Complexity Digest 2011.22

2011/11/11

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

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Previous issue 2011.21 | Next issue 2011.23

Content

  1. The Language of Dendrites, Science
  2. The Brain's Social Network, Science
    1. Social Network Size Affects Neural Circuits in Macaques, Science
  3. Evolutionary biology: The path to sociality, Nature
    1. Stepwise evolution of stable sociality in primates, Nature
  4. Briefing: Can ecosystems show how to fix the euro?, New Scientist
  5. Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life, TED.com
    1. Paul Zak: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin, TED.com
    2. Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains, TED.com
    3. Allan Jones: A map of the brain, TED.com
  6. Another Reason to Exercise, Science
  7. Simulating the Social Processes of Science, JASSS
  8. Special issue on neuroscience: The autism enigma, Nature
  9. To End Poverty, What Works, What Doesn't and Why: A Conversation with the Authors of 'Poor Economics', Knowledge@Wharton
  10. Multi-Stage Complex Contagions, arXiv
    1. Recruitment dynamics in adaptive social networks, arXiv
  11. Daniel Kahneman: Beware the ‘inside view’, McKinsey Quaterly
  12. IBM Open-Sources Potential "Internet of Things" Protocol, ReadWrite Hack
  13. Computation Emerges from Adaptive Synchronization of Networking Neurons, PLoS ONE
  14. Temporal stability and psychological foundations of cooperation preferences, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
    1. Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
  15. Steve Jobs (1955"2011), Nature
  16. The Birth-Death-Mutation Process: A New Paradigm for Fat Tailed Distributions, PLoS ONE
  17. Mathematics: Alice in time, Nature
  18. Role of fractal dimension in random walks on scale-free networks, Eur. Phys. J. B
  19. Book Announcements
    1. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, W. W. Norton & Company
    2. Metaphorical Management: Using Intuition and Creativity as a Guiding Mechanism for Complex Systems, Springer
    3. Engineering Systems: Meeting Human Needs in a Complex Technological World, The MIT Press
    4. Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, Springer
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Event Announcements
    3. Video Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. The Language of Dendrites, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Animal survival depends on the ability to analyze the environment and act on it: escape predators, find food, select a mate. Understanding how the brain achieves this is one of the most fascinating and challenging problems in neuroscience. What sequence of steps converts sensory cues into behavior? In other words, how does the brain compute?
    • Source: The Language of Dendrites, Tiago Branco, DOI: 10.1126/science.1215079, Science Vol. 334 no. 6056 pp. 615-616, 2011/11/4

  2. The Brain's Social Network, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Keeping track of an extended network of Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections"not to mention those old-fashioned face-to-face relationships with neighbors and office mates"can certainly feel like a mental challenge. But does having a larger, more complex social network actually change the brain? A new study with macaques suggests it can.
    • Source: The Brain's Social Network, Greg Miller, DOI: 10.1126/science.334.6056.578, Science Vol. 334 no. 6056 pp. 578-579, 2011/11/4

    1. Social Network Size Affects Neural Circuits in Macaques, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: It has been suggested that variation in brain structure correlates with the sizes of individuals’ social networks. Whether variation in social network size causes variation in brain structure, however, is unknown. To address this question, we neuroimaged 23 monkeys that had been living in social groups set to different sizes. Subject comparison revealed that living in larger groups caused increases in gray matter in mid-superior temporal sulcus and rostral prefrontal cortex and increased coupling of activity in frontal and temporal cortex. Social network size, therefore, contributes to changes both in brain structure and function. The changes have potential implications for an animal’s success in a social context; gray matter differences in similar areas were also correlated with each animal’s dominance within its social network.

  3. Evolutionary biology: The path to sociality, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: (…) some hints about the sequence of events that led to the evolution of human social systems are emerging. The latest evidence comes from Shultz et al.1, who (…) trace the evolution of complex sociality within the order Primates. Their data provide a strong foundation for modelling the origins of hominid mating systems by constraining the range of likely trajectories of social change.

    1. Stepwise evolution of stable sociality in primates, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: (…) This supports suggestions that social living may arise because of increased predation risk associated with diurnal activity. Sociality based on loose aggregation is followed by a second shift to stable or bonded groups. This structuring facilitates the evolution of cooperative behaviours5 and may provide the scaffold for other distinctive anthropoid traits including coalition formation, cooperative resource defence and large brains.

  4. Briefing: Can ecosystems show how to fix the euro?, New Scientist Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The eurozone, like the rest of the world economy, is a complex networked system. That gives it properties economists rarely consider but which could help us understand the current crisis.

  5. Martin Hanczyc: The line between life and not-life, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    About this talk: In his lab, Martin Hanczyc makes "protocells," experimental blobs of chemicals that behave like living cells. His work demonstrates how life might have first occurred on Earth ... and perhaps elsewhere too.

    1. Paul Zak: Trust, morality -- and oxytocin, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      About this talk: What drives our desire to behave morally? Neuroeconomist Paul Zak shows why he believes oxytocin (he calls it "the moral molecule") is responsible for trust, empathy and other feelings that help build a stable society.

    2. Daniel Wolpert: The real reason for brains, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      About this talk: Neuroscientist Daniel Wolpert starts from a surprising premise: the brain evolved, not to think or feel, but to control movement. In this entertaining, data-rich talk he gives us a glimpse into how the brain creates the grace and agility of human motion.

    3. Allan Jones: A map of the brain, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      About this talk: How can we begin to understand the way the brain works? The same way we begin to understand a city: by making a map. In this visually stunning talk, Allan Jones shows how his team is mapping which genes are turned on in each tiny region, and how it all connects up.

  6. Another Reason to Exercise, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Modern medicine has demonstrated the virtues of healthy diet and routine exercise for cardiovascular health, preventing diabetes, and lowering cholesterol. But a role for exercise in combating neurodegenerative diseases is less well understood. (…) Fryer et al. (1) present compelling evidence suggesting that exercise might have a long-lasting beneficial effect on slowing neurodegenerative disease progression.
    • Source: Another Reason to Exercise, Aaron D. Gitler, DOI: 10.1126/science.1214714, Science Vol. 334 no. 6056 pp. 606-607, 2011/11/4

  7. Simulating the Social Processes of Science, JASSS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: This Special Section of JASSS presents a collection of position papers by philosophers, sociologists and others describing the features and issues the authors would like to see in social simulations of the many processes and aspects that we lump together as "science". It is intended that this collection will inform and motivate substantial simulation work as described in the last section of this introduction.

  8. Special issue on neuroscience: The autism enigma, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Everything about autism spectrum disorder conspires to make it hard to understand. It takes diverse forms, from profound communication and behavioural problems to social difficulties coupled with normal language and even precocious talents. (…) The prevalence of autism is rising " by some counts, steeply " but the reasons for that are unclear. Causes of the condition include a complicated mixture of genetic and environmental factors, most unknown (…). Its roots lie in the development of the human brain, a process that, despite huge leaps in neuroscience, remains mysterious. So as awareness rises and parents clamour for answers, scientists can offer few certainties. Hearsay and unsubstantiated theories sometimes fill the void.

  9. To End Poverty, What Works, What Doesn't and Why: A Conversation with the Authors of 'Poor Economics', Knowledge@Wharton Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Summary: MIT economists Abhijeet Banerjee and Esther Duflo approach global poverty much as a medical researcher might set about finding the treatment for a disease: They believe in conducting small, randomized trials to see what works, what doesn't and why. Their book, Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, explains this approach. Last week, the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs named it the best business book of 2011. Knowledge@Wharton spoke with Banerjee and Duflo at a conference in Goa, India, about their concepts and how they can help rescue millions from destitution.

  10. Multi-Stage Complex Contagions, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The spread of ideas across a social network can be studied using complex contagion models, in which agents are activated by contact with multiple activated neighbors. The investigation of complex contagions can provide crucial insights into social influence and behavior-adoption cascades on networks. In this paper, we introduce a model of a multi-stage complex contagion on networks. (…) We demonstrate that the presence of even one additional stage introduces novel dynamical behavior, including interplay between multiple cascades, that cannot occur in single-stage contagion models.

    1. Recruitment dynamics in adaptive social networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: We model recruitment in adaptive social networks in the presence of birth and death processes. Recruitment is characterized by nodes changing their status to that of the recruiting class as a result of contact with recruiting nodes. Only a susceptible subset of nodes can be recruited. The recruiting individuals may adapt their connections in order to improve recruitment capabilities, thus changing the network structure adaptively.

  11. Daniel Kahneman: Beware the ‘inside view’, McKinsey Quaterly Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: In an excerpt from his new book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, the Nobel laureate recalls how an inwardly focused forecasting approach once led him astray, and why an external perspective can help executives do better.

  12. IBM Open-Sources Potential "Internet of Things" Protocol, ReadWrite Hack Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: It would be the current data explosion, times itself. A projected 24 billion simultaneous devices by the year 2020, including RFID tags on shipping crates, heart rate monitors, GPS devices, smartphone firmware, automobile maintenance systems, and yes, not a joke, earrings may become more socially active than any teenage human being presently alive. Tens of billions of devices, billions of messages per hour.

  13. Computation Emerges from Adaptive Synchronization of Networking Neurons, PLoS ONE Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Here we show that computation can be seen as a feature emerging from the collective dynamics of an ensemble of networking neurons, which interact by means of adaptive dynamical connections. Namely, by associating logical states to synchronous neuron's dynamics, we show how the usual Boolean logics can be fully recovered, and a universal Turing machine can be constructed.

  14. Temporal stability and psychological foundations of cooperation preferences, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: A core element of economic theory is the assumption of stable preferences. We test this assumption in public goods games by repeatedly eliciting cooperation preferences in a fixed subject pool over a period of five months. We find that cooperation preferences are very stable at the aggregate level, and, to a smaller degree, at the individual level,...

    1. Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: [...] this paper experimentally investigates cooperation and non-binding communication in a two-stage game. More specifically, two treatments are considered: one with only pre-play communication and one where subjects can also communicate intra-play between the stages of the game.

  15. Steve Jobs (1955"2011), Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Apple co-founder Steve Jobs branded the Macintosh as “the computer for the rest of us”. Today, that includes toddlers too young to speak, who use Apple's iPad without adult help. His uncompromising vision survived rejection, ejection from the company he founded, and a fairy-tale return that transformed Apple into the most valuable company in the world. His passion to make computers beautiful and accessible to everyone reshaped the personal computer industry " and also music, mobile phones, books, magazines and films.

  16. The Birth-Death-Mutation Process: A New Paradigm for Fat Tailed Distributions, PLoS ONE Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The statistics emerging from the neutral birth-death-mutation (BDM) process is shown to fit marvelously many empirical distributions. While previous neutral theories have focused on the power-law tail, our theory economically and accurately explains the entire distribution. We thus suggest the BDM distribution as a standard neutral model: effects of fitness and selection are to be identified by substantial deviations from it.

  17. Mathematics: Alice in time, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Time haunts both Alice books. Lewis Carroll, author of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871), was also Charles Dodgson, mathematician and logician, and so was aware of the disturbing arguments, new in the mid-nineteenth century, that suggested our view of the geometry of space and time was not universal.
    As Dodgson, he was a devout Euclidean, believing that planes are flat and parallel lines never meet. As Lewis Carroll, he stepped across those boundaries.

  18. Role of fractal dimension in random walks on scale-free networks, Eur. Phys. J. B Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Fractal dimension is central to understanding dynamical processes occurring on networks; however, the relation between fractal dimension and random walks on fractal scale-free networks has been rarely addressed, despite the fact that such networks are ubiquitous in real-life world. In this paper, we study the trapping problem on two families of networks.

  19. Book Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter, W. W. Norton & Company Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      The "Theory of Everything" that appears to be emerging includes everything but us: the feelings, meanings, consciousness, and purposes that make us what we are. These most immediate phenomena are left unexplained by the natural sciences because they lack the physical properties that are assumed to be necessary for something to have physical consequences in the world. This book meticulously traces the emergence of a causal capacity from simple thermodynamics to self-organizing dynamics to living and mental dynamics, and it demonstrates how specific absences play the critical causal role in the organization of physical processes that generate these properties.

    2. Metaphorical Management: Using Intuition and Creativity as a Guiding Mechanism for Complex Systems, Springer Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      In times of general instability change management is a great challenge. Our fossil mental patterns are not sufficient any more to be able to navigate sensibly the global scenario of complexity. Metaphorical thinking is a method which releases creative impulses into every change process and is of practical use, activating collective knowledge as a new network resource at the same time. This book reflects modern economy, ecology, sustainability and perception from an artistic perspective. (...)

    3. Engineering Systems: Meeting Human Needs in a Complex Technological World, The MIT Press Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      Engineering, for much of the twentieth century, was mainly about artifacts and inventions. Now, it's increasingly about complex systems. As the airplane taxis to the gate, you access the Internet and check email with your PDA, linking the communication and transportation systems. Through scholarly discussion, concrete examples, and history, the authors consider the engineer's changing role, new ways to model and analyze these systems, the impacts on engineering education, and the future challenges of meeting human needs through the technologically enabled systems of today and tomorrow. (...)

    4. Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems, Springer Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      Mathematics of Complexity and Dynamical Systems is an authoritative reference to the basic tools and concepts of complexity, systems theory, and dynamical systems from the perspective of pure and applied mathematics. Complex systems are systems that comprise many interacting parts with the ability to generate a new quality of collective behavior through self-organization, e.g. the spontaneous formation of temporal, spatial or functional structures. The more than 100 entries in this wide-ranging, single source work provide a comprehensive explication of the theory and applications of mathematical complexity, covering ergodic theory, fractal, dynamical systems, perturbation theory, solitons, systems and control theory, etc.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Storage Balancing in Self-organizing Multimedia Delivery Systems, Anita Sobe, Wilfried Elmenreich and Laszlo B\"osz\"ormenyi, 2011/11/1, arXiv:1111.0242
      2. Hierarchical Synchrony of Phase Oscillators in Modular Networks, Per Sebastian Skardal and Juan G. Restrepo, 2011/11/3, arXiv:1111.0921
      3. Generalization of Conway's "Game of Life" to a continuous domain - SmoothLife, Stephan Rafler, 2011/11/7, arXiv:1111.1567
      4. A mathematical model of tumor–immune interactions, Robertson-Tessi M, El-Kareh A, Goriely A, October 2011, Journal of Theoretical Biology, in Press, DOI: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.10.027

    2. Event Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. The Dynamics of Disease, Workshop in Medical Systems Biology, Manchester, UK, 2011/11/28-12/02
      2. Network Frontier Workshop 2011, Evanston, IL, USA, 2011/12/01-02
      3. New England Complex Systems Institute Winter School, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2012/01/02-13
      4. 41th Winter Meeting on Statistical Physics, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, 2012/01/3-6
      5. VI Congreso Bienal Internacional Complejidad 2012, Havana, Cuba, 2012/01/10-13
      6. 38th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Špindlerův Mlýn, Czech Republic, 2012/01/21-27
      7. 4th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - ICAART 2012, Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal, 2012/02/6-8
      8. WIVACE 2012 Italian Workshop on Artificial Life and Evolutionary Computation "Artificial Life, Evolution and Complexity" , Parma, Italy, 2012/02/20-21
      9. 3rd Workshop on Complex Networks, Melbourne, Florida, USA, 2012/03/7-9
      10. evostar - the main european events on evolutionary computation eurogp, evocop, evobio, evomusart and evoapplications, Málaga, Spain, 2012/03/11-13
      11. IWSOS'12 (Sixth International Workshop on Self-Organizing Systems), Delft, The Netherlands, 2012/03/15-16
      12. 5th International Nonlinear Science Conference 2012, Barcelona, Spain, 2011/03/15-17
      13. IPCAT 2012: Ninth International Conference on Information Processing in Cells and Tissues, Cambridge, United Kingdom, 2012/03/31-04/02
      14. Collective Intelligence 2012, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2012/04/18-20
      15. 2012 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence, Brisbane, Australia, 2012/06/10-15
      16. GECCO 2012, Philadelphia, USA, 2012/07/7-11
      17. 25th European Conference on Operational Research, Vilnius, Lithuania, 2012/07/8-11
      18. ALife XIII: The Thirteenth International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Lansig, Michigan, USA, 2012/08/19-22
      19. 12th International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving From Nature (PPSN2012), Taormina, Italy, 2012/09/1-5
      20. ECCS'12: European Conference on Complex Systems, Brussels, Belgium, 2012/09/3-7

    3. Video Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Complexity Digest videos.
      2. Lakeside Labs videos.
      3. FuturICT videos.
      4. IFISC@uib.es seminars.
      5. ASSYST Digital Library.
      6. TED Talks.
      7. Edge Videos
      8. CERN Webcast Service.
      9. Dean LeBaron's Video Casts.

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share


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