Complexity Digest 2007.36

20-Sep-2007

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Content

  1. Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence, Science
    1. Reports Says Organized Crime Top Problem, Associated Press
  2. Separate Is Never Equal - How Social Segregation Leads To Economic Inequality, Science News
    1. Computer Science: Cultural Modeling In Real Time, Science
    2. Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems, Science
  3. AIs May Call Virtual Worlds Home, Digital Trends
    1. On Wikipedia, Debating 2008 Hopefuls' Every Facet, Washington Post
  4. Psychiatric Research: Is Internal Timing Key To Mental Health?, Science
    1. Debate Renewed: Diabetes Drug Ups Heart Risk, Science News
    2. At What Price?, Nature
  5. Immunology: Square-Dancing Antibodies, Science
  6. Consciousness In The Raw - The Brain Stem May Orchestrate The Basics Of Awareness, Science News
    1. Brain Network Related To Intelligence Identified, PhysOrg.com
    2. The Molecular Signature Of Loneliness, Innovations-report
  7. Ecology: Scaling Laws In The Drier, Nature
    1. Positive Feedbacks Promote Power-Law Clustering Of Kalahari Vegetation, Nature
    2. Fungal Roles In Soil Ecology: Underground Networking, Nature
  8. A General Integrative Model For Scaling Plant Growth, Carbon Flux, And Functional Trait Spectra, Nature
    1. Mutual Feedbacks Maintain Both Genetic And Species Diversity In A Plant Community, Science
  9. Chimps Pinch Papayas To Impress Potential Mates, New Scientist
    1. Primate Behavior Explained By Computer 'Agents', ScienceDaily
  10. On The Stability Of Populations Of Mammals, Birds, Fish And Insects, Ecol. Lett.
    1. Predation Linked To Evolution, Study Suggests, ScienceDaily
    2. Vibrational Signals In A Gregarious Sawfly Larva ( Perga Affinis ): Group Coordination Or Competitive Signaling?, J. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol.
  11. Epigenetics: Perceptive Enzymes, Nature
  12. Unsettling Weather - Explosive Growth Of [Hurricane, Ed.] Humberto Delivers A Warning., Houston Chronicle
  13. Cosmic 'Egg-Beaters' May Have Left Magnetic Legacy, New Scientist
    1. Lighting the Universe with Filaments, Science
    2. Dark Matter Clues In Oldest Stars, BBC News
  14. Mirror Particles Form New Matter, BBC News
  15. Scientists Unlock Secrets Of Protein Folding, PhysOrg.com
  16. Nanoscale Computer Memory Retrieves Data 1,000 Times Faster, PhysOrg.com
    1. Sheet Of Carbon Atoms Acts Like A Billiard Table, Physicists Find, PhysOrg.com
    2. Phase-Coherent Transport in Graphene Quantum Billiards, Science
    3. Engineering Quantum States Of A Nanoresonator Via A Simple Auxiliary System, Phys. Rev.
  17. Decentralized Control and Interactive Design Methods for Large-Scale Heterogeneous Self-Organizing Swarms, ECAL2007
  18. What Happens To Private Contractors Who Kill Iraqis? Maybe Nothing, Salon.com
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Global Pattern Formation and Ethnic/Cultural Violence, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Prediction of regions of ethnic violence in the former Yugoslavia (red overlay) by an agent model (colored dots as agents) based upon the population distribution of ethnic groups in 1991. The prediction map is shown in the context of a geospatial map of Europe.
    A model based on principles of phase-separation predicts regions of violence when applied to the distribution of ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia and India.

    We identify a process of global pattern formation that causes regions to differentiate by culture. Violence arises at boundaries between regions that are not sufficiently well defined. We model cultural differentiation as a separation of groups whose members prefer similar neighbors, with a characteristic group size at which violence occurs. Application of this model to the area of the former Yugoslavia and to India accurately predicts the locations of reported conflict.
    See also Science podcast

    1. Reports Says Organized Crime Top Problem, Associated Press Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Organized crime may have brought in more than $2 trillion in revenue last year, about twice all the military budgets in the world combined,(...)

      Glenn said the expansion of organized crime across national borders has made it necessary to find a global solution to the problem, possibly through the creation of a financial prosecution system that would handle cases outside national jurisdictions, similar to the International Criminal Court.

      Such a system would have to be funded initially by governments, but could later receive its financial support from the frozen assets of convicted criminals, the report said.


  2. Separate Is Never Equal - How Social Segregation Leads To Economic Inequality, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Figure 1: Housing patterns show the extent of social segregation in Manhattan. This map shows the relative proportion of black households and non-Hispanic white households, using figures and classifications from the 2000 Census. Sethi and Somanathan
    Rajiv Sethi of Columbia University, Glenn Loury of Brown University in Providence, R.I., and Sam Bowles of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, have created a simple mathematical model for understanding the interaction between segregation and inequality. They imagined a situation in which discrimination that had historically existed between two groups of people came to an end, so that people from both groups who had equal skills subsequently began earning equal wages. The researchers then asked whether, over many generations, the income of the two groups would tend to equalize or whether the disparity would persist.

    1. Computer Science: Cultural Modeling In Real Time, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Several recent examples show the difficulties governments and organizations have in predicting the consequences of their actions. In 2001, U.S. commanders were unable to successfully negotiate deals with local tribesmen to prevent the escape of bin Laden, even though reports indicate that they had excellent intelligence on where he was. The day after the United Nations approved a resolution calling for the deployment of 17,300 peacekeepers to Sudan, the Sudanese government launched a major offensive in Darfur.

    2. Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Integrated studies of coupled human and natural systems reveal new and complex patterns and processes not evident when studied by social or natural scientists separately. Synthesis of six case studies from around the world shows that couplings between human and natural systems vary across space, time, and organizational units. They also exhibit nonlinear dynamics with thresholds, reciprocal feedback loops, time lags, resilience, heterogeneity, and surprises. Furthermore, past couplings have legacy effects on present conditions and future possibilities.
      • Source: Complexity of Coupled Human and Natural Systems, Jianguo Liu, Thomas Dietz, Stephen R. Carpenter, Marina Alberti, Carl Folke, Emilio Moran, Alice N. Pell, Peter Deadman, Timothy Kratz, Jane Lubchenco, Elinor Ostrom, Zhiyun Ouyang, William Provencher, Charles L. Redman, Stephen H. Schneider, William W. Taylor, Science: 1513-1516., 07/09/14

  3. AIs May Call Virtual Worlds Home, Digital Trends Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Artificial intelligence developers are looking at virtual worlds like Second Life as ideal proving grounds for their creations.

    If artificial intelligence developers like Novamente have their way, virtual worlds like Second Life may soon become training grounds for self-directed artificial intelligence applications which learn by interacting with their environments - and with the virtual people populating them. And maybe users will be able to own their own AI-powered companions.

    1. On Wikipedia, Debating 2008 Hopefuls' Every Facet, Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      (AP/CBS)
      Experts have tried to determine how reliable the information on Wikipedia is. It's difficult to know, for example, whether campaign staffers are editing articles about their candidates. But that kind of embarrassing revelation is what Virgil Griffith had in mind when he released the free WikiScanner last month.

      Griffith, a visiting researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and a "disruptive technologist," has caused public relations disasters for corporations and federal agencies. WikiScanner traces the millions of changes back to the editor's network.

  4. Psychiatric Research: Is Internal Timing Key To Mental Health?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Wehr grew convinced that the antidepressant effect was a result of the artificially lengthened daytime, which led to less melatonin secretion and presumably had downstream effects leading to an improvement in the patient's mood. Lewy instead came to believe that the effect was due to the resetting of the patient's circadian clock, not the overall duration of melatonin production. In most SAD patients, he argued, the depression was the result of circadian clocks being out of sync with respect to the sleep-wake cycle, like a chronic form of jet lag.

    1. Debate Renewed: Diabetes Drug Ups Heart Risk, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "The public health impact of potential harm ... is substantial," Singh and his colleagues write in the Sept. 12 Journal of the American Medical Association. Singh, an internist, says that he no longer prescribes rosiglitazone. He chastised the FDA for keeping it on the market. "They want absolute proof of harm before they take action," he says. "Who's going to provide that proof?"

      Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who advocates tightened FDA oversight, points to the new report as "a case study in what's wrong with the [FDA's] drug-safety system .... FDA's relationship with drugmakers is too cozy."

    2. At What Price?, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Differential pricing could make global medicines affordable in developing countries. But drugs for diseases that have no market in the developed world will require additional subsidies, (...).

      Differential pricing1 (also known as price discrimination) can offer a solution to this dilemma, at least for drugs with considerable sales in the developed world. Prices in affluent countries - and to a lesser extent in middle-income countries - could generate sufficient revenue to pay for R&D, whereas prices in developing nations need only cover their marginal costs.

      • Source: At What Price?, Patricia M. Danzon, DOI: 10.1038/449176a, Nature 449, 176-179, 07/09/13

  5. Immunology: Square-Dancing Antibodies, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Antibodies are among nature's most versatile molecules. The classic Y-shaped molecules can recognize essentially any antigen by the variable tips of the Fab (fragment antigen binding) arms, whereas the Fc (fragment crystallizable) stem recognizes effector molecules that help eliminate antigen (see the figure). The two Fab arms are identical, allowing antibodies to bind bivalently to repeating antigens on, for example, microbial pathogens or tumor cells. This arrangement enhances the affinity of antibody for antigen and allows antibodies to cross-link antigen molecules under certain conditions.

  6. Consciousness In The Raw - The Brain Stem May Orchestrate The Basics Of Awareness, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Inner Brain. Animal studies and observations of children born missing most of the brain's outer layer, or cortex, suggest that the brain stem generates a fundamental form of conscious thought. Here, cutaway of a normal human brain shows the folded cortex atop the brain stem (in box). W. Krutein / Photovault.com
    Merker argues that the brain stem supports an elementary form of conscious thought in kids with hydranencephaly. It also contains auditory structures capable of preserving hearing in someone without a cortex. In contrast, optic nerve damage in hydranencephaly frequently impairs vision, regardless of what the brain stem does.

    Self-awareness and other "higher" forms of thought may require cortical contributions. But Merker posits that "primary consciousness," which he regards as an ability to integrate sensations from the environment with one's immediate goals and feelings in order to guide behavior, springs from the brain stem.

    1. Brain Network Related To Intelligence Identified, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      The photo illustration shows brain areas important to intelligence. Credit: UCI
      "Recent neuroscience studies suggest that intelligence is related to how well information travels throughout the brain," said Haier, a professor of psychology in the School of Medicine and longtime human intelligence researcher. "Our review of imaging studies identifies the stations along the routes intelligent information processing takes. Once we know where the stations are, we can study how they relate to intelligence."

      The data suggest that some of the brain areas related to intelligence are the same areas related to attention and memory and to more complex functions like language.

    2. The Molecular Signature Of Loneliness, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: People who experience chronically high levels of loneliness show gene-expression patterns that differ markedly from those of people who don't feel lonely, according to a new molecular analysis (...). The findings suggest that feelings of social isolation are linked to alterations in immune system activity, which result in increased inflammatory signalling within the body. This is the first study to show an alteration in genome-wide transcriptional activity linked to a social epidemiological risk factor. It provides a molecular framework for understanding why social factors are linked to an increased risk of diseases where inflammation is thought to be a factor, such as heart disease (...).

  7. Ecology: Scaling Laws In The Drier, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The vegetation of arid ecosystems displays scale-free, self-organized spatial patterns. Monitoring of such patterns could provide warning signals of the occurrence of sudden shifts towards desert conditions.

    Once upon a time the Sahara was green - it was covered by vegetation. The evidence for this comes from many different sources, including the former existence of lakes. Around 5,500 years ago, the wet environmental conditions suddenly came to an end. Despite the absence of abrupt, external climatic change, plant productivity declined and the topsoil was lost.

    1. Positive Feedbacks Promote Power-Law Clustering Of Kalahari Vegetation, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The concept of local-scale interactions driving large-scale pattern formation has been supported by numerical simulations, which have demonstrated that simple rules of interaction are capable of reproducing patterns observed in nature. These models of self-organization suggest that characteristic patterns should exist across a broad range of environmental conditions provided that local interactions do indeed dominate the development of community structure. Readily available observations that could be used to support these theoretical expectations, however, have lacked sufficient spatial extent or the necessary diversity of environmental conditions to confirm the model predictions.

    2. Fungal Roles In Soil Ecology: Underground Networking, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Above ground, plants compete for life-giving sunlight, but below the surface a more complex picture emerges. (...)

      Emerging clues suggest that this covert subterranean interplay influences many aspects of the forest community, including which plants live, which die, the effects of physical stresses such as heat and drought, and what happens after the introduction of new species. Add the controversial possibility that fungi mediate resource sharing between different plant species and a picture emerges of a Robin Hood of the soil, subsidizing those less able to make food, and by so doing, helping its own cause by promoting a diverse range of plant partners.

  8. A General Integrative Model For Scaling Plant Growth, Carbon Flux, And Functional Trait Spectra, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Linking functional traits to plant growth is critical for scaling attributes of organisms to the dynamics of ecosystems and for understanding how selection shapes integrated botanical phenotypes. However, a general mechanistic theory showing how traits specifically influence carbon and biomass flux within and across plants is needed. Building on foundational work on relative growth rate, recent work on functional trait spectra and metabolic scaling theory, here we derive a generalized trait-based model of plant growth.

    1. Mutual Feedbacks Maintain Both Genetic And Species Diversity In A Plant Community, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The forces that maintain genetic diversity among individuals and diversity among species are usually studied separately. Nevertheless, diversity at one of these levels may depend on the diversity at the other. We have combined observations of natural populations, quantitative genetics, and field experiments to show that genetic variation in the concentration of an allelopathic secondary compound in Brassica nigra is necessary for the coexistence of B. nigra and its competitor species. In addition, the diversity of competing species was required for the maintenance of genetic variation in the trait within B. nigra.

  9. Chimps Pinch Papayas To Impress Potential Mates, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Male chimpanzees will risk serious injury to provide females with the "forbidden fruit" that they crave, reveals a study of chimps in western Africa.

    The males advertise their prowess and impress potential mates by stealing papaya from local farms, researchers found.

    Kim Hockings at the University of Stirling, UK and colleagues spent two years observing the behaviour of a chimpanzee group living in wild forest surrounding a farming village in the Republic of Guinea. They noticed several of the male chimps in the group ventured repeatedly into the crop fields, even though farmers tried beating them away with sticks.

    1. Primate Behavior Explained By Computer 'Agents', ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The complex behaviour of primates can be understood using artificially-intelligent computer 'agents' that mimic their actions, shows new research (...). Scientists using agents programmed with simple instructions to work out why some primate groups are 'despotic' whilst others are 'egalitarian' - overturning previous theories developed by primatologists. They have also found support for an existing theory of how dominant macaques make it to the safer positions at the middle of their troop without seeming to be pre-occupied with getting there. Using agents programmed with two rules (...) scientists found that their more dominant agents would make their way to the centre of the group. (...)

  10. On The Stability Of Populations Of Mammals, Birds, Fish And Insects, Ecol. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A key concern for conservation biologists is whether populations of plants and animals are likely to fluctuate widely in number or remain relatively stable around some steady-state value. In our study of 634 populations of mammals, birds, fish and insects, we find that most can be expected to remain stable despite year to year fluctuations caused by environmental factors. Mean return rates were generally around one (...). Our estimates of return rates were generally well below the threshold for chaos, which makes it unlikely that chaotic dynamics occur in natural populations - one of ecology's key unanswered questions.

    1. Predation Linked To Evolution, Study Suggests, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The fossil record seems to indicate that the diversity of marine creatures increased and decreased over hundreds of millions of years in step with predator-prey encounters, (...). For decades, there has been a debate between paleontologists, biologists, and ecologists on the role of ecological interactions, such as predation, in the long term patterns of animal evolution. (...) decided to look at the importance of ecology by surveying the literature for incidents of predation in marine invertebrates, such as clams and their relatives. "Today, certain predators leave easy to identify marks on the shells of their prey, such as clean, round holes," said Huntley. (...)

    2. Vibrational Signals In A Gregarious Sawfly Larva ( Perga Affinis ): Group Coordination Or Competitive Signaling?, J. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Group living confers both benefits and costs to the individuals involved. Benefits may include enhanced defense, thermoregulation, and increased foraging efficiency while costs often involve competition for resources such as food, shelter, and mates. Communication provides a medium of exchange among individuals engaged in either cooperative or competitive interactions. The functional analysis of signals within groups therefore requires testing both cooperative and competitive functions, although the latter is infrequently done. In this paper, I study the use of two vibrational signals (...). The vibrational signals in this processionary species likely function cooperatively to maintain group cohesiveness and coordinate movement.

  11. Epigenetics: Perceptive Enzymes, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Adding methyl groups to DNA is a way of regulating some genes and genomic sequences. Structural analysis reveals that the enzyme complex that mediates this process shows unexpected sequence specificity.

    Imprinted genes are a small but developmentally important set of genes whose expression depends on the parent from which they are inherited. So, for some of these genes only the maternally inherited copy is expressed, and for others only the copy inherited from the father is expressed.

  12. Unsettling Weather - Explosive Growth Of [Hurricane, Ed.] Humberto Delivers A Warning., Houston Chronicle Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: As National Hurricane Center senior forecaster James Franklin noted in an advisory on Humberto, "No tropical cyclone in the historical record has ever reached this intensity at a faster rate near landfall. It would be nice to know ... someday ... why this happened."

    Climatologists are debating whether hotter oceans generated by man-made global warming are fueling more intense cyclones. Although only half over, this season is providing intriguing evidence.

  13. Cosmic 'Egg-Beaters' May Have Left Magnetic Legacy, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Did colossal spinning loops of energy whip up the magnetic fields that thread through galaxies and may even stretch across intergalactic space? That's the idea being put forward to explain the universe's mysterious magnetic fields. (...)

    Galactic fields have a strength of about 10-10 tesla - one-hundred-thousandth of Earth's magnetic field - and cosmologists calculate that they could have been amplified from even weaker "seed fields" in the early universe of only about 10-34 tesla.

    1. Lighting the Universe with Filaments, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The first stars in the universe form when chemically pristine gas heats as it falls into dark-matter potential wells, cools radiatively because of the formation of molecular hydrogen, and becomes self-gravitating. Using supercomputer simulations, we demonstrated that the stars' properties depend critically on the currently unknown nature of the dark matter. If the dark-matter particles have intrinsic velocities that wipe out small-scale structure, then the first stars form in filaments with lengths on the order of the free-streaming scale, (...)

    2. Dark Matter Clues In Oldest Stars, BBC News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Simulation: Warm dark matter would drive filamentary structures
      A computer model of the early Universe indicates the first stars could have formed in spectacular, long filaments.

      These structures, which may have been thousands of light-years across, would have been shaped by "dark matter".

      Scientists know very little about this type of matter, even though it accounts for most of the mass in the cosmos.

      The researchers told the British Association (BA) Festival of Science that their work could reveal the true nature of dark matter.

  14. Mirror Particles Form New Matter, BBC News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Fragile particles rarely seen in our Universe have been merged with ordinary electrons to make a new form of matter. Di-positronium, as the new molecule is known, was predicted to exist in 1946 but has remained elusive to science. Now, a US team has created thousands of the molecules by merging electrons with their antimatter equivalent: positrons. The discovery, reported in the journal Nature, is a key step in the creation of ultra-powerful lasers known as gamma-ray annihilation lasers. #body_type2

  15. Scientists Unlock Secrets Of Protein Folding, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Working on a smaller chain of amino acids known as a peptide, the group showed that the folding is determined largely by how parts of the peptide interact with water. Areas that shun water are said to be hydrophobic, and the team's results show that the way water wets these hydrophobic areas determines the ultimate shape and behavior of the peptide.

    In particular, the team determined that small hydrophobic areas of the peptide, up to the size of a water molecule, induce different behavior in water than larger hydrophobic areas, and that this difference is crucial for the folding.

  16. Nanoscale Computer Memory Retrieves Data 1,000 Times Faster, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, all using less power and space than current memory technologies. (...)

    Fabrication of the nanoscale devices, roughly 100 atoms in diameter, was performed without conventional lithography, the blunt, top-down manufacturing process that employs strong chemicals and often produces unusable materials with space, size and efficiency limitations.

    1. Sheet Of Carbon Atoms Acts Like A Billiard Table, Physicists Find, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Image shows graphene, which can act as an atomic-scale billiard table, with electric charges acting as billiard balls. Credit: Lau lab, UC-Riverside
      The finding underscores graphene's potential for serving as an excellent electronic material, such as silicon, that can be used to develop new kinds of transistors based on quantum physics. Because they encounter no obstacles, the electrons in graphene roam freely across the sheet of carbon, conducting electric charge with extremely low resistance. (...)

      (...) electrons in graphene are reflected back by the only obstacle they meet: graphene's boundaries.

      "These electrons meet no other obstacles and behave like quantum billiard balls," (...)


    2. Phase-Coherent Transport in Graphene Quantum Billiards, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: As an emergent electronic material and model system for condensed-matter physics, graphene and its electrical transport properties have become a subject of intense focus. By performing low-temperature transport spectroscopy on single-layer and bilayer graphene, we observe ballistic propagation and quantum interference of multiply reflected waves of charges from normal electrodes and multiple Andreev reflections from superconducting electrodes, thereby realizing quantum billiards in which scattering only occurs at the boundaries.

    3. Engineering Quantum States Of A Nanoresonator Via A Simple Auxiliary System, Phys. Rev. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Wigner function generated by the quantum analogue of the chaotic Duffing oscillator. Blue and green indicate positive and negative values of the function in phase space.
      We show how to engineer an extensive range of nonlinear Hamiltonians for a nanomechanical resonator. The technique requires only a time-dependent drive applied to a Cooper-pair box or second oscillator to which the nanoresonator is coupled. This method allows one to generate a large number of nonclassical states, as well as Hamiltonians whose classical counterparts are chaotic.

  17. Decentralized Control and Interactive Design Methods for Large-Scale Heterogeneous Self-Organizing Swarms, ECAL2007 Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We present new methods of decentralized control and inter- active design for artificial swarms of a large number of agents that can spontaneously organize and maintain non-trivial heterogeneous forma- tions. Our model assumes no elaborate sensing, computation, or com- munication capabilities for each agent; the self-organization is achieved solely by simple kinetic interactions among agents. Specifications of the final formations are indirectly and implicitly woven into a list of different kinetic parameter settings and their proportions, which would be hard to obtain with a conventional top-down design method but may be designed heuristically through interactive design processes.
    See Also: Swarm Chemistry Simulator

  18. What Happens To Private Contractors Who Kill Iraqis? Maybe Nothing, Salon.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images A Blackwater helicopter flies low over Baghdad where a bomb exploded near the Iranian embassy, July 5, 2005.
    Blackwater USA employees are accused of killing several civilians, but there might not be anyone with the authority to prosecute them. (...)

    "Blackwater and all these other contractors are beyond the reach of the justice process in Iraq. They can not be held to account," says Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. "There is nothing [the Iraqi government] can do that gives them the right to punish someone for misbehaving or doing anything else."

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

    1. Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      The Dark Web project team catalogues and studies places online where terrorists operate.
      Terrorists and extremists have set up shop on the Internet, using it to recruit new members, spread propaganda and plan attacks across the world. The size and scope of these dark corners of the Web are vast and disturbing. But in a non-descript building in Tucson, a team of computational scientists are using the cutting-edge technology and novel new approaches to track their moves online, providing an invaluable tool in the global war on terror. (...)

      This is where the Dark Web project comes in. Using advanced techniques such as Web spidering, link analysis, (...)

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Production of Trout Offspring from Triploid Salmon Parents, Tomoyuki Okutsu, Shinya Shikina, Megumi Kanno, Yutaka Takeuchi, Goro Yoshizaki, 07/09/14, Science : 1517. Transplantation of trout spermatogonia to newborn sterile salmon results in male and female adults that produce trout offspring, a method that may help revive extinct species.
      2. Checkers Is Solved, Jonathan Schaeffer, Neil Burch, Yngvi Bjoernsson, Akihiro Kishimoto, Martin Mueller, Robert Lake, Paul Lu, Steve Sutphen, 07/09/14, Science : 1518-1522. A series of up to 200 computers running since 1989 has considered the 5 * 1020 possible positions for checkers, showing that perfect play always leads to a draw.
      3. Exotic Superconducting Properties in the Electron-Hole-Compensated Heavy-Fermion "Semimetal" URu2Si2, Y. Kasahara, T. Iwasawa, H. Shishido, T. Shibauchi, K. Behnia, Y. Haga, T. D. Matsuda, Y. Onuki, M. Sigrist, Y. Matsuda, 07/09/14, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 116402
      4. Curry Power - An Age-Old Seasoning Could Help Combat Alzheimer's, Patrick Barry, 07/09/15, Science News, A component of the spice turmeric, the color-giving ingredient in yellow curries, may help prevent and possibly treat Alzheimer's disease.
      5. Advantage: Starch, 07/09/15, Science News, An enhanced ability to digest starch may have given early humans an evolutionary advantage over their ape relatives.
      6. Using RDF to Model the Structure and Process of Systems, Marko A. Rodriguez, Jennifer H. Watkins, Johan Bollen, Carlos Gershenson, 2007/09/08, arXiv, DOI: 0709.1167
      7. Bats Respond To Polarity Of A Magnetic Field, Y. Wang, Y. Pan, S. Parsons, M. Walker, S. Zhang, 2007/09/11, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.0904
      8. A Beetle-Inspired Solution For Underwater Adhesion, M. Varenberg, S. Gorb, 2007/09/11, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2007.1171
      9. How Dirty Is Your Money?, 2007/09/13, Innovations-report
      10. Google Sponsors Private Moon Race: Search Giant Offers $30m In Prizes, I. Williams, 2007/09/14, vnunet.com
      11. Russians And Americans Even Get Tired In A Different Way, 2007/09/14, Innovations-report
      12. Very Young Children Can Step Into The Minds Of Storybook Characters, 2007/09/14, ScienceDaily & Massachusetts Institute of Technology
      13. Scientists Use 'Dark Web' To Snag Extremists And Terrorists Online, 2007/09/14, ScienceDaily & National Science Foundation
      14. Scientists Identify Fundamental Brain Defect, Probable Drug Target In Fragile X Syndrome, 2007/09/18, Innovations-report
      15. Cyprian Honeybees Kill Their Enemy By Smothering Them, 2007/09/18, ScienceDaily & Cell Press
      16. Measuring Trends In Leisure: The Allocation Of Time Over Five Decades, M. Aguiar, Aug. 2007, Online 2007/07/30., Quarterly Journal of Economics, DOI: 10.1162/qjec.122.3.969
      17. Exact Simulation Of Integrate-And-Fire Models With Exponential Currents, R. Brette - bretteadi.ens.fr, Oct. 2007, Online 2007/08/23, Neural Computation, DOI: 10.1162/neco.2007.19.10.2604

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Reseau Nationale des Systemes Complexes , (in French), 2007
      2. World Economic Forum , Davos, Switzerland, 07/01/24-28
      3. TED Talks, TED Conferences LLC , since 2006
      4. Talking Robots: The PodCast on Robotics and AI, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 06/11/03
      5. Potentials of Complexity Science for Business, Governments, and the Media 2006, Budapest, Hungary, 06/08/03-05
      6. 6th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 06/06/25-30
      7. Artificial Life X, 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Bloomington, IN, USA. 2006/06/03-07
      8. 6th Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Il, 06/05/15-18
      9. Ralph Abraham on Complexity Digest, , Calcutta, India, 05/12/27
      10. An Afternoon with Michael Crichton, Washington, 05/11/06
      11. Illuminating the Shadow of the Future, Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25
      12. Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems - Brainstorming Meeting, Paris, France 05/09/19-23
      13. Complexity, Science & Society Conference 2005, U. Liverpool, UK 2005/09/11-14
      14. ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK 2005/09/5-9
      15. T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder, The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy, 05/08/27, QuickTime video (10:38 min), Podcast
      16. North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity 2005 Conference, Virtual Conference Network, St. Pete's Beach, Florida, 05/06/09-11
      17. Understanding Complex Systems - Computational Complexity and Bioinformatics, Virtual Conference Network, Urbana-Champaign, Il, UIUC, 05/05/16-19
      18. Nonlinearity, Fluctuations, and Complexity, with a celebration of the 65th birthday of Gregoire Nicolis. , Complexity Session, Universite' Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 05/03/16
      19. 1st European Conference on Complex Systems, Torino, Italy, 04/12/5-7
      20. From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
      21. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
      22. International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
      23. Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
      24. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      25. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
      26. Edge Videos

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Itl. Conf. on Applications in Nonlinear Dynamics, Poipu Beach, Koloa (Kauai), Hawaii, 07/09/24-27
      2. 3rd Edition of the Econophysics Colloquium , Ancona, Italy, 07/09/27-29
      3. European Conference on Complex Systems 2007 (ECCS'07), Dresden, Germany, 07/10/01-05
      4. Processes Of Emergence Of Systems And Systemic Properties. Towards A General Theory Of Emergence. , Castel Ivano (Trento), 07/10/18-20
      5. 2nd Annual Conf on The Physics, Chemistry and Biology of Water, West Dover, Vermont. 07/10/18-21
      6. Smithsonian conference, Creating a Sustainable Future in a Complex World, Washington, DC, 07/10/27
      7. Intl Conf on Complex Systems 2007, Boston, MA, USA, 07/10/28-11/02
      8. 2007 IEEE/WIC/ACM Intl Joint Conf on Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology (WI-IAT'07), Silicon Valley, USA, 07/11/02-05
      9. Theory In Cognitive Neuroscience, Wildbad Kreuth (Bavaria), Germany, 07/11/04-07
      10. 7th Intl Conf on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems , Piscataway, NJ, 07/11/05-07
      11. KSS 2007 - 8th Intl Symposium on Knowledge and Systems Sciences, Ishikawa prefecture, Japan, 07/11/05-07
      12. NetLogo Workshop at Agent 2007 Conference, Evanston, IL, USA, 07/11/12-14
      13. Australia New Zealand Systems Conference 2007 "Systemic development: Local solutions in a global environment", Auckland, New Zealand, 07/12/02-05
      14. The 3rd Indian Intl Conf on Artificial Intelligence (IICAI-07), Pune, INDIA, 07/12/17-19
      15. The 1st Conf on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-08), Memphis, Tennessee, USA, 08/03/01-03
      16. The 3rd International Nonlinear Sciences Conference (INSC), Tokyo, Japan, 08/03/13-15
      17. 19th European Meeting On Cybernetics And Systems Research, (EMCSR 2008), Vienna, Austria, 08/03/25-28
      18. The 12th World Multi-Conf on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA, 08/06/29-07/02
      19. From Animals To Animats 10 - The 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation Of Adaptive Behavior (SAB'08), Osaka, Japan, 08/07/07-12
      20. Stochastic Resonance 2008, Perugia, Italy, 08/08/17-21

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      1. A short notice from Dean LeBaron

        Dear ComDig Readers,

        Our editor, Dr. Gottfried Mayer, is affectionately esteemed by many of you -- as readers, you know he devotes himself unselfishly to widening our knowledge of complexity science. He was recently diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and given a timetable of a very few years. Knowing Gottfried, you can imagine that, in addition to the customary processes of chemotherapy, he would explore other frontier therapies, especially those arising out of interdisciplinary applications of complexity. These are expensive ... if he can find them.

        Many of you have sent your good wishes and indicated your desire to assist. With Gottfried's permission, I am posting this note with information, below, about how to send contributions to him. Please indicate the source since Gottfried will want to express his warm gratitude.

        I know that Gottfried, the good scientist that he is, will explain from time to time what he is doing and what the results are ... and we will follow his progress with great interest and hope.

        Dean LeBaron
        Publisher, Complexity Digest

        Bank Information:

        If your contribution is made by check:
        Please mail the check, payable to "Gottfried Mayer", to:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall
        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        (on the back of the check, please write: "For Deposit Only: Account # 983 338 3814")

        If your contribution is made by wire:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall

        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        SWIFT Code# MANTUS33
        UID: 209 791
        ABA routing # 022 00 00 46 [for US wire transfers]
        Account # 983 338 3814
        Ref. Gottfried Mayer

      2. Intl Master of Science in Methods For Management Of Complex Systems - Academic Year 2007-2008, Institute for Advanced Study, Pavia, Italy, 08/01/01
      3. News notes on Agent-based Computational Economics (ACE) for July 2007 are now available on-line, 07/08/04
      4. National Humanities Center Launches Humanities/Sciences Website, 07/04, As part of its ongoing "Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity: The Human & The Humanities" project (ASC), the National Humanities Center makes public a new website for the initiative which significantly expands the potential pool of humanists and scientists engaged in the exploration and examination of topics surrounding the question of human being.

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