Complexity Digest 2009.08

2009/04/13

Editor-in-Chief: Carlos Gershenson
Founding Editor: Gottfried Mayer

For individual e-mail subscriptions go to Subscriptions.
Previous issue 2009.07 | Next issue 2009.09

Content

  1. Exploring the “Global Workspace” of Consciousness, PLoS Biol
    1. Converging Intracranial Markers of Conscious Access, PLoS Biol
  2. Self-adjusting systems avoid chaos, Complexity
    1. The Human Brain Is On The Edge Of Chaos, ScienceDaily
  3. Behavioural science: School soundings, Nature
    1. Critical Population Density Triggers Rapid Formation of Vast Oceanic Fish Shoals, Science
  4. Distilling Free-Form Natural Laws from Experimental Data, Science
  5. Open Revolution, PLoS Biol
    1. Technology: The textbook of the future, Nature
    2. Clicking on a new chapter, Nature
  6. Initial community evenness favours functionality under selective stress, Nature
  7. Social Circles: A Simple Structure for Agent-Based Social Network Models, JASSS
  8. Faith in the Algorithm, Part 2: Computational Eudaemonics, arXiv
  9. Brain On A Chip?, ScienceDaily
  10. The Implications of Multiple Circadian Clock Origins, PLoS Biol
  11. Chemistry: Three in one, Nature
  12. Evolution: Biology's next top model?, Nature
    1. On the Origin of Flowering Plants, Science
    2. Mutated Gene In Zebrafish Sheds Light On Blindness In Humans, Innovations-report
    3. Darwin's One Special Difficulty': Celebrating Darwin 200, Biol. Lett.
  13. The cancer genome, Nature
    1. Cancer: When restriction is good, Nature
  14. Building a Better Nano-Biped, Science
    1. A Bipedal DNA Brownian Motor with Coordinated Legs, Science
  15. Quark statistics shed light on Universe's symmetry, Nature
  16. Multifractal Behaviors In Foreign Exchange Markets., Fractals
  17. Language Of Music Really Is Universal, ScienceDaily
  18. Parental Effects In Ecology And Evolution: Mechanisms, Processes And Implications, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
  19. Persistence and Success in the Attention Economy, arXiv
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Exploring the “Global Workspace” of Consciousness, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The model, called the “global workspace” model, posits that incoming information becomes conscious only when three conditions are met. First, the information must be represented by networks of sensory neurons, such as those in the primary visual cortex at the rear of the brain, that process incoming visual signals. Second, this representation must last long enough to gain access to (“come to the attention of”) a second stage of processing, distributed across the brain's cortex, and especially involving the prefrontal cortex, which is believed to be a major center for associating multiple kinds of information. Third and finally, this combination of bottom-up information propagation and top-down amplification through attention must “ignite” to create a state of reverberating, coherent activity among many different brain centers. That, according to the model, is what we experience as consciousness.

    1. Converging Intracranial Markers of Conscious Access, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: What is the neural signature of the conscious perception of a visual stimulus? To address this question, we recorded neural activity directly from the brains of human subjects (who were undergoing neural surgery for medical reasons). This rare opportunity afforded greater spatial and temporal resolution than noninvasive methods used previously to probe the neural basis of consciousness. We compared neural activity concomitant with conscious and nonconscious processing of words by using a visual masking procedure that allowed us to manipulate the conscious visibility of briefly masked words. (...)

  2. Self-adjusting systems avoid chaos, Complexity Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: One of the most useful properties of self-adjusting systems is their tendency to avoid chaos. This phenomenon is called ‘‘adaptation to the edge of chaos.’’ The concept ‘‘adaptation to the edge of chaos’’ describes the phenomenon that many complex adaptive systems, including those found in biology, seem to evolve toward a narrow regime near the boundary between order and chaos [1]. Packard [2, 3] observed an adaptation to the edge of chaos in a population of cel- lular automata, which optimizes their performance with a genetic algorithm. Self- organized critically [4] in avalanche and earthquake models is a related phenomenon. Neural nets with self-adjusting coupling strength have been found to synchronize and suppress chaos as well [5]. The edge of chaos is important because it is the optimal target dynamics for control [6] (...)

    1. The Human Brain Is On The Edge Of Chaos, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Cambridge-based researchers provide new evidence that the human brain lives "on the edge of chaos", at a critical transition point between randomness and order. The study provides experimental data on an idea previously fraught with theoretical speculation. Self-organized criticality (where systems spontaneously organize themselves to operate at a critical point between order and randomness), can emerge from complex interactions in many different physical systems, including avalanches, forest fires, earthquakes, and heartbeat rhythms. According to this study, (...) the dynamics of human brain networks have something important in common with some superficially very different systems in nature. (...)

  3. Behavioural science: School soundings, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract:
    H. BAESEMANN/DPA/CORBIS
    It is difficult to study what triggers shoaling in sea fish as the conglomerations can be tens of kilometres across and yet are still hard to find in the vast oceans. Nicholas Makris of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his colleagues have observed the genesis of an entire giant shoal for the first time, using a low-frequency acoustic technique that can take snapshots of areas up to 100 kilometres across every 75 seconds.

    1. Critical Population Density Triggers Rapid Formation of Vast Oceanic Fish Shoals, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Similarities in the behavior of diverse animal species that form large groups have motivated attempts to establish general principles governing animal group behavior. It has been difficult, however, to make quantitative measurements of the temporal and spatial behavior of extensive animal groups in the wild, such as bird flocks, fish shoals, and locust swarms. By quantifying the formation processes of vast oceanic fish shoals during spawning, we show that (i) a rapid transition from disordered to highly synchronized behavior occurs as population density reaches a critical value; (ii) organized group migration occurs after this transition; and (iii) small sets of leaders significantly influence the actions of much larger groups. Each of these findings confirms general theoretical predictions believed to apply in nature irrespective of animal species.

  4. Distilling Free-Form Natural Laws from Experimental Data, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: For centuries, scientists have attempted to identify and document analytical laws that underlie physical phenomena in nature. Despite the prevalence of computing power, the process of finding natural laws and their corresponding equations has resisted automation. A key challenge to finding analytic relations automatically is defining algorithmically what makes a correlation in observed data important and insightful. We propose a principle for the identification of nontriviality. We demonstrated this approach by automatically searching motion-tracking data captured from various physical systems, ranging from simple harmonic oscillators to chaotic double-pendula. Without any prior knowledge about physics, kinematics, or geometry, the algorithm discovered Hamiltonians, Lagrangians, and other laws of geometric and momentum conservation. The discovery rate accelerated as laws found for simpler systems were used to bootstrap explanations for more complex systems, gradually uncovering the "alphabet" used to describe those systems.

  5. Open Revolution, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Browsing the Web site of MIT's Open Courseware (OCW) project (http://ocw.mit.edu), you feel the stirring of a “my God, it's full of stars” transformation: you can borrow material for your courses, study other teachers' teaching methods, maybe even retake college courses you regret having slept through! Remarkably, OCW is just one highly visible part of an “open education movement.” The essays collected in Opening Up Education, edited by Toru Iiyoshi and M.S. Vijay Kumar, describe ways in which individuals and institutions intend to exploit digital communications technology, develop innovative and freely redistributable educational methods and resources, and improve education at all levels throughout the world.
    See Also: Iiyoshi T, Kumar MSV, editors (2008) Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge. MIT Press

    1. Technology: The textbook of the future, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: In the larger sense, of course, no one really knows where e-textbooks are headed. They just know that things are moving very fast. About all that's certain, says Klute, is that the next chapter of e-textbooks is now being written. "E-textbooks as we currently know them will look drastically different five years from now".
      See Also: Free digital textbooks at http://en.wikibooks.org

    2. Clicking on a new chapter, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The printed textbook will not vanish anytime soon " but a generation from now, it could be just a memory.
      Yet at the same time, new technology is not limited to delivering the same type of content in new formats. E-textbooks are part of a much larger technological shift in the nature of teaching and learning.

  6. Initial community evenness favours functionality under selective stress, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Summary: Ecosystem functioning is well known to be affected by species richness (the number of species), but species evenness (relative abundance of species) has been much less studied. Boon et al. investigated the effect of species unevenness in 1,260 denitrifying bacterial microcosms and found that initial evenness strongly improved ecosystem functioning, especially under stress.

  7. Social Circles: A Simple Structure for Agent-Based Social Network Models, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: None of the standard network models fit well with sociological observations of real social networks. This paper presents a simple structure for use in agent-based models of large social networks. Taking the idea of social circles, it incorporates key aspects of large social networks such as low density, high clustering and assortativity of degree of connectivity. The model is very flexible and can be used to create a wide variety of artificial social worlds.

  8. Faith in the Algorithm, Part 2: Computational Eudaemonics, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Eudaemonics is the study of the nature, causes, and conditions of human well-being. According to the ethical theory of eudaemonia, reaping satisfaction and fulfillment from life is not only a desirable end, but a moral responsibility. However, in modern society, many individuals struggle to meet this responsibility. Computational mechanisms could better enable individuals to achieve eudaemonia by yielding practical real-world systems that embody algorithms that promote human flourishing. This article presents eudaemonic systems as the evolutionary goal of the present day recommender system.
    See Also: http://faithinthealgorithm.net/

  9. Brain On A Chip?, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: How does the human brain run itself without any software? Find that out, say European researchers, and a whole new field of neural computing will open up. A prototype brain on a chip' is already working. "We know that the brain has amazing computational capabilities," remarks Karlheinz Meier, a physicist at Heidelberg University. "Clearly there is something to learn from biology. I believe that the systems we are going to develop could form part of a new revolution in information technology." (...) The human brain is often likened to a computer, but it differs from everyday computers in three important ways (...).
    • Source: Brain On A Chip?, ScienceDaily & ICT Results, 2009/03/23
    • Contributed by Atin Das - dasatinayahoo.co.in

  10. The Implications of Multiple Circadian Clock Origins, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: (...) the key circadian proteins of mammals appear completely unrelated to the key circadian proteins of cyanobacteria. Although negative evidence must be interpreted with great caution (“absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”), there is no relationship evident between the circadian proteins of cyanobacteria and those of mammals. As this is not the case for many other classes of proteins, the strong suggestion is that circadian rhythms have arisen at least twice, once in an ancestor of present-day cyanobacteria and then again in an ancestor of animals.

  11. Chemistry: Three in one, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:
    Made from silica, the material has three separate but interwoven continuous porous channels (pictured). Until now, scientists have only managed to construct mesoporous silica materials containing at most two independent pore systems.
    See Also: Nature Chem. doi:10.1038/nchem.166 (2009)

  12. Evolution: Biology's next top model?, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: As the water temperatures plunged by about 5 °C to below zero over the next few million years, most fish became extinct or moved on to warmer climes. But one group, the Notothenioidei, remained. Thanks to some extraordinary evolutionary innovations, these bottom-dwellers radiated, speciated and ultimately dominated. Crucial proteins shifted shape so they could work at cold temperatures, and a digestive enzyme fragment took on a new role as antifreeze.

    1. On the Origin of Flowering Plants, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: How did flowering plants diversify and spread so rapidly across the globe? From rice paddies to orange groves, alpine meadows to formal gardens, prairies to oak-hickory forests, the 300,000 species of angiosperms alive today shape most terrestrial landscapes and much of human life and culture. Their blooms color and scent our world; their fruits, roots, and seeds feed us; and their biomass provides clothing, building materials, and fuel. And yet this takeover, which took place about 100 million years ago, apparently happened in a blink of geological time, just a few tens of millions of years.

    2. Mutated Gene In Zebrafish Sheds Light On Blindness In Humans, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Among zebrafish, the eyes have it. Inside them is a mosaic of light-sensitive cells whose structure and functions are nearly identical to those of humans. There, biologists at The Florida State University discovered a gene mutation that determines if the cells develop as rods (the photoreceptors responsible for dim-light vision) or as cones (the photoreceptors needed for color vision). (...) are the first scientists to identify the crucial function of a previously known gene called "tbx2b." The researchers have named the newfound allele (a different form of a gene) "lor" -- for "lots-of-rods" -- because the mutation results in too many rods (...).

    3. Darwin's One Special Difficulty': Celebrating Darwin 200, Biol. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Darwin identified eusocial evolution, especially of complex insect societies, as a particular challenge to his theory of natural selection. A century later, Hamilton provided a framework for selection on inclusive fitness. Hamilton's rule is robust and fertile, having generated multiple subdisciplines over the past 45 years. His suggestion that eusociality can be explained via kin selection, however, remains contentious. I review the continuing debate on the role of kin selection in eusocial evolution and suggest some lines of research that should resolve that debate.

  13. The cancer genome, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: All cancers arise as a result of changes that have occurred in the DNA sequence of the genomes of cancer cells. Over the past quarter of a century much has been learnt about these mutations and the abnormal genes that operate in human cancers. We are now, however, moving into an era in which it will be possible to obtain the complete DNA sequence of large numbers of cancer genomes. These studies will provide us with a detailed and comprehensive perspective on how individual cancers have developed.
    • Source: The cancer genome, Michael R. Stratton, Peter J. Campbell & P. Andrew Futreal, DOI: 10.1038/nature07943, Nature 458, 719-724, 2009/04/09

    1. Cancer: When restriction is good, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: It is well established that dietary restriction, which involves limiting nutrient intake below normal levels but without reaching malnutrition, extends lifespan in most, if not all, species " probably including humans. This amazing benefit is likely to be due to the evolutionary advantage of keeping alive under suboptimal nutrient availability, and postponing reproduction until food is plentiful. On the basis of this evolutionary hypothesis, dietary restriction should prolong not only lifespan, but also youthfulness. Indeed, in both rodents and humans, limiting caloric intake delays many age-associated traits and diseases, including cognitive deterioration and cancer.

  14. Building a Better Nano-Biped, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Among the many molecular motors that occur in nature, perhaps the most striking ones are the bipedal walkers such as the kinesin and dynein proteins (1). These molecules, together with the microtubules upon which they walk, provide cells with mechanisms to transport macromolecules and organelles through the viscous internal environment of the cell. On page 67 of this issue, Omabegho et al. (2) present a remarkable DNA-based walking system that promises to open the door to a wide assortment of experiments and applications in nanotechnology.

    1. A Bipedal DNA Brownian Motor with Coordinated Legs, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: A substantial challenge in engineering molecular motors is designing mechanisms to coordinate the motion between multiple domains of the motor so as to bias random thermal motion. For bipedal motors, this challenge takes the form of coordinating the movement of the biped's legs so that they can move in a synchronized fashion. To address this problem, we have constructed an autonomous DNA bipedal walker that coordinates the action of its two legs by cyclically catalyzing the hybridization of metastable DNA fuel strands.

  15. Quark statistics shed light on Universe's symmetry, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The findings, by Gary Gibbons and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge, UK, are spurring discussions about whether the laws of physics are 'fine-tuned' " that is, whether the magnitudes of various physical constants should be considered peculiarly unlikely. And they hint at the possibility of probing physics beyond the standard model, which describes all the known particles and forces at the subatomic scale.

  16. Multifractal Behaviors In Foreign Exchange Markets., Fractals Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: A two-phase phenomenon in three financial exchange prices is studied. To understand the underlying mechanism for the formation of market prices, we perform the multifractal analysis and the detrended fluctuation analysis in terms of time series of market prices. We also examine higher order temporal correlations for the market price. Although the multifractal properties of market prices are obtained, it cannot be reproduced the binomial multiplicative process through that was used to understand fully developed turbulence.
    • Source: Multifractal Behaviors In Foreign Exchange Markets, S. Y. Kim, G. Lim, Ki-H. Chang, K. L. Kim, S. Y. Lee, I. H. Park, D. I. Lee, C.-H. You, K. Kim, DOI: 10.1142/S0218348X0900420X, Fractals, Mar. 2009
    • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

  17. Language Of Music Really Is Universal, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Native African people who have never even listened to the radio before can nonetheless pick up on happy, sad, and fearful emotions in Western music, according to a new report (...) shows that the expression of those three basic emotions in music can be universally recognized, the researchers said. "These findings could explain why Western music has been so successful in global music distribution, even in music cultures that do not as strongly emphasize the role of emotional expression in their music," said (...). The expression of emotions is a basic feature of Western music, (...).

  18. Parental Effects In Ecology And Evolution: Mechanisms, Processes And Implications, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: As is the case with any metaphor, parental effects mean different things to different biologists-from developmental induction of novel phenotypic variation to an evolved adaptation, and from epigenetic transference of essential developmental resources to a stage of inheritance and ecological succession. (...) Here, we suggest that by emphasizing the complexity of causes and influences in developmental systems and by making explicit the links between development, natural selection and inheritance, the study of parental effects enables deeper understanding of developmental dynamics of life cycles and provides a unique opportunity to explicitly integrate development and evolution. (...)

  19. Persistence and Success in the Attention Economy, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: A hallmark of the attention economy is the competition for the attention of others. Thus people persistently upload content to social media sites, hoping for the highly unlikely outcome of topping the charts and reaching a wide audience. And yet, an analysis of the production histories and success dynamics of 10 million videos from YouTube revealed that the more frequently an individual uploads content the less likely it is that it will reach a success threshold. This paradoxical result is further compounded by the fact that the average quality of submissions does increase with the number of uploads, with the likelihood of success less than that of playing a lottery.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Living Model Of Basic Units Of Human Brain Created, 2009/03/22, ScienceDaily & Aston University
      2. Internet Can Warn Of Ecological Changes, 2009/03/23, ScienceDaily & University of East Anglia
      3. Wild Bees Can Be Effective Pollinators: Three-Year Study Finds Possible Alternatives To Honey Bees, 2009/03/26, Innovations-report
      4. Two New Greenhouse Gases Growing, 2009/03/26, Innovations-report
      5. Protein Helps Immune Cells To Divide And Conquer, R. Marshall, 2009/03/27, vnunet.com
      6. Face Recognition: The Eyes Have It, 2009/03/27, ScienceDaily & Public Library of Science
      7. How Groups Can Foster Consensus: The Case of Local Cultures, Patrick Groeber, Frank Schweitzer and Kerstin Press, 2009/03/31, JASSS 12(2)
      8. Self-Assembly of a Statistically Self-Similar Fractal, Aaron Sterling, 2009/04/10, arXiv:0904.1630
      9. Completing The Cycle: Maternal Effects As The Missing Link In Plant Life Histories, K. Donohue - k.donohueaduke.edu, 2009/04/27, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0291
      10. From exact sciences to life phenomena: Following Schrödinger and Turing on Programs, Life and Causality, Giuseppe Longo, 2009/05, Information and Computation Volume 207, Issue 5, Pages 545-558, DOI: 10.1016/j.ic.2008.11.002
      11. Stochastic And Deterministic Processes Jointly Structure Tropical Arthropod Communities, M. D. F. Ellwood - mdfe2acam.ac.uk, A. Manica, W. A. Foster, Apr. 2009, Online 2009/02/08, Ecology Letters, DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01284.x
      12. Towards A Worldwide Wood Economics Spectrum, J. Chave - chaveacict.fr, D. Coomes, S. Jansen, S. L. Lewis, N. G. Swenson, A. E. Zanne, Apr. 2009, Online 2009/02/20, Ecology Letters, DOI: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2009.01285.x
      13. Stability And Bifurcation Of A Two-Neuron Network With Distributed Time Delays, C.-H. Hsu, S.-Y. Yang, T.-H. Yang, T.-S. Yang, online 2009/03/19, Nonlinear Analysis: Real World Applications, DOI: 10.1016/j.nonrwa.2009.03.004

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Memorial Service for Dr Gottfried Mayer, Founding Editor Complexity Digest, Taipei, Taiwan (1954-2009). Video [RM], 09/02/13

      2. Making Connections: In Memory and Celebration of the Life of Dr. Gottfried Mayer (1954-2009). Video [RM] [MPG], 09/02/13

      3. Eulogy for Gottfried Mayer by Dean LeBaron [WMV, 25 Mb], [RM, 10 Mb], 09/02/10

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

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

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. 7th Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, 09/04/27-29, Boston, MA
      2. Morphogenesis in Living Systems, Paris, France, 09/05/14-16
      3. 2nd Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference (CHAOS2009), Chania, Crete, Greece, 09/06/01-05
      4. International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, Zurich, Switzerland, 09/06/8-13
      5. NECSI Summer School, Cambridge, MA, USA, 09/06/08-26
      6. 20th Intl Conf on Noise and Fluctuations, Pisa, Italy, 09/06/14-19
      7. First International Workshop on Morphogenetic Engineering, Paris, France, 09/06/19
      8. 17th Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES 2009), Rapperswil, Switzerland, 09/06/21-24
      9. First Latin American Conference on Computing and Philosophy, Mexico City, Mexico, June 22-23, 2009
      10. Emergence in Chemical Systems, , Anchorage, Alaska, 09/06/22-26
      11. From Systemic Thinking to Systems Design and Systems Practice, Xanthi, Greece, 09/06/24-27
      12. International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks - CASoN 2009, Fontainebleau, France, 09/06/24-27
      13. CCSA 2009 The 3rd International Conference on Complex Systems and Applications, University of Le Havre, France. 09/06/29-07/02
      14. 7th Intl Conf on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA. 09/07/10-13
      15. Complex Systems and Social Simulations, Budapest, Hungary, 09/07/13-24
      16. Second International Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/07/20-21
      17. The 19th Annual Intl Conf Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences , Milwaukee, WI USA, 09/07/23-25
      18. 2009 Intl Conf of the System Dynamics Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 09/07/26-30
      19. 5th Intl Conf on Fractals and Dynamic Systems in Geoscience, Townsville, Australia, 09/08/13-14
      20. Darwin Meets von Neumann: European Conference on Artificial Life 2009, Budapest, Hungary, 09/09/13-16
      21. IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems , San Francisco, California, 09/09/14-18
      22. 6th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association, Guilford, UK, 09/09/14-18
      23. European Conference on Complex Systems 2009 (ECCS'09), University of Warwick, UK, 09/09/21-25
      24. International Workshop on Natural Computing, Himeji, Japan, 09/09/23-25
      25. The 2009 International Conference on Adaptive & Intelligent Systems (ICAIS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/09/24-26
      26. Complexity Theories of Cities have come of Age, Delft Netherlands, 09/09/24-27
      27. Natural and Biomimetic Mechanosensing, Dresden, Germany, 09/10/26-28
      28. The 11th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems (SSS 2009) , Lyon, France, 09/11/03-06
      29. 9th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, Pisa, Italy, 09/11/30-12/02
      30. 5th Biennial Convention about the philosophical, epistemological, and methodological implications of the Theory of Complexity, Havana, Cuba, 10/01/6-8

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      • Postdoc positions: The C3 - Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad, a new interdisciplinary, inter-institutional research center based at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) plans to have several openings for postdoctoral candidates in the coming months. The center currently has affiliated to it more than 50 researchers and 40 students from all the major scientific disciplines. The main research topics at the moment are: Genetic networks and Systems Biology, Ecological Complexity, Social Complexity and Computational Intelligence. Salary will be in the region of 20-25,000 pesos per month.
        Interested candidates are asked to send a CV, a statement of research interests and the names of at least three potential referees to:
        Dr. Chris Stephens (Ecological Complexity and Computational Intelligence) stephens@nucleares.unam.mx
        Dra. Elena Alvarez-Buylla (Systems Biology) eabuylla@gmail.com
        Dr. Gustavo Martinez-Mekler (Social Complexity and other areas) mekler@ce.fis.unam.mx

      • New Book: Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell. Oxford University Press, 2009.
        What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer.
        In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields.
        Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity: A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.


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