Complexity Digest 2009.03

2009/01/30

It is with great sadness that I announce the passing of my friend and founding editor, Dr Gottfried Mayer on January 25, 2009 in Taipei, Taiwan. He had been battling numerous cancers with his intellect, guidance from complexity science and his strength. But the fight was concluded attended at his bedside with his wife, Yeou-Teh, and daughter, Stephanie.

Complexity Digest is Gottfried's creation. It was his vision that work was being done all over the world which needed to be brought into the community's network to solve problems. His own scientific sweep was a demonstration of the multi-disciplinary, rapid response features that became the hallmark of each weekly issue reaching over 10k members dedicated to furthering complexity. He trained a small international team of editors to write concise, summaries of important articles. And he partnered with me on what more we could do whether exploring new media like video, partnering with other institutions or finding ways to preserve the services of Complexity Digest beyond the lives of any of us.

And Gottfried triumphed is setting the course for ComDig's next phase. The editor's burdens are being assumed by Carlos Gershenson who has been writing for the publication since 2001. The publisher is the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), the leading university in Latin America, and its new Center of Complexity Sciences. This exciting group will impact complexity both through its own research and in acting as a source of inspiration for others in its publication efforts. Publication will be on a bi-weekly basis and you can expect to find Complexity Digest continue to be useful in your work....the spirit of Gottfried will be present to guide us by continuing to be on the masthead as founding editor.

Dean LeBaron

For individual e-mail subscriptions go to Subscriptions.
Previous issue 2009.02 | Next issue 2009.04

Content

  1. Redefining Science Education, Science
  2. An Economy of Faith and Trust, NY Times
    1. Your inbox, Mr President, News@Nature
    2. Top 10 IT Priorities For Obama: Hopes For The New Administration, vnunet.com
    3. Major Foreign Policy Challenges For The Next Us President, Int. Affairs
  3. The Commodification Of Emergence: Systems Biology, Synthetic Biology And Intellectual Property, Biosocieties
  4. On An Evolutionary Foundation Of Neuroeconomics, Econ. & Phil.
  5. Friends dis-united?, News@Nature
    1. Preference or opportunity? Why do we find more friendship segregation in more heterogeneous schools?, arXiv
  6. How low can you go?, News@Nature
  7. Artificial Chemistry, Artificial Life
  8. Thinking outside the box, Nature
  9. Biological Systems from an Engineer's Point of View, PLoS Biol
  10. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Biology, PLoS Biol
  11. Self-organized criticality and adaptation in discrete dynamical networks, arXiv
    1. Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks, arXiv
  12. Revisiting the Age of Enlightenment from a Collective Decision Making Systems Perspective, arXiv
  13. A framework for the local information dynamics of distributed computation in complex systems, arXiv
    1. The transmission sense of information, arXiv
  14. Neural Networks as dynamical systems, arXiv
  15. Where Bacteria and Languages Concur, Science
  16. Emergence Of Cooperation In Public Goods Games, Proc. Biol. Sc.
  17. A Longer Working Life - A Good Thing For Everyone?, Innovations-report
  18. Spurring Innovation To Lift The Economy, Innovations-report
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Military Power And International Order, Int. Affairs
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Redefining Science Education, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: There is a major mismatch between opportunity and action in most education systems today. It revolves around what is meant by "science education," a term that is incorrectly defined in current usage. Rather than learning how to think scientifically, students are generally being told about science and asked to remember facts. This disturbing situation must be corrected if science education is to have any hope of taking its proper place as an essential part of the education of students everywhere.

  2. An Economy of Faith and Trust, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Once there was just Newtonian physics and the world seemed neat and mechanical. Then quantum physics came along and revealed that deep down things are much weirder than they seem. Something similar is now happening with public policy.

    1. Your inbox, Mr President, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Rejuvenate the Environmental Protection Agency. End the stem-cell ban. Re-engage with the UN on climate change. Six leading voices tell Nature what the new US president needs to do to move beyond the Bush legacy.

    2. Top 10 IT Priorities For Obama: Hopes For The New Administration, vnunet.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The bunting is going up, the crowds are flocking to Washington for the inauguration on Tuesday and the Secret Service is working overtime to make sure Obama's first presidential command isn't "Duck!" Tuesday's swearing-in will be a landmark not only for its cultural and social implications, but also for its impact on technology. Obama has promised to be more in touch with the cutting edge of the internet and tech world than any previous President. John McCain may not have known how to use a computer but Obama used the internet to raise millions in small donations and has big plans. (...)

    3. Major Foreign Policy Challenges For The Next Us President, Int. Affairs Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: President Obama has been elected to office in the United States during a crisis of confidence in America's capacity to exercise effective leadership in world afairs. National self-indulgence, greedy financial irresponsibility and an unnecessary war have discredited that leadership, a situation that has been compounded by the current global economic crisis. Added to these self-inflicted wounds, this article suggests, are two transformational developments on the world political scene. First, the 'global political awakening' to issues such as climate change, health and social inequality; and second, a shift in the distribution of global power from the West to the East. (...)

  3. The Commodification Of Emergence: Systems Biology, Synthetic Biology And Intellectual Property, Biosocieties Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In this article I address the interactions between biological knowledge and ideas about the kinds of entity (...). I then turn to the new field of systems biology, which recognizes that traditional reductionist approaches to biology are no longer adequate and attempts to provide a more integrative understanding of biological systems. In doing this, systems biology has to deal with emergent phenomena. But patenting does not suit the dynamic and interactive complexity that is the object of study in systems biology. If systems biology rejects reductionism where does that leave commodification? I examine attempts to commodify predictive computational models in systems biology. (...)

  4. On An Evolutionary Foundation Of Neuroeconomics, Econ. & Phil. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Neuroeconomics focuses on brain imaging studies mapping neural responses to choice behaviour. Economic theory is concerned with choice behaviour but it is silent on neural activities. We present a game theoretic model in which players are endowed with an additional structure - a simple "nervous system" - and interact repeatedly in changing games. The nervous system constrains information processing functions and behavioural functions. (...) we suggest that nervous systems can develop to "function well" in exogenously changing strategic environments. (...)

  5. Friends dis-united?, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: One could, for example, ask instead "Why do the black kids sit together all the more when there are proportionately more of them?"
    For that's what seems to happen: segregation is often stronger in schools with a greater ethnic mix than in those that are more homogeneous.

    1. Preference or opportunity? Why do we find more friendship segregation in more heterogeneous schools?, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Research on friendship networks in schools suggests that heterogeneity increases homophily preferences. We argue that this may be a misleading interpretation of the coefficients of the exponential random graph models (p*) that are used to model the network data. If students wish to avoid having no friends at all, then minority students may appear to be willing to integrate more with the majority in a more homogeneous school, even if the preference for having same ethnicity friends has the same strength in all schools.

  6. How low can you go?, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The ones and zeroes that propel the digital world â€" the fording of electrons across a transistor, or hard drives reliant on electrons' intrinsic spin â€" are getting packed into smaller and smaller spaces. The limit was thought to be set: no more than one bit of information could be encoded on an atom or electron.
    But now, (...) have used another feature of the electron (...) to create holograms that pack information into subatomic spaces.
    • Source: How low can you go?, Eric Hand, DOI: 10.1038/10.1038/news.2009.54, News@Nature, 2009/01/24

  7. Artificial Chemistry, Artificial Life Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The theme of this special issue, artificial chemistry (AChem), is a research field that complements systems biology (...) In a typical AChem study, we construct a model of a biological system at a molecular level, but we minimize the computational cost by dramatically simplifying the model in order to make self-organizing phenomena or functional emergence happen on a computer. The biomolecular system is one of the few systems whose elementary processes (molecular reactions) are well known and that exhibit such phenomena as self-organization or self-assembly. AChem facilitates one of the most promising approaches toward the design of computational systems with emergent characteristics.
    • Source: Artificial Chemistry, Hideaki Suzuki, Peter Dittrich, DOI: 10.1162/artl.2009.15.1.15100, Artificial Life Winter 2009, Vol. 15, No. 1, Pages 1-3, 2009/01

  8. Thinking outside the box, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: In Supersizing the Mind, philosopher Andy Clark makes the compelling argument that the mind extends beyond the body to include the tools, symbols and other artefacts we deploy to engage the world. According to Clark and other proponents of the 'extended mind' hypothesis, the laptop on which I am writing this review is coupled to my brain and has become part of my mind.

  9. Biological Systems from an Engineer's Point of View, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Mathematical modeling of the processes that pattern embryonic development (often called biological pattern formation) has a long and rich history [1,2]. These models proposed sets of hypothetical interactions, which, upon analysis, were shown to be capable of generating patterns reminiscent of those seen in the biological world, such as stripes, spots, or graded properties.(...) In hindsight, one could argue that a greater attention to engineering principles would have focused attention on these shortcomings, including potential failure modes, and would have led to more complex, but more robust, models.

  10. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on Contemporary Biology, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The work of historians and philosophers of science has long benefited from conversations with practicing scientists, but to many scientific researchersâ€"perhaps especially to those engaged in laboratory workâ€"the value that such dialogue might have for their own endeavor is not nearly so obvious. There are of course exceptionsâ€"evolutionary biology, for one. Over the last several decades, a tradition of active engagement between historians and philosophers on the one hand, and evolutionary biologists on the other, has become well established (...)

  11. Self-organized criticality and adaptation in discrete dynamical networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: It has been proposed that adaptation in complex systems is optimized at the critical boundary between ordered and disordered dynamical regimes. Here, we review models of evolving dynamical networks that lead to self-organization of network topology based on a local coupling between a dynamical order parameter and rewiring of network connectivity, with convergence towards criticality in the limit of large network size $N$. In particular, two adaptive schemes are discussed and compared in the context of Boolean Networks and Threshold Networks.

    1. Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Networks have in recent years emerged as an invaluable tool for describing and quantifying complex systems in many branches of science. Recent studies suggest that networks often exhibit hierarchical organization, where vertices divide into groups that further subdivide into groups of groups, and so forth over multiple scales(...) Here we present a general technique for inferring hierarchical structure from network data and demonstrate that the existence of hierarchy can simultaneously explain and quantitatively reproduce many commonly observed topological properties of networks,

  12. Revisiting the Age of Enlightenment from a Collective Decision Making Systems Perspective, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The ideals of the eighteenth century's Age of Enlightenment are the foundation of modern democracies. The era was characterized by thinkers who promoted progressive social reforms that opposed the long-established aristocracies and monarchies of the time. Prominent examples of such reforms include the establishment of inalienable human rights, self-governing republics, and market capitalism. Twenty-first century democratic nations can benefit from revisiting the systems developed during the Enlightenment and reframing them within the techno-social context of the Information Age.

  13. A framework for the local information dynamics of distributed computation in complex systems, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The nature of distributed computation has often been described in terms of the component operations of universal computation: information storage, transfer and modification. We introduce the first complete framework that quantifies each of these individual information dynamics on a local scale within a system, and describes the manner in which they interact to create non-trivial computation where "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts".

    1. The transmission sense of information, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Biologists rely heavily on the language of information, coding, and transmission that is commonplace in the field of information theory as developed by Claude Shannon, but there is open debate about whether such language is anything more than facile metaphor. Philosophers of biology have argued that when biologists talk about information in genes and in evolution, they are not talking about the sort of information that Shannon's theory addresses.

  14. Neural Networks as dynamical systems, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We consider neural networks from the point of view of dynamical systems theory. In this spirit we review recent results dealing with the following questions, adressed in the context of specific models. 1. Characterizing the collective dynamics; 2. Statistical analysis of spikes trains; 3. Interplay between dynamics and network structure; 4. Effects of synaptic plasticity.

  15. Where Bacteria and Languages Concur, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Two articles in this issue mark a substantial advance in our understanding of human population history in the Pacific area. On page 479, Gray et al. (1) report a computational linguistic analysis that offers a detailed and precise scenario for the dispersal and development of the Austronesian languages, and by implication of human populations among the Pacific islands. The authors come down decisively in favor of one of the two major models for the peopling of the Pacific. On page 527, Moodley et al. (2) come to the same conclusion as Gray et al. about the source and trajectory of spread of the human populations in question, based on results from a seemingly unrelated field: the archaeogenetics of human gastric bacterial parasites.

  16. Emergence Of Cooperation In Public Goods Games, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Evolution of cooperation has been a major issue in evolutionary biology. Cooperation is observed not only in dyadic interactions, but also in social interactions involving more than two individuals. It has been argued that direct reciprocity cannot explain the emergence of cooperation in large groups because the basin of attraction for the ‘cooperative' equilibrium state shrinks rapidly as the group size increases. However, this argument is based on the analysis of models that consider the deterministic process. More recently, stochastic models of two-player games have been developed and the conditions for natural selection to favour the emergence of cooperation in finite populations have been specified. (...)

  17. A Longer Working Life - A Good Thing For Everyone?, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The thesis "We who stayed at Volvo" is a study of the impact that many years of industrial work has on people and their attitude to their job, their life outside work and their own future. The study is based on life history interviews with 16 workers aged between 49 and 62 at Volvo's Torslanda plant. The objective has been to try to understand how workers' experiences and the ageing process have led them to think, feel and act in the way they do now. There are also a number of norms that reinforce their desire to take early retirement. (...)

  18. Spurring Innovation To Lift The Economy, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The United States is one of only three industrialized nations that lack a national innovation policy. Most international competitors boast recently created or long-standing innovation agencies in addition to scientific research bodies. (...) But not only is U.S. innovation policy disorganized, it is woefully underfunded. In 2006, the federal government spent a total of $2.7 billion, or 0.02 percent of gross domestic product, on its principal innovation programs and agencies. Compare that to the 0.07 percent of GDP Sweden spends, Japan's 0.04 percent, and South Korea's 0.03 percent investments. (...)

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

    1. Military Power And International Order, Int. Affairs Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: '"Military power … remains an instrument with which no state has yet found it possible completely to dispense". So writes Michael Howard (...) originally published in volume 40: 3, July 1964 and reprinted in this anniversary issue. It has been chosen because, 45 years later, it still retains astonishing freshness and relevance. Now in 2009, states, and especially the new US administration, will need to assess the emphasis they put on military means to achieve their foreign policy ends, while attempting to deal effectively with, for example, the confects in the Middle East and Afghanistan, and the threat of international terrorism. (...)
      • Source: Military Power And International Order, M. Howard, DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2346.2009.00786.x, International Affairs, Jan. 2009, Online 2009/01/13
      • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Differentiating information transfer and causal effect, Joseph T. Lizier and Mikhail Prokopenko, 2008/12/23, arXiv, DOI: 0812.4373
      2. Generative Network Automata: A Generalized Framework for Modeling Adaptive Network Dynamics Using Graph Rewritings, Hiroki Sayama and Craig Laramee, 2009/01/02, arXiv, DOI: 0901.0216
      3. An Algorithmic Information Theory Critique of Statistical Arguments for Intelligent Design, Sean D Devine, 2009/01/04, arXiv, DOI: 0901.0399
      4. Economic Models with Chaotic Money Exchange, Carmen Pellicer-Lostao, Ricardo Lopez-Ruiz, 2009/01/08, arXiv, DOI: 0901.1038
      5. Why We Procrastinate And How To Stop, 2009/01/12, ScienceDaily & Association for Psychological Science
      6. A Weighted Communicability Measure Applied To Complex Brain Networks, J. J. Crofts, D. J. Higham, 2009/01/13, Interface, DOI: 10.1098/rsif.2008.0484
      7. Scaling Rules For The Final Decline To Extinction, B. D. Griffen, J. M. Drake, 2009/01/13, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1558
      8. The Rise And Fall Of An Arbitrary Tradition: An Experiment With Wild Meerkats, A. Thornton, A. Malapert, 2009/01/13, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2008.1794
      9. Evolution Of New Brain Area Enables Complex Movements, 2009/01/14, ScienceDaily & University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences
      10. Switchboard In The Brain Helps Us Learn And Remember At The Same Time, 2009/01/16, ScienceDaily & Public Library of Science
      11. Setting The Cellular Clock: Synthetic Genetic Circuits Enable Researchers To Uncover The Mechanisms By Which Cells Set Their Internal Clocks, 2009/01/19, Innovations-report
      12. Microbot Motors Fit To Swim Human Arteries, 2009/01/23, ScienceDaily & Institute of Physics
      13. Senator Asks Microsoft To Sack Foreigners First: Jobs Cuts Shouldn't Hit American Staff, I. Thomson, 2009/01/25, vnunet.com
      14. Feeling Your Words: Hearing With Your Face, 2009/01/26, ScienceDaily & Yale University
      15. LĂ©vy-like behavior in deterministic models of intelligent agents exploring heterogeneous environments, D. Boyer, O. Miramontes and H. Larralde, 2009/01/26, arXiv, DOI: 0901.4037
      16. Human Rights And Global Democracy, M. Goodhart, Winter 2008, Online 2008/12/30, Ethics & International Affairs, DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7093.2008.00177.x

    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. Systemic Solutions for Today’s World Challenges Lecture by Bernard A. Lietaer, Brussels, Belgium, 09/02/19
      2. COMPLEX'2009, First Intl Conf on Complex Systems: Theory and Applications, Shanghai, China, 09/02/23-25
      3. 3rd Biennial International Transdisciplinary Seminar on the Complexity Approach, Camaguey, Cuba. 09/02/23-27
      4. Models and Simulations 3 Conference, Charlottesville, USA 09/03/05-07
      5. 2nd Conf on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-09.org), Arlington, Virginia, 09/03/06-09
      6. EmergeNET2: Evolution and Emergence, Glasgow, Scotland, 09/03/23-24
      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. International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, Zurich, Switzerland, 09/06/8-13
      11. 20th Intl Conf on Noise and Fluctuations, Pisa, Italy, 09/06/14-19
      12. 17th Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES 2009), Rapperswil, Switzerland, 09/06/21-24
      13. Emergence in Chemical Systems, , Anchorage, Alaska, 09/06/22-26
      14. 7th Intl Conf on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA., 09/07/10-13
      15. Second International Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/07/20-21
      16. The 19th Annual Intl Conf Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences , Milwaukee, WI USA, 09/07/23-25
      17. 2009 Intl Conf of the System Dynamics Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 09/07/26-30
      18. 5th Intl Conf on Fractals and Dynamic Systems in Geoscience, Townsville, Australia, 09/08/13-14
      19. Darwin Meets von Neumann: European Conference on Artificial Life 2009, Budapest, Hungary, 09/09/09-12
      20. The 2009 International Conference on Adaptive & Intelligent Systems (ICAIS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/09/24-26

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      The Complex Systems Institute, Paris ĂŽle-de-France (ISC-PIF) is hiring two Guest Researchers on 18-month fellowships. Submission deadline (for full consideration): February 22, 2009
      Interviews of selected candidates: March (TBA)
      Start of employment (tentative): April 1, 2009

      The Fellowship program at ISC-PIF offers research support for scholars who have recently received a doctoral degree and want to conduct independent research. ISC-PIF Guest Researcher Fellows pursue research questions of their own, with bridges to projects and themes developed by ISC-PIF. They engage in collaborations with other researchers from ISC-PIF, the ĂŽle-de-France Region (Paris area), Europe and beyond. Fellows pursue projects that lie at the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines and create new fields of inquiry.

      Research at ISC-PIF is integrative, as there are no formal programs or departments. Individual research projects can draw input from a variety of fields including biology, chemistry, computer science, physics, mathematics, economics, geography, sociology, anthropology, and political science. We welcome applications from any of these fields, as well as other scientific topics pertaining to complex systems that are not necessarily listed here. Descriptions of the thematic domains and projects of the faculty and current Guest Researchers Fellows can be found on the ISC-PIF website (www.iscpif.fr). Although most of the research at ISC-PIF focuses on theoretical and computational approaches, applicants whose research includes experimental or data-collection aspects are also encouraged to apply.

      Candidates should have a Ph.D. (or expect to receive one in the spring of 2009), a strong academic record, and a proven ability to work independently. We especially welcome applicants who have an interest in transdisciplinary interactions and collaborations, and have demonstrated the potential to think outside traditional paradigms.

      For more information, please visit the announcement web page : http://iscpif.fr/Guest-Researchers-2009

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