Complexity Digest 2008.50

11-Dec-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 2008.49 | Next issue 2008.51

Content

  1. A Scientific Approach to Policy, Science
    1. The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment, Science
  2. Make Secondary Education Universal, Nature
    1. Silicon Valley Conference Aims to Raise Planetary IQ, Wired
    2. Search And Find Magazines On Google Book Search, The Official Google Blog
  3. Generosity: A Winner's Advice, Nature
  4. While Detroit Slept, NY Times
    1. IBM Takes Grid To The Clouds And Aids Solar Research, Computerworld
  5. Great Depression Spurred Great Creativity, Innovations-report
    1. Why Do People Keep Their Promises? An Experimental Test of Two Explanations, Econometrica
    2. Happiness Is 'Infectious' In Network Of Friends: Collective -- Not Just Individual -- Phenomenon, ScienceDaily
  6. Behavioural Ecology: The Social Side Of Wild Yeast, Nature
  7. Cancer Stem Cells: Here, There, Everywhere?, Nature
    1. Melanoma In Mice Casts Doubt On Scarcity Of Cancer Stem Cells - Tumour Treatments May Need A Rethink., Nature
  8. Dynamic Proteomics of Individual Cancer Cells in Response to a Drug, Science
  9. Genetics: Hopping To A Better Protein, Science
  10. Cardiogenesis and the Complex Biology of Regenerative Cardiovascular Medicine, Science
    1. a. Morphogenetic Cell Movements: Diversity from Modular Mechanical Properties, Science
    2. Patterning Mechanisms of Branched Organs, Science
  11. Neuroscience: Along Memory Lane, Nature
    1. Direct Control Of Paralysed Muscles By Cortical Neurons, Nature
  12. Immunology: Fetal Immune System Hushes Attacks on Maternal Cells, Science
  13. Distance From Africa, Not Climate, Explains Within-Population Phenotypic Diversity In Humans, Proc. Biol. Sc.
  14. Revisiting The Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis For The Evolution Of Large Brains, Biol. Lett.
  15. Endangered Species: Sanctuaries Aim to Preserve a Model Organism's Wild Type, Science
  16. Oceans: Elements and Evolution, Science
  17. The Pectoral Fin Of Panderichthys And The Origin Of Digits, Nature
  18. 2008 Will Be Coolest Year Of The Decade, Guardian
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks, NY Times
    2. U.S. Is Losing Global Cyberwar, Commission Says, BusinessWeek
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. A Scientific Approach to Policy, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Science and engineering produce a vibrant economy. Their effects are strikingly obvious in the innovative industrial clusters that have grown up and prospered near great U.S. research universities, in the Boston and San Francisco Bay areas, for example. Nations such as China have long had a clear view of the source of U.S. economic strength, and they have intensely focused on building their own scientific and technological excellence.* But in addition to the innovation that stems from research, scientific habits of mind contribute critically to a nation's success.

    1. The Long-Run Benefits of Punishment, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Experiments have shown that punishment enhances socially beneficial cooperation but that the costs of punishment outweigh the gains from cooperation. This challenges evolutionary models of altruistic cooperation and punishment, which predict that punishment will be beneficial. We compared 10- and 50-period cooperation experiments. With the longer time horizon, punishment is unambiguously beneficial. (...)

      Once cooperation is established, the costs of punishment are low because punishment is rarely needed.

  2. Make Secondary Education Universal, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The time is right to push global learning beyond primary-school level, (...). The benefits could include a dramatically smaller increase in world population by 2050. (...)

    Secondary education increases people's capacity and motivation to reduce their own fertility, improve the survival of their children, and care for their own and their families' health. Education promotes a shift from the quantity of children in favour of the quality of children. This transition reduces the future number of people using environmental resources and enhances the capacity of individuals and societies to cope with environmental change.

    1. Silicon Valley Conference Aims to Raise Planetary IQ, Wired Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: What many attendees had in common was an earnest belief in the power of collective intelligence to improve the world, a deep appreciation for Engelbart the man, and a level of comfort with the jargon of collective intelligence. A long mural illustrated the significance of the 1968 demo on a 20-foot "co-evolution" timeline (4.4-MB image file, part of which is shown at top of this page) that paralleled Engelbart's life and stretched past 2008 into the future. On the timeline, significant events and inventions were marked with icons, while "The Demo" took the shape of a huge, blue tidal wave of ideas: email, networked computing, online publishing, video conference, hyperlinks and - of course - the mouse.

    2. Search And Find Magazines On Google Book Search, The Official Google Blog Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The word "magazine" is derived from the Arabic word "makhazin," meaning storehouse. Since Daniel Defoe published the world's first English magazine back in 1704, millions of magazines catering to nearly every imaginable taste have been created and consumed, passed from person to person in cafes, barber shops, libraries, and homes around the world. If you're wondering what cars people drove in the eighties or what was in fashion thirty years ago, there's a good chance that you'll find that answer in a magazine. Yet few magazine archives are currently available online.

      Today, we're announcing an initiative to help bring more magazine archives and current magazines online, (...).

  3. Generosity: A Winner's Advice, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Mathematical models can reveal how prosocial human behaviour - and even social intelligence and language - have evolved, (...).

    Generosity is an essential feature of winning strategies in games that explore human interactions. These strategies underpin many of the choices people make in everyday life, and shed light on how our unusually cooperative ways have evolved.

    Biologists recognize two fundamental forces of evolution: mutation and selection. I want to add a third: cooperation.

  4. While Detroit Slept, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: And therefore it will be done, and eventually, I bet, it will be done profitably.

    And when it is, our bailout of Detroit will be remembered as the equivalent of pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into the mail-order-catalogue business on the eve of the birth of eBay. It will be remembered as pouring billions of dollars into the CD music business on the eve of the birth of the iPod and iTunes. (...)

    What business model am I talking about? It is Shai Agassi's electric car network company, called Better Place.

    1. IBM Takes Grid To The Clouds And Aids Solar Research, Computerworld Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Harvard scientists are using the grid to find organic materials that can replace the expensive silicon that has traditionally been used in solar panels, according to Alan Aspuru-Guzik, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard and the principal investigator on the project.

      "We'll use approximately a sixth of the grid," said Aspuru-Guzik. "The grid is an enabler. It gives us the capacity of a large supercomputer for ourselves. It's a lot of compute power. Without it, it would take me probably 10 times longer to do the work."

  5. Great Depression Spurred Great Creativity, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The Grapes of Wrath is not the only Depression-era work worth taking a second (or a first) look at from our current perspective in what some are calling the New Depression. "If it's true that adversity and hardship can bring out creativity," said (...), "then the Great Depression was one of the great creative periods of our time." "If it's true that adversity and hardship can bring out creativity," said (...), "then the Great Depression was one of the great creative periods of our time." Common themes found in the literature of the period are despair, poverty, corruption, strife between labor and management, (...).

    1. Why Do People Keep Their Promises? An Experimental Test of Two Explanations, Econometrica Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: A link in a supplier-customer network is usually a creditor-debtor relationship. If a firm goes into a state of financial insolvency or bankruptcy, then firms on its upstream are affected secondarily along the links. By using 10-year data from recent data on bankruptcy in Japan, we show that this "link effect" is by no means negligible in a nationwide economy. While the total debt of bankruptcy typically amounts to as much as a few percent of GDP in Japan, nearly 20% of all bankruptcies are due to the link effect. Interestingly, we find that such a link effect becomes comparable with other causes (...).

    2. Happiness Is 'Infectious' In Network Of Friends: Collective -- Not Just Individual -- Phenomenon, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: If you're happy and you know it, thank your friends-and their friends. And while you're at it, their friends' friends. But if you're sad, hold the blame. Researchers (...) have found that "happiness" is not the result solely of a cloistered journey filled with individually tailored self-help techniques. Happiness is also a collective phenomenon that spreads through social networks like an emotional contagion. (...) researchers found that when an individual becomes happy, the network effect can be measured up to three degrees. One person's happiness triggers a chain reaction that benefits not only their friends, but their friends' friends, (...).

  6. Behavioural Ecology: The Social Side Of Wild Yeast, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The workhorse of cell biology, yeast, is a surprisingly cooperative organism. It uses an unusual means of identifying partners - a 'green-beard gene', which encodes a tag that must match among cooperating cells.

    Everyone knows how a glass or two of beer can act as social glue, making even misanthropes amiable. Oddly, the production of beer has a similarly convivial effect on the tiny brewers that make it, cells of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. As alcohol content rises, the normally solitary cells begin to adhere to each other in clumps called flocs.

  7. Cancer Stem Cells: Here, There, Everywhere?, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Can every tumour cell propagate human cancers or is this property exclusive to an elite subset? Findings are divided. The latest set shows that - depending on circumstances - both perspectives can be correct.

    A long-standing goal of both researchers and oncologists is to establish a framework for understanding how many and which tumour cells must be eliminated for treatment to be successful. One framework that has received much attention recently attempts to understand cancers as perturbed versions of the normal tissue in which they arise, with retention of many tissue-specific developmental features.

    1. Melanoma In Mice Casts Doubt On Scarcity Of Cancer Stem Cells - Tumour Treatments May Need A Rethink., Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The rare 'cancer stem cells' thought to seed cancer growth are not so rare after all, according to researchers in Michigan. If they're right, then the strategies used for some cancer therapies may need to change.

  8. Dynamic Proteomics of Individual Cancer Cells in Response to a Drug, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Why do seemingly identical cells respond differently to a drug? To address this, we studied the dynamics and variability of the protein response of human cancer cells to a chemotherapy drug, camptothecin. We present a dynamic-proteomics approach that measures the levels and locations of nearly 1000 different endogenously tagged proteins in individual living cells at high temporal resolution. All cells show rapid translocation of proteins specific to the drug mechanism, including the drug target (topoisomerase-1), and slower, wide-ranging temporal waves of protein degradation and accumulation. However, the cells differ in the behavior of a subset of proteins.

  9. Genetics: Hopping To A Better Protein, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Exon [Segment of a DNA or RNA molecule containing information coding for a protein or peptide sequence., Ed.] skipping. It sounds like a game, like hopscotch. But it's not child's play. A half-dozen research teams around the world are scrambling to turn exon skipping--which involves tricking a cell's protein-making machinery into skipping over defective parts of a gene--into a treatment for a devastating muscular disorder called Duchenne muscular dystrophy. "It's the best shot" for stemming the progressive paralysis that puts teenagers in wheelchairs and, in many cases, leads to premature death, (...).

  10. Cardiogenesis and the Complex Biology of Regenerative Cardiovascular Medicine, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The heart is a complex organ system composed of a highly diverse set of muscle and nonmuscle cells. Understanding the pathways that drive the formation, migration, and assembly of these cells into the heart muscle tissue, the pacemaker and conduction system, and the coronary vasculature is a central problem in developmental biology. Efforts to unravel the biological complexity of in vivo cardiogenesis have identified a family of closely related multipotent cardiac progenitor cells. These progenitors must respond to non-cell-autonomous signaling cues to expand, differentiate, and ultimately integrate into the three-dimensional heart structures.

    1. a. Morphogenetic Cell Movements: Diversity from Modular Mechanical Properties, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Animal tissue and organ development requires the orchestration of cell movements, including those of interconnected cell groups, termed collective cell movements. Such movements are incredibly diverse. Recent work suggests that two core cellular properties, cell-cell adhesion and contractility, can largely determine geometry, packing, sorting, and rearrangement of epithelial cell layers. Two additional force-generating properties, the ability to generate cell protrusions and cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix, contribute to active motility.

    2. Patterning Mechanisms of Branched Organs, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Branching morphogenesis is one of the earliest events essential for the success of metazoans. By branching out and forming cellular or tissue extensions, cells can maximize their surface area and overcome space constraints posed by organ size. Over the past decade, tremendous progress has been made toward understanding the branching mechanisms of various invertebrate and vertebrate organ systems. Despite their distinct origins, morphologies and functions, different cell and tissue types use a remarkably conserved set of tools to undergo branching morphogenesis. Recent studies have shed important light on the basis of molecular conservation in the formation of branched structures in diverse organs.

  11. Neuroscience: Along Memory Lane, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Memories are encoded by efficient signalling between neurons. The myosin V proteins help this process by shuttling receptors and membranes to make synaptic junctions better detectors of incoming signals.

    Synaptic junctions transmit information between neurons. The efficiency with which they do this is affected by how frequently they are activated, a cellular equivalent of experience. For example, repeated activation yields a lasting increase in the efficiency of synaptic transmission - a process called long-term potentiation (LTP) - which is thought to underlie memory formation.

    1. Direct Control Of Paralysed Muscles By Cortical Neurons, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: A potential treatment for paralysis resulting from spinal cord injury is to route control signals from the brain around the injury by artificial connections. Such signals could then control electrical stimulation of muscles, thereby restoring volitional movement to paralysed limbs. In previously separate experiments, activity of motor cortex neurons related to actual or imagined movements has been used to control computer cursors and robotic arms, and paralysed muscles have been activated by functional electrical stimulation.

  12. Immunology: Fetal Immune System Hushes Attacks on Maternal Cells, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: On page 1562 of this week's issue of Science, researchers provide an explanation for why some maternal cells that cross the placenta escape attack by the fetal immune system. The work also suggests a new mechanism for how the human immune system learns to spare the body's own tissues, a tolerance that breaks down in autoimmune diseases.,P. The new study shows that the maternal escapees spur the baby to produce regulatory T cells, or T regs--white blood cells that can quell immune assaults.

  13. Distance From Africa, Not Climate, Explains Within-Population Phenotypic Diversity In Humans, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The relative importance of ancient demography and climate in determining worldwide patterns of human within-population phenotypic diversity is still open to debate. Several morphometric traits have been argued to be under selection by climatic factors, but it is unclear whether climate affects the global decline in morphological diversity with increasing geographical distance from sub-Saharan Africa. Using a large database of male and female skull measurements, we apply an explicit framework to quantify the relative role of climate and distance from Africa. We show that distance from sub-Saharan Africa is the sole determinant of human within-population phenotypic diversity, while climate plays no role. (...)

  14. Revisiting The Cognitive Buffer Hypothesis For The Evolution Of Large Brains, Biol. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Why have some animals evolved large brains despite substantial energetic and developmental costs? A classic answer is that a large brain facilitates the construction of behavioural responses to unusual, novel or complex socioecological challenges. This buffer effect should increase survival rates and favour a longer reproductive life, thereby compensating for the costs of delayed reproduction. Although still limited, evidence in birds and mammals is accumulating that a large brain facilitates the construction of novel and altered behavioural patterns and that this ability helps dealing with new ecological challenges more successfully, supporting the cognitive-buffer interpretation of the evolution of large brains.

  15. Endangered Species: Sanctuaries Aim to Preserve a Model Organism's Wild Type, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The axolotl, a salamander that retains unique evolutionary features and is a darling of biologists because it can regenerate limbs, faces adversity on two fronts. (...)

    Allowing axolotls to disappear from the wild would carry an immeasurable risk, researchers say: There's a danger that vulnerable lab populations might be wiped out by disease, and no one knows exactly how a loss of the wild type might diminish future studies of evolution and regeneration.

  16. Oceans: Elements and Evolution, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Changes in elemental abundances in Earth's oceans on geological time scales are intimately linked to evolutionary processes.

    We think of Earth as a biologically thriving world. However, nearly half of the planet's surface is covered by ocean regions in which life is scarce. These thinly populated ecosystems do not lack water or sunshine, nor the bulk biological elements hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen. Instead, they are deficient in one or more of the other elements necessary for life.

  17. The Pectoral Fin Of Panderichthys And The Origin Of Digits, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: One of the identifying characteristics of tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) is the presence of fingers and toes. Whereas the proximal part of the tetrapod limb skeleton can easily be homologized with the paired fin skeletons of sarcopterygian (lobe-finned) fish, there has been much debate about the origin of digits. Early hypotheses1 interpreted digits as derivatives of fin radials, but during the 1990s the idea gained acceptance that digits are evolutionary novelties without direct equivalents in fish fin skeletons.

  18. 2008 Will Be Coolest Year Of The Decade, Guardian Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Global average for 2008 should come in close to 14.3C, but cooler temperature is not evidence that global warming is slowing, say climate scientists. (...)

    The Met Office predicted at the beginning of the year that 2008 would be cooler than recent years because of a La Nina event - characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean. It is the mirror image of the El Nino climate cycle. The Met Office had forecast an annual global average of 14.37C.

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

    1. Mumbai Terrorists Relied on New Technology for Attacks, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The terrorists who struck this city last month stunned authorities not only with their use of sophisticated weaponry but also with their comfort with modern technology. (...)

      And, perhaps most significantly, throughout the three-day siege at two luxury hotels and a Jewish center, the Pakistani-based handlers communicated with the attackers using Internet phones that complicate efforts to trace and intercept calls.

    2. U.S. Is Losing Global Cyberwar, Commission Says, BusinessWeek Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The U.S. faces a cybersecurity threat of such magnitude that the next President should move quickly to create a Center for Cybersecurity Operations and appoint a special White House advisor to oversee it. Those are among the recommendations in a 44-page report by the U.S. Commission on Cybersecurity, a version of which will be made public today. The bipartisan panel includes executives, high-ranking military officers and intelligence officials, leading specialists in computer security, and two members of Congress.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Evolution And Evolvability: Celebrating Darwin 200, J. F.Y. Brookfield, 2008/12/02, Biological Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2008.0639
      2. New Orleans’ Recovery Needs “Unconventional Thinking", 2008/12/04, Innovations-report
      3. Study Helps Explain The Current Economic Crisis, 2008/12/04, Innovations-report
      4. Asymmetries Of The Human Social Brain In The Visual, Auditory And Chemical Modalities, A. Brancucci, G. Lucci, A. Mazzatenta, L. Tommasi, 2008/12/04, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0279
      5. Up To 10% Of Children Start School Suffering From Sleep Disturbances, 2008/12/04, ScienceDaily & Deutsches Aerzteblatt International
      6. Virtual Faces Created With Emotions, Moods And Personality, 2008/12/05, ScienceDaily & Plataforma SINC
      7. Decline Of Roman And Byzantine Empires 1,400 Years Ago May Have Been Driven By Climate Change, 2008/12/06, ScienceDaily & University of Wisconsin-Madison
      8. Inner Workings Of The Immune System Filmed, 2008/12/06, ScienceDaily & Sydney's Centenary Institute
      9. The Merits Of Dehyphenation: Explaining U.S. Success In Engaging India And Pakistan, A. J. Tellis, Autumn 2008, online 2008/08/20, The Washington Quarterly, DOI: 10.1162/wash.2008.31.4.21
      10. Does Music Induce Emotion? A Theoretical And Methodological Analysis, V. J. Konecni, May 2008, online 2008/09/26, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, DOI: 10.1037/1931-3896.2.2.115
      11. What Happens When Wal-Mart Comes to Town: An Empirical Analysis of the Discount Retailing Industry, P. Jia - pjiaamit.edu, Nov. 2008, Online 2008/11/24, Econometrica, DOI: 10.3982/ECTA6649

    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. "Approaching Complexity" Workshop, IT Revolutions, Venice, 08/12/17-19
      2. NECSI Winter School, Cambridge, MA, 09/01/05-23
      3. COMPLEX'2009, First Intl Conf on Complex Systems: Theory and Applications, Shanghai, China, 09/02/23-25
      4. 3rd Biennial International Transdisciplinary Seminar on the Complexity Approach, Camaguey, Cuba. 09/02/23-27
      5. Models and Simulations 3 Conference, Charlottesville, USA 09/03/05-07
      6. 2nd Conf on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-09.org), Arlington, Virginia, 09/03/06-09
      7. 2009 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Nashville, Tennessee, USA,09/03/30-04/02
      8. 7th Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, 09/04/27-29, Boston, MA
      9. 2nd Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference (CHAOS2009), Chania, Crete, Greece, 09/06/01-05
      10. 20th Intl Conf on Noise and Fluctuations, Pisa, Italy, 09/06/14-19
      11. 17th Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES 2009), Rapperswil, Switzerland, 09/06/21-24
      12. 7th Intl Conf on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA., 09/07/10-13
      13. The 19th Annual Intl Conf Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences , Milwaukee, WI USA, 09/07/23-25
      14. 2009 Intl Conf of the System Dynamics Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 09/07/26-30
      15. 5th Intl Conf on Fractals and Dynamic Systems in Geoscience, Townsville, Australia, 09/08/13-14

    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