Complexes

Biased media & social networks in Mexico

2012-05-21T05:38:00.001+02:00

The presidential elections in Mexico next July 1st are heating up the political landscape.

It has always been a tradition that most media support some candidate, in this case Enrique Peña Nieto (EPN) from PRI, who is ahead in their questionable polls. However, the information spreading on social networks is something they still cannot control.

On Friday, May 11th, EPN went to the Universidad Iberoamericana, one of the most recognized private universities in the country, where the students demonstrated their rejection towards him. Of course, none of this was seen in most media, one newspaper even Photoshopping their frontpage picture:

However, with half the students filming every moment with their smartphones, the real deal spread like wildfire on social networks and youtube. One of the claims to EPN was a police operation in the town of Atenco in the outskirts of Mexico City, while EPN was governor of the State of Mexico. State and federal police arrested dozens of people, raped about fifty women, and even killed some of the citizens. Even when EPN justified the spilled blood, there was no legal consequence. [The reason that triggered the Atenco conflict was the plan to build a new airport for Mexico City, paying landowners about $500 USD per acre. The people refused, they were repressed, and even so they kept their lands.]

Yesterday there were "Anti-EPN" demonstrations in several cities, with about 46,000 in Mexico City. In some places people were beaten by EPN followers. Today there were demonstrations in support of Andres Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in several cities all over the world (London, Washington, Paris, Dubai, Oslo, Brussels, Istambul, etc.) and all over the country. We will see how the media cover these. For yesterday's demonstration, one major newspaper suggested that it was organized by Josefina Vasquez Mota (JVM) supporters, a declaration which has been ridiculized in twitter.

It is clear that Internet and social networks are making it more difficult for the government and the media to manipulate the citizens. However, in Mexico only about one third of people have Internet access, and a large percentage of those are under voting age. Social networks are having an impact which makes the situation different from the last election six years ago. The question is whether this impact will be large enough to spread the news beyond Internet users, in the rural areas, where people on average have less education and are manipulated more easily. I wonder how can we learn from the Arab Spring.

Elections: Mexico 2012

2012-05-12T19:24:00.001+02:00

I've been meaning to start posting about the upcoming presidential elections to be held in Mexico on July 1st. The current government of Felipe Caledrón (who began his presidency in 2006 amidst proofs of fraud) has been characterized by a stagnation of the economy and a war declared against (most of) the drug cartels, leading to at least 60,000 people killed so far. Only in Ciudad Juárez, we had ten times the murder rate than in Baghdad during the recent U.S. occupation. Last year, a complaint was filed at the International Court in The Hague against Felipe Calderón and others, accusing them of crimes against humanity.

The perspective is not positive for Calderón, since he cannot go abroad like other ex-presidents, and most probably his party (PAN) will lose the presidency, given the failures of the two previous presidents: Calderón and Vicente Fox (2000-2006).

The candidates:

Josefina Vázquez Mota "JVM" (PAN), former minister of education and leader of her party's group in the lower congress.
Enrique Peña Nieto "EPN" (PRI, PVEM), former governor of the State of Mexico (2005-2011), and former administrator for his predecessor and uncle Arturo Montiel, who was accused of corruption and illegal enrichment during his term as governor, during which Peña was managing the finances of the state. His party PRI was in power for more than 70 years until 2000. He is also supported by the Green party (PVEM), which is right wing and their main political campaign is about legalizing death penalty and life sentences (senseless in a country where less than 10% of murders are ever punished).
Andres Manuel López Obrador "AMLO" (PRD, PT, MC), former mayor of Mexico City (2000-2005) and alleged winner of the 2006 presidential elections.
Gabriel Quadri de la Torre "GQT" (PANAL). Ecologist by profession, he is supported by the party of the leader of the teacher's union, Elba Esther Gordillo, who was a key player in the 2006 fraud, and has also been accused of corruption and suspected murder.

Polls have been suspiciously manipulated, giving differences of 10%-20% per poll, positioning EPN in first place (39-65%), JVM or AMLO in 2nd (10-33%), and Quadri last (0.5-9%). With such dramatic variances we cannot believe none. In any case, there has been a massive support by the media and the federal electoral institute of EPN, and even so, his popularity has been decreasing constantly in recent months.

Last sunday we had the first presidential debate, better reviewed in The Colbert Report.

Will keep on posting as news unfold, one key difference between this election and previous ones are the massive spread of news by social networks. We get to know things we usually wouldn't get to know via established media, and you will see Twitter treding topics related to Mexico in the coming weeks.

New draft: Complexity and Information: Measuring Emergence, Self-organization, and Homeostasis at Multiple Scales

2012-05-10T16:17:00.000+02:00

Concepts used in the scientific study of complex systems have become so widespread that their use and abuse has led to ambiguity and confusion in their meaning. In this paper we use information theory to provide abstract and concise measures of complexity, emergence, self-organization, and homeostasis. The purpose is to clarify the meaning of these concepts with the aid of the proposed formal measures. In a simplified version of the measures (focussing on the information produced by a system), emergence becomes the opposite of self-organization, while complexity represents their balance. We use computational experiments on random Boolean networks and elementary cellular automata to illustrate our measures at multiple scales.

Gershenson, C. & N. Fernández (2012). Complexity and Information: Measuring Emergence, Self-organization, and Homeostasis at Multiple Scales. C3 Report 2012.03. http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2026

The Past, Present and Future of Cybernetics and Systems Research

2012-04-12T17:13:00.001+02:00

Summary of "The Past, Present and Future of Cybernetics and Systems Research"
Symposium M at European Meetings on Cybernetics and Systems Research (EMCSR), Vienna, Austria, April 12, 2012.
Organizer: Carlos Gershenson

This guided reflection on the challenges and opportunities of cybernetics and systems research (CSR) included initial interventions by panelists Peter Erdi, Helena Knyazeva, Stefan Thurner, Peter Csermely, and Alexander Lazlo. Afterwards, the floor was opened to interventions from the general public and further interventions by panelists.

Commentaries were made from a broad variety of perspectives, but several general ideas can be distilled from the discussion. CSR have strongly influenced all scientific disciplines. As an example, the term "system" is used commonly in daily language. One of the breakthroughs of CSR lies in the search of commonalities across disciplines. Even when this was achieved to a certain degree, there is still a lack of a common language to communicate successfully, especially between the natural and social sciences.

Currently, the scientific study of complex systems has several commonalities with CSR. It could be argued that complexity has inherited many of the aims of CSR, and they can be distinguished roughly by complexity being dominated more by natural sciences and CSR more by social sciences, although there is a strong overlap. One of the aspects that has propagated complexity has been its ability to contrast its theories and dispose those that do not match observations. This is a challenge for CSR, where theories should also be contrasted with real data. Nevertheless, this is becoming feasible due to the increased accessibility to several sources of information.

It was suggested that CSR researchers should be humble (since our knowledge and cognitive abilities are limited), cautious (not to believe blindly in our models), an open minded (towards other disciplines and approaches). As our future unfolds, CSR has the opportunity to solve big problems of our globalized society. This makes CSR an ambitious endeavor. However, in order to find our limits we have to go beyond them.

New draft: Learning, Social Intelligence and the Turing Test - why an "out-of-the-box" Turing Machine will not pass the Turing Test

2012-03-26T23:28:00.000+02:00

Edmonds, B. & C. Gershenson (2012). Learning, Social Intelligence and the Turing Test - why an "out-of-the-box" Turing Machine will not pass the Turing Test. Invited talk at Turing Centenary Conference CiE 2012,
special session on "The Turing Test and Thinking Machines". CPM Report No.: 12-215

Abstract: The Turing Test (TT) checks for human intelligence, rather than any putative general intelligence. It involves repeated interaction requiring learning in the form of adaption to the human conversation partner. It is a macro-level post-hoc test in contrast to the definition of a Turing Machine (TM), which is a prior micro-level definition. This raises the question of whether learning is just another computational process, i.e. can be implemented as a TM. Here we argue that learning or adaption is fundamentally different from computation, though it does involve processes that can be seen as computations. To illustrate this difference we compare (a) designing a TM and (b) learning a TM, defining them for the purpose of the argument. We show that there is a well-defined sequence of problems which are not effectively designable but are learnable, in the form of the bounded halting problem. Some characteristics of human intelligence are reviewed including it's: interactive nature, learning abilities, imitative tendencies, linguistic ability and context-dependency. A story that explains some of these is the Social Intelligence Hypothesis. If this is broadly correct, this points to the necessity of a considerable period of acculturation (social learning in context) if an artificial intelligence is to pass the TT. Whilst it is always possible to 'compile' the results of learning into a TM, this would not be a designed TM and would not be able to continually adapt (pass future TTs). We conclude three things, namely that: a purely "designed" TM will never pass the TT; that there is no such thing as a general intelligence since it necessary involves learning; and that learning/adaption and computation should be clearly distinguished.

Full paper: http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.3376

TEDxDF talk: Semáforos auto-organizantes

2012-01-18T16:24:00.000+01:00

Last November I had the honor of participating in TEDxDF with a talk on self-organizing traffic lights. You can watch the video (in Spanish) at:

Mejorar el transporte público de la Ciudad de México es una idea que a todos se nos ocurre, pero pocos hacemos algo al respecto. Este no es el caso de Carlos, un apasionado del estudio científico de la complejidad: ¿Cómo podemos diseñar componentes de un sistema para que, por medio de sus interacciones, realicen una función deseada a nivel del sistema? Con su ponencia Carlos responderá esta pregunta y expondrá ideas aplicables al DF para mejorar diversos medios de transporte, afectando positivamente la calidad de vida de la población.

"New" Paper: Facing Complexity: Prediction vs. Adaptation

2011-12-19T17:09:00.000+01:00

One of the presuppositions of science since the times of Galileo, Newton, Laplace, and Descartes has been the predictability of the world. This idea has strongly influenced scientific and technological models. However, in recent decades, chaos and complexity have shown that not every phenomenon is predictable, even if it is deterministic. If a problem space is predictable, in theory we can find a solution via optimization. Nevertheless, if a problem space is not predictable, or it changes too fast, very probably optimization will offer obsolete solutions. This occurs often when the immediate solution affects the problem itself. An alternative is found in adaptation. An adaptive system will be able to find by itself new solutions for unforeseen situations.

Gershenson, C. (In Press). Facing Complexity: Prediction vs. Adaptation. To be published in Martorell, X. & Massip, A. (Eds.) Complexity and Language.
Full paper at http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3843
Versión en español en http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.4908

New Draft: Living in Living Cities

2011-11-17T15:45:00.001+01:00

This paper presents and overview of current and potential applications of living technology to urban problems. Living technology can be described as technology that exhibits the core features of living systems. These features can be useful to solve dynamic problems. In particular, urban problems concerning mobility, logistics, telecommunications, governance, safety, sustainability, and society and culture are presented, while solutions involving living technology are reviewed. Finally, the usefulness of describing cities as living systems is discussed.

Gershenson, C. (2011). Living in Living Cities. C3 Report 2011.09. http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.3659

New Draft: Are Minds Computable?

2011-10-14T16:55:00.000+02:00

This essay explores the limits of Turing machines concerning the modeling of minds and suggests alternatives to go beyond those limits.

Gershenson, C. (2011). Are Minds Computable? C3 Tech. Report 2011.08. http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3002

The Laws of Information

2011-09-07T17:16:00.000+02:00

1. Law of Information Transformation. Information will potentially be transformed by interacting with other information.
2. Law of Information Propagation. Information propagates as fast as possible.
3. Law of Requisite Complexity. More complex information will require more complex agents to perceive, act on, and propagate it.
4. Law of Information Criticality. Transforming and propagating information will tend to a critical balance be- tween its stability and its variability.
5. Law of Information Organization. Information produces constraints that regulate information production.
6. Law of Information Self-organization. Information tends to its preferred, most probable state.
7. Law of Information Potentiality. An agent can give different potential meanings to information.
8. Law of Information Perception. The meaning of information is unique for an agent perceiving it in unique, always changing open contexts.

More at: http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0304

Video Talk: Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems

2011-08-12T16:11:00.001+02:00

UPDATE: Video also on youtube.
You can find here the video (32 min) of a talk I gave at the last Lakeside Research Days in Klagenfurt, Austria. I speak about the results presented in this paper:

Gershenson C (2011) Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems. PLoS ONE 6(6): e21469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021469

The main idea is that self-organization can regulate public transportation systems in such a way that passengers wait less than the theoretical optimum. Of course, this means that the theory was wrong. Well, more precisely, theory made misguided assumptions.

I thank Christian Bettstetter and Wifried Elmenreich for organizing the Research Days and Chrisitan Philipp for making the video.

Tip: The video is high quality, so it takes some time to download, even if one chooses right click -> Switch to low quality. Cultivate patience...

Robocup

2011-07-10T22:02:00.000+02:00

Today was the last day of competitions for my first RoboCup. Already on its 15th year, one of its goals is to have by 2050 human-size robots playing against the soccer world champions and winning. I thought that was far fetched, but after seeing some robots in action, it doesn't seem that impossible anymore.

There are several different leagues, playing in simulations, wheeled and humanoid robots of different sizes. The simulated leagues can have complex strategies and make nice moves. Wheeled robots can move very fast and are very good at kicking. Team Water from China defeated TechUnited Eindhoven from The Netherlands in the final in an exciting 6-5. Those bots play good! At the human-robot match, Water tied 5-5 against an allowing group of team leaders. Humans could have easily won if they wished, but it was more of a friendly game...

The humanoid robots are a bit slower, but still there is action packed excitement in some matches. The Nao robots are a bit slow, but they can certainly kick the ball.

Perhaps the most interesting league is the @Home, where our group Golem competed for the first time. We weren't one of the best teams, but we gained lots of experience. The idea of the @Home league is to exhibit robot capabilities in domestic environments. We are still far away from fully autonomous general purpose robots at home, but small steps are being made.

Next year RoboCup will be held in Mexico City. See you there.

New Paper: Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems

2011-07-01T00:25:00.000+02:00

Gershenson C (2011) Self-Organization Leads to Supraoptimal Performance in Public Transportation Systems. PLoS ONE 6(6): e21469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0021469

Abstract:
The performance of public transportation systems affects a large part of the population. Current theory assumes that passengers are served optimally when vehicles arrive at stations with regular intervals. In this paper, it is shown that self-organization can improve the performance of public transportation systems beyond the theoretical optimum by responding adaptively to local conditions. This is possible because of a “slower-is-faster” effect, where passengers wait more time at stations but total travel times are reduced. The proposed self-organizing method uses “antipheromones” to regulate headways, which are inspired by the stigmergy (communication via environment) of some ant colonies.

Epidemiology and social networks

2011-06-10T23:23:00.000+02:00

Excerpt: By definition, noncommunicable diseases cannot be transmitted. However, there is recent evidence of the op- posite, involving a change of scientific paradigm. We have a notion that cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes are noncontagious. Actually, there are no physical mechanisms that help spread these diseases. Nevertheless, risk factors of several noncommunicable diseases—such as obesity, al- coholism and smoking—are spread across populations.

Epidemiology and social networks, Carlos Gershenson, Cir Cir 2011;79:199-200

Full Text:

In English: [pdf] [html]

En Español: [pdf] [html]

Postdoctoral Fellowships at UNAM

2011-05-24T18:07:00.000+02:00

//Please forward to whom may be interested.

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships.

Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last three years and be under 36 years, both to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. In previous years, there has been a 50% acceptance rate. Candidates are evaluated mainly by their number of papers published in ISI-indexed journals.

The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems, artificial life, information, evolution, cognition, robotics, and/or philosophy.

Interested candidates should send CV and a tentative project (1 paragraph) to cgg-at-unam.mx
Projects can be inspired from: http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/projects.html

Postdoctoral fellowships are between one and three years (renewing each year).
Spanish is not a requisite.
Accepted candidates would be working at the Computer Science Department of the IIMAS (http://turing.iimas.unam.mx ), and/or at the Center for Complexity Sciences (http://c3.fisica.unam.mx/ ), both at UNAM's main campus.
To know more about UNAM, please visit http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/unam.html

Call is available at http://dgapa.unam.mx/becas/posdoctorales/becas_posdoc_conv_2011.pdf [in Spanish].
Application Deadlines:
June 2nd (to start in September 1st 2011)
September 29th (tentative, to start March 1st, 2012)

New draft: The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy

2011-05-18T14:43:00.000+02:00

Gershenson, C. (2011). The Implications of Interactions for Science and Philosophy. C3 Report 2011.04.

Abstract: Reductionism has dominated science and philosophy for centuries. Complexity has recently shown that interactions---which reductionism neglects---are relevant for understanding phenomena. When interactions are considered, reductionism becomes limited in several aspects. In this paper, I argue that interactions imply non-reductionism, non-materialism, non-predictability, non-Platonism, and non-nihilism. As alternatives to each of these, holism, informism, adaptation, contextuality, and meaningfulness are put forward, respectively. A worldview that includes interactions not only describes better our world, but can help to solve many open scientific, philosophical, and social problems caused by implications of reductionism.

Full text: http://arxiv.org/abs/1105.2827

New draft: Polyethism in a colony of artificial ants

2011-04-19T04:26:00.001+02:00

Marriott, Chris & Carlos Gershenson. Polyethism in a colony of artificial ants. C3 Report 2011.03.

Abstract: We explore self-organizing strategies for role assignment in a foraging task carried out by a colony of artificial agents. Our strategies are inspired by various mechanisms of division of labor (polyethism) observed in eusocial insects like ants, termites, or bees. Specifically we instantiate models of caste polyethism and age or temporal polyethism to evaluate the benefits to foraging in a dynamic environment. Our experiment is directly related to the exploration/exploitation trade of in machine learning.

Full text: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3152

New draft: Self-organizing traffic lights at multiple-street intersections

2011-04-15T17:08:00.000+02:00

Gershenson, C. & D. A. Rosenblueth (2011). Self-organizing traffic lights at multiple-street intersections. C3 Report 2011.02

Summary: Traffic light coordination is a complex problem. In this paper, we extend previous work on an abstract model of city traffic to allow for multiple street intersections. We test a self-organizing method in our model, showing that it is close to theoretical optima and superior to a traditional method of traffic light coordination.

Abstract: The elementary cellular automaton following rule 184 can mimic particles flowing in one direction at a constant speed. This automaton can therefore model highway traffic. In a recent paper, we have incorporated intersections regulated by traffic lights to this model using exclusively elementary cellular automata. In such a paper, however, we only explored a rectangular grid. We now extend our model to more complex scenarios employing an hexagonal grid. This extension shows first that our model can readily incorporate multiple-way intersections and hence simulate complex scenarios. In addition, the current extension allows us to study and evaluate the behavior of two different kinds of traffic light controller for a grid of six-way streets allowing for either two or three street intersections: a traffic light that tries to adapt to the amount of traffic (which results in self-organizing traffic lights) and a system of synchronized traffic lights with coordinated rigid periods (sometimes called the "green wave" method). We observe a tradeoff between system capacity and topological complexity. The green wave method is unable to cope with the complexity of a higher-capacity scenario, while the self-organizing method is scalable, adapting to the complexity of a scenario and exploiting its maximum capacity. Additionally, in this paper we propose a benchmark, independent of methods and models, to measure the performance of a traffic light controller comparing it against a theoretical optimum.

Full paper at: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.2829

CfP: ECAL 2011

2011-02-23T20:17:00.000+01:00

CALL FOR PAPERS: ECAL 2011

<< Back to the origins of Alife >>

ECAL 2011, European Conference on Artificial Life,
an international conference on the simulation and synthesis of living systems

8-12 August 2011, Paris, France
www.ecal11.org

=====================

Artificial Life is an interdisciplinary undertaking that investigates the fundamental properties of living systems through the simulation and synthesis of biological entities and processes. It also attempts to design and build artificial systems that display properties of organisms, or societies of organisms, out of abiotic or virtual parts.

ECAL, the European Conference on Artificial Life, is a biennial event that alternates with the US-based Alife conference series.

---------------------

Welcome to ECAL 2011! Back then, in the early 1990's, the first two ECAL conferences in Paris and Brussels were mainly centered on theoretical biology and the physics of complex systems. Today, we feel that Alife can look back on these origins and take more inspiration from new developments at the intersection between computer science and theoretical biology — thus it is our wish to refocus the conference on *complex biological systems*. Closing a loop, this ECAL will mark the 20th anniversary of the 1st ECAL and will be framed as a tribute to the late Francisco Varela, co-organizer in 1991 with two of this year's committee members (Paul Bourgine, CREA, and Hugues Bersini, IRIDIA). We look forward to seeing you in Paris.

** You are invited to submit papers (full and abstract) to this exciting event! **

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
---------------------
* Eric Wieschaus, Princeton University, 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology
* Jacques Demongeot, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble
* David Harel, Weizmann Institute of Science
* James D. Murray, Universities of Washington and Oxford
* Jordan Pollack, Brandeis University
* Ricard Solé, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona

IMPORTANT DATES
---------------------
o Workshop proposal submission: February 21, 2011
o Workshop proposal notification: February 28, 2011
o PAPER & ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: April 6, 2011
o Paper & abstract notification: May 20, 2011
o Camera-ready versions: June 10, 2011
o Late registration: June 10, 2011
o End of registration: July 31, 2011
o Conference: August 8-12, 2011

THEMES
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"A new body of disciplines": Over the past two decades, biological knowledge has grown at an unprecedented rate, giving rise to new disciplines such as systems biology —- testimony of the striking progress of modeling and quantitative methods across the field. During the same period, highly speculative ideas have matured, and entire conferences and journals are now devoted to them. Synthesizing artificial cells, simulating large-scale biological networks, storing and making intelligent use of an exponentially growing amount of data (e.g., microarrays), exploiting biological substrates for computation and control, and deploying bio-inspired engineering are all cutting-edge topics today.

"Life itself": ECAL 2011 will leverage the remarkable development of biological modeling and extend the topics of Artificial Life to the fundamental properties of living organisms: their multiscale pattern-forming morphodynamics, their autopoiesis, robustness, capacity to self-repair, cognitive capacities, and co-adaptation at all levels, including ecological ones. ECAL 2011 will bring together a large interdisciplinary community of biologists, computer scientists, physicists, and mathematicians. It will invite them to reflect on how traditional boundaries between disciplines have become blurred, and to revisit in depth what constitutes “life”.

Papers are welcome in all areas of Artificial Life, including, but not limited to:

- (Chemical) Self-Assembly & Complexity
- Artificial Chemistries
- Biological & Chemical Information Processing and Production
- Biosemiotics
- Complex Networks
- Emergent Engineering
- Evolutionary & Learning Dynamics
- Minimal (Bottom up) Synthetic Cells
- Minimal Cognition & Physical Intelligence
- Mixed Living (Technology) Systems
- Modular Robotics
- Morphogenesis, Generative & Developmental Systems
- Multilevel Ecologies
- Organizations & Collective Intelligence
- Origins of Life
- Philosophy of Artificial Life & Living Technology
- Protocellular Energetics & Metabolic Networks
- Robotic Energy Autonomy
- Robotic Self-Assembly
- Socio-Technical Systems
- Swarm Intelligence
- Systems Biology
- Theoretical & Computational Frameworks
- Top-Down Artificial Cells

Authors are encouraged to explain how their work sheds light on the fundamental properties of living systems and makes progress on the important open questions identified during previous meetings.

PAPER/ABSTRACT FORMAT
---------------------
Detailed information concerning the formatting guidelines, templates, online submission process, and proceedings can be found at http://www.ecal11.org/submission

There are two options for submission: either *full paper* or *abstract*. Note that the format is exactly the same for both options. The only difference resides in the number of pages and type of contents:

1. Full papers have an *8-page* maximum length and should report on new, unpublished work

2. Abstracts are limited to a *2-page* length and should discuss work previously published in a journal. It is therefore essential that a reference to the previous article is clearly cited in the abstract.

All submissions will be subject to peer review, and all accepted submissions will be allocated either an oral presentation slot or a poster slot with no distinction being made between the two submission options (full paper or abstract).

PUBLICATION
---------------------
Every accepted full-paper and abstract, which was submitted to the main conference (not the satellite workshops), will be published by MIT Press in a single online open-access proceedings volume.

The top 10 accepted publications will have the opportunity to publish a revised and expanded version of their conference paper in the Artificial Life journal.

LOCATION
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The conference will be held at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris (CIUP), located on a wooded park at the southern edge of the French capital. See more information at http://www.ecal11.org/venue

Registration information will be posted soon at http://www.ecal11.org/registration

ORGANIZATION
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* René Doursat (chair)
Complex Systems Institute/CREA, Ecole Polytechnique & CNRS, Paris

* Hugues Bersini
IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles

* Paul Bourgine
Complex Systems Institute/CREA, Ecole Polytechnique & CNRS, Paris

* Mario Giacobini (program chair)
Molecular Biotechnology Center, University of Torino

* Tom Lenaerts (program chair)
Department of Computer Science, Université Libre de Bruxelles

* Marco Dorigo
IRIDIA, Université Libre de Bruxelles

PROGRAM COMMITTEE
---------------------
* Hussein Abbass * Bart De Boer * Daniel Lobo * Hiroki Sayama
* Andy Adamatzky * Ralf Der * Fernando Lobo * Matthias Scheutz
* Chris Adami * Gianni Di Caro * Robert Lowe * Thomas Schmickl
* Andreas Albrecht * Cecilia Di Chio * Penousal Machado * Marc Schoenauer
* Fernando Almeida E Costa * Ezequiel A. Di Paolo * Steven Maere * Luis Seabra Lopes
* Lee Altenberg * Peter Dittrich * Davide Marocco * Roberto Serra
* Paul Andrews * Marco Dorigo * John Mccaskill * Cosma Shalizi
* Takaya Arita * Alan Dorin * Chris Mcewan * Linda Smith
* Wolfgang Banzhaf * Rene Doursat * Barry Mcmullin * Ricard Sole
* Xabier E. Barandiaran * Marc Ebner * Jose Mendes * Antoine Spicher
* Andrea Baronchelli * Arantza Etxeberria * Olivier Michel * Peter Stadler
* Zoltan Barta * Nazim Fates * Martin Middendorf * Susan Stepney
* Jacob Beal * Christoph Flamm * Eduardo Miranda * Charles Taylor
* Mark Bedau * Luca Gambardella * Colin Molter * Tim Taylor
* Randall Beer * Carlos Gershenson * Luís Moniz Pereira * Gianluca Tempesti
* Tony Belpaeme * Mario Giacobini * Sara Montagna * Christof Teuscher
* Peter Bentley * Takashi Gomi * Jason Moore * Jon Timmis
* Hugues Bersini * Roderich Gross * Federico Moran * Peter Todd
* Luc Berthouze * Thilo Gross * Chrystopher L. Nehaniv * Marco Tomassini
* Mauro Birattari * Pauline C Haddow * Jason Noble * Arne Traulsen
* Joris Bleys * Emma Hart * Stefano Nolfi * Elio Tuci
* Josh Bongard * Inman Harvey * Ann Nowe * Gunnar Tufte
* Paul Bourgine * Paulien Hogeweg * Charles Ofria * Ali Emre Turgut
* Seth Bullock * Phil Husbands * Alexandra Penn * Karl Tuyls
* Stefano Cagnoni * Fumiya Iida * Andrew Philippides * Jon Umerez
* Alexandre Campo * Yaochu Jin * Raphaël Plasson * Sven Van Segbroeck
* Philippe Capdepuy * Colin Johnson * Daniel Polani * Patricia A. Vargas
* Ciro Cattuto * Istvan Karsai * Vitorino Ramos * Mirko Viroli
* Anders Christensen * Jozef Kelemen * Charles Richter * Paul Vogt
* Dominique Chu * Serge Kernbach * Marylyn Ritchie * Richard Watson
* Netta Cohen * Daeeun Kim * Luis M. Rocha * Alan Winfield
* Luis Correia * Kalevi Kull * Miguel Rocha * Rachel Wood
* Ernesto Costa * Renaud Lambiotte * Pierre Rouze * Andrew Wuensche
* Tamás Czárán * Doron Lancet * Kepa Ruiz-Mirazo * Larry Yaeger
* Christian Darabos * Tom Lenaerts * Erol Sahin * Klauspeter Zauner
* Joachim De Beule * Pedro U. Lima * Francisco C. Santos * Tom Ziemke

CONTACT
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For further information about the conference program and travel arrangements, please see the website, http://www.ecal11.org. For questions about the submission, reviewing process and other issues, email to: contact@ecal11.org.

IWSOS'2011 Proceedings Online

2011-02-22T18:14:00.001+01:00

The Proceedings of IWSOS'2011 (starts tomorrow) are available in Google Books and in Springer.

Self-Organizing Systems: 5th International Workshop, IWSOS 2011, Karlsruhe, Germany, February 23-24. 2011. Proceedings. Edited by Christian Bettstetter and Carlos Gershenson, LNCS 6557, Springer, 2011.

New Draft: Modular Random Boolean Networks

2011-01-11T15:56:00.000+01:00

Poblanno-Balp, Rodrigo & Gershenson, Carlos (2011). Modular Random Boolean Networks. C3 Report 2011.01.

Abstract: Random Boolean networks (RBNs) have been a popular model of genetic regulatory networks for more than four decades. However, most RBN studies have been made with regular topologies, while real regulatory networks have been found to be modular. In this work, we extend classical RBNs to define modular RBNs. Statistical experiments and analytical results show that modularity has a strong effect on the properties of RBNs. In particular, modular RBNs are closer to criticality than regular RBNs.

Full text: http://arxiv.org/abs/1101.1893

Why facebook stopped working for me

2010-12-24T00:13:00.001+01:00

Facebook offers great functionalities, it is easy, fun, extensible... However, it seems that like many things which are positive for many people (e.g. automobiles), they get overused with unintended consequences (e.g. traffic jams).

OK, so I have 400+ friends on facebook. The problem is that I could spare like 5 minutes every other day to check the news feed. With so many people in my feed, I get what was posted 2 hours ago at most. Sure, there are ways of blocking applications, creating filters (e.g. with Better FB), but this does not work for me. There are just too many posts I am not interested about, but I am interested in few things that most people post about. It is difficult to categorize. Where is artificial intelligence when it is needed? I believe that algorithms similar to anti-spam filters would be immensely useful on social networks. For example, I am interested about the English postings of my Iranian friends, but I cannot make much of their Farsi posts... For users, it would be as easy as to add an "Unlike" button.

In Twitter I have a similar problem, but it is easier to unfollow people. Still, e.g. my friend @mauropm tweets about a hundred times a day. I can be interested in a couple of those, but I am unable to follow him because of the rest of his activity.

As feeds are becoming more and more widespread, it is becoming more and more necessary to develop AI algorithms to sort through the "relevant" stuff...
(read a big business opportunity)

Deadline Extended, Final CfP: Special Issue on Complex Networks, Artificial Life

2010-12-13T18:36:00.003+01:00

Call for Papers

Special Issue on Complex Networks

Artificial Life Journal

Motivation

As a result of the quality of the Complex Networks track at the ALife XII conference last August in Odense, Denmark and the interest of the attendants; we announce a call for papers for a special issue on this theme for the Artificial Life Journal.

Many complex systems are amenable to be described as networks. These include genetic regulatory, structural or functional cortical networks, ecological systems, metabolism of biological species, author collaborations, interaction of autonomous systems in the Internet, etc. A recent trend suggests to study common global topological features of such networks, e.g. network diameter, clustering coefficients, assortativity, modularity, community structure, etc.

Various network growth models have also been proposed and studied to emulate the features of the real-world networks, e.g. the preferential attachment model, which explains scale-free power law degree distributions observed in many real-world networks.

Another direction is to investigate network motifs and subgraphs in order to understand and analyse the local structure and function of networks. The presence of a certain motif in a network may mean that that motif plays an important role in the overall functionality of the network. Thus, functionality of specific motifs, including their information processing and control functions, is a challenging topic relevant in Artificial Life studies, such as genetic regulatory networks, cell signaling networks, and protein interaction networks.

In addition, propagation and processing of information within networks may be analysed as (Shannon) information dynamics. Such analysis requires to consider not only networks' topology, but also the time-series dynamics at individual nodes. Specific topics of interest include phase transitions of network properties between ordered and chaotic regimes, where information transfer is often maximised, and other nonlinear phenomena related to criticality in networks.

Goal

The intention of the special issue is to bring together research from both Artificial Life and Complex Networks communities, in order to facilitate cross-fertilization, increase exposure of both communities to relevant research and foster new collaborations.

Submission

Contributions to the Session should be prepared and submitted according to the Artificial Life journal guidelines, available at http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/sub/artl. Authors should also include a cover letter describing briefly the relevance of their article to the specific topic of this call. Every submission will be subject to full peer review.

Articles should NOT be submitted to the journal editor, but should be uploaded through the special issue website (http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~review ).

Papers will be judged by members of the Review Committee on their relevance to the call for papers, originality, clarity of the presentation, and overall quality.

Important Dates

Extended paper submission: January 7th, 2011

Paper notification: February 28th, 2011

Camera-ready papers due: March 31st, 2011

Review Committee

Chris Adami
Lee Altenberg
Alain Barrat
Randall Beer
Hugues Bersini
Johan Bollen
Markus Brede
Mikhail Burtsev
Alan Dorin
Nic Geard
Carlos Gershenson
Mario Giacobini
Juan Luis Jiménez Laredo
Joseph Lizier
Michael Mayer
Juan Julián Merelo Guervós
Oliver Obst
Charles Ofria
Mikhail Prokopenko
Tom Ray
Hiroki Sayama
Hideaki Suzuki
Vito Trianni
Elio Tuci
Rosalind Wang
Borys Wrobel
Larry Yaeger

Guest Editors

Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko

CSIRO, Australia

http://www.prokopenko.net/

Dr. Carlos Gershenson

IIMAS, UNAM, Mexico

http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/

Paper Published: The sigma profile: A formal tool to study organization and its evolution at multiple scales, Complexity

2010-12-10T14:52:00.002+01:00

Gershenson, C. (2010). The sigma profile: A formal tool to study organization and its evolution at multiple scales. Complexity, first published online: 10 NOV 2010. DOI: 10.1002/cplx.20350

Abstract
The σ profile is presented as a tool to analyze the organization of systems at different scales, and how this organization changes in time. Describing structures at different scales as goal-oriented agents, one can define σ ∈ [0,1] (satisfaction) as the degree to which the goals of each agent at each scale have been met. σ reflects the organization degree at that scale. The σ profile of a system shows the satisfaction at different scales, with the possibility to study their dependencies and evolution. It can also be used to extend game theoretic models. The description of a general tendency on the evolution of complexity and cooperation naturally follows from the σ profile. Experiments on a virtual ecosystem are used as illustration.

Full text
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cplx.20350
(send me an email if you do not have access and want a copy)

Science catching up science fiction

2010-12-10T14:46:00.000+01:00

The science: mice are born with genetic material of two males (fresh news).
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/12/look_dads_no_mum.html

The science fiction: dreams of a teenager (~12 years ago).
http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/jlagunez/npm1.htm [in Spanish...]