Complexity Digest 2008.22

29-May-2008

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Content

  1. Language: The Language Barrier, Nature
    1. Prior Knowledge Versus Constructed Knowledge: What Impact On Learning?, Adv. Complex Sys.
  2. Science & Music: Lost In Music, Nature
  3. How A Thriving Social Life Can Boost Lifespan, New Scientist
    1. Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking, NY Times
    2. With Age Comes A Sense Of Peace And Calm: Population Research Center Study Shows, Innovations-report
    3. When Your Memories Can No Longer Be Trusted, ScienceDaily
    4. Eyewitness Identification: Line-Ups On Trial, Nature
  4. Global Report On Conflict, Governance And State Fragility 2008, Foreign Policy Bull.
  5. Dutch Robot Flame Walks Like A Human, PhysOrg.com
  6. Religion Is A Product Of Evolution, Software Suggests, New Scientist
  7. Differential Rescue of Light- and Food-Entrainable Circadian Rhythms, Science
  8. Matching Tumors To Drugs - A Clinical Trial Offers A First Step Toward Personalizing Cancer Treatments., Technology Review
    1. Unlocking The Promise Of Clinical And Translational Science, ScienceDaily
  9. The Inner Lives of Sponges, Science
  10. Biophysics: Cells Get In Shape For A Crawl, Nature
    1. Cell 'Organs' Get Plastic Upgrades, New Scientist
  11. Confusing Kinships, Science
    1. The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles, Science
    2. Microbial Ecology of Ocean Biogeochemistry: A Community Perspective, Science
    3. Microbiology: Bacteria Are Picky About Their Homes on Human Skin, Science
  12. Linear And Nonlinear Processing In Hair Cells, J. Experi. Biol.
  13. Community Ecology: All That Makes Fungus Gardens Grow, Science
  14. Global Warming: Hurricanes Won't Go Wild, According to Climate Models, Science
  15. Complex Networks: from Biology to Information Technology, J. Phys. A
    1. Mapping Global Sensitivity Of Cellular Network Dynamics, Interface
  16. Epigenetic Tracking, a Method to Generate Arbitrary Shapes By Using Evolutionary-Developmental Techniques, arXiv
  17. Doughnut-Shaped Universe Bites Back, News@Nature
  18. A Levy Flight For Light, Nature
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Terrorism On Decline: Canadian Study, AFP
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Language: The Language Barrier, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Some researchers think that the evolution of languages can be understood by treating them like genomes ¡X but many linguists don't want to hear about it. (...)

    Just as species can shade off into a maddening continuum of subspecies, populations and hybrids, languages dissolve into an untidy collection of dialects and intermediate forms. And the rampant borrowing of words between languages resembles, graphically at least, the promiscuous horizontal gene transfer that microbes engage in.

    There are limits to the analogy. It is unclear, for example, what the 'selection pressures' are for language, if any.

    1. Prior Knowledge Versus Constructed Knowledge: What Impact On Learning?, Adv. Complex Sys. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The aim of this paper is to model the process of learning within a social network and compare the levels of learning in two different situations: one where individuals know others' competencies as given data and interact on this basis; and one where individuals know nothing about others' competencies but rather build this knowledge over time, according to their past interactions. For this purpose, we build an agent-based model, and model these two scenarios of simulations. (...) Results also show that learning is easier when there is no prior knowledge of others' competencies. (...)

  2. Science & Music: Lost In Music, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Never has so much music been so easily available. Go online, and you can download millions of recordings, from Spanish flamenco to Inuit throat singing. As a consequence, people are aware of the diversity of 'world musics' as never before.

    But this rich cacophony is the soundtrack to a collapse in the diversity of musical minds. A Nigerian group might sing in Yoruba, but the harmonies are thoroughly Western. Native American Navajo singers make valiant efforts to preserve their traditions, but to the trained musicologist, their singing bears the unmistakable imprint of Western scales.

  3. How A Thriving Social Life Can Boost Lifespan, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: It has been suggested that humans and other vertebrates live longer if they have more social interactions, and now this has been verified - in fruit flies. (...)

    Mutant flies that shared a home with younger flies, or non-mutants, lived longer and were more mobile than those sharing a home with similar-aged flies. They were also more resistant to the effects of extreme physical exertion, heat and oxidative stress.

    Impairing the movement or activity of younger flies reduced this effect, suggesting that social interaction with the younger flies through courtship, aggression, or grooming, plays a key role in increasing the lifespan of the older flies. "Social activity is the key," says Wu.

    1. Study Finds Big Social Factor in Quitting Smoking, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: For years, smokers have been exhorted to take the initiative and quit: use a nicotine patch, chew nicotine gum, take a prescription medication that can help, call a help line, just say no. But a new study finds that stopping is seldom an individual decision.

      Smokers tend to quit in groups, the study finds, which means smoking cessation programs should work best if they focus on groups rather than individuals. It also means that people may help many more than just themselves by quitting: quitting can have a ripple effect prompting an entire social network to break the habit.

    2. With Age Comes A Sense Of Peace And Calm: Population Research Center Study Shows, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Aging brings a sense of peace and calm, according to a new study (...). Starting at about age 60, participants reported more feelings of ease and contentment than their younger counterparts. (...) The findings reveal aging is associated with more positive than negative emotions, and more passive than active emotions, Ross said. Previous research on emotions associated with aging focused on negative emotions, such as depression. However, a second dimension underlying emotions is an active versus passive dimension, which is less studied, but may be important in explaining how emotions shift as people age, according to the researchers. (...)

    3. When Your Memories Can No Longer Be Trusted, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: You went to a wedding yesterday. The service was beautiful, the food and drink flowed and there was dancing all night. But people tell you that you are in hospital, that you have been in hospital for weeks, and that you didn't go to a wedding yesterday at all. The experience of false memories like this following neurological damage is known as confabulation. The reasons why patients experience false memories such as these has largely remained a mystery. (...) neuroimaging studies have associated memory-control processes which are assumed to underlie confabulation with the right lateral prefrontal cortex. (...).

    4. Eyewitness Identification: Line-Ups On Trial, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A major, but flawed, study of identity parades, or line-ups, has set science and the police at odds. (...)

      The group immediately homed in on the fact that most line-ups are overseen by the case's investigating officer, who knows the suspect's identity. For scientists, this is a major error: even something as seemingly objective as a clinical trial can be affected if the nurse who administers the injection knows whether the syringe contains a drug or a placebo. It is all but impossible for an experimenter - or an investigating officer - to avoid giving away the 'right' answer through body language, tone of voice or other such unconscious hints.

  4. Global Report On Conflict, Governance And State Fragility 2008, Foreign Policy Bull. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) Systems analysis necessarily focuses on the complex relations between dynamics (human agency and environmental forces) and statics (physical and social attributes, conditions, and structures). Basic societal-systems analysis must take into account the interconnectedness of three key, or fundamental, dimensions: conflict, governance, and development (...). Available technology largely determines the size and complexity of viable societal-systems. The qualities, and prospects, of each of the three fundamental dimensions of societal-systems critically affects the qualities of the other two dimensions to such a degree that it is not possible to meaningfully analyze one dimension without taking the other two into account. (...)

  5. Dutch Robot Flame Walks Like A Human, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    TU Delft is leading in constructing walking robots which are based on the way humans walk. Credit: TU Delft
    TU Delft is a pioneer of the other method used for constructing walking robots, based on the way humans walk. This is really very similar to falling forward in a controlled fashion. Adopting this method replaces the cautious, rigid way in which robots walk with the more fluid, energy-efficient movement used by humans.

    PhD student Daan Hobbelen has demonstrated for the first time that a robot can be both energy-efficient and highly stable. His breakthrough came in inventing a suitable method for measuring the stability of the way people walk for the first time.

  6. Religion Is A Product Of Evolution, Software Suggests, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:

    By distilling religious belief into a genetic predisposition to pass along unverifiable information, the program predicts that religion will flourish. However, religion only takes hold if non-believers help believers out - perhaps because they are impressed by their devotion.

    "If a person is willing to sacrifice for an abstract god then people feel like they are willing to sacrifice for the community," says James Dow, (...), who wrote the program - called Evogod (download the code here).


  7. Differential Rescue of Light- and Food-Entrainable Circadian Rhythms, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: When hungry, rodents may optimize their chances of finding food by engaging a food-entrained circadian clock in the brain that takes over from the light-driven clock.

    When food is plentiful, circadian rhythms of animals are powerfully entrained by the light-dark cycle. However, if animals have access to food only during their normal sleep cycle, they will shift most of their circadian rhythms to match the food availability. We studied the basis for entrainment of circadian rhythms by food and light in mice with targeted disruption of the clock gene Bmal1, which lack circadian rhythmicity.

  8. Matching Tumors To Drugs - A Clinical Trial Offers A First Step Toward Personalizing Cancer Treatments., Technology Review Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: "The ultimate goal is to take a molecular fingerprint of someone's tumor and assign treatment based on molecular defects."

    Standard cancer drugs are designed to preferentially kill cancer cells, but they can still be toxic to normal tissue. But cancer researchers have been working toward the goal of developing an array of drugs that could hit precise molecular targets in tumors, while being less toxic to normal cells. For example, non-small-cell lung cancer is an aggressive form of cancer that is typically treated with chemotherapy; however, in recent years, new drugs for the disease have been developed that target a specific molecule in cancer cells, called the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR).

    1. Unlocking The Promise Of Clinical And Translational Science, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: If you were sick, wouldn't you prefer a customized medical treatment that works specifically for you? Or a treatment that prevents you from ever getting sick in the first place? The emerging field of clinical and translational science provides the bridging force that transforms lab discoveries into customized, patient-specific therapy. (...) "Diseases ultimately originate from abnormalities in the individual molecules controlling the function of normal cells. Defining those molecules and their normal and abnormal interactions for each disease state creates opportunities to repair malfunctions and restore cells to normal health," explains Waldman. (...)

  9. The Inner Lives of Sponges, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Symbiotic ties, bioactive compounds, and mysterious distributions of bacteria characterize these ancient invertebrates (...)

    One of evolution's more ancient animals, sponges at first glance seem quite simple--little more than loose consortiums of semiautonomous cells, stuck in one place filtering food from the water column. But a closer look reveals a surprising twist. "With many species, under the microscope you see almost exclusively bacteria" among the cells, says Piel, an organic chemist at the University of Bonn in Germany.

    • Source: The Inner Lives of Sponges, Gretchen Vogel, DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5879.1028, Science: Vol. 320. no. 5879, pp. 1028 - 1030, 08/05/23

  10. Biophysics: Cells Get In Shape For A Crawl, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A cell's shape changes as it moves along a surface. The forward-thinking cytoskeletal elements are all for progress, but the conservative cell membrane keeps them under control by physically opposing their movement.

    The ability of living cells to move affects the way our bodies develop, fight off infections and heal wounds. Moreover, cell migration is an extremely complex process, which explains why it has captured the collective imaginations of a variety of fields, from the biological and the physical sciences.

    1. Cell 'Organs' Get Plastic Upgrades, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Meier says the artificial organelles would also work in other human cells, opening up the possibility of a new cancer therapy that tricks diseased cells into poisoning themselves from the inside out.

      An advanced chemotherapy technique involves giving patients a harmless "prodrug" that only becomes toxic in the presence of a particular enzyme. This enzyme bonds to an antibody that seeks out cancer but ignores healthy cells - this means the drug will only become active around cancerous cells.

  11. Confusing Kinships, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Understanding microbial evolution and ecology rests on a solid classification system, but coming up with one is difficult. (...)

    Not only are bacteria and their ilk amazingly diverse, but genes cross species lines so frequently that researchers argue whether microbial species exist at all. At stake is much more than the esoteric record-keeping of taxonomists, (...): "This is about our fundamental understanding of evolution." Without rigorously categorizing diversity, "we're really stuck."


    • Source: Confusing Kinships, John Bohannon, DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5879.1031, Science : 1031-1033, 08/05/23

    1. The Microbial Engines That Drive Earth's Biogeochemical Cycles, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Virtually all nonequilibrium electron transfers on Earth are driven by a set of nanobiological machines composed largely of multimeric protein complexes associated with a small number of prosthetic groups. These machines evolved exclusively in microbes early in our planet's history yet, despite their antiquity, are highly conserved. Hence, although there is enormous genetic diversity in nature, there remains a relatively stable set of core genes coding for the major redox reactions essential for life and biogeochemical cycles.

    2. Microbial Ecology of Ocean Biogeochemistry: A Community Perspective, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The oceans harbor a tremendous diversity of marine microbes. Different functional groups of bacteria, archaea, and protists arise from this diversity to dominate various habitats and drive globally important biogeochemical cycles. Explanations for the distribution of microbial taxa and their associated activity often focus on resource availability and abiotic conditions. However, the continual reshaping of communities by mortality, allelopathy, symbiosis, and other processes shows that community interactions exert strong selective pressure on marine microbes.

    3. Microbiology: Bacteria Are Picky About Their Homes on Human Skin, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Julie Segre is touring the microbial landscape of our body's biggest organ, the skin. In anticipation of a $115 million, 5-year effort by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), she's traveling from head to toe, conducting a census of some of the trillions of bacteria that live within and upon human skin. Although their project is just getting off the ground, Segre, a geneticist at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in Bethesda, Maryland, and her colleagues have already uncovered a surprising diversity and distribution among skin bacteria.

  12. Linear And Nonlinear Processing In Hair Cells, J. Experi. Biol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Mechanosensory hair cells in the ear are exquisitely responsive to minute sensory inputs, nearly to the point of instability. Active mechanisms bias the transduction apparatus and subsequent electrical amplification away from saturation in either the negative or positive direction, to an operating point where the response to small signals is approximately linear. An active force generator coupled directly to the transducer enhances sensitivity and frequency selectivity, and counteracts energy loss to viscous drag. Active electrical amplification further enhances gain and frequency selectivity. In both cases, nonlinear properties may maintain the system close to instability, as evidenced by small spontaneous oscillations, (...).
    • Source: Linear And Nonlinear Processing In Hair Cells, W. M. Roberts - billrauoregon.edu, M. A. Rutherford, DOI: 10.1242/jeb.017616, Journal of Experimental Biology, 2008/06/01, online 2008/05/19
    • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

  13. Community Ecology: All That Makes Fungus Gardens Grow, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Fifty million years ago, while the earliest primates were still scurrying from tree to tree, scrounging fruits and insects, attine ants were growing their own food. They were so adept at domesticating mushrooms that hundreds of species have descended from the original farmers, all of them cultivating fungi.

    Humans could learn a lot from the ants' success. Over the past 10 years, researchers have come to realize that the fungus gardens thrive because of an intricate web of bacteria and fungi that includes both pests, such as a newly discovered black yeast, and partners, including bacteria that keep pathogens in check.

  14. Global Warming: Hurricanes Won't Go Wild, According to Climate Models, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Two new model studies project a modest increase or even a decrease in the frequency and intensity of Atlantic tropical cyclones. (...)

    But even some of those involved in the studies urge caution in interpreting the results. "I'm much less sanguine about models solving the problem," (...). There's still too much messiness beneath the surface of all such studies, he says.

    Using two different approaches, both model studies tweak the big global climate models to simulate tropical cyclones. Global climate models can't form tropical cyclones because their picture of the atmosphere is too fuzzy. (...)


  15. Complex Networks: from Biology to Information Technology, J. Phys. A Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The field of complex networks is one of the most active areas in contemporary statistical physics. Ten years after seminal work initiated the modern study of networks, interest in the field is in fact still growing, as indicated by the ever increasing number of publications in network science. The reason for such a resounding success is most likely the simplicity and broad significance of the approach that, through graph theory, allows researchers to address a variety of different complex systems within a common framework.
    This special issue comprises a selection of contributions presented at the workshop 'Complex Networks: from Biology to Information Technology' held in July 2007 in Pula (Cagliari), Italy as a satellite of the general conference STATPHYS23.
    See Also: SPECIAL ISSUE: PAPERS FROM THE STATPHYS23 SATELLITE MEETING ON COMPLEX NETWORKS: FROM BIOLOGY TO INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (PULA (CAGLIARI), ITALY, 2â€"6 July 2007)

    1. Mapping Global Sensitivity Of Cellular Network Dynamics, Interface Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The dynamical systems arising from gene regulatory, signalling and metabolic networks are strongly nonlinear, have high-dimensional state spaces and depend on large numbers of parameters. Understanding the relation between the structure and the function for such systems is a considerable challenge. We need tools to identify key points of regulation, illuminate such issues as robustness and control and aid in the design of experiments. Here, I tackle this by developing new techniques for sensitivity analysis. In particular, I show how to globally analyse the sensitivity of a complex system by means of two new graphical objects: the sensitivity heat map and the parameter sensitivity spectrum. (...)

  16. Epigenetic Tracking, a Method to Generate Arbitrary Shapes By Using Evolutionary-Developmental Techniques, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: This paper describes an Artificial Embryology method (called ``Epigenetic Tracking'') to generate predefined arbitrarily shaped 2-dimensional arrays of cells by means of evolutionary techniques. It is based on a model of development, whose key features are: i) the distinction bewteen ``normal'' and ``driver'' cells, being the latter able to receive guidance from the genome, ii) the implementation of the proliferation/apoptosis events in such a way that many cells are created/deleted at once, in order to speed-up the morphogenetic process. iii) the presence in driver cells of an epigenetic memory, that holds the position of the cell in the cell lineage tree and represents the source of differentiation during development.

  17. Doughnut-Shaped Universe Bites Back, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:
    Mmm... Universe. Calculations show it really might be shaped like the snack favourite.
    The CMB [cosmic microwave background, Ed.] is made up of hot and cold spots that represent ripples in the density of the infant Universe, like waves in the sea. An infinite Universe should contain waves of all sizes, but cosmologists were surprised to find that longer wavelengths were missing from measurements of the CMB made by NASA’s Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.

  18. A Levy Flight For Light, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Transport based on Levy flights has been extensively studied numerically, but experimental work has been limited, and, to date, it has not seemed possible to observe and study Levy transport in actual materials. For example, experimental work on heat, sound, and light diffusion is generally limited to normal, brownian, diffusion. Here we show that it is possible to engineer an optical material in which light waves perform a Levy flight. The key parameters that determine the transport behaviour can be easily tuned, making this an ideal experimental system in which to study Levy flights in a controlled way.
    • Source: A Levy Flight For Light, Pierre Barthelemy, Jacopo Bertolotti, Diederik S. Wiersma, DOI: 10.1038/nature06948, Nature 453, 495-498, 08/05/22

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

    1. Terrorism On Decline: Canadian Study, AFP Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers at Simon Fraser University (SFU) said in an annual Human Security Brief that terrorism fatalities were down by some 40 percent in late 2006 compared to 2001, and according to preliminary data, dropped even further in mid-2007. The study pointed to more widespread and coordinated counterterrorism efforts, "bitter doctrinal infighting" within the global Islamist networks, and Muslims' rejection of terrorists' "indiscriminate violence, extremist ideology and harshly repressive policies" for the downswing.

      As well, it specifically acknowledged a "dramatic collapse in popular support throughout the Muslim world" for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Evolution: Hard Facts About Soft Animals, Matthias Glaubrecht, 08/05/23, Science : 1014-1015. The contributors combine data from anatomy, ecology, paleontology, and genomics to provide a summary of what we do and do not know about the evolutionary relationships of molluscs
      2. Insects (The Original White Meat), 08/05/24, Science News, Dining on insects, usually more by choice than necessity, occurs in at least 100 countries ¡X and may be better than chicken for both people and the environment.
      3. It's The Network, Stupid, 08/05/24, Science News, The complexity of humans may lie not in genes but in the web of interactions among the proteins they make.
      4. Sharing Valuable Real Estate, 08/05/24, Science News, Human brains rewire when people lose a sense, but a new study of people who have regained vision shows that the rewired areas retain their old abilities.
      5. Assessing Random Dynamical Network Architectures for Nanoelectronics, Christof Teuscher, Natali Gulbahce, Thimo Rohlf, 2008/05/17, arXiv, DOI: 0805.2684
      6. Evolution Of Cooperation With Shared Costs And Benefits, J. S. Brown, T. L. Vincent, 2008/05/20, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2007.1685
      7. Sensitivity To Reward Loss As An Indicator Of Animal Emotion And Welfare, O. H. P. Burman, R. M. A. Parker, E. S. Paul, M. Mendl, 2008/05/20, Biological Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0113
      8. Steel Toughened by Pancakes, Philip Ball, 2008/05/22, News@Nature, DOI: 10.1038/news.2008.851
      9. How Low Can Life Go?, Heidi Ledford, 2008/05/22, News@Nature, DOI: 10.1038/news.2008.850
      10. Modeling How We See Natural Scenes, 2008/05/22, ScienceDaily & Cell Press
      11. Why Do Astronauts Suffer From Space Sickness?, 2008/05/23, Innovations-report
      12. Brain's 'Trust Machinery' Identified, 2008/05/23, ScienceDaily & Cell Press
      13. Mathematicians Reveal Secrets Of The Ancient And Universal Art Of Symmetry, 2008/05/24, ScienceDaily & University of Arkansas, Fayetteville
      14. At The Synapse: Gene May Shed Light On Neurological Disorders, 2008/05/26, Innovations-report
      15. Bone Repair Using Patient's Stem Cells Comes Closer: Enzyme Induces Adult Stem Cells To Grow Bone, 2008/05/26, Innovations-report
      16. Historical Simulation: A Study Of Civil Service Examinations, The Family Line And Cultural Capital In China, S. Kurahashi - kurahashiagssm.otsuka.tsukuba.ac.jp, T. Terano - teranoadis.titech.ac.jp, Apr. 2008, Advances in Complex Systems, DOI: 10.1142/S0219525908001568

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. 7th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 07/10/28-11/02
      2. Reseau Nationale des Systemes Complexes , (in French), 2007
      3. World Economic Forum , Davos, Switzerland, 08/01/22-27
      4. TED Talks, TED Conferences LLC , since 2006
      5. Talking Robots: The PodCast on Robotics and AI, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 06/11/03
      6. Potentials of Complexity Science for Business, Governments, and the Media 2006, Budapest, Hungary, 06/08/03-05
      7. 6th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 06/06/25-30
      8. Artificial Life X, 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Bloomington, IN, USA. 2006/06/03-07
      9. 6th Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Il, 06/05/15-18
      10. Ralph Abraham on Complexity Digest, , Calcutta, India, 05/12/27
      11. An Afternoon with Michael Crichton, Washington, 05/11/06
      12. Illuminating the Shadow of the Future, Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25
      13. Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems - Brainstorming Meeting, Paris, France 05/09/19-23
      14. Complexity, Science & Society Conference 2005, U. Liverpool, UK 2005/09/11-14
      15. ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK 2005/09/5-9
      16. T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder, The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy, 05/08/27, QuickTime video (10:38 min), Podcast
      17. 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
      18. Understanding Complex Systems - Computational Complexity and Bioinformatics, Virtual Conference Network, Urbana-Champaign, Il, UIUC, 05/05/16-19
      19. 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
      20. 1st European Conference on Complex Systems, Torino, Italy, 04/12/5-7
      21. From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
      22. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
      23. International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
      24. Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
      25. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      26. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
      27. Edge Videos

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. CHAOS2008 Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference, Chania, Crete, Greece, 08/06/03-06
      2. Creating Cultures of Engagement in Health Care: New Models for Addressing Conflict, Disruption and Avoidance in Health Care, Omaha, Nebraska, 08/06/03-05
      3. International Conference on Chaos, Complexity & Conflict, Omaha, NE, 08/06/05-07
      4. 4th Organization Studies Summer Workshop: "Embracing Complexity: Advancing Ecological Understanding in Organization Studies", Pissouri, Cyprus, 08/06/05-07
      5. Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Tenth Annual... Applying Systems Biology, San Francisco, CA, 08/06/09-11
      6. AUTOMATA 2008, EPSRC Workshop Cellular Automata Theory and Applications, Bristol, UK, 08/06/12-14
      7. Intl Summer School on "Modelling and Optimization in Micro- and Nano- Electronics" - MOMINE 2008, Ragusa, Sicily, Italy, 08/06/14-28
      8. NECSI Summer School, Cambridge, MA, 08/06/16-07/04,
      9. 9th Intl Mathematica Symposium, Maastricht, The Netherlands, 08/06/20-24
      10. The 14th Intl Conf on Auditory Display (ICAD), Paris, France, 08/06/24-27
      11. 8th Intl Conf of Sociocybernetics - Complex Social Systems, Interdisciplinarity And World Futures, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico, 08/06/24-28
      12. "Is complexity the new framework for management and public policy in the 21st century?" Complexity Society Workshop, Manchester, UK, 08/06/26
      13. The 3rd Intl Symp on Knowledge Communication and Peer Reviewing: KCPR 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA, 08/06/29-07/02
      14. The 3rd Intl Symp on Knowledge Communication and Conferences: KCC 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA, 08/06/29-07/02
      15. 7th Intl Summer School and Conf "Let's Face Chaos through Nonlinear Dynamics", Maribor, Slovenia, 08/06/29-07/13
      16. The 12th World Multi-Conf on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics: WMSCI 2008, Orlando, Florida, USA, 08/06/29-07/02
      17. From Animals To Animats 10 - The 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation Of Adaptive Behavior (SAB'08), Osaka, Japan, 08/07/07-12
      18. Complex Systems and Social Simulations, CEU Summer University, Budapest, Hungary, 08/07/07-18
      19. 2008 Gordon Research Conf on Oscillations & Dynamic Instabilities in Chemical Systems, Waterville, ME, 08/07/13-18
      20. Nonlinear Fracture Mechanics Models, Udine, Italy, 08/07/14-18
      21. 1st Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'08), Klagenfurt, Austria, 08/07/18-19
      22. Scratch@MIT,Cambridge, MA, 08/07/24-26
      23. 8th Intl Conf on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems, Brighton, UK, 08/07/31-08/02
      24. On the Edge: Healthcare in the Age of Complexity, Kansas City, MO, 08/08/03-05
      25. Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences 18th Annl Intl Conf, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 08/08/08-10
      26. Stochastic Resonance 2008, Perugia, Italy, 08/08/17-21
      27. 4th Intl Conf on Natural Computation (ICNC'08) - 5th Intl Conf on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery (FSKD'08), Jinan, China, 08/08/25-27
      28. Intl Conf DEscribing COmplex Systems (DECOS), Zadar, Croatia, 08/09/03-07
      29. BICS Conference - Emergence in Complex Systems, Bath, UK, 08/09/09-11
      30. 5th European Conference on Complex Systems, Jerusalem, Israel, 08/09/14-19
      31. EPOS 2008, III Edition of Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation, Lisbon, Portugal, 08/10/02-03
      32. International Congress on Complex Thought, Hermosillo , Sonora , Mexico, 08/10/21-24
      33. 2nd Intl Congress of Complex Systems in Sport (2nd ICCSS) and 10th European Workshop of Ecological Psychology. (10th EWEP), Funchal, in Madeira Island, Portugal, 08/11/05-08
      34. COMPLEX'2009, First Intl Conf on Complex Systems: Theory and Applications, Shanghai, China, 09/02/23-25

    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


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