Complexity Digest 2008.28

11-July-2008

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Content

  1. Will The Real Theory Of Evolution Please Stand Up? - An Expose Of The Evolution Industry, Scoop
    1. Human Evolution: Details Of Being Human, Nature
    2. Human Uniqueness-Self-Interest And Social Cooperation, J. Theor. Biol.
  2. Science And Government: An Earth Systems Science Agency, Science
    1. Arise 'Cliodynamics', Nature
    2. Indirect Social Influence, Science
  3. Origins Of Life: How Leaky Were Primitive Cells?, Nature
    1. Paleontology: Life's Innovations Let It Diversify, At Least Up To A Point, Science
  4. Ecology: Return Of The Niche, Nature
    1. Selection On Personality In A Songbird Affects Maternal Hormone Levels, Biol. Lett.
  5. The Emergence of Cloud Computing, Data Center Journal
    1. The Dangers Of Cloud Computing, InfoWorld
    2. Should Your Website Be In The Cloud?, e-consultancy
    3. 'Not A Site, But A Concept': Tapping The Power Of Social Networking, Knowledge@Wharton
    4. Surveillance Sans Frontieres: Internet-Based Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence and the HealthMap Project, PLOS Medicine
  6. A Picowatt Processor - A Low-Power Chip Could Be Used For Implantable Medical Sensors., Technology Review
    1. Nanotubes Hold Promise for Next-Generation Computing, Wired
    2. AI Beats Human Poker Champions, EE Times
  7. Science And Music: The Ear Of The Beholder, Nature
    1. Music Went With Cave Art In Prehistoric Caves, ScienceDaily
  8. Chaotic Gene Regulatory Networks Can Be Robust Against Mutations And Noise, J. Theor. Biol.
    1. Genomics: Billion-Dollar Cancer Mapping Project Steps Forward, Science
  9. A Computational Framework For Modelling Solid Tumour Growth, Proc. A: Math., Phy. & Engg. Sc.
    1. Scientists Find Way To Dim Cancer Switch, Washington Post
    2. 'Smart Bomb' Nanoparticle Strategy Impacts Metastasis, EurekAlert
  10. Neuroscience: Predicting Psychosis, Nature
    1. Brain Chemical Shown To Induce Both Desire And Dread, EurekAlert
    2. Sick And Down, Science News
  11. Neuroscience: The Scale Of Experience, Science
    1. Neuroscience: Transient Dynamics For Neural Processing, Science
  12. Neuronal Diversity and Temporal Dynamics: The Unity of Hippocampal Circuit Operations, Science
  13. Herculean Device for Molecular Mysteries, NYTimes
  14. Atmospheric Chemistry: Her Dark Materials, Nature
  15. Fitting Food For Physics, Physicworld.com
  16. Recipe For An Avalanche, Science News
  17. Reincarnation Can Save Schrodinger's Cat - Physicists Reverse Quantum-Classical Transition., Nature
  18. Spatial Cooperativity In Soft Glassy Flows, Nature
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Radical Web Of Islam's Terror, National Post
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Will The Real Theory Of Evolution Please Stand Up? - An Expose Of The Evolution Industry, Scoop Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Developmental biologist Stuart Kauffman is clearly one who thinks we must expand evolutionary theory. Kauffman, now head of the Biocomplexity and Informatics Institute at the University of Calgary, is known for his decades-long investigations into self-organization. He's been described by one evolutionary biologist as a "very creative man, try reading one of his books" who said in the next breath that "if he [Kauffman] really put an effort into understanding evolutionary biology - the basic theoretical framework that we have - I think he could have come a lot further". (...)

    Kauffman also describes genes as "utterly dead". However, he says there are some genes that turn the rest of the genes and one another on and off. Certain chemical reactions happen. Enzymes are produced, etc. And that while we only have 25,000 to 30,000 genes, there are many combinations of activity.

    1. Human Evolution: Details Of Being Human, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: They found that humans are indeed the only primates missing Neu5Gc1 [N-glycolyl neuraminic acid, Ed.] and that human cells are instead rich in another sialic acid, N-acetyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Ac). (...) biochemical analysis of 900,000-year-old Homo antecessor fossils from Atapuerca in northern Spain, some of the oldest hominid bones yet found in Europe. What Varki is looking for is evidence that Neu5Gc was lost very early in human evolution. He believes that the fact that humans, and only humans, have lost Neu5Gc could be implicated in the emergence of hominid species.

    2. Human Uniqueness-Self-Interest And Social Cooperation, J. Theor. Biol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Humans are unique among all species of terrestrial history in both ecological dominance and individual properties. Many, or perhaps all, of the unique elements of this nonpareil status can be plausibly interpreted as evolutionary and strategic elements and consequences of the unprecedented intensity and scale of our social cooperation. Convincing explanation of this unique human social adaptation remains a central, unmet challenge to the scientific enterprise. (...) our results support the proposal that access to a novel capacity for projection of coercive threat might represent the essential initiating event for the evolution of a human-like pattern of social cooperation (...).
      • Source: Human Uniqueness-Self-Interest And Social Cooperation, D. Okada - okadaaecon.rutgers.edu, P. M. Bingham - pbinghamanotes.cc.sunysb.edu, DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.02.041, Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2008/07/21, online 2008/03/13
      • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

  2. Science And Government: An Earth Systems Science Agency, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Addressing serious environmental and economic challenges in the United States will require organizational changes at the federal level. (...)

    Robust Earth-observing systems are critical to meeting national and international needs. Yet these systems have not kept pace with increasing demands of the public and private sectors for comprehensive, high-quality information on the changing global environment. At a time when federal Earth-observing systems should have been ramping up, priorities have shifted to manned missions to the Moon and Mars. A recent study by the National Research Council found that NASA's Earth science budget had declined 30% since 2000. The scientific importance and societal value of remote sensing systems has not been communicated effectively to the public and Congress; hence, there is little awareness of the shortfalls in our Earth-observing systems--and no driving force to address them. Yet these systems are critical to public safety, natural disaster response, and efficient transportation and they fuel multibillion-dollar industries.

    1. Arise 'Cliodynamics', Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: If we are to learn how to develop a healthy society, we must transform history into an analytical, predictive science, (...). Rather than trying to reform the historical profession, perhaps we need an entirely new discipline: theoretical historical social science. We could call this 'cliodynamics', from Clio, the muse of history, and dynamics, the study of temporally varying processes and the search for causal mechanisms. Let history continue to focus on the particular. Cliodynamics, meanwhile, will develop unifying theories and test them with data generated by history, archaeology and specialized disciplines such as numismatics (the study of ancient coins).

    2. Indirect Social Influence, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: To what extent are the opinions you hold simply a reflection of the opinions of those you associate with? Most people like to think that their opinions are based on their own deliberations. Of course, there are exceptions. You may take into account the opinions of others if you believe they are better informed. You may even conform to the majority opinion in order to avoid being seen as deviant. Studies of how norms and beliefs vary between groups, and how they are transmitted from peers or parents, testify to the importance of such social influence.

  3. Origins Of Life: How Leaky Were Primitive Cells?, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: If the first cells were simple vesicles, how did nutrients cross their membranes without help from transport proteins? A model of a primitive cell suggests that early membranes were surprisingly permeable.

    (...) life began either as an autotrophic organism that used primitive metabolic pathways to make its own organic components, or as a heterotroph that incorporated carbon-containing nutrients already available in the environment. On page 122 of this issue, Mansy et al. weigh in with a laboratory simulation that supports a heterotrophic origin of life - a cell-like vesicle that allows small, organic 'nutrient' molecules to pass through its membrane.

    1. Paleontology: Life's Innovations Let It Diversify, At Least Up To A Point, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Although marine invertebrates had continued to innovate new ways of making a living, the scientists concluded, total diversity had hardly increased in 400 million years.

      Now the number crunchers have rewritten the prehistory books again. On page 97, 35 of them--including authors of the original paper--present a new analysis of the Paleobiology Database, which records about 3.5 million specimens described in papers of the past century and more. They conclude that the diversity of marine invertebrates has indeed increased over time, although far less than some early analysts believed.

  4. Ecology: Return Of The Niche, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Two ideas vie for prominence in community ecology - 'niche partitioning' and 'neutral theory'. A survey of patterns of tree abundance in tropical forest prompts fresh thinking on their respective effects.

    (...) contention, arising from recent modelling work, that stochastic demography and dispersal are more important, and that they allow the widespread coexistence of species with identical niches. This 'neutral theory' has provided possible explanations for the occurrence of highly diverse communities that challenge the traditional view, and has indicated ways to account for them with simple models.

    1. Selection On Personality In A Songbird Affects Maternal Hormone Levels, Biol. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The increase or decrease in yolk androgens over the laying sequence of a clutch in birds may mitigate or enhance, respectively, the disadvantage of the last-hatched chicks, providing a potentially adaptive tool to adjust brood size to food conditions. This variation may involve a genetic component on which Darwinian selection can act. We found that two lines of a wild bird species selected for bold and shy personalities show, respectively, increased and decreased androgen concentrations over the laying sequence. (...) The results indicate a correlated response in maternal hormone transfer to genetic selection on personality, which relates to ecological conditions.

  5. The Emergence of Cloud Computing, Data Center Journal Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Corporations could learn a good deal from the path of Internet companies, such as Google and Amazon who have taken a different approach. They deliver Web services using unbounded grids of computers, which behave as a single ˇ§cloud computer.ˇ¨

    Amazon.com, for example, has begun renting compute time on its cloud, called the Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. This offers virtually unlimited amounts of computing capacity. Individuals subscribe to the service and pay for storage and virtual server space on an as-needed basis. This supports a range of applications, storage photos, music, buy products and chat with friends and family. Amazon.com loads the applications, manages network access and runs as many systems as the subscriber wants.

    Cloud computing models allow individuals to buy IT on a subscription basis, without the operational headaches. Unfortunately, large-scale corporations simply cannot go this route due to their security requirements. The sensitivity of data prohibits it from being outsourced.

    1. The Dangers Of Cloud Computing, InfoWorld Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: On-demand apps and services have several security risks that IT should address up front

      (...) security risks, including perils related to compliance, availability, and data integrity.

      Yet many companies don't think through those risks upfront. For example, having proper failover technology in place is a component of securing the cloud that is often overlooked, notes Josh Greenbaum, principal at Enterprise Applications Consulting. Yet these same companies make sure they have failover for established services, like electricity. "If you look around, go to any major facility, what is sitting in a box outside is an alternative power supply. They don't rely on just the grid," says Greenbaum. He argues that cloud computing should be no different.

    2. Should Your Website Be In The Cloud?, e-consultancy Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: I would recommend that you only evaluate cloud hosting if you meet one or more of the following criteria: - You run a demanding web application (...).
      - You've experienced sharp, shorter-term traffic "spikes" that have brought your existing hosting setup to its knees (...).
      - You have optimized your web application(...).
      - You have found it difficult or cost-prohibitive to scale with your current hosting setup (...).
      - You have enough data to show that you will save money using a cloud hosting provider.

    3. 'Not A Site, But A Concept': Tapping The Power Of Social Networking, Knowledge@Wharton Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Mini USA, the American branch of BMW's Mini Cooper line, tracks everything being said about its brand everywhere on line -- in blogs, discussion groups, forums, MySpace pages and much more -- then uses what it learns to guide advertising campaigns. (...)

      These are all examples of companies savvy enough to participate in the "groundswell," according to Charlene Li, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research. "The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations."

    4. Surveillance Sans Frontieres: Internet-Based Emerging Infectious Disease Intelligence and the HealthMap Project, PLOS Medicine Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Screenshot of the HealthMap System (http://www.healthmap.org/)
      Summary Points
      - Valuable information about infectious diseases is found in Web-accessible information sources such as discussion forums, mailing lists, government Web sites, and news outlets.
      - Web-based electronic information sources can play an important role in early event detection and support situational awareness by providing current, highly local information about outbreaks, even from areas relatively invisible to traditional global public health efforts.
      - While these sources are potentially useful, information overload and difficulties in distinguishing -signal from noise- pose substantial barriers to fully utilizing this information.
      - HealthMap is a freely accessible, automated real-time system that monitors, organizes, integrates, filters, visualizes, and disseminates online information about emerging diseases.
      - The goal of HealthMap is to deliver real-time intelligence on a broad range of emerging infectious diseases for a diverse audience, from public health officials to international travelers.
      - Ultimately, the use of news media and other nontraditional sources of surveillance data can facilitate early outbreak detection, increase public awareness of disease outbreaks prior to their formal recognition, and provide an integrated and contextualized view of global health information.

  6. A Picowatt Processor - A Low-Power Chip Could Be Used For Implantable Medical Sensors., Technology Review Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Pico power: This tiny processor, called the Phoenix, uses 90 percent less energy than the most efficient chip on the market today. It could enable implantable medical sensors powered by tiny batteries.
    Credit: University of Michigan
    The processer uses only about 30 picowatts (a picowatt is one-millionth of one-millionth of a watt) of power when idle. When active, the processor consumes only 2.8 picojoules of energy per computing cycle. That amount is about a tenth of the energy used by the most energy-efficient chips on the market, (...).

    The Michigan team's main idea was to design a chip that runs at an extremely low voltage. While microprocessors for personal computers may require two volts of electricity per operation, the Phoenix only needs 500 millivolts, or 75 percent less.
    Editor's Note: This development direction moves closer to the computational conditions in the brain: Neurons have operating voltages that are a factor of more than a thousand smaller.

    1. Nanotubes Hold Promise for Next-Generation Computing, Wired Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      Carbon nanotubes grown on silicon wafers go in all directions (right), while nanotubes grown on crystalline quartz are much more orderly, mostly growing in straight rows (left). Image: Stanford University Department of Electrical Engineering
      The trouble is that, until recently, making nanotubes was a somewhat random affair: You'd mix the required ingredients, grow a batch of nanotubes, and then sort through the resulting batch to see what you got. Researchers had no effective way to grow exclusively metallic or exclusively semiconducting nanotubes, and even ordering the nanotubes in regular patterns was a challenge. That has made using nanotubes on an industrial scale impractical to the point of impossibility. "An ant is incredibly strong for its size. But nobody uses ants to do useful work, because they all run around in different directions," (...).

    2. AI Beats Human Poker Champions, EE Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "There are two really big changes in Polaris over last year," said professor Michael Bowling, who supervised graduate students who programmed Polaris. "First of all, our poker model is much expanded over last year--its much harder for humans to exploit weaknesses. And secondly, we have added an element of learning, where Polaris identifies which common poker stratagy a human is using and switches its own strategy to counter. This complicated the human players ability to compare notes, since Polaris chose a different strategy to use against each of the humans it played," Bowling said.

  7. Science And Music: The Ear Of The Beholder, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Thanks to technology, we have an unprecedented choice of music to listen to, and places and times to hear it. Music has never been more accessible. But never has it been more mysterious and inscrutable. Many people say they lack musical skills such as singing, playing an instrument or composing. A fifth of adults believe they are 'tone deaf', so they don't see music as something they do; rather, they experience music as something that is done to them, something that, at a very deep level, they don't fully understand.

    1. Music Went With Cave Art In Prehistoric Caves, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Thousands of years later, we can view stone-age art on cave walls, but we can't listen to the stone-age music that would have accompanied many of the pictures. In many sites, flutes made of bone are to be found nearby. (...) reports that the most acoustically resonant place in a cave -- where sounds linger or reverberate the most -- was also often the place where the pictures were densest. And when the most-resonant spot was located in a very narrow passageway too difficult for painting, red marks are often found, as if the resonance maximum had to be signified in some way. (...)

  8. Chaotic Gene Regulatory Networks Can Be Robust Against Mutations And Noise, J. Theor. Biol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Robustness to mutations and noise has been shown to evolve through stabilizing selection for optimal phenotypes in model gene regulatory networks. The ability to evolve robust mutants is known to depend on the network architecture. How do the dynamical properties and state-space structures of networks with high and low robustness differ? Does selection operate on the global dynamical behavior of the networks? What kind of state-space structures are favored by selection? We provide damage propagation analysis and an extensive statistical analysis of state spaces of these model (...). Most notably, the networks that are most robust to both mutations and noise are highly chaotic. (...)

    1. Genomics: Billion-Dollar Cancer Mapping Project Steps Forward, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Leaders of an ambitious effort to find all common mutations in human cancers delivered their first results to a U.S. government panel last week along with a plain message: Their $100 million pilot is paying off. A sweeping search for mutations in one cancer--glioblastoma, a type of brain tumor--has verified known genes and turned up a few new ones, said lead presenter Eric Lander of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The data from DNA sequencing of tumors, combined with other genetic analyses, he said, are already pointing to potential new therapies to extend the lives of glioblastoma patients, who now rarely survive much longer than a year.

  9. A Computational Framework For Modelling Solid Tumour Growth, Proc. A: Math., Phy. & Engg. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The biology of cancer is a complex interplay of many underlying processes, taking place at different scales both in space and time. A variety of theoretical models have been developed, which enable one to study certain components of the cancerous growth process. However, most previous approaches only focus on specific aspects of tumour development, largely ignoring the influence of the evolving tumour environment. In this paper, we present an integrative framework to simulate tumour growth, including those model components that are considered to be of major importance. We start by addressing issues at the tissue level, (...).

    1. Scientists Find Way To Dim Cancer Switch, Washington Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The researchers found that by turning down the Myc switch, like using a dimmer switch on a lamp, they could shrink tumor cells to normal sizes and restore their ability to die as they're supposed to.

      The findings suggest that researchers trying to turn off the signal may not need to go that far, Felsher said. "Before, we thought there were these switches that you had to turn on and off," he said. "Now, we've added a dimmer. To me, that's really exciting."

    2. 'Smart Bomb' Nanoparticle Strategy Impacts Metastasis, EurekAlert Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A new treatment strategy using molecular "smart bombs" to target metastasis with anti-cancer drugs leads to good results using significantly lower doses of toxic chemotherapy, with less collateral damage to surrounding tissue, according to a collaborative team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego. By designing a "nanoparticle" drug delivery system, the UC San Diego team, led by Moores UCSD Cancer Center Director of Translational Research David Cheresh, Ph.D., has identified a way to target chemotherapy to achieve a profound impact on metastasis in pancreatic and kidney cancer in mice. (...)

      The team found that the nanoparticle/drug combination didn't have much impact on primary tumors, but stopped pancreatic and kidney cancers from metastasizing throughout the bodies of mice. They showed that a greatly reduced dosage of chemotherapy can achieve the desired effect because the drug selectively targets the specific blood vessels that feed the cancerous lesion and kills the lesion without destroying surrounding tissue. The destruction of healthy tissue is a side-effect when chemotherapy is administered systemically, flooding the body with cancer-killing toxins. "We were able to establish the desired anti-cancer effect while delivering the drug at levels 15 times below what is needed when the drug is used systemically," said Cheresh. "Even more interesting is that the metastatic lesions were more sensitive to this therapy than the primary tumor."

  10. Neuroscience: Predicting Psychosis, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: J. Neurosci, 6295 - 6303 (2008) doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0910-08.2008

    Scientists have found a way of predicting how an individual will respond to the party drug ketamine and it might help us understand why symptoms of schizophrenia vary so much between individuals.

    Ketamine mimics many symptoms of schizophrenia.

    1. Brain Chemical Shown To Induce Both Desire And Dread, EurekAlert Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Dopamine's opposing effects separated by a few millimeters in the brain

      The chemical dopamine induces both desire and dread, (...). Although dopamine is well known to motivate animals and people to seek positive rewards, the study indicates that it also can promote negative feelings like fear. The finding may help explain why dopamine dysfunction is implicated not only in drug addiction, which involves excessive desire, but in schizophrenia and some phobias, which involve excessive fear. (...)

      Kent Berridge, PhD, and his colleagues at the University of Michigan, identified dopamine's dual effect on the nucleus accumbens, a brain region that motivates people and animals to seek out pleasurable rewards like food, sex, or drugs, but is also involved in fear. They found that inhibiting dopamine's normal function prevented the nucleus accumbens neurons from inducing both rewarding and fearful behaviors, suggesting that dopamine is important in both.

    2. Sick And Down, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      From Sick to DownImmune cells secrete cytokines (shown as red dots in this simplified drawing, click on image to see larger version) that trigger inflammatory responses. But when cytokine levels in the brain stay high fo too long, people susceptible to mood disorders may develop depression. Cytokines released in the body may enter the brain directly, by passing through leaky areas in the blood-brain barrier, or indirectly by initiating a chain reaction of "middlemen" that lead to brain cells called microglia releasing cytokines. Cytokines may alter mood by changing brain processes and levels of brain chemicals such as serotonin and dopamine. Synthetic version of interferon-alpha and interferon-beta, used to treat cancers, hepatitis C and multiple sclerosis, may engage the same pathway.
      Amadeo Bachar
      To fight off an infection or illness, the body shifts into a slow-down mode that mirrors some symptoms of depression. In fact, scientists now think the immune response itself may even cause the mood disorder. (...)

      Certain immune proteins in the body appear to mess with the minds of otherwise healthy, but depressed people as well. Those who suffer from major depression have higher levels of cytokines, immune proteins the body makes to fend off infections and to patrol the body for disease, and which laboratories mimic. Excess cytokines have also been found lurking in the postmortem brains of suicide victims. "It raises the issue, how much of how we feel - how much of who we are as people - is dictated in terms of our immune system?" (...).

  11. Neuroscience: The Scale Of Experience, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Specific cells in the hippocampus allow the rat brain to track spatial location at different scales.

    Most people would not equate remembering their way around the neighborhood with remembering their way around the kitchen, but the same neural mechanisms may be involved in navigating on both scales. On page 140 in this issue, Kjelstrup et al. (1) show that neurons at different anatomical positions along the length of the rat hippocampus may represent location along a continuum of spatial scales.

    1. Neuroscience: Transient Dynamics For Neural Processing, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Neural networks are complicated dynamical entities, whose properties are understood only in the simplest cases. When the complex biophysical properties of neurons and their connections (synapses) are combined with realistic connectivity rules and scales, network dynamics are usually difficult to predict. Yet, experimental neuroscience is often based on the implicit premise that the neural mechanisms underlying sensation, perception, and cognition are well approximated by steady-state measurements (of neuron activity) or by models in which the behavior of the network is simple (steady state or periodic). Transient states--ones in which no stable equilibrium is reached--may sometimes better describe neural network behavior. An intuition for such properties arises from mathematical and computational modeling of some appropriately simple experimental systems.

  12. Neuronal Diversity and Temporal Dynamics: The Unity of Hippocampal Circuit Operations, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: n the cerebral cortex, diverse types of neurons form intricate circuits and cooperate in time for the processing and storage of information. Recent advances reveal a spatiotemporal division of labor in cortical circuits, as exemplified in the CA1 hippocampal area. In particular, distinct GABAergic (...) cell types subdivide the surface of pyramidal cells and act in discrete time windows, either on the same or on different subcellular compartments. They also interact with glutamatergic pyramidal cell inputs in a domain-specific manner and support synaptic temporal dynamics, network oscillations, selection of cell assemblies, and the implementation of brain states. The spatiotemporal specializations in cortical circuits reveal that cellular diversity and temporal dynamics coemerged during evolution, providing a basis for cognitive behavior.

  13. Herculean Device for Molecular Mysteries, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Nature
    Benoit Roux of the University of Chicago and his team are using a BlueGene/L supercomputer to look at potassium channels in neurons. ]]
    A privately financed team of scientists and engineers is nearing completion of a special-purpose supercomputer intended to offer more than a thousandfold increase in performance for complex molecular simulations.

  14. Atmospheric Chemistry: Her Dark Materials, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: A glitch in the history of sulphur isotopes could imply that methane emitted by the ancient biosphere created a high-altitude photochemical smog, which governed the climate in a distinctly Gaian way. (...)

    In the authors' model, the action of ultraviolet light on methane produces a high-altitude hydrocarbon haze akin to the photochemical smog that shrouds Saturn's moon Titan. They argue that the sooty skies and methane-dependent climate were maintained by feedback with the primitive biosphere - an example of Gaian management.

  15. Fitting Food For Physics, Physicworld.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Fish 'n' chips at the seaside is a British tradition. Physicists in Brazil believe that such "national dishes" are unlikely to be displaced by foods from afar. (Courtesy: Andrew Dunn).
    Culinary xenophobes take note: your favourite national dish is unlikely to be pushed off the menu by exotic recipes from afar. That's the conclusion of physicists in Brazil who have applied statistical methods to cookery books from different countries and different eras in the name of interdisciplinary science. The study, (...), also suggests that the average number of ingredients per recipe is similar between countries (about 7-10) and has remained constant over time. (...)

    "Having observed that culinary ingredients and recipes constitute a bipartite network, just like actors and films do, we realized they can be modelled using tools from mathematics and physics," (...).

    For each they ranked ingredients according to how often they appeared, and then plotted the number of recipes in which each ingredient appears as a function of decreasing rank (...).

  16. Recipe For An Avalanche, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Look out below
    A slab avalanche begins, as seen from a distance. The release was triggered by a field worker on skis moving near the top of the rounded ridge seen in the upper left corner of the picture.
    A. Duclos, www.data-avalanche.org
    Forecasting a snow avalanche takes more than measuring the angle of a mountain slope, researchers report in the July 11 Science. Whether an avalanche happens might also depend on how the snow cracks and collapses, the study suggests.

    "The new theory could be a breakthrough in understanding what is going on at the very moment when an avalanche begins," (...). It "gives hints on what snow properties to look for to anticipate the risk of triggering a slab avalanche."

    Slab avalanches are the most common and most dangerous because a slab of snow breaks loose and cascades to the slope's bottom. By modeling this avalanche type the team found that snow fractures much easier than previously thought. Also, friction between snow layers may be more important in avalanche dynamics than once thought.

  17. Reincarnation Can Save Schrodinger's Cat - Physicists Reverse Quantum-Classical Transition., Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: However, a more recent interpretation of quantum mechanics, 'decoherence theory', suggests that collapse does not occur instantaneously. Instead it plays out gradually as the quantum system slowly interacts with its environment (see Nature 453, 22-25; 2008). In 2006, Alexander Korotkov of the University of California, Riverside, and Andrew Jordan, of the University of Rochester in New York, proposed that this may leave open a time period in which experimenters could intervene to halt the collapse (A. N. Korotkov, A. N. Jordan Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 166805; 2006). They provided blueprints for an experiment to test the idea, which Katz, Korotkov and their colleagues have now done.

  18. Spatial Cooperativity In Soft Glassy Flows, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Amorphous glassy materials of diverse nature - concentrated emulsions, granular materials, pastes, molecular glasses - display complex flow properties, intermediate between solid and liquid, which are at the root of their use in many applications. A general feature of such systems, well documented yet not really understood, is the strongly nonlinear nature of the flow rule relating stresses and strain rates. Here we use a microfluidic velocimetry technique to characterize the flow of thin layers of concentrated emulsions, confined in gaps of different thicknesses by surfaces of different roughnesses.

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

    1. Radical Web Of Islam's Terror, National Post Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A new generation of Islamist terrorists is connecting through the Internet, not al-Qaeda. Their lack of central organization makes them even more terrifying than their forebears. (...)

      Tsouli's online username, as they discovered, was "Irhabi007" ("Terrorist007" in Arabic). It was a moniker well known to international counterterrorism officials. Since 2004, this young man, with no history of radical activity, had become one of the world's most influential propagandists in jihadi chat rooms. It had been the online images of the war in Iraq that first radicalized him. He began spending his days creating and hacking dozens of Web sites in order to upload videos of beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq and post links to the texts of bomb-making manuals. From his bedroom in London, he eventually became a crucial global organizer of online terrorist networks, guiding others to jihadist sites where they could learn the deadly craft. Ultimately, he attracted the attention of the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. When British police discovered this young IT student in his London flat, he was serving as Zarqawi's public relations mouthpiece on the Web.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Girl Athletes' Energy Crisis, Nathan Seppa, 08/06/17, Science News
      2. A Vanilla Vanilla, Rachel Ehrenberg, 08/06/18, Science News
      3. Genetics: The Genetics Of Anarchy, 08/07/03, Nature, DOI: doi:10.1038/454004c
      4. Acoustics: Fiddling The Numbers, 08/07/03, Nature, DOI: doi:10.1038/454005c
      5. Microwave Ray Gun Controls Crowds With Noise, David Hambling, 08/07/03, NewScientist
      6. Phylogenetic Signal in the Eukaryotic Tree of Life, Michael J. Sanderson, 08/07/04, Science
      7. Sporadic Autonomic Dysregulation and Death Associated with Excessive Serotonin Autoinhibition, Enrica Audero, Elisabetta Coppi, Boris Mlinar, Tiziana Rossetti, Antonio Caprioli, Mumna Al Banchaabouchi, Renato Corradetti, and Cornelius Gross, 08/07/04, Nature
      8. Finite Scale of Spatial Representation in the Hippocampus, Kirsten Brun Kjelstrup, Trygve Solstad, Vegard Heimly Brun, Torkel Hafting, Stefan Leutgeb, Menno P. Witter, Edvard I. Moser, and May-Britt Moser, 08/07/04, Science
      9. Odour Character Differences For Enantiomers Correlate With Molecular Flexibility, J. C. Brookes, A. P. Horsfield, A. M. Stoneham, 2008/07/02, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0165
      10. Mobile Users Make Same Mistakes As Disabled PC Users, 2008/07/02, ScienceDaily & University of Manchester
      11. Boffins Charm Rubber Snake For Wave Power: Anaconda Device Consists Of A Rubber Tube Closed At Both Ends And Filled With Water, R. Jaques, 2008/07/03, vnunet.com
      12. A Bitter Pill To Swallow, 2008/07/03, Innovations-report
      13. Prevalence Of Religious Congregations Affects Mortality Rates, 2008/07/03, ScienceDaily & Louisiana State University
      14. Competing To Use "Green" Words, 2008/07/04, Innovations-report
      15. 'Mind's Eye' Influences Visual Perception, 2008/07/04, ScienceDaily & Vanderbilt University
      16. Get Smart About What You Eat And You Might Actually Improve Your Intelligence: MIT Researchers Offer Tantalizing Evidence On How To Make People Smarter, Naturally, 2008/07/07, Innovations-report
      17. When Using Gestures, Rules Of Grammar Remain The Same, 2008/07/07, ScienceDaily & University of Chicago
      18. The Food Retail Revolution In Poor Countries: Is It Coming Or Is It Over?, B. Minten, Jul. 2008, Economic Development and Cultural Change, DOI: 10.1086/588168
      19. Why Children Work, Attend School, Or Stay Idle: The Roles Of Ability And Household Wealth, M. P. Bacolod, P. Ranjan, Jul. 2008, Economic Development and Cultural Change, DOI: 10.1086/588165

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. 7th Intl Summer School and Conf "Let's Face Chaos through Nonlinear Dynamics", Maribor, Slovenia, 08/06/29-07/13
      2. From Animals To Animats 10 - The 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation Of Adaptive Behavior (SAB'08), Osaka, Japan, 08/07/07-12
      3. Complex Systems and Social Simulations, CEU Summer University, Budapest, Hungary, 08/07/07-18
      4. 2008 Gordon Research Conf on Oscillations & Dynamic Instabilities in Chemical Systems, Waterville, ME, 08/07/13-18
      5. Nonlinear Fracture Mechanics Models, Udine, Italy, 08/07/14-18
      6. 1st Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'08), Klagenfurt, Austria, 08/07/18-19
      7. Scratch@MIT,Cambridge, MA, 08/07/24-26
      8. 8th Intl Conf on Epigenetic Robotics: Modeling Cognitive Development in Robotic Systems, Brighton, UK, 08/07/31-08/02
      9. On the Edge: Healthcare in the Age of Complexity, Kansas City, MO, 08/08/03-05
      10. Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences 18th Annl Intl Conf, Richmond, Virginia, USA, 08/08/08-10
      11. Stochastic Resonance 2008, Perugia, Italy, 08/08/17-21
      12. 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
      13. Intl Conf DEscribing COmplex Systems (DECOS), Zadar, Croatia, 08/09/03-07
      14. BICS Conference - Emergence in Complex Systems, Bath, UK, 08/09/09-11
      15. 5th European Conference on Complex Systems, Jerusalem, Israel, 08/09/14-19
      16. EPOS 2008, III Edition of Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation, Lisbon, Portugal, 08/10/02-03
      17. The 1st Intl Conf on the Evolution and Development of the Universe., Paris, France, 08/10/08-09
      18. International Congress on Complex Thought, Hermosillo , Sonora , Mexico, 08/10/21-24
      19. 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
      20. 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI-08), Sydney, Australia, 08/12/09-12
      21. 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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