Complexity Digest 2008.35

28-Aug-2008

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Content

  1. A Case For Nurture, Nature
    1. Innovation Policy: Not Just A Jumbo Shrimp, Nature
  2. Automatic Mental Associations Predict Future Choices Of Undecided Decision-Makers, Science
    1. Psychology: The Unseen Mind, Science
  3. Efficient Technique Enables Thinking, PhysOrg.com
  4. Is It Possible To Teach Experience? European Researchers Say Yes, ScienceDaily
  5. Face Recognition: Nurture Not Nature, ScienceDaily
  6. Spatio-Temporal Correlations And Visual Signalling In A Complete Neuronal Population, Nature
  7. Free Will Versus The Programmed Brain, Scientific American
  8. Scientists Unmask Brain's Hidden Potential, PhysOrg.com
  9. Wireless Sensors Learn From Life, PhysOrg.com
    1. Google Rolls Out Tool That Suggests Search Queries, NY Times
  10. Biophysics: Mob Rule, Nature
  11. Animal Behaviour: Crowd Control, Nature
  12. Immunology: The Power Of Tick Spit, Nature
  13. Genomics: 'Simple' Animal's Genome Proves Unexpectedly Complex, Science
    1. Exploding Chromosomes Fuel Research About Evolution, Innovations-report
  14. Self-Destructive Cooperation Mediated By Phenotypic Noise, Nature
  15. Ecology: A Matter Of Timing, Science
  16. Birds Are Tracking Climate Warming, But Not Fast Enough, Proc. Biol. Sc.
    1. Climate Indicators: Early Birds, Nature
    2. Ecology: Toward A Global Biodiversity Observing System, Science
  17. Turbulent Times for Climate Model, Science
  18. Atmospheric Chemistry: Attacked From Within, Nature
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Incubators Of Terror: Do Failed And Failing States Promote Transnational Terrorism?, Int. Studies Quar.
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. A Case For Nurture, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Innovation is a complex ecosystem that requires careful cultivation.

    Where does innovation come from? How can it best be nurtured and encouraged? These questions are taking on global significance as fast-developing nations such as China, India and Brazil increasingly see leadership in innovation as key to their economic competitiveness.

    1. Innovation Policy: Not Just A Jumbo Shrimp, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Policies that predict and direct innovative research might seem to be a practical impossibility, says David H. Guston, but social sciences point to a solution.

      Innovation policy could be seen as an oxymoron. Like an 'open secret', or 'jumbo shrimp' - which the late comedian George Carlin compared to 'military intelligence' the words just don't go together. Innovation policy evokes a tension. How does one predict and direct something that is by nature unpredictable and, by necessity, often undirected?

      The tension in innovation policy runs deeper than word play, of course. Policies are made too late to change the past that necessitated them and too early to understand the future they are meant to shape.

  2. Automatic Mental Associations Predict Future Choices Of Undecided Decision-Makers, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Common wisdom holds that choice decisions are based on conscious deliberations of the available information about choice options. On the basis of recent insights about unconscious influences on information processing, we tested whether automatic mental associations of undecided individuals bias future choices in a manner such that these choices reflect the evaluations implied by earlier automatic associations. With the use of a computer-based, speeded categorization task to assess automatic mental associations (i.e., associations that are activated unintentionally, difficult to control, and not necessarily endorsed at a conscious level) and self-report measures to assess consciously endorsed beliefs and choice preferences, automatic associations of undecided participants predicted changes in consciously reported beliefs and future choices over a period of 1 week.

    1. Psychology: The Unseen Mind, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Can people think they are undecided about a political issue after they have already made up their minds? The study by Galdi et al., on page 1100 in this issue (1), suggests that they can, which raises intriguing questions about how well people know their own minds. The short answer, based on research in social psychology, is not very well.
      • Source: Psychology: The Unseen Mind, Timothy D. Wilson, Yoav Bar-Anan, DOI: 10.1126/science.1163029, Science : Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1046 - 1047, 08/08/22

  3. Efficient Technique Enables Thinking, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Nerve cells constantly create new contact points to their neighbouring cells. This is how the basic structure of our brain develops. In adults, new contact makes learning and memory possible. However, not all contact between cells is useful - most of it is dismantled again very quickly. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried near Munich have now described a completely new technique with which nerve cells can evaluate the quality of the cells they contact in a very time- and energy-saving way. (Neuron, July 31, 2008)

  4. Is It Possible To Teach Experience? European Researchers Say Yes, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Business veterans claim you cannot teach ‘experience', but European researchers say you can. The team developed software that helps players acquire real-life skills and realistic experiences through game playing. But this game is no executive toy. The interactive software has caught the imagination of world-class business colleges in the USA and elsewhere and it has prompted enormous interest in Europe's leading corporations. ChangeMasters represents an emerging shift in business education, based on realistic computer games. Colleges and companies believe it gives students real-world skills through ‘experience'. (...)

  5. Face Recognition: Nurture Not Nature, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) said: "In a series of eye-movement studies, we showed that social experience has an impact on how people look at faces. Specifically we noticed a striking difference in eye movements in Westerners and East Asian observers. We found that Westerners tend to look at specific features on an individual's face such as the eyes and mouth whereas East Asian observers tend to focus on the nose or the centre of the face which allows a more general view of all the features. One possible cause of this could be that direct or excessive eye contact may be considered rude in East Asian cultures." (...)

  6. Spatio-Temporal Correlations And Visual Signalling In A Complete Neuronal Population, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Statistical dependencies in the responses of sensory neurons govern both the amount of stimulus information conveyed and the means by which downstream neurons can extract it. Although a variety of measurements indicate the existence of such dependencies their origin and importance for neural coding are poorly understood. Here we analyse the functional significance of correlated firing in a complete population of macaque parasol retinal ganglion cells using a model of multi-neuron spike responses. The model, with parameters fit directly to physiological data, simultaneously captures both the stimulus dependence and detailed spatio-temporal correlations in population responses, and provides two insights into the structure of the neural code. First, neural encoding at the population level is less noisy than one would expect from the variability of individual neurons: spike times are more precise, and can be predicted more accurately when the spiking of neighbouring neurons is taken into account. Second, correlations provide additional sensory information: optimal, model-based decoding that exploits the response correlation structure extracts 20% more information about the visual scene than decoding under the assumption of independence, and preserves 40% more visual information than optimal linear decoding.

  7. Free Will Versus The Programmed Brain, Scientific American Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: If our actions are determined by prior events, then do we have a choice about anything - or any responsibility for what we do?

    Many scientists and philosophers are convinced that free will doesn't exist at all. According to these skeptics, everything that happens is determined by what happened before - our actions are inevitable consequences of the events leading up to the action - and this fact makes it impossible for anyone to do anything that is truly free. This kind of anti-free will stance stretches back to 18th century philosophy, but the idea has recently been getting much more exposure through popular science books and magazine articles. Should we worry? If people come to believe that they don't have free will, what will the consequences be for moral responsibility?

  8. Scientists Unmask Brain's Hidden Potential, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Now a long-term study from the Berenson-Allen Center for Noninvasive Brain Stimulation at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) demonstrates that sudden and complete loss of vision leads to profound - but rapidly reversible -- changes in the visual cortex. These findings, reported in the August 27 issue of the journal PLOS One, not only provide new insights into how the brain compensates for the loss of sight, but also suggest that the brain is more adaptable than originally thought.

  9. Wireless Sensors Learn From Life, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: European and Indian researchers are applying principles learned from living organisms to design self-organising networks of wireless sensors suitable for a wide range of environmental monitoring purposes.

    Monsoon rains in the Indian state of Kerala often bring increased risk of landslides. What can be done to warn nearby communities that a landslide is imminent?

    One answer is to use a wireless sensor network to monitor geological conditions. Wireless sensors are becoming popular because the sensor nodes are small, simple and cheap and require no cabling to connect them together and to the control centre. They can be used for numerous purposes and are well suited to environmental monitoring.

    1. Google Rolls Out Tool That Suggests Search Queries, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: After more than four years in development, a new feature that suggests queries as letters and words are typed into Google Inc.'s search engine, is being rolled out over the next week.

      Google Suggest, which the company began developing in 2004, aims to help users better formulate queries, reduce spelling errors and save keystrokes, Google noted in a blog post Monday.

  10. Biophysics: Mob Rule, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The crowding inherent within cells may affect not only protein movement and folding, but also shape (...).

    They focused on the VlsE protein, a proposed virulence factor in Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease. VlsE is usually rugby-ball shaped, but the team found that it adopts different equilibrium shapes in vitro in the presence of varying levels of a polymeric 'crowding agent' that mimics cytoplasmic macromolecules. When the native protein is loosened up by a denaturing agent or by heat, two new structures - a 'bean' shape and a roughly spherical conformation - intervene between the rugby ball and the denatured protein as soon as the crowding agent is added.

    If crowding can be 'tuned', it might be possible to expose different sites in proteins and alter their behaviour.

  11. Animal Behaviour: Crowd Control, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Many researchers would expect parasitic infection rates to increase as groups of animals get bigger and more hosts are available. Contrary to this, researchers reveal that as groups of red colobus monkeys (Procolobus rufomitratus) get larger, they have fewer parasites.

    Tamaini Snaith at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and her colleagues made the discovery while studying the monkeys in Uganda. They tested faeces for parasites and monitored group dynamics. The researchers noticed that large groups tended to spread out more than smaller ones, and suggest that this could lower infection rates.

  12. Immunology: The Power Of Tick Spit, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Proteins used by ticks to evade their hosts' immune systems may one day provide a new way to fight inflammation, researchers say.

    Compounds in tick saliva block inflammation and allow the bloodsucking parasites to feed off a host for long time periods without alerting its immune system.

  13. Genomics: 'Simple' Animal's Genome Proves Unexpectedly Complex, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Aptly named "sticky hairy plate," Trichoplax adhaerens barely qualifies as an animal. About 1 millimeter long and covered with cilia, this flat marine organism lacks a stomach, muscles, nerves, and gonads, even a head. It glides along like an amoeba, its lower layer of cells releasing enzymes that digest algae beneath its ever-changing body, and it reproduces by splitting or budding off progeny. Yet this animal's genome looks surprisingly like ours, says Daniel Rokhsar, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB) and the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California. Its 98 million DNA base pairs include many of the genes responsible for guiding the development of other animals' complex shapes and organs, he and his colleagues report in the 21 August issue of Nature.

    1. Exploding Chromosomes Fuel Research About Evolution, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Human cells somehow squeeze two meters of double-stranded DNA into the space of a typical chromosome, a package 10,000 times smaller than the volume of genetic material it contains. Now research into single-celled, aquatic algae called dinoflagellates is showing that these and related organisms may have evolved more than one way to achieve this feat of genetic packing. Even so, the evolution of chromosomes in dinoflagellates, humans and other mammals seem to share a common biochemical basis, (...). Packing the whole length of DNA into tiny chromosomes is problematic because DNA carries a negative charge that, unless neutralized, prevents any attempt at folding (...).

  14. Self-Destructive Cooperation Mediated By Phenotypic Noise, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In many biological examples of cooperation, individuals that cooperate cannot benefit from the resulting public good. This is especially clear in cases of self-destructive cooperation, where individuals die when helping others. If self-destructive cooperation is genetically encoded, these genes can only be maintained if they are expressed by just a fraction of their carriers, whereas the other fraction benefits from the public good. One mechanism that can mediate this differentiation into two phenotypically different sub-populations is phenotypic noise. Here we show that noisy expression of self-destructive cooperation can evolve if individuals that have a higher probability for self-destruction have, on average, access to larger public goods.

  15. Ecology: A Matter Of Timing, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Climate change is causing shifts in the distribution and phenology of many plants and animals. Birds have played a key role in detecting these changes, because long-term data are available on the distribution, migration, and breeding of many species. Studies of the timing of egg laying--a key trait with extensive records dating back half a century for some species--are providing crucial insights into the mechanisms that underlie the response to climate change.
    • Source: Ecology: A Matter Of Timing, Bruce E. Lyon, Alexis S. Chaine, David W. Winkler, DOI: 10.1126/science.1159822, Science : Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1051 - 1052, 08/08/22

  16. Birds Are Tracking Climate Warming, But Not Fast Enough, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Range shifts of many species are now documented as a response to global warming. But whether these observed changes are occurring fast enough remains uncertain and hardly quantifiable. Here, we developed a simple framework to measure change in community composition in response to climate warming. This framework is based on a community temperature index (CTI) that directly reflects, for a given species assemblage, the balance between low- and high-temperature dwelling species. Using data from the French breeding bird survey, we first found a strong increase in CTI over the last two decades revealing that birds are rapidly tracking climate warming. (...)

    1. Climate Indicators: Early Birds, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The first robin sighting of spring may not be the best indicator of climate warming. (...)

      They found that the first sighting of a migratory bird, although one of the most commonly used statistics, can be confounded by population size. As bird numbers decline, there are fewer early outliers, making the first birds harder to spot.

    2. Ecology: Toward A Global Biodiversity Observing System, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Biodiversity is a composite term used to embrace the variety of types, forms, spatial arrangements, processes, and interactions of biological systems at all scales and levels of organization, from genes to species and ecosystems (1), along with the evolutionary history that led to their existence (2). In part because of this complexity, universally applicable measures of biodiversity have proven elusive. Commonly used measures, such as the number of species present, are strongly scale-dependent and only reveal a change after species have been lost. Indices incorporating several proxy signals are potentially sensitive, but their arbitrariness obscures underlying trends and mechanisms.
      • Source: Ecology: Toward A Global Biodiversity Observing System, R. J. Scholes, G. M. Mace, W. Turner, G. N. Geller, N. J?rgens, A. Larigauderie, D. Muchoney, B. A. Walther, H. A. Mooney, DOI: 10.1126/science.1162055, Science Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1044 - 1045, 08/08/22

  17. Turbulent Times for Climate Model, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Researchers are running out of time to finish updating an important U.S. climate change model that has been hamstrung by the budget woes of its home institution, the National Center for Atmospheric Research

    Every June, U.S. climate scientists descend upon Breckenridge, Colorado, to kick the tires on the nation's foremost academic global climate model. Some years there is added pressure, as scientists try to tune up the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) for simulations that will feed into the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is one of those years, and scientists are more worried than usual.

  18. Atmospheric Chemistry: Attacked From Within, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Organic compounds in the lower atmosphere can be attacked by the particles they are sitting on, according to researchers at the University of California, Irvine.

    Lab-based experiments by Barbara Finlayson-Pitts and her colleagues show that airborne sea-salt particles containing nitrate or nitrite ions can produce reactive hydroxyl radicals that attack the organic compounds adsorbed onto the particles' surfaces. It was previously thought that oxidation of these organics occurred through attack from outside by ozone or hydroxyl radicals.

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

    1. Incubators Of Terror: Do Failed And Failing States Promote Transnational Terrorism?, Int. Studies Quar. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: A growing body of scholars and policymakers have raised concerns that failed and failing states pose a danger to international security because they produce conditions under which transnational terrorist groups can thrive. This study devises an empirical test of this proposition, along with counter-theories, using simple descriptive statistics and a time-series, cross-national negative binomial analysis of 197 countries from 1973 to 2003. It finds that states plagued by chronic state failures are statistically more likely to host terrorist groups that commit transnational attacks, have their nationals commit transnational attacks, and are more likely to be targeted by transnational terrorists themselves.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Epigenetic Reprogramming by Adenovirus e1a, Roberto Ferrari, Matteo Pellegrini, Gregory A. Horwitz, Wei Xie, Arnold J. Berk, Siavash K. Kurdistani, 08/08/22, Science : Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1086 - 1088 , DOI: 10.1126/science.1155546
      2. The Effect Of Opinion Clustering On Disease Outbreaks, M. Salathé, S. Bonhoeffer, 2008/08/19, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0271
      3. Japan Warns Of Ipod Nano Fires: Faulty Batteries Blamed For Spontaneous Combustion, S. Nichols, 2008/08/20, vnunet.com
      4. Maximal Frustration As An Immunological Principle, F. V. de Abreu, P. Mostardinha, 2008/08/20, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0280
      5. False Memories Affect Behavior, 2008/08/20, ScienceDaily & Association for Psychological Science
      6. FBI Unveils Science Of Anthrax Investigation, 2008/08/21, ScienceDaily & DOE/Sandia National Laboratories
      7. Pre-School Age Exercises Can Prevent Dyslexia, 2008/08/22, Innovations-report
      8. Ventriloquism In Motion: How Sound Can Move Light, 2008/08/24, ScienceDaily & Brunel University
      9. Brain Study Could Lead To New Understanding Of Depression, 2008/08/25, Innovations-report
      10. The ILO: An Agency For Globalization?, G. Standing - guystandingastandingnet.com, May 2008, Online 2008/07/29, Development and Change, DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2008.00484.x
      11. Effect Of Meditation On Scaling Behavior And Complexity Of Human Heart Rate Variability, A. Sarkar - apuaplatinum.materials.iisc.ernet.in, P. Barat, Sep. 2008, Fractals, DOI: 10.1142/S0218348X08003983
      12. Size Measure Relationship Method For Fractal Analysis Of Signals, P. Paramanathan, R. Uthayakumar - uthayagriagmail.com, Sep. 2008, Fractals, DOI: 10.1142/S0218348X08003995

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Can Ants Solve Traffic Jams?, Danielle Parsons, Slatev.com, 08/07/22

        As roads and highways become ever more clogged, Danielle Parsons tells us how researchers are studying ways to learn from nature's own traffic-flow experts: ants.

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

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Intl Conf DEscribing COmplex Systems (DECOS), Zadar, Croatia, 08/09/03-07
      2. BICS Conference - Emergence in Complex Systems, Bath, UK, 08/09/09-11
      3. 5th European Conference on Complex Systems, Jerusalem, Israel, 08/09/14-19
      4. EPOS 2008, III Edition of Epistemological Perspectives on Simulation, Lisbon, Portugal, 08/10/02-03
      5. 1st Intl Conf on the Evolution and Development of the Universe, Paris, France, 08/10/08-09
      6. International Congress on Complex Thought, Hermosillo , Sonora , Mexico, 08/10/21-24
      7. What Is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute? - 2008 Midwest NKS Conference, Bloomington, IN, 08/10/30-11/02
      8. 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
      9. 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI-08), Sydney, Australia, 08/12/09-12
      10. COMPLEX'2009, First Intl Conf on Complex Systems: Theory and Applications, Shanghai, China, 09/02/23-25
      11. Models and Simulations 3 Conference, Charlottesville, USA 09/03/05-07
      12. 2009 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Nashville, Tennessee, USA,09/03/30-04/02

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      1. PhD Studentship in Unconventional Computing or Cellular Automata, University of the West of England, Bristol, UK, Deadline: 08/10/01
      2. 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

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