turning Memory Development Inside Out, Dev. Rev. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: These papers provide a useful progress report on how the mature and successful field of memory development is transcending traditional boundaries of populations, content, context, and design. Examining children's memory for distant as well as recent occurrences, for social interactions as well as individual experiences, for meaningful as well as arbitrary information, and for emotion-laden as well as neutral experiences is creating a broader and more vigorous field. Even greater progress can be made by measuring at a fine grain level the processing activities that experiences elicit, how such immediate processing activities shape later memory (...).
      • Source: Turning Memory Development Inside Out, R. S. Siegler - rs7kaandrew.cmu.edu, DOI: 10.1016/j.dr.2004.08.007, Developmental Review, Dec. 2004, online 2004/12/12
      • Contributed by Atin Das - dasatinayahoo.co.in

    2. Magnesium May Reverse Middle-age Memory Loss, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Magnesium helps build bones, make proteins, release energy stored in muscles and regulate body temperature. (...) researchers report a possible new role for magnesium: helping maintain memory function in middle age and beyond. The adult daily nutritional requirement for magnesium, a trace mineral found in foods such as dark green, leafy vegetables, is around 400 mg a day. But studies show that as many as half of all Americans do not consume enough magnesium. Magnesium deficits have been tied to allergies, asthma, attention deficit disorder, anxiety, heart disease, muscle cramps and other conditions.

  12. The Gap in Testing Drugs for Children, NPR ATC Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The Food and Drug Administration requires safety screening for medications used by adults, but most drugs approved for use in the United States have never undergone comprehensive pediatric studies. Doctors often must guess the appropriate dosage when administering such medications to children. NPR's Michele Norris talks to Dr. Jerome Groopman, who has written about the subject in the current New Yorker magazine.

    1. Lilly Shares Fall on Report About Prozac Documents, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Shares in Eli Lilly & Company fell yesterday after an article in a medical journal suggested that the drug company had long concealed evidence that its well-known antidepressant, Prozac, could cause violent and suicidal behavior.

      The accusations were made in the Jan. 1 issue of The British Medical Journal, which said it had turned over documents related to the allegations to the United States Food and Drug Administration. (...) gunman in Kentucky who had reportedly been taking Prozac for a month before going on a rampage.

    2. Meditation Gives Brain a Charge, Study Finds, Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: (...), the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organized and coordinated than in the students. The meditation novices showed only a slight increase in gamma wave activity while meditating, but some of the monks produced gamma wave activity more powerful than any previously reported in a healthy person, (...). The monks who had spent the most years meditating had the highest levels of gamma waves, he added.

  13. Temperature-Dependent Sex Ratio In A Bird, Biol. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: To our knowledge, there is, so far, no evidence that incubation temperature can affect sex ratios in birds, although this is common in reptiles. Here, we show that incubation temperature does affect sex ratios in megapodes, which are exceptional among birds because they use environmental heat sources for incubation. In the Australian brush-turkey Alectura lathami, a mound-building megapode, more males hatch at low incubation temperatures and more females hatch at high temperatures, whereas the proportion is 1:1 at the average temperature found in natural mounds. Chicks from lower temperatures weigh less, which probably affects offspring survival, but are not smaller. (...)

  14. Concrete Nation, Bright Future For Ancient Material, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    SACRED SURFACES. The modern church Dives in Misericordia located in Rome, is made from a self-cleaning concrete that breaks down atmospheric pollutants that would otherwise darken the surface over time.
    G. Basilico/Italcementi
    Scientists and architects have been pushing the limits of this humdrum material to give it new features and creative functions. "Liquid Stone," a current exhibit at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., portrays the future of concrete. The show includes ultrahigh-performance concrete that bends like metal and another type of concrete that forms translucent blocks.

    In pursuit of environmentally friendly construction materials, engineers are also giving concrete a hard look. Already among the most essential construction materials, concrete now seems poised to take on new roles.

    1. The Song of the Dunes as a Self-synchronized Instrument, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Since Marco Polo it has been known that some sand dunes have the peculiar ability of emitting a loud sound with a well defined frequency, sometimes for several minutes. The origin of this sustained sound has remained mysterious, partly because of its rarity in nature. It has been recognized that the sound is not due to the air flow around the dunes but to the motion of an avalanche, and not to an acoustic excitation of the grains but to their relative motion. By comparing several singing dunes and two controlled experiments, one in the laboratory and one in the field, we here demonstrate that the frequency of the sound is the frequency of the relative motion of the sand grains. The sound is produced because some moving grains synchronize their motions. The existence of a velocity threshold in both experiments further shows that this synchronization comes from an acoustic resonance within the flowing layer: if the layer is large enough it creates a resonance cavity in which grains self-synchronize.

    2. Asymmetric Diffusion, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Diffusion rates through a membrane can be asymmetric, if the diffusing particles are spatially extended and the pores in the membrane have asymmetric structure. This phenomenon is demonstrated here via (i) deterministic simulations of a two-species hard-disk gas, (ii) simulations of two species in Brownian motion, diffusing through a membrane which is more permeable to one species than the other, and (iii) simulation of diffusion in a simple network model. In its extreme form, this effect will rapidly seal off flow in one direction through a membrane, while allowing free flow in the other direction. A single species of appropriately shaped particles will exhibit the same effect when diffusing through appropriately shaped pores. We hypothesize that purely geometric effects discussed here may play a role in common biological contexts such as the potassium ion channel.

    3. Snowflakes Made Easy, Nature News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Computer snowflakes are surprisingly easy to make.
      There are a handful of mathematical models of snowflake growth, says Reiter, but most involve fiendishly complicated differential equations. (...)

      So Reiter tried to make snowflakes using mathematical processes called cellular automata. These are sets of simple rules that can generate extremely complex forms when applied to a system over and over again. Unlike a differential equation, which tries to describe the whole snowflake, a cellular automaton just looks at a tiny part of the whole structure, and describes it in relation to areas that have already been built.


      Editor's Note: Lattice-gas automata for the Navier-Stokes equation had been developed by Frisch, Hasslacher, Pomeau, Wolfram and others already almost twenty years ago and had proven to be very useful for many applications.

      But anyway, we haven't seen decorative CA movies for a while, and the Christmas spirit probably influenced the nature editors in their publication decision.

  15. Alcoholism And Excessive Food Intake May Share Chemical Pathways In The Brain, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Galanin is one of several neuropeptides known to increase food intake. Previous findings have suggested that galanin may also be involved in alcohol consumption and/or the motivation to drink alcohol beverages. Most recently, researchers have discovered that giving galanin microinjections to rodents can increase their voluntary alcohol intake. (...) "Galanin's well-known effects of increasing food intake, especially the intake of fat-rich diets, was one of the early reasons we investigated it, (...). Alcohol is the only drug of abuse that can also qualify as a calorie-rich food, and it undoubtedly has important interactions with systems that control food intake and nutrition." (...)

  16. Can Game(s) Theory Explain Culture? The Emergence of Cultural Behavior within Multiple Games, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The hallmarks of "cultural behavior" are consistency within and across individuals, variance between populations, behavioral stickiness, and suboptimal performance. In this paper, we build a formal framework within which we can derive each of these five behavioral attributes. Our framework rests on two primary assumptions: (i) agents play ensembles of games, not just single games as is traditionally the case in evolutionary game theory models and (ii) agents have finite cognitive capacity. Our analysis combines agent-based techniques and mathematics. The former enable us to explore dynamics and the latter allow us to prove when the behaviors produced by the agents are equilibria. Our results provide game theoretic foundations for cultural diversity and agent-based support for how cultural behavior might emerge.

  17. Middle and Long Distance Athletics Races Viewed from the Perspective of Complexity, Journal of Theoretical Biology Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Middle and long distance athletics races behave as power-laws when time (or average speed) and distance are related, thus suggesting the presence of critical phenomena. Power-laws as a function of the athlete's position in the all-time world ranking allows us to define a Performance Index that reveals the existence of possible multifractal structures associated to the natural barriers to that the athletes tend in their evolution towards better results and in pursuit of world records. The new theories of self-organized critical phenomena provide an explanation for the power-law and fractal structures in systems at, or near, their critical points. In this paper we analyse the athletic races using these theories and as a result of this study a new variety of interpretations are posited.

  18. The Partisan Paradox Religious Commitment And The Gender Gap In Party Identification, Public Opin. Quart. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: A large body of scholarly literature points to the growing influence of religious devotion on U.S. partisanship. This article attempts to reconcile the growing religious commitment cleavage in the American party system with the commensurate growth in the gender gap. If women are, on average, more religiously devout than men, and if contemporary shifts in partisanship are disproportionately founded on religious and cultural cleavages, then why are women more likely to identify with the Democratic Party? I pose three possible explanations for this apparent paradox: (...).

    1. Experiences Make People Happier Than Material Goods, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: When it comes to spending money in the pursuit of happiness, the "good life" may be better lived by doing things rather than by having things, according to a University of Colorado at Boulder researcher. In a society that thrives on the pursuit of happiness, a question that often comes to mind, especially around the holiday shopping season, is what really makes us happy. (...) Through a series of surveys and experiments spanning several years, Van Boven found that people from various walks of life were made happier by investing their discretionary income in life experiences than in material goods. (...)

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

    1. An Easier, but Less Deadly, Recipe for Terror, The Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      During a visit to a Russian military base, Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) shows how easy it is to fit a small chemical weapon into a briefcase. (Courtesy Of Sen. Richard G. Lugar)
      If you can get past the guards and fences, the ingredients for a chemical attack are available off the shelf at a crumbling military base called Shchuchye in south-central Russia. There, stacked like dusty wine bottles on wooden racks, is a collection of 1.9 million artillery shells filled with nerve agents such as VX, an oily yellow liquid so deadly that a single drop on the skin can kill.

      The smallest shells, each containing enough poison for at least 85,000 lethal doses, could be slipped easily into a backpack.

    2. Success Without Victory [A "Containment" Strategy For The Age Of Terror], The Atlantic Monthly Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "We are approaching an age in which national governments may no longer monopolize the instruments of major destruction," he said. "The instruments of warfare once possessed only by armies will be available to gangs. It will not be possible to satisfy the real or imagined grievances of all the little groups that will be capable of large-scale disruption and destruction, or to defend everyone against them … In the future, warfare-highly destructive warfare-may be waged without the necessity for armies and governments, by people with little to lose."

    3. Terror Suspects in U.S. Face Indefinite Detentions, NPR ATC Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The Bush administration is said to be preparing plans to hold terrorism suspects in the U.S. indefinitely without trial. NPR's Michele Norris talks with Dana Priest, who reported the story for the Washington Post.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

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      20. Do You Know Where Your Information Is In The Homeland Security Era?, J. W. Seifert - jseifertacrs.loc.gov, H. C. Relyea, 2004 21:4, 399-405, online 2004/10/28, Government Information Quarterly, DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2004.08.001
      21. Electronic Government: Government Capability And Terrorist Resource, L. E. Halchin - ehalchinacrs.loc.gov, 2004 21:4, 406-419, online 2004/11/17, Government Information Quarterly, DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2004.08.002
      22. Old Issues, New Context: Privacy, Information Collection, And Homeland Security, P. M. Regan - preganagmu.edu, 2004 21:4, 481-497, online 2004/10/19, Government Information Quarterly, DOI: 10.1016/j.giq.2004.08.003
      23. The Poverty Of Theistic Cosmology, A. Grünbaum - grunbaumapitt.edu, 2004 55(4):561-614, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, DOI: 10.1093/bjps/55.4.614
      24. Fitness, Probability And The Principles Of Natural Selection, F. Bouchard - alexroseaduke.edu, A. Rosenberg, 2004 55(4):693-712, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, DOI: 10.1093/bjps/55.4.693
      25. Complexity of Self-Assembled Shapes, David Soloveichik, Erik Winfree, 2004/09/21, arXiv, DOI: cs.CC/0412096
      26. The Computational Power of Benenson Automata, David Soloveichik and Erik Winfree, 2004/09/21, arXiv, DOI: cs.CC/0412097
      27. Automatic Meaning Discovery Using Google, Rudi Cilibrasi, Paul M. B. Vitanyi, 2004/09/21, arXiv, DOI: cs.CL/0412098
      28. Brain Imaging Reveals New Language Circuits, 2004/12/28, ScienceDaily & John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
      29. Thanks For The Memories: Cinematic Portrayal Of Amnesia Is Profoundly Misleading, 2004/12/30, ScienceDaily & British Medical Journal
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      34. Beyond Path Dependency? Constructing New Models For Institutional Change: The Case Of Capital Markets In Japan, G. Morgan - glenn.morganawarwick.ac.uk, I. Kubo, Jan. 2005, Socio-Economic Review, DOI: 10.1093/soceco/3.1.55
      35. A Neural Basis For Collecting Behaviour In Humans, S. W. Anderson - steven-andersonauiowa.edu, H. Damasio, A. R. Damasio, Jan. 2005, online 2004/11/17, Brain, DOI: 10.1093/brain/awh329
      36. Community Response To Enrichment Is Highly Sensitive To Model Structure, G. F. Fussmann, B. Blasius, Online 2004/12/29, Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2004.0246

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