Complexity Digest 2008.23

5-June-2008

PDF files of our annual editions are available at www.comdig.de/AnnualEditions.html

Aletter from Gottfried Mayer to our readers and friends is at http://www.comdig.de/GMLetter.html

For individual e-mail subscriptions go to Subscriptions.
Previous issue 2008.22 | Next issue 2008.24

Content

  1. How We See Ourselves and How We See Others, Science
    1. The Diplomat's Dilemma: Maximal Power for Minimal Effort in Social Networks, arXiv
  2. Groundbreaking UCSD Research Study To Measure "How Much Information?" Is In The World, UCSD News Release
  3. Microbiology: The Inside Story, Nature
    1. Replaying Evolution - Scientists Show That Happenstance Mutations Matter, Science News
    2. Abundance And Diversity Of Microbial Life In Ocean Crust, Nature
  4. Log Or Linear? Distinct Intuitions Of The Number Scale In Western And Amazonian Indigene Cultures, Science
    1. Why We Should Love Logarithms, News@Nature
  5. Science & Music: The Neural Roots Of Music, Nature
  6. Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns, Science
  7. Measuring Research Output with Science & Technology Indicators, Scirus.com
  8. The Church Versus The Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?, Quart. J. Econ.
  9. The Good News In Our DNA: Defects You Can Fix With Vitamins And Minerals, PhysOrg.com
    1. Agent In Red Wine Found To Keep Hearts Young, U Wisconsin-Madison News Release
  10. Human Stem Cells Used To Cure Brain Disorder, Nature News
    1. Brain Cells Help Neighboring Nerves Regenerate, ScienceDaily
  11. Clues to Controlling Seizures, Technology Review
  12. Cancer: Whispering Sweet Somethings, Nature
    1. Self-assembled Viruses Efficiently Carry Genes And Drug Molecules Into Tumor Cells, ScienceDaily
  13. Bad Synergy, Science News
  14. Did Walking On Two Feet Begin With A Shuffle?, ScienceDaily
  15. Ancestral Monogamy Shows Kin Selection Is Key To The Evolution Of Eusociality, Science
    1. Zombie Babysitters - Not-Quite-Dead Caterpillar Victims Do Child Care For Their Killers, Science News
  16. Life Before Proteins, Science News
    1. What Makes Life Go At The Tropics?, Innovations-report
    2. Sperm Sociality: Cooperation, Altruism, and Spite, PLoS Biol
  17. Antarctica: Freeze-Dried Findings Support a Tale of Two Ancient Climates, Science
    1. Atmospheric Science: Whither Geoengineering?, Science
    2. Entomogenic Climate Change, arXiv
  18. Microrobots Dance On Something Smaller Than A Pin's Head, Physorg.com
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Perpetuating The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Myth, Time
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. How We See Ourselves and How We See Others, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: People see themselves differently from how they see others. They are immersed in their own sensations, emotions, and cognitions at the same time that their experience of others is dominated by what can be observed externally. This basic asymmetry has broad consequences. It leads people to judge themselves and their own behavior differently from how they judge others and those others' behavior. Often, those differences produce disagreement and conflict. Understanding the psychological basis of those differences may help mitigate some of their negative effects.

    1. The Diplomat's Dilemma: Maximal Power for Minimal Effort in Social Networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Closeness is a global measure of centrality in networks, and a proxy for how influential actors are in social networks. In most network models, and many empirical networks, closeness is strongly correlated with degree. However, in social networks there is a cost of maintaining social ties. This leads to a situation (that can occur in the professional social networks of executives, lobbyists, diplomats and so on) where agents have the conflicting objectives of aiming for centrality while simultaneously keeping the degree low.

  2. Groundbreaking UCSD Research Study To Measure "How Much Information?" Is In The World, UCSD News Release Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: "Experts say that we live in an information economy, but how much information is there, and do countries count and value information comparably? The previous generation of studies have reported information as countable bits and bytes, and documented large growth numbers" said IR/PS Dean Peter F. Cowhey. "The next generation of studies will count more precisely the impacts and implications of information growth, and do this internationally," continued Cowhey.

  3. Microbiology: The Inside Story, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Any story about a human's microbes tends to invoke impressive numbers. Take the 10 trillion or so microbial cells living in the gut, which exceed the number of human cells by 10 to 1. Between them, they harbour millions of genes, compared with the paltry 20,000 estimated in the human genome. To say that you are outnumbered is a massive understatement. (...)

    There is strength in numbers; so much so, in fact, that some biologists regard a human as a 'superorganism' - a community that adds up to more than the sum of its parts. The body itself is merely one, albeit encompassing, component.

    1. Replaying Evolution - Scientists Show That Happenstance Mutations Matter, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: In experiments on bacteria grown in the lab, scientists found that evolving a new trait sometimes depended on previous, happenstance mutations. Without those earlier random mutations, the window of opportunity for the novel trait would never have opened. History might have been different. (...)

      Lenski's team watched 12 colonies of identical E. coli bacteria evolve under carefully controlled lab conditions for 20 years, which equates to more than 40,000 generations of bacteria. After every 500 generations, the researchers froze samples of bacteria. Those bacteria could later be thawed out to "replay" the evolutionary clock from that point in time.

    2. Abundance And Diversity Of Microbial Life In Ocean Crust, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Oceanic lithosphere exposed at the sea floor undergoes seawater-rock alteration reactions involving the oxidation and hydration of glassy basalt. Basalt alteration reactions are theoretically capable of supplying sufficient energy for chemolithoautotrophic growth. Such reactions have been shown to generate microbial biomass in the laboratory, but field-based support for the existence of microbes that are supported by basalt alteration is lacking. Here, using quantitative polymerase chain reaction, in situ hybridization and microscopy, we demonstrate that prokaryotic cell abundances on seafloor-exposed basalts are 3-4 orders of magnitude greater than in overlying deep sea water.(...).

  4. Log Or Linear? Distinct Intuitions Of The Number Scale In Western And Amazonian Indigene Cultures, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The mapping of numbers onto space is fundamental to measurement and to mathematics. Is this mapping a cultural invention or a universal intuition shared by all humans regardless of culture and education? We probed number-space mappings in the Mundurucu, an Amazonian indigene group with a reduced numerical lexicon and little or no formal education. At all ages, the Mundurucu mapped symbolic and nonsymbolic numbers onto a logarithmic scale, whereas Western adults used linear mapping with small or symbolic numbers and logarithmic mapping when numbers were presented nonsymbolically under conditions that discouraged counting. This indicates that the mapping of numbers onto space is a universal intuition and that this initial intuition of number is logarithmic. The concept of a linear number line appears to be a cultural invention that fails to develop in the absence of formal education.

    1. Why We Should Love Logarithms, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Do kids instinctively think logarithmically - and is this the smartest way to look at numbers after all?
      Punchstock
      (...) logarithmic scaling is the natural system for magnitudes of quantities in the sciences.
      (...) Stanislas Dehaene of the Federative Institute of Research in Gif-sur-Yvette, France, and his co-workers report in Science 1 that both adults and children of an Amazonian tribe called the Mundurucu, who have had almost no exposure to the linear counting scale of the industrialized world, judge magnitudes on a logarithmic basis.

  5. Science & Music: The Neural Roots Of Music, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Certain sounds elicit specific, powerful emotions in people, presumably a testament to the evolutionary heritage of our auditory systems. Low, loud, dissonant sounds evoke fear; rapid, higher, consonant sounds evoke friendliness or joy. Mothers around the world talk and sing to infants using a cooing tone of voice and higher pitch than when interacting with adults. Infants prefer these higher-pitched vocalizations and mothers sing in different styles to help prelinguistic infants regulate their emotional state. Across cultures, songs sung while playing with babies are fast, high and contain exaggerated rhythmic accents; lullabies are lower, slower and softer.

  6. Predicting Human Brain Activity Associated with the Meanings of Nouns, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The question of how the human brain represents conceptual knowledge has been debated in many scientific fields. Brain imaging studies have shown that different spatial patterns of neural activation are associated with thinking about different semantic categories of pictures and words (for example, tools, buildings, and animals). We present a computational model that predicts the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neural activation associated with words for which fMRI data are not yet available. This model is trained with a combination of data from a trillion-word text corpus and observed fMRI data associated with viewing several dozen concrete nouns.

  7. Measuring Research Output with Science & Technology Indicators, Scirus.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The measurement of research output and the ranking of universities has become an industry in itself. Ranking, however, is based on reducing the complexity to a single number. The weighting of different dimensions remains a problem. Research output measurements are based on indicators such as impact factors. These indicators have been clearly defined, but for other purposes (Garfield, 1979). For example, impact factors can vary by an order of magnitude between mathematics and the life-sciences. Would a university be well advised to close its mathematics department in order to improve its ranking?

  8. The Church Versus The Mall: What Happens When Religion Faces Increased Secular Competition?, Quart. J. Econ. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Recently economists have begun to consider the causes and consequences of religious participation. An unanswered question in this literature is the effect upon individuals of changes in the opportunity cost of religious participation. In this paper we identify a policy-driven change in the opportunity cost of religious participation based on state laws that prohibit retail activity on Sunday (...). Many states have repealed these laws in recent years, raising the opportunity cost of religious participation. We use a variety of data sets to show that when a state repeals its blue laws religious attendance falls and that church donations and spending fall as well. (...)

  9. The Good News In Our DNA: Defects You Can Fix With Vitamins And Minerals, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: As the cost of sequencing a single human genome drops rapidly, with one company predicting a price of $100 per person in five years, soon the only reason not to look at your "personal genome" will be fear of what bad news lies in your genes.(...)

    (...) there are many genetic differences that make people's enzymes less efficient than normal, and that simple supplementation with vitamins can often restore some of these deficient enzymes to full working order. (...)


    1. Agent In Red Wine Found To Keep Hearts Young, U Wisconsin-Madison News Release Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: How, scientists wonder, do the French get away with a clean bill of heart health despite a diet loaded with saturated fats? The answer to the so-called "French paradox" may be found in red wine. More specifically, it may reside in small doses of resveratrol, a natural constituent of grapes, pomegranates, red wine and other foods, (...).

      (...) low doses of resveratrol in the diet of middle-aged mice has a widespread influence on the genetic levers of aging and may confer special protection on the heart.

  10. Human Stem Cells Used To Cure Brain Disorder, Nature News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The treatment uses human glial progenitor cells - cells that can differentiate into the glial cells that, among other things, make up myelin. Myelin, a protein that insulates the long 'arms' of nerve cells, called axons, helps the conduction of neural signals throughout the nervous system.

    (...), took the progenitor cells from white matter in the fetal human brain and injected them into the spinal cords of mutant shiverer mice shortly after their birth.

    The mice, (...), have severe neurological defects caused by a genetic mutation that stops them producing myelin. Without myelin, neural signals get stuck, causing potentially fatal disease.

    1. Brain Cells Help Neighboring Nerves Regenerate, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Researchers have uncovered a completely unexpected way that the brain repairs nerve damage, wherein cells known as astrocytes deliver a protective protein to nearby neurons. Astrocytes are a type of support cell in the brain that serve many functions; one of their roles is to chew up damaged nerves during brain injury and then form scar tissue in the damaged area. (...) During injury, astrocytes overproduce a protein called metallothionein (MT) and secrete it to surrounding nerves; MT is a scavenging protein that grabs free radicals and metal ions and prevents them from damaging a cell, and thus is a potent protecting agent. (...)

  11. Clues to Controlling Seizures, Technology Review Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Modeling seizures: By building models that mimic the neural activity characteristic of seizures, scientists hope to improve electrical-stimulation therapies for epilepsy patients. Neural activity recorded from a slice of rat cortex is shown in the top box. (Neurons in a dissected piece of brain can stay active for hours if treated properly.) Results of three versions of a computational model calculated from real neural activity are shown below, each capturing a different aspect of the actual neural activity. The colors represent changes in voltage in the real or simulated neural tissue. Credit: Steven Schiff (Pennsylvania State University), Xiaoying Huang and Jian-Young Wu (Georgetown University Medical Center)
    New approaches to modeling the brain could improve electrical-stimulation therapies.

    The same type of modeling used by meteorologists to forecast the weather could help scientists design better electrical-stimulation therapies for the brain. These therapies, which involve sending small jolts of electricity to specific neural targets, are currently in use for both Parkinson's and epilepsy, two neurological diseases in which drugs have had limited success.

    As neurosurgical technologies improve and medical devices become smaller and more precise, interest in stimulation therapies has blossomed (...).

  12. Cancer: Whispering Sweet Somethings, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: That genetic mutations contribute to cancer is undisputed. What now emerges is that a cancer cell's microenvironment has a much stronger hand in the course a cancer takes than previously thought.

    The goal of personalized medicine is to tailor a treatment to a specific cellular target at the appropriate stage of a disease, thus 'defusing' the disease process. Cancer is an example of the way in which multifaceted approaches to attaining this goal are emerging. We have come to appreciate that a tumour is a collection of diverse cells - cells carrying cancer-causing mutations and the cells of its immediate microenvironment - that act in concert towards disease progression.

    1. Self-assembled Viruses Efficiently Carry Genes And Drug Molecules Into Tumor Cells, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Viruses are true experts at importing genetic material into the cells of an infected organism. This trait is now being exploited for gene therapy, in which genes are brought into the cells of a patient to treat genetic diseases or genetic defects. Korean researchers have now made an artificial virus. (...) they have been able to use it to transport both genes and drugs into the interior of cancer cells. Natural viruses are extremely effective at transporting genes into cells for gene therapy; their disadvantage is that they can initiate an immune response or cause cancer. Artificial viruses do not have these side effects, (...).

  13. Bad Synergy, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Simultaneous parasite infections act in concert to raise risk of anemia in children (...)

    These data suggest that moderate-to-severe parasite infestations with hookworms and blood flukes seem to triple the risk of anemia when compared with that would be calculated by simply adding the risks of these worms together, says study author Amara Ezeamama, an epidemiologist at the Health Effects Institute in Boston.


  14. Did Walking On Two Feet Begin With A Shuffle?, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Somewhere in the murky past, between four and seven million years ago, a hungry common ancestor of today's primates, including humans, did something novel. While temporarily standing on its rear feet to reach a piece of fruit, this protohominid spotted another juicy morsel in a nearby shrub and began shuffling toward it instead of dropping on all fours, crawling to the shrub and standing again. A number of reasons have been proposed for the development of bipedal behavior, (...) and now researchers (...) have developed a mathematical model that suggests shuffling emerged as a precursor to walking as a way of saving metabolic energy. (...)

  15. Ancestral Monogamy Shows Kin Selection Is Key To The Evolution Of Eusociality, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Close relatedness has long been considered crucial to the evolution of eusociality. However, it has recently been suggested that close relatedness may be a consequence, rather than a cause, of eusociality. We tested this idea with a comparative analysis of female mating frequencies in 267 species of eusocial bees, wasps, and ants. We found that mating with a single male, which maximizes relatedness, is ancestral for all eight independent eusocial lineages that we investigated. Mating with multiple males is always derived.

    1. Zombie Babysitters - Not-Quite-Dead Caterpillar Victims Do Child Care For Their Killers, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      A caterpillar doomed by wasp attack looms over the cocoons of its attackers - but ends up protecting them from predators.
      The caterpillar, the young of the moth Thyrinteinta leucocerae, stops feeding and stays on the spot, too. Healthy caterpillars don't react much to approaching insects, but the ones the wasp larvae have been using as baby food develop a fighting streak. When a predatory insect or even an entomologist's hand swoops near, the caterpillar "will start violently swinging its head from side to side," (...). The headbutting typically chases away the predator.


  16. Life Before Proteins, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The first cells to arise on the primordial Earth needed nutrients from their surroundings in order to grow and reproduce long enough to evolve complex proteins. Yet the membranes that encapsulate modern cells need complex proteins to act as pores that let these nutrients pass into the cells. Presumably, primitive cells wouldn't have had these sophisticated pore proteins, so scientists have wondered how the first living cells managed to get nutrients from their environment.

    1. What Makes Life Go At The Tropics?, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: What causes tropical life to thrive: temperature, or sunlight? The answer is not necessarily "both." According to a study (...), the explosion of species at the tropics has much more to do with warmth than with light. "The diversity was unrelated to productivity (from photosynthesis), but it was strongly related to temperature," said (...). Fuhrman's group found far greater diversity in samples taken near the equator. In particular, samples from low-productivity waters still contained many bacterial species, suggesting that photosynthesis has little influence on diversity. (...)

    2. Sperm Sociality: Cooperation, Altruism, and Spite, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: A swimming sperm cell appears to perfectly capture the individualist Darwinian struggle, as it frantically races onwards towards a waiting egg. Consistent with this imagery, sperm morphology and behaviour in many organisms appears exquisitely designed to maximise the chances of fertilisation of each individual sperm cell [1]. However, there are numerous less obliging cases where sperm seem poorly suited to the task, even to the extent that the majority of sperm in an ejaculate may be infertile [2,3]. Why would such sperm evolve?

  17. Antarctica: Freeze-Dried Findings Support a Tale of Two Ancient Climates, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A surprising cache of ancient plant material adds evidence for divergent climate histories of the East and West Antarctic ice sheets over the past 14 million years. (...)

    Juxtaposed against these findings are results from two recent cores drilled into the seabed of McMurdo Sound, 120 kilometers from the Olympus Range. The analysis of the ANDRILL (ANtarctic geological DRILLing) cores, taken in the fall of 2006 and 2007, indicate huge fluctuations in temperature over the same period in that general region.

    1. Atmospheric Science: Whither Geoengineering?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Costs, benefits, and harms associated with geoengineering must be assessed before it is used to mitigate climate change. (...)

      On page 1201 of this issue, Tilmes et al. (5) quantify the effects of one geoengineering approach--the introduction of additional aerosols into Earth's stratosphere, akin to a volcanic eruption--on high-latitude stratospheric ozone concentrations.

      Geoengineering involves trying to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface to compensate for the additional long-wave infrared radiation from greenhouse gases, thereby reducing or reversing global warming (6).

    2. Entomogenic Climate Change, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Rapidly expanding insect populations, deforestation, and global climate change threaten to destabilize key planetary carbon pools, especially the Earth's forests which link the micro-ecology of insect infestation to climate. To the extent mean temperature increases, insect populations accelerate deforestation. This alters climate via the loss of active carbon sequestration by live trees and increased carbon release from decomposing dead trees. A positive feedback loop can emerge that is self-sustaining--no longer requiring independent climate-change drivers.

  18. Microrobots Dance On Something Smaller Than A Pin's Head, Physorg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Microscopic robots crafted to maneuver separately without any obvious guidance are now assembling into self-organized structures (...).

    Each microrobot is shaped something like a spatula but with dimensions measuring just microns, or millionths of a meter. They are almost 100 times smaller than any previous robotic designs of their kind and weigh even less,(...).

    Propelling themselves across such surfaces in an inchworm-like fashion impelled by a "scratch-drive" motion actuator, the microrobots advance in steps only 10 to 20 billionths of a meter each, but repeated as often as 20,000 times a second.


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

    1. Perpetuating The Al-Qaeda-Iraq Myth, Time Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: They "stand up" al-Qaeda as the enemy in Iraq, he said, even behind closed doors. In the teeth of the facts, they ignore that the enemy we're fighting in Iraq is a half a dozen homegrown insurgencies, an incipient civil war, and criminal gangs. They ignore the fact that although a handful of Osama bin Laden's followers showed up in Iraq after the invasion, in a futile attempt to hijack the Sunni resistance, al-Qaeda is not the main enemy in that country.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Diversity: Culture, Gender, And Math, Luigi Guiso, Ferdinando Monte, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales, 08/05/30, Science: 1164-1165. Analysis of PISA results suggests that the gender gap in math scores disappears in countries with a more gender-equal culture.
      2. Materials Science: Graphene-Based Materials, Dan Li, Richard B. Kaner, 08/05/30, Science : 1170-1171. Advances in synthesizing graphene offer opportunities for making novel materials for nanoelectronics and many other applications.
      3. Planetary Science: Is Mars Geodynamically Dead?, Matthias Grott, 08/05/30, Science: 1171-1172. The observation that Mars' northern polar cap barely deforms its crust implies that its planetary interior is colder than expected.
      4. Water Activity and the Challenge for Life on Early Mars, Nicholas J. Tosca, Andrew H. Knoll, Scott M. McLennan, 08/05/30, Science : 1204-1207. Calculations imply that the high salinity required to form widespread sulfates found on Mars reduces the effective concentration of water below the limits for life on Earth.
      5. Coordination of Early Protective Immunity to Viral Infection by Regulatory T Cells, Jennifer M. Lund, Lianne Hsing, Thuy T. Pham, Alexander Y. Rudensky, 08/05/30, Science : 1220-1224. In mice infected with herpes virus, a usually immunosuppressive T cell is necessary for rapid arrival of immune cells and elevated cytokine levels at the site of infection., DOI: 10.1126/science.1155209
      6. Evolution and Creationism in America's Classrooms: A National Portrait, Michael B. Berkman, Julianna Sandell Pacheco, Eric Plutzer, 2008/05/20, PLoS Biol 6(5): e124, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060124
      7. Public Discourse in the Web Does Not Exhibit Group Polarization, Fang Wu and Bernardo A. Huberman, 2008/05/22, arXiv, DOI: 0805.3537
      8. Fluctuation-Driven Capacity Distribution in Complex Networks, Dong-Hee Kim and Adilson E. Motter, 2008/05/23, arXiv [New J. Phys. 10, 053022 (2008)], DOI: 0805.3725
      9. Temporal Trends In The Discovery Of Human Viruses, M. E. J. Woolhouse, R. Howey, E. Gaunt, L. Reilly, M. C.-Topping, N. Savill, 2008/05/27, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.0294
      10. Boolean Network Models Of Cellular Regulation: Prospects And Limitations, S. Bornholdt, 2008/05/28, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0132.focus
      11. Fission And Fusion Of Darwin's Finches Populations, B. R. Grant, P. R. Grant, 2008/05/28, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0051
      12. Boffins Find 'New Class Of Superconductor': Material Based On Iron And Arsenic, R. Jaques, 2008/05/29, vnunet.com
      13. Do People From Different Countries Behave Differently In A Crisis? Life-Saving Research About Emergency Evacuations Begins At University Of Greenwich, 2008/05/29, Innovations-report
      14. Life, But Not As We Know It?, 2008/05/29, Innovations-report
      15. Olfactory Receptor Neurons Select Which Odor Receptors To Express, 2008/05/31, ScienceDaily & Public Library of Science
      16. Wireless Vision Implant: Implantable Prosthesis Lets Patients Perceive Visual Images, 2008/06/02, ScienceDaily & Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft
      17. Characterizing The Structural Quality Of General Complex Software Networks, J. Liu - j_liuawhu.edu.cn, J. Lü - jhluaiss.ac.cn, K. He - hekeqingapublic.whu.edu.cn, B. Li - libingykapublic.whu.edu.cn, C. K. Tse - encktseapolyu.edu.hk, Feb. 2008, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127408020537
      18. Time Scaling Of Chaotic Systems: Application To Secure Communications, D. Materassi - materassiadsi.unifi.it, M. Basso - bassoadsi.unifi.it, Feb. 2008, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127408020483
      19. Dopamine, Reward Prediction Error, And Economics, A. Caplin, M. Dean, May 2008, Online 2008/04/10, Quarterly Journal of Economics, DOI: 10.1162/qjec.2008.123.2.663

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


Also available in: Simple HTML format | TXT format | TXT format with links | Print