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Jean-Baptiste Michel: The mathematics of history

Wed, 16 May 2012 20:34:00 +0200

What can mathematics say about history? According to TED Fellow Jean-Baptiste Michel, quite a lot. From changes to language to the deadliness of wars, he shows how digitized history is just starting to reveal deep underlying patterns.

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Global Survey of Complex Systems and Social Simulation

Wed, 16 May 2012 18:26:00 +0200

English version:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/survey_complex-systems_social-simulation ;

Spanish version:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/encuesta_sistemas-complejos_simulacion-social

French version:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/enquete_systemes-complexes_simulation-sociale ;

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A long-time limit for world subway networks

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:43:00 +0200

We study the temporal evolution of the structure of the world's largest subway networks in an exploratory manner. We show that, remarkably, all these networks converge to a shape that shares similar generic features despite their geographical and economic differences.

A long-time limit for world subway networks
Camille Roth, Soong Moon Kang, Michael Batty and Marc Barthelemy

J. R. Soc. Interface

Published online before print May 16, 2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/ rsif.2012.0259

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Science of Winning Soccer: Emergent pattern-forming dynamics in association football

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:40:00 +0200

While football (soccer) is alternately known as a sport, a national pastime, or a national obsession, the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) is the first to place soccer in the category of a complex social system. A new study from NECSI uses quantitative analysis to reveal the key team dynamics within a Premier League match.

L. Vilar, D. Araújo, K. Davids, Y. Bar-Yam, Science of Winning Soccer: Emergent pattern-forming dynamics in association football. Journal of Systems Science and Complexity (in press).

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Simulations of the social organization of large schools of fish whose perception is obstructed

Wed, 16 May 2012 17:38:00 +0200

Individual-based models have shown that simple interactions among moving individuals (repulsion, attraction and alignment) result in travelling schools that resemble those of real fish. In most models individuals interact with all neighbours within sensory range which usually includes almost all the individuals of the school. Thus, it implies (almost) global perception. However, in reality in large groups, individuals will only interact with their neighbours close by, because they cannot perceive those farther away, since they are masked by closer ones. Here, we have developed a new model to investigate how such obstruction of perception influences aspects of social organization in schools of up to 10,000 individuals.

Applied Animal Behaviour Science, Volume 138, Issue 3, Pages 142-151, May 2012, Authors:Hanspeter Kunz; Charlotte K. Hemelrijk

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applanim.2012.02.002

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Control and Modeling of Complex Systems: Cybernetics in the 21st Century, Festschrift in Honor of Hidenori Kimura

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:42:00 +0200

Control and Modeling of Complex Systems: Cybernetics in the 21st Century, Festschrift in Honor of Hidenori Kimura (Trends in Mathematics): Koichi Hashimoto, Yutaka Yamamoto, Yasuaki Oishi: Amazon.com: Kindle Store (Control and Modeling of Complex ...

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The economy of individuals: tapping the minds of many - Keynote Ross Dawson at TNW2012

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:40:00 +0200

Keynote Ross Dawson at TNW2012...

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Network Science in Education | Boston University

Wed, 16 May 2012 16:38:00 +0200

Welcome to the Network Science in Education site of the Center for Polymer Studies (CPS) Science Education Group at Boston University.

Our science education work is a significant aspect of the goals of our interdisciplinary research center in the Physics Department and Science and Mathematics Education Center. Our research is devoted to interdisciplinary study of aspects of polymer, random, fractal and complex systems.

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SFI Short Course - Exploring Complexity in Science and Technology

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:58:00 +0200

September 14-16, 2012
Stanford University
Palo Alto, California

This two-and-a-half day course is an intensive tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of effort that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. This course, sponsored by the Santa Fe Institute, is specifically designed for professionals, faculty, students and others who are curious to explore and apply this new transdisciplinary scientific approach.

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Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, by Philip Ball

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:33:00 +0200

There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to delve into matters that didn't concern you - after all, the original sin stemmed from a desire for forbidden knowledge. Through curiosity our innocence was lost.

Yet this hasn't deterred us. Today we spend vast sums trying to recreate the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of pure desire to know. There seems now to be no question too vast or too trivial to be ruled out of bounds: Why can fleas jump so high? What is gravity? What shape are clouds? Today curiosity is no longer reviled, but celebrated.

Examining how our inquisitive impulse first became sanctioned, changing from a vice to a virtue, Curiosity begins with the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. It reveals a complex story, in which the liberation - and the taming - of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade and empire.

By examining the rise of curiosity, we can ask what has become of it today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged and sold, how well it is being sustained and honoured, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.

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3 PhD positions on evolution of speech, VUB, Belgium

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:17:00 +0200

3 PhD positions on evolution of speech
Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium
Deadline: July first 2012
Envisaged starting date: September 2012

The AI-lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel is looking for three PhD students that will work on Bart de Boer’s European Research Council project “ABACUS”. The ABACUS project investigates (evolution of) cognitive mechanisms for dealing with combinatorial speech. It uses a combination of iterated learning experiments, individual learning experiments and computational modeling. For each of these lines of research, a PhD position is available. The PhDs of the different projects are expected to cooperate closely with each other.

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CoSMoS Workshop 2012

Mon, 14 May 2012 14:49:00 +0200

The 5th workshop on Complex Systems Modelling and Simulation (CoSMoS 2012) will take place as a satellite workshop of the Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation (UCUN) at the University of Orléans, France on 3rd September 2012.

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Foundations of Complex Systems: Emergence, Information and Prediction by (G. Nicolis, C. Nicolis)

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:59:00 +0200

This book provides a self-contained presentation of the physical and mathematical laws governing complex systems. Complex systems arising in natural, engineering, environmental, life and social sciences are approached from a unifying point of view using an array of methodologies such as microscopic and macroscopic level formulations, deterministic and probabilistic tools, modeling and simulation. This book can be used as a textbook by graduate students, researchers and teachers in science, as well as non-experts who wish to have an overview of one of the most open, markedly interdisciplinary and fast-growing branches of present-day science.

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Networked: The New Social Operating System (by Lee Rainie, Barry Wellman)

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:59:00 +0200

Daily life is connected life, its rhythms driven by endless email pings and responses, the chimes and beeps of continually arriving text messages, tweets and retweets, Facebook updates, pictures and videos to post and discuss. Our perpetual connectedness gives us endless opportunities to be part of the give-and-take of networking.

Some worry that this new environment makes us isolated and lonely. But in Networked, Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman show how the large, loosely knit social circles of networked individuals expand opportunities for learning, problem solving, decision making, and personal interaction. The new social operating system of "networked individualism" liberates us from the restrictions of tightly knit groups; it also requires us to develop networking skills and strategies, work on maintaining ties, and balance multiple overlapping networks. Rainie and Wellman outline the "triple revolution" that has brought on this transformation: the rise of social networking, the capacity of the Internet to empower individuals, and the always-on connectivity of mobile devices. Drawing on extensive evidence, they examine how the move to networked individualism has expanded personal relationships beyond households and neighborhoods; transformed work into less hierarchical, more team-driven enterprises; encouraged individuals to create and share content; and changed the way people obtain information. Rainie and Wellman guide us through the challenges and opportunities of living in the evolving world of networked individuals.

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Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial-and-Error for Business, Politics, and Society (by Jim Manzi)

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:58:00 +0200

How do we know which social and economic policies work, which should be continued, and which should be changed? Jim Manzi argues that throughout history, various methods have been attempted—except for controlled experimentation. Experiments provide the feedback loop that allows us, in certain limited ways, to identify error in our beliefs as a first step to correcting them. Over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, scientists invented a methodology for executing controlled experiments to evaluate certain kinds of proposed social interventions. This technique goes by many names in different contexts (randomized control trials, randomized field experiments, clinical trials, etc.).

Over the past ten to twenty years this has been increasingly deployed in a wide variety of contexts, but it remains the red-haired step child of modern social science. This is starting to change, and this change should be encouraged and accelerated, even though the staggering complexity of human society creates severe limits to what social science could be realistically expected to achieve. Randomized trials have shown, for example, that work requirements for welfare recipients have succeeded like nothing else in encouraging employment, that charter school vouchers have been successful in increasing educational attainment for underprivileged children, and that community policing has worked to reduce crime, but also that programs like Head Start and Job Corps, which might be politically attractive, fail to attain their intended objectives. Business leaders can also use experiments to test decisions in a controlled, low-risk environment before investing precious resources in large-scale changes – the philosophy behind Manzi’s own successful software company.

In a powerful and masterfully-argued book, Manzi shows us how the methods of science can be applied to social and economic policy in order to ensure progress and prosperity.

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Proving Darwin: Making Biology Mathematical (by Gregory Chaitin)

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:58:00 +0200

For years it has been received wisdom among most scientists that, just as Darwin claimed, all of the Earth’s life-forms evolved by blind chance. But does Darwin’s theory function on a purely mathematical level? Has there been enough time for evolution to produce the remarkable biological diversity we see around us? It’s a question no one has yet answered—in fact, no one has even attempted to answer it until now.

In this illuminating and provocative book, Gregory Chaitin argues that we can’t be sure evolution makes sense without a mathematical theory. He elucidates the mathematical scheme he’s developed that can explain life itself, and examines the works of mathematical pioneers John von Neumann and Alan Turing through the lens of biology. Chaitin presents an accessible introduction to metabiology, a new way of thinking about biological science that highlights the mathematical structures underpinning the biological world. Fascinating and thought-provoking, Proving Darwin makes clear how biology may have found its greatest ally in mathematics.

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

Thu, 10 May 2012 18:06:00 +0200

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.

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

Carlos Gershenson, Nelson Fernandez

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.2026

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Graphical Notation Reveals Topological Stability Criteria for Collective Dynamics in Complex Networks

Thu, 10 May 2012 16:28:00 +0200

We propose a graphical notation by which certain spectral properties of complex systems can be rewritten concisely and interpreted topologically. Applying this notation to analyze the stability of a class of networks of coupled dynamical units, we reveal stability criteria on all scales. In particular, we show that in systems such as the Kuramoto model the Coates graph of the Jacobian matrix must contain a spanning tree of positive elements for the system to be locally stable.

Graphical Notation Reveals Topological Stability Criteria for Collective Dynamics in Complex Networks

Anne-Ly Do, Stefano Boccaletti, and Thilo Gross

Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 194102 (2012)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.108.194102

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JP Rangaswami: Information is food

Wed, 09 May 2012 23:39:00 +0200

TED Talks

How do we consume data? At TED@SXSWi, technologist JP Rangaswami muses on our relationship to information, and offers a surprising and sharp insight: we treat it like food.

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Dragon-kings: mechanisms, statistical methods and empirical evidence

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:19:00 +0200

This introductory article presents the special Discussion and Debate volume "From black swans to dragon-kings, is there life beyond power laws?" published in Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics in May 2012. We summarize and put in perspective the contributions into three main themes: (i) mechanisms for dragon-kings, (ii) detection of dragon-kings and statistical tests and (iii) empirical evidence in a large variety of natural and social systems. Overall, we are pleased to witness significant advances both in the introduction and clarification of underlying mechanisms and in the development of novel efficient tests that demonstrate clear evidence for the presence of dragon-kings in many systems. However, this positive view should be balanced by the fact that this remains a very delicate and difficult field, if only due to the scarcity of data as well as the extraordinary important implications with respect to hazard assessment, risk control and predictability.

Dragon-kings: mechanisms, statistical methods and empirical evidence

D. Sornette, G. Ouillon

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.1002

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Complex Networks from Simple Rewrite Systems

Wed, 09 May 2012 19:17:00 +0200

Complex networks are all around us, and they can be generated by simple mechanisms. Understanding what kinds of networks can be produced by following simple rules is therefore of great importance. We investigate this issue by studying the dynamics of extremely simple systems where are 'writer' moves around a network, and modifies it in a way that depends upon the writer's surroundings. Each vertex in the network has three edges incident upon it, which are colored red, blue and green. This edge coloring is done to provide a way for the writer to orient its movement. We explore the dynamics of a space of 3888 of these 'colored trinet automata' systems. We find a large variety of behaviour, ranging from the very simple to the very complex. We also discover simple rules that generate forms which are remarkably similar to a wide range of natural objects. We study our systems using simulations (with appropriate visualization techniques) and analyze selected rules mathematically. We arrive at an empirical classification scheme which reveals a lot about the kinds of dynamics and networks that can be generated by these systems.

Complex Networks from Simple Rewrite Systems

Richard Southwell, Jianwei Huang

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0596

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Research Days 2012 Lakeside Labs, Klagenfurt, Austria July 9-13, 2012

Wed, 09 May 2012 18:44:00 +0200

The Research Days are an annual event concentrating on the core competence of Lakeside Labs - Self-organizing Networked Systems. During this workshop organized by Lakeside Labs GmbH in cooperation with the University of Klagenfurt, international experts devote themselves to a special topic in self-organization. The event is organized as a five days workshop in July. It takes place at Lakeside Labs in Klagenfurt am Wörthersee, Austria, near a beautiful lake and Alps scenery. Invited experts, local professors, and young researchers discuss and elaborate ideas in the field of Self-Organizing Systems (SOS). The main emphasis of the workshop is on soliciting discussions and creating new ideas regarding a topic related to self-organizing systems. The event greatly supports scientific exchange, networking, establishment of international collaborations, and joint research projects.

Research Days 2012

Lakeside Labs, Klagenfurt, Austria

July 9-13, 2012

http://www.lakeside-labs.com/index.php?id=622

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Exploring Statistical and Population Aspects of Network Complexity

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:20:00 +0200

The characterization and the definition of the complexity of objects is an important but very difficult problem that attracted much interest in many different fields. In this paper we introduce a new measure, called network diversity score (NDS), which allows us to quantify structural properties of networks.

Emmert-Streib F, Dehmer M (2012) Exploring Statistical and Population Aspects of Network Complexity. PLoS ONE 7(5): e34523. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034523

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Retrospective Relatedness Reconstruction: Applications to Adaptive Social Networks and Social Sentiment

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:12:00 +0200

Examination of temporally changing adaptive social networks has been difficult given the need for extensive and usually real-time data collection. Building from interdisciplinary advances, the authors propose a web search engine–based method (called retrospective relatedness reconstruction or 3R) for collecting approximated historical data of temporally changing adaptive social networks. As quantifying relatedness among people in social networks leads to difficulty in assigning proper weights to relationship ties, 3R offers a means for assessing relatedness between people over time. Additionally, 3R can be applied beyond people relatedness to include word associations. To illustrate these two novel contributions, the authors reconstructed the temporal evolution of a social network from 2005 to 2009 of 92 individuals (key leaders) related to the U.S. financial crisis and also examined the temporal evolution of social sentiment (i.e., fear, shame, blame, confidence) related to the same 92 individuals. We found several illustrative cases where temporal changes in centrality and/or sentiment captured actual events related to these individuals during this time period.

Retrospective Relatedness Reconstruction: Applications to Adaptive Social Networks and Social Sentiment
Shelley D. Dionne, et al.

Organizational Research Methods May 2, 2012

http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1094428112442572

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Universal features of correlated bursty behaviour

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:51:00 +0200

Inhomogeneous temporal processes, like those appearing in human communications, neuron spike trains, and seismic signals, consist of high-activity bursty intervals alternating with long low-activity periods. In recent studies such bursty behavior has been characterized by a fat-tailed inter-event time distribution, while temporal correlations were measured by the autocorrelation function. However, these characteristic functions are not capable to fully characterize temporally correlated heterogenous behavior. Here we show that the distribution of the number of events in a bursty period serves as a good indicator of the dependencies, leading to the universal observation of power-law distribution for a broad class of phenomena. We find that the correlations in these quite different systems can be commonly interpreted by memory effects and described by a simple phenomenological model, which displays temporal behavior qualitatively similar to that in real systems.

Universal features of correlated bursty behaviour

Márton Karsai, Kimmo Kaski, Albert-László Barabási & János Kertész

Scientific Reports 2, Article number: 397 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00397

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A Simple Artificial Life Model Explains Irrational Behavior in Human Decision-Making

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:48:00 +0200

Although praised for their rationality, humans often make poor decisions, even in simple situations. In the repeated binary choice experiment, an individual has to choose repeatedly between the same two alternatives, where a reward is assigned to one of them with fixed probability. The optimal strategy is to perseverate with choosing the alternative with the best expected return. Whereas many species perseverate, humans tend to match the frequencies of their choices to the frequencies of the alternatives, a sub-optimal strategy known as probability matching. Our goal was to find the primary cognitive constraints under which a set of simple evolutionary rules can lead to such contrasting behaviors.

Feher da Silva C, Baldo MVC (2012) A Simple Artificial Life Model Explains Irrational Behavior in Human Decision-Making. PLoS ONE 7(5): e34371. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0034371

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Taking Stock of Complexity Economics: Which Problems Does It Illuminate?

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:46:00 +0200

A fascinating series of talks on Economic Complexity which took place at the Institute of New Economic Thinking Conference in Berlin earlier this year. Featuring talks from Doyne Farmer, J-P Bouchaud, Ricardo Hausmann and Mauro Gallegati.

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Peopling the planet

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:15:00 +0200

Few question the idea that modern humans are all emigrants from Africa. But when their journey began, when it ended and what they did along the way makes for a deepening mystery, explored in this issue of Nature.

Nature 485, 23 (03 May 2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/485023a

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The organization of strong links in complex networks

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:13:00 +0200

Many complex systems reveal a small-world topology, which allows simultaneously local and global efficiency in the interaction between system constituents. Here, we report the results of a comprehensive study that investigates the relation between the clustering properties in such small-world systems and the strength of interactions between its constituents, quantified by the link weight. For brain, gene, social and language networks, we find a local integrative weight organization in which strong links preferentially occur between nodes with overlapping neighbourhoods; we relate this to global robustness of the clustering to removal of the weakest links. Furthermore, we identify local learning rules that establish integrative networks and improve network traffic in response to past traffic failures. Our findings identify a general organization for complex systems that strikes a balance between efficient local and global communication in their strong interactions, while allowing for robust, exploratory development of weak interactions.

The organization of strong links in complex networks

Sinisa Pajevic & Dietmar Plenz

Nature Physics 8, 429–436 (2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys2257

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Don’t Look Back in Anger! Responsiveness to Missed Chances in Successful and Nonsuccessful Aging

Fri, 04 May 2012 21:10:00 +0200

Life-span theories explain successful aging with an adaptive management of emotional experiences like regret. As opportunities to undo regrettable situations decline with age, a reduced engagement into these situations represents a potentially protective strategy to maintain well-being in older age. Yet, little is known about the underlying neurobiological mechanisms supporting this claim. We used a multimodal psychophysiological approach in combination with a sequential risk-taking task that induces the feeling of regret and investigated young as well as emotionally successfully and unsuccessfully (i.e., late-life depressed) aged participants. Responsiveness to regret was specifically reduced in successful aging paralleled by autonomic and frontostriatal characteristics indicating adaptive shifts in emotion regulation. Our results suggest that disengagement from regret reflects a critical resilience factor for emotional health in older age.

Don’t Look Back in Anger! Responsiveness to Missed Chances in Successful and Nonsuccessful Aging
Stefanie Brassen, Matthias Gamer, Jan Peters, Sebastian Gluth, Christian Büchel

Science 4 May 2012:
Vol. 336 no. 6081 pp. 612-614
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1217516

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Network Science

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:40:00 +0200

Network Science is a new journal for a new discipline -- one using the network paradigm, focusing on actors and relational linkages, to inform research, methodology, and applications from many fields across the natural, social, engineering and informational sciences. Given growing understanding of the interconnectedness and globalization of the world, network methods are an increasingly recognized way to research aspects of modern society along with the individuals, organizations, and other actors within it.

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A greedy-navigator approach to navigable city plans

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:38:00 +0200

We use a set of four theoretical navigability indices for street maps to investigate the shape of the resulting street networks, if they are grown by optimizing these indices. The indices compare the performance of simulated navigators (having a partial information about the surroundings, like humans in many real situations) to the performance of optimally navigating individuals. We show that our simple greedy shortcut construction strategy generates the emerging structures that are different from real road network, but not inconceivable.

A greedy-navigator approach to navigable city plans

Sang Hoon Lee, Petter Holme

http://arxiv.org/abs/1205.0537

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European Data Forum 2012

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:37:00 +0200

The European Data Forum (EDF) 2012 will take place on June 6-7, 2012 in Copenhagen (Denmark) at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS). It is a meeting place for industry, research, policymakers and community initiatives to discuss the challenges of Big Data and the emerging Data Economy and to develop suitable action plans for addressing these challenges.

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Determinants of Sexual Network Structure and Their Impact on Cumulative Network Measures

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:35:00 +0200

Although many diseases spread so easily between humans that someone could be infected by any of his or her daily social contacts, such is not the case for sexually transmitted diseases. Most of us have a very limited number of concurrently ongoing sexual partnerships, and thus the contact network over which sexually transmitted diseases spread tends to be very sparsely connected. The exact structure of these sexual networks plays an important role in how easy and fast sexually transmitted diseases spread through a population, and how effective various health care interventions will be.

Schmid BV, Kretzschmar M (2012) Determinants of Sexual Network Structure and Their Impact on Cumulative Network Measures. PLoS Comput Biol 8(4): e1002470. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002470

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The Impact of Imitation on Vaccination Behavior in Social Contact Networks

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:33:00 +0200

Both infectious diseases and behavioral traits can spread via social contacts. Using network-based mathematical models, our study addresses the interplay between these two processes, as disease spreads through a population and individuals copy their social contacts when making vaccination decisions. Imitation can produce clusters of non-vaccinating, susceptible individuals that facilitate relatively large outbreaks of infectious diseases despite high overall vaccination coverage. This may explain, for example, recent measles outbreaks observed in many countries with universal measles vaccination policies. Given that vaccine decisions are likely to be influenced by social contacts and that such imitation can have detrimental epidemiological effects, it is important that policy makers understand its causes, magnitude and implications for disease eradication.

Ndeffo Mbah ML, Liu J, Bauch CT, Tekel YI, Medlock J, et al. (2012) The Impact of Imitation on Vaccination Behavior in Social Contact Networks. PLoS Comput Biol 8(4): e1002469. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002469

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Rise and Demise of Bioinformatics? Promise and Progress

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:30:00 +0200

The field of bioinformatics and computational biology has gone through a number of transformations during the past 15 years, establishing itself as a key component of new biology. This spectacular growth has been challenged by a number of disruptive changes in science and technology. Despite the apparent fatigue of the linguistic use of the term itself, bioinformatics has grown perhaps to a point beyond recognition. We explore both historical aspects and future trends and argue that as the field expands, key questions remain unanswered and acquire new meaning while at the same time the range of applications is widening to cover an ever increasing number of biological disciplines. These trends appear to be pointing to a redefinition of certain objectives, milestones, and possibly the field itself.

Ouzounis CA (2012) Rise and Demise of Bioinformatics? Promise and Progress. PLoS Comput Biol 8(4): e1002487. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002487

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Eduardo Paes: The 4 commandments of cities

Fri, 04 May 2012 20:24:00 +0200

Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, a sprawling, complicated, beautiful city of 6.5 million. He shares four big ideas about leading Rio -- and all cities -- into the future, including bold (and do-able) infrastructure upgrades and how to make a city "smarter."

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Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death

Fri, 04 May 2012 19:27:00 +0200

We analyze the dynamic properties of 107 words recorded in English, Spanish and Hebrew over the period 1800–2008 in order to gain insight into the coevolution of language and culture. We report language independent patterns useful as benchmarks for theoretical models of language evolution.

Statistical Laws Governing Fluctuations in Word Use from Word Birth to Word Death

Alexander M. Petersen, Joel Tenenbaum, Shlomo Havlin & H. Eugene Stanley

Scientific Reports 2, Article number: 313 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep00313

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TOASTS @ SASO 2012

Fri, 04 May 2012 18:58:00 +0200

Workshop on Technologies for the Organisation, Adaptation and Simulation of Transportation Systems
To be held at SASO 2012, in Lyon (France) on Friday, September 14, 2012

With the increasing mobility of people and goods around the globe, the management of the transportation system as a whole becomes a very complex task, and it requires a better knowledge of users' travels and behaviours as well as their interactions with their environment. To carry out this work, modeling methods and simulation tools are playing an increasingly importance.
Self-adaptive and self-organising systems seem to be particularly appropriate for infrastructure design, network operation and new mobile services.

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Modes of Explanation: A Discussion Conference

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:48:00 +0200

Modes of Explanation
A Discussion Conference
May 22-24, 2013 at the American University of Paris

Three days to discuss and learn about advances in modes of explanation. A look at how our mode of explanation affects our affordances for action.

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PhD position on the analysis and modelling of animal social networks

Fri, 04 May 2012 16:41:00 +0200

Our group based at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, is looking for a PhD candidate to work on the analysis of dynamical social networks and the adaptive benefit of individual strategies in a population of wild house mice.
Name: Nicolas Perony
Email: nperony@ethz.ch

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Chromatin Computation

Thu, 03 May 2012 16:24:00 +0200

In living cells, DNA is packaged along with protein and RNA into chromatin. Chemical modifications to nucleotides and histone proteins are added, removed and recognized by multi-functional molecular complexes. Here I define a new computational model, in which chromatin modifications are information units that can be written onto a one-dimensional string of nucleosomes, analogous to the symbols written onto cells of a Turing machine tape,... I prove that chromatin computers are computationally universal – and therefore more powerful than the logic circuits often used to model transcription factor control of gene expression. ...

Bryant B (2012) Chromatin Computation. PLoS ONE 7(5): e35703.

http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0035703

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Programming the Global Brain

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:09:00 +0200

New ways of combining networked humans and computers—whether they are called collective intelligence, social computing, or various other terms—are already extremely important and likely to become truly transformative in domains from education and industry to government and the arts. These systems are now routinely able to solve problems that would have been unthinkably difficult only a few short years ago, combining the communication and number-crunching capabilities of computer systems with the creativity and high-level cognitive capabilities of people.

Programming the Global Brain

Abraham Bernstein, Mark Klein, Thomas W. Malone

Communications of the ACM
Vol. 55 No. 5, Pages 41-43
http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2160718.2160731

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I Wanted to Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:07:00 +0200

Predicting X from Twitter is a popular fad within the Twitter research subculture. It seems both appealing and relatively easy. Among such kind of studies, electoral prediction is maybe the most attractive, and at this moment there is a growing body of literature on such a topic. This is not only an interesting research problem but, above all, it is extremely difficult. However, most of the authors seem to be more interested in claiming positive results than in providing sound and reproducible methods. It is also especially worrisome that many recent papers seem to only acknowledge those studies supporting the idea of Twitter predicting elections, instead of conducting a balanced literature review showing both sides of the matter. After reading many of such papers I have decided to write such a survey myself. Hence, in this paper, every study relevant to the matter of electoral prediction using social media is commented. From this review it can be concluded that the predictive power of Twitter regarding elections has been greatly exaggerated, and that hard research problems still lie ahead.

"I Wanted to Predict Elections with Twitter and all I got was this Lousy Paper" -- A Balanced Survey on Election Prediction using Twitter Data

Daniel Gayo-Avello

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.6441

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Diverse societies are more productive: a lesson from ants

Wed, 02 May 2012 18:59:00 +0200

The fitness consequences of animal personalities (also known as behavioural syndromes) have recently been studied in several solitary species. However, the adaptive significance of collective personalities in social insects and especially of behavioural variation among group members remains largely unexplored. Although intracolonial behavioural variation is an important component of division of labour, and as such a key feature for the success of societies, empirical links between behavioural variation and fitness are scarce. We investigated aggression, exploration and brood care behaviour in Temnothorax longispinosus ant colonies. We focused on two distinct aspects: intercolonial variability and its consistency across time and contexts, and intracolonial variability and its influence on productivity. Aggressiveness was consistent over four to five months with a new generation of workers emerging in between trial series. Other behaviours were not consistent over time. Exploration of novel environments responded to the sequence of assays: colonies were faster in discovering when workers previously encountered opponents in aggression experiments. Suites of correlated behaviours (e.g. aggression–exploration syndrome) present in the first series did not persist over time. Finally, colonies with more intracolonial behavioural variation in brood care and exploration of novel objects were more productive under standardized conditions than colonies with less variation.

Diverse societies are more productive: a lesson from ants
Andreas P. Modlmeier, Julia E. Liebmann and Susanne Foitzik

Proc. R. Soc. B 7 June 2012 vol. 279 no. 1736 2142-2150

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.2376

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COMPLEX 2012 - 2nd International ICST Conference on Complex Sciences: Theory and Applications

Wed, 02 May 2012 18:57:00 +0200

The Complex conference gathers researchers and practitioners to discuss recent research in the field of Complex systems.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
5‐7 December 2012

Note: This conference is not organized by the Santa Fe Institute.

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A Market-Inspired Approach for Intersection Management in Urban Road Traffic Networks

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:37:00 +0200

In this article we propose a distributed, market-inspired, mechanism for the management of a future urban road network, where intelligent autonomous vehicles, operated by software agents on behalf of their human owners, interact with the infrastructure in order to travel safely and efficiently through the road network. Building on the reservation-based intersection control model proposed by Dresner and Stone, we consider two different scenarios: one with a single intersection and one with a network of intersections. In the former, we analyse the performance of a novel policy based on combinatorial auctions for the allocation of reservations. In the latter, we analyse the impact that a traffic assignment strategy inspired by competitive markets has on the drivers' route choices. Finally we propose an adaptive management mechanism that integrates the auction-based traffic control policy with the competitive traffic assignment strategy.

M. Vasirani and S. Ossowski (2012) "A Market-Inspired Approach for Intersection Management in Urban Road Traffic Networks", JAIR Volume 43, pages 621-659.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1613/jair.3560

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Effect of periodic inflow on elevator traffic

Wed, 02 May 2012 16:16:00 +0200

We study the dynamic behavior of an elevator induced by a periodic inflow of passengers. An elevator schedule is closely related to the dynamics. We present the modified circle map model for the dynamics of the elevator traffic. The motion of the elevator depends on both loading parameter and inflow period. The elevator displays the periodic and irregular motions with varying both loading parameter and inflow rate.

Effect of periodic inflow on elevator traffic
Takashi Nagatani, , Kazuhiro Tobita

Physica A, In Press, Accepted Manuscript

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2012.04.013

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2013 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation

Wed, 02 May 2012 15:53:00 +0200

The annual IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation is one of the leading events in the area of evolutionary computation.

Cancun, Mexico, 2013/06/20-23

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IEEE SSCI 2013, Singapore

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 15:33:00 +0200

2013 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence

IEEE SSCI 2013

15 Mon -19 Fri April 2013, Singapore

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The persistence of social signatures in human communication

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:22:00 +0200

The social brain hypothesis has suggested that social network size (and structure) is constrained by a combination of cognitive processes and the time required to service social relationships. We test this hypothesis in humans using a unique 18-month mobile phone dataset by examining changes in the structure of social networks across a major change in subjects' social and geographical circumstances. (...) This provides the first direct evidence that social networks are constrained by a combination of cognitive constraints and the time individuals have available for social interaction, confirming one of the key assumptions of the social brain hypothesis.

The persistence of social signatures in human communication

J. Saramaki, E. A. Leicht, E. Lopez, S. G. B. Roberts, F. Reed-Tsochas, R. I. M. Dunbar

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.5602

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Sexual selection enables long-term coexistence despite ecological equivalence

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:20:00 +0200

Empirical data indicate that sexual preferences are critical for maintaining species boundaries, yet theoretical work has suggested that, on their own, they can have only a minimal role in maintaining biodiversity. This is because long-term coexistence within overlapping ranges is thought to be unlikely in the absence of ecological differentiation9. Here we challenge this widely held view by generalizing a standard model of sexual selection to include two ubiquitous features of populations with sexual selection: spatial variation in local carrying capacity, and mate-search costs in females.

Sexual selection enables long-term coexistence despite ecological equivalence

Leithen K. M’Gonigle, Rupert Mazzucco, Sarah P. Otto & Ulf Dieckmann
Nature 484, 506–509 (26 April 2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature10971

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Controversial research: Good science bad science

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 16:02:00 +0200

It sounds like a great idea: experimentally mutate a rare but deadly virus so that scientists can do a better job of recognizing dangerous emerging strains. But it also sounds like a terrible idea — the studies could create a virus that is easier to transmit and produce findings that are useful to bioterrorists.

Controversial research: Good science bad science

Geoff Brumfiel

Nature 484, 432–434 (26 April 2012) http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/484432a

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Using Grizzly Bears to Assess Harvest-Ecosystem Tradeoffs in Salmon Fisheries

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:53:00 +0200

Using grizzly bears as surrogates for "salmon ecosystem" function, the authors develop a generalizable ecosystem-based management framework that enables decision-makers to quantify ecosystem-harvest tradeoffs between wild and human recipients of natural resources like fish.

Using Grizzly Bears to Assess Harvest-Ecosystem Tradeoffs in Salmon Fisheries
Taal Levi, Chris T. Darimont, Misty MacDuffee, Marc Mangel, Paul Paquet, Christopher C. Wilmers

PLoS Biol 10(4): e1001303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001303

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The Emergence of Modularity in Biological Systems

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:47:00 +0200

In this review, we discuss modularity and hierarchy in biological systems. We review examples from protein structure, genetics, and biological networks of modular partitioning of the geometry of biological space. We review theories to explain modular organization of biology, with a focus on explaining how biology may spontaneously organize to a structured form. That is, we seek to explain how biology nucleated from among the many possibilities in chemistry.

The Emergence of Modularity in Biological Systems

Dirk M. Lorenz, Alice Jeng, Michael W. Deem

http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.5999

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The Mobile Revolution: Cultivating Boundaries of the Unbounded

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:38:00 +0200

Google Tech Talk March 2, 2012 Presented by Professor Carsten Sørensen.

My talk will report on research conducted within the mobility@lse research unit at the London School of Economics since 2000. It will present some of the main findings regarding the social and business impact of the mobile revolution, for example, the re-negotiation and daily endeavour to manage a boundary-less world by cultivating boundaries. The mobile revolution has significantly contributed to the erosion of long-established boundaries for inter-personal interaction, and as a result individuals will through their everyday life with the technology seek to resolve the resulting paradoxes. The technology that sets them free and allows for "anytime-anywhere" communication also enslaves them as they are always available.

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Sensing the City: Mapping London’s Population Flows

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:35:00 +0200

I recently had the pleasure of presenting at the first Data Visualisation London Meetup event where I spoke about some of work we do at UCL CASA. A fair chunk of the slides were movies so I thought it best to stick them in a blog post.

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EPJ Data Science - a SpringerOpen journal

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:16:00 +0200

The 21st century is currently witnessing the establishment of data-driven science as a complementary approach to the traditional hypothesis-driven method. This (r)evolution accompanying the paradigm shift from reductionism to complex systems sciences has already largely transformed the natural sciences and is about to bring the same changes to the techno-socio-economic sciences, viewed broadly.

Editors-in-Chief
Frank Schweitzer, ETH Zürich
Alessandro Vespignani, Northeastern University

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WISES 2012: Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:00:00 +0200

Workshop on Intelligent Solutions in Embedded Systems
Klagenfurt, Austria, July 5–6, 2012

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Alan M. Turing Centennial Conference - Israel

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 02:09:00 +0200

"Alan M.Turing Centennial Conference - Israel", a playlist created by GoogleTechTalks...

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Wasted World: How Our Consumption Challenges the Planet (by Rob Hengeveld)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:04:00 +0200

All systems produce waste as part of a cycle—bacteria, humans, combustion engines, even one as large and complex as a city. To some extent, this waste can be absorbed, processed, or recycled—though never completely. In Wasted World, Rob Hengeveld reveals how a long history of human consumption has left our world drowning in this waste.

This is a compelling and urgent work that traces the related histories of population growth and resource consumption. As Hengeveld explains, human life (and population growth) depends not only on mineral resources but also on energy. People first obtained energy from food and later supplemented this with energy from water, wind, and animals as one source after another fell short of our ever-growing needs. Finally, we turned to fossil energy, which generates atmospheric waste that is the key driver of global climate change. The effects of this climate change are already leading to food shortages and social collapse in some parts of the world. Because all of these problems are interconnected, Hengeveld argues strenuously that measures to counter individual problems cannot work. Instead, we need to tackle their common cause—our staggering population growth. While many scientists agree that population growth is one of the most critical issues pressuring the environment, Hengeveld is unique in his insistence on turning our attention to the waste such growth leaves in its wake and to the increasing demands of our global society.

A practical look at the sustainability of our planet from the perspective of a biologist whose expertise is in the abundances and distributions of species, Wasted World presents a fascinating picture of the whole process of using, wasting, and exhausting energy and material resources. And by elucidating the complexity of the causes of our current global state, Hengeveld offers us a way forward.

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The Brain: Big Bangs, Behaviors, and Beliefs (by Rob DeSalle, Ian Tattersall, Patricia J. Wynne)

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:04:00 +0200

After several million years of jostling for ecological space, only one survivor from a host of hominid species remains standing: us. Human beings are extraordinary creatures, and it is the unprecedented human brain that makes them so. In this delightfully accessible book, the authors present the first full, step-by-step account of the evolution of the brain and nervous system.

Tapping the very latest findings in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and molecular biology, Rob DeSalle and Ian Tattersall explain how the cognitive gulf that separates us from all other living creatures could have occurred. They discuss the development and uniqueness of human consciousness, how human and nonhuman brains work, the roles of different nerve cells, the importance of memory and language in brain functions, and much more. Our brains, they conclude, are the product of a lengthy and supremely untidy history—an evolutionary process of many zigs and zags—that has accidentally resulted in a splendidly eccentric and creative product.

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Emergence and Collapse of Early Villages: Models of Central Mesa Verde Archaeology (Origins of Human Behavior and Culture) by Timothy A. Kohler, Mark D. Varien

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 01:02:00 +0200

Ancestral Pueblo farmers encountered the deep, well watered, and productive soils of the central Mesa Verde region of Southwest Colorado around A.D. 600, and within two centuries built some of the largest villages known up to that time in the U.S. Southwest. But one hundred years later, those villages were empty, and most people had gone. This cycle repeated itself from the mid-A.D. 1000s until 1280, when Puebloan farmers permanently abandoned the entire northern Southwest.

Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book examines how climate change, population size, interpersonal conflict, resource depression, and changing social organization contribute to explaining these dramatic shifts. Comparing the simulations from agent-based models with the precisely dated archaeological record from this area, this text will interest archaeologists working in the Southwest and in Neolithic societies around the world as well as anyone applying modeling techniques to understanding how human societies shape, and are shaped by the environments we inhabit.

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NetSciEd Satellite Symposium @ NetSci2012: Education -- Infuse Network Science into K-12 and Undergraduate Education

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:52:00 +0200

In anticipation of preparing the next generation of network scientists, as well as addressing the urgent needs in improving STEM education overall, we are hosting the first symposium to specifically address how network science will transform STEM education in the coming years. The Satellite Symposium Education-Infuse Network Science into K-12 and Undergraduate Education (NetSciEd) will include preeminent speakers from education practice and research as well as the network science community, culminating in a highly interactive panel discussion to determine directions in support of research and practice in the use of network science to improve education.

Northeastern University Evanston Campus
Evanston, IL, USA

June 18th, 2012

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Master in Science Intelligent Adaptive Systems - Universität Hamburg

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 22:22:00 +0200

Intelligent systems and robots are expected to become an integral part of our daily lives. In order to be accepted by, and interact efficiently and naturally with humans, they have to adapt to changing environments as well as the users they interact with. Intelligent systems are not only expected to automatically acquire and manage knowledge through a variety of sensors but also to learn and optimise their behaviour over time. This International Master’s programme aims to provide students with the ability to create these intelligent adaptive systems and to prepare them for a future market, where intelligent behaviour is considered the standard for computer systems.

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Frans de Waal: Moral behavior in animals

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 01:23:00 +0200

Empathy, cooperation, fairness and reciprocity -- caring about the well-being of others seems like a very human trait. But Frans de Waal shares some surprising videos of behavioral tests, on primates and other mammals, that show how many of these moral traits all of us share.

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The Cognitive Science of Science: Explanation, Discovery, and Conceptual Change (by Paul Thagard)

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:33:00 +0200

Many disciplines, including philosophy, history, and sociology, have attempted to make sense of how science works. In this book, Paul Thagard examines scientific development from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. Cognitive science combines insights from researchers in many fields: philosophers analyze historical cases, psychologists carry out behavioral experiments, neuroscientists perform brain scans, and computer modelers write programs that simulate thought processes. Thagard develops cognitive perspectives on the nature of explanation, mental models, theory choice, and resistance to scientific change, considering disbelief in climate change as a case study. He presents a series of studies that describe the psychological and neural processes that have led to breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology. He shows how discoveries of new theories and explanations lead to conceptual change, with examples from biology, psychology, and medicine. Finally, he shows how the cognitive science of science can integrate descriptive and normative concerns; and he considers the neural underpinnings of certain scientific concepts.

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Trees of Life: A Visual History of Evolution (by Theodore W. Pietsch)

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 15:32:00 +0200

For the past 450 years, tree-like branching diagrams have been created to show the complex and surprising interrelationships of organisms, both living and fossil, from viruses and bacteria to birds and mammals. This stunning book celebrates the manifest beauty, intrinsic interest, and human ingenuity of these exquisite trees of life.

Theodore W. Pietsch has chosen 230 trees of life—from among thousands of possible contenders—dating from the sixteenth century to the present day. His arrangement gives readers a visual sense of the historical development of these diagrams and shows how, in Darwin’s words, "from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

Pietsch’s brief, accessible prose accompanies the diverse trees to fully reveal the engrossing history of human theories of evolution. Over the centuries, trees of life appeared in a wide variety of forms; some were revered as iconic while others incited intense controversy. The earliest examples were meant to portray the imagined temporal order in which God created life on Earth. More recent scientific trees represent hypothetical histories of life.

Never before has the full spectrum of trees of life been brought together in a single volume. Pietsch has spent decades collecting and researching the origin and meaning of these evolutionary trees and presents a visually breathtaking and intellectually brilliant history of the form.

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ISCPIF Complex Systems Summer School

Thu, 19 Apr 2012 17:54:00 +0200

6th Annual French Complex Systems Summer School

"Pattern detection in Complex Systems"

Paris, July 2nd to 13th, 2012

The school will provide in-depth reference courses to a multi-disciplinary audience of researchers and students. The level of lectures will range from introductory to advanced, as attendees are not expected to be familiar with all the fields covered. Lecture topics will address specific complex systems methods and tools and their relevance to various disciplines (physics, biology, computer science, geography, sociology, linguistic, etc.). An emphasis will be given to pattern detection in complex systems.

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10 years of "A New Kind of Science"

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:05:00 +0200

Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science was published almost 10 years ago on May 14, 2002.

As a part of the 10th anniversary celebration, they are inventorying advances in NKS from the past decade: published and unpublished work motivated by NKS, including papers, artwork, programs, and products.

Should you have or known a project motivated by NKS (completed or in progress) they would love to hear from you. Please send information about the project to nks-advances@wolfram.com.

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The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:26:00 +0200

In The Intelligence Paradox, the coauthor of Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters, Satoshi Kanazawa challenges the common misconceptions about what intelligence is and what it is not, how it is measured, what it's good for, and what it's bad at. He also makes many controversial statements: liberals are, on average, more intelligent than conservatives; atheists are more intelligent than believers; and homosexuals are more intelligent than heterosexuals. And using the latest research, he shows each one to be true.

The Intelligence Paradox: Why the Intelligent Choice Isn't Always the Smart One
Satoshi Kanazawa

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The Social Conquest of Earth by Edward O. Wilson

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:28:00 +0200

From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson's legendary career.

Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In a generational work of clarity and passion, one of our greatest living scientists directly addresses these three fundamental questions of religion, philosophy, and science while “overturning the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover magazine). Refashioning the story of human evolution in a work that is certain to generate headlines, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution. He proves that history makes no sense without prehistory, and prehistory makes no sense without biology. Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, Wilson presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.

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How the Brain Got Language: The Mirror System Hypothesis by Michael A. Arbib

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:27:00 +0200

Unlike any other species, humans can learn and use language. This book explains how the brain evolved to make language possible, through what Michael Arbib calls the Mirror System Hypothesis. Because of mirror neurons, monkeys, chimps, and humans can learn by imitation, but only "complex imitation," which humans exhibit, is powerful enough to support the breakthrough to language. This theory provides a path from the openness of manual gesture, which we share with nonhuman primates, through the complex imitation of manual skills, pantomime, protosign (communication based on conventionalized manual gestures), and finally to protospeech. The theory explains why we humans are as capable of learning sign languages as we are of learning to speak. This fascinating book shows how cultural evolution took over from biological evolution for the transition from protolanguage to fully fledged languages. The author explains how the brain mechanisms that made the original emergence of languages possible, perhaps 100,000 years ago, are still operative today in the way children acquire language, in the way that new sign languages have emerged in recent decades, and in the historical processes of language change on a time scale from decades to centuries. Though the subject is complex, this book is highly readable, providing all the necessary background in primatology, neuroscience, and linguistics to make the book accessible to a general audience.

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Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:27:00 +0200

"More information is always better, and full information is best. More computation is always better, and optimization is best." More-is-better ideals such as these have long shaped our vision of rationality. Yet humans and other animals typically rely on simple heuristics to solve adaptive problems, focusing on one or a few important cues and ignoring the rest, and shortcutting computation rather than striving for as much as possible. In this book, we argue that in an uncertain world, more information and computation are not always better, and we ask when, and why, less can be more. The answers to these questions constitute the idea of ecological rationality: how we are able to achieve intelligence in the world by using simple heuristics matched to the environments we face, exploiting the structures inherent in our physical, biological, social, and cultural surroundings.

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Computation and its Limits by Paul Cockshott, Lewis M Mackenzie, Gregory Michaelson

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:26:00 +0200

Computation and its Limits is an innovative cross-disciplinary investigation of the relationship between computing and physical reality. It begins by exploring the mystery of why mathematics is so effective in science and seeks to explain this in terms of the modelling of one part of physical reality by another. Going from the origins of counting to the most blue-skies proposals for novel methods of computation, the authors investigate the extent to which the laws of nature and of logic constrain what we can compute. In the process they examine formal computability, the thermodynamics of computation and the promise of quantum computing.

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Complex Adaptive Innovation Systems: Relatedness and Transversality in the Evolving Region

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:25:00 +0200

Leading up to the financial crisis of 2008 and onwards, the shortcomings of traditional models of regional economic and environmental development had become increasingly evident. Rooted in the idea that ‘policy’ is an encumbrance to free markets, the stress on supply-side smoothing measures such as clusters and an over reliance on venture capital, the inadequacy of existing orthodoxies has come to be replaced by the notion of transversality.

This approach has three strong characteristics that differentiate it from its failing predecessor. First, as the name implies, it seeks to finesse horizontal knowledge interactions as well as vertical ones, thus building ‘platforms’ of industrial interaction. Secondly, it is not a supply, but a demand side model in which needs-driven innovation rather than pure market competition prevails. Finally, it is ongoing through recessionary times, being more robust than over-specialized approaches to economic growth.

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An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 09:25:00 +0200

One of the most influential economists of the decade-and the New York Times bestselling author of The Great Stagnation-boldly argues that just about everything you've heard about food is wrong.

Food snobbery is killing entrepreneurship and innovation, says economist, preeminent social commentator, and maverick dining guide blogger Tyler Cowen. Americans are becoming angry that our agricultural practices have led to global warming-but while food snobs are right that local food tastes better, they're wrong that it is better for the environment, and they are wrong that cheap food is bad food. The food world needs to know that you don't have to spend more to eat healthy, green, exciting meals. At last, some good news from an economist!

Tyler Cowen discusses everything from slow food to fast food, from agriculture to gourmet culture, from modernist cuisine to how to pick the best street vendor. He shows why airplane food is bad but airport food is good; why restaurants full of happy, attractive people serve mediocre meals; and why American food has improved as Americans drink more wine. And most important of all, he shows how to get good, cheap eats just about anywhere.

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International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2012)

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 10:09:00 +0200

The 19th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2012)

November 12-15, 2012, Doha, Qatar

http://www.iconip2012.org

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GSO-2012: 5th International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization

Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:01:00 +0200

Fifth International Workshop on
Guided Self-Organization

The University of Sydney and CSIRO are pleased to host the 5th International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization, September 26-28, 2012.

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Weak Links: The Universal Key to the Stability of Networks and Complex Systems by Peter Csermely

Wed, 11 Apr 2012 09:43:00 +0200

How can our societies be stabilized in a crisis? Why can we enjoy and understand Shakespeare? Why are fruitflies uniform? How do omnivorous eating habits aid our survival? What makes the Mona Lisa 's smile beautiful? How do women keep our social structures intact? Could there possibly be a single answer to all these questions? This book shows that the statement: "weak links stabilize complex systems" provides the key to understanding each of these intriguing puzzles, and many others too. The author (recipient of several distinguished science communication prizes) uses weak (low affinity, low probability) interactions as a thread to introduce a vast variety of networks from proteins to economics and ecosystems. Many people, from Nobel Laureates to high-school students have helped to make the book understandable to all interested readers. This unique book and the ideas it develops will have a significant impact on many, seemingly diverse, fields of study.

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Think Complexity

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 14:03:00 +0200

This book is about complexity science, data structures and algorithms, intermediate programming in Python, and the philosophy of science

Think Complexity

by Allen B. Downey

O'Reilly

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Bernardo Huberman - "Social Media and Attention"

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:02:00 +0200

The past decade has witnessed a momentous transformation in the way people interact and exchange information with each other. Content is now co-produced, shared, classified and rated on the Web by millions of people, while attention has become the ephemeral and valuable resource that everyone seeks to acquire.

This talk will focus on how social attention is allocated among all media and how it decays as novelty fades and new content is created. This will be followed by a description of the role that attention plays in the production and consumption of content within social media, how its dynamics can be used to predict future trends, and its connection with the emergence of a public agenda.

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Maxi San Miguel - "What do we learn from simple models of social behavior?"

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:01:00 +0200

When does a social group reach agreement by imitation processes? I will discuss how we answer this question by considering the voter model, a paradigmatic example of simple model of social behavior. Aspects to be addressed include the role of tie heterogeneity and non persistent ties in social networks, as well as the heterogeneity in the timing of interactions and the coexistence of imitation and rational behavior. I will also discuss the competition between self-organization and external messages or mass media in models of social consensus.

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INCoS 2012: International Conference on Networking and Collaborative Systems

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 15:57:00 +0200

Fourth International Conference on Networking and Collaborative Systems

Review: Viability and Resilience of Complex Systems

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:52:00 +0200

In modern science, the concept of resilience has had various meanings depending on the context. Given the impact of resilience in a wide spectrum of fields, definitional issues have attracted a lot of interest. In this book , a consortium of researchers (funded by a joint European project) suggested measures to formalize the concept of resilience by following viability theory, which can also be extremely useful to design management policies in different environments.

Viability and Resilience of Complex Systems: Concepts, Methods and Case Studies from Ecology and Society (Understanding Complex Systems)

Deffuant, Guillaume and Gilbert, Nigel (eds.)
Springer-Verlag: Berlin, 2011
ISBN 9783642204227 (pb)

Reviewed by Albert Diaz-Guilera

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Review: Quantitative Sociodynamics: Stochastic Methods and Models of Social Interaction Processes

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:50:00 +0200

This book describes a physicist's approach to modelling social systems, namely by focussing on how to use analytic mathematics for this purpose. The central premise of the book is that there are now mathematical techniques that are adequate to the modelling of social phenomena - the book presents these with a few examples.

Quantitative Sociodynamics: Stochastic Methods and Models of Social Interaction Processes

Helbing, Dirk
Springer-Verlag: Berlin, 2010
ISBN 9783642115455 (pb)

Reviewed by Bruce Edmonds and Mario Paolucci

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Seminar announcement: Complexity leadership

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:30:00 +0200

In a seminar at the University of the West of England on April 18th 2012, Professor Mary Uhl-Bien provides an overview of the emerging field of complexity leadership, and discusses how and why it is changing the way we think about the study and practice of leadership

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Complex Systems Society: Job Market Portal

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:25:00 +0200

Complex Systems Society: Job Market Portal

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2012 Brainhack, MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Sept 1-4, Leipzig, Germany

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 05:23:00 +0200

The Neuro Bureau is proud to announce the 2012 Brainhack to be held from September 1-4 at the Max Plank Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany.

Brainhack is a unique event with the goals of fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and open neuroscience. The structure for the conference builds from the concepts of an unconference and hackathon. The term “unconference” refers to a conference structure in which most of the content is dynamically chosen by the participants – and a hackathon is an event where participants collaborate intensively on science-related projects. Brainhack will be a blend of both elements. On the last day, collaborative groups will give a brief presentation detailing their project, and the progress that was made over the course of the Brainhack.

We encourage participants across all disciplines related to neuroimaging to come prepared to present and discuss their research interests. Additionally, there will be the opportunity to present a poster during the first evening of the workshop.

Please visit: http://www.cbs.mpg.de/events/workshops/brainhack for more information and to register and prepare for the conference.

Registration Deadline: 30 July 2012 (However, we encourage early registration, as space will be limited).

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Unconventional Computation and Natural Computation 2012

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:57:00 +0200

11th International Conference
Unconventional Computation & Natural Computation 2012
LIFO, University of Orléans (France)
3‒7 September 2012

Extended deadline to April 9, 2012 for paper submission

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CiE 2012, Turing Centenary Conference

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:49:00 +0200

TURING CENTENARY CONFERENCE
CiE 2012 - How the World Computes

University of Cambridge
18 June - 23 June, 2012:
http://www.cie2012.eu

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Generative and Developmental Systems Track @ GECCO

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 05:48:00 +0200

The conference will be held in Philadelphia, USA. For more information, please see the GECCO 2012 homepage at http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2012.

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TEDxSydney - David Chalmers - The Extended Mind

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:20:00 +0200

David Chalmers is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Consciousness at the Australian National University. Chalmers is inter...

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Significance and Perspectives of FuturICT for Economics

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:19:00 +0200

FuturICT - Participatory Computing for Our Complex World http://www.multimedia.ethz.ch/conferences/2012/futurict Kirman, Alan; Hedström, Peter...

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Review of Portugali, Juval: Complexity, Cognition and the City (Understanding Complex Systems)

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:16:00 +0200

``10 years ago Alasdair Turner (2002) reviewed Self-Organization and the City by Juval Portugali. Now, the same author published a new book where cognition pops up in the title. The review by Turner was very positive and I am also inclined to express my admiration: What a book! It took me some time to digest it, but I strongly recommend it to scholars who work on spatial agent models. On the other hand, I would like to warn the readers as the book suggests a synergetic approach to agent-based modelling, which many of us are unfamiliar with. Moreover, although being almost perfect, the book missed something that crept into my brain while reading these 400 pages.´´

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Artificial Life: An Overview (Complex Adaptive Systems) – Christopher G. Langton download, read, buy online | e-Books

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:13:00 +0200

Artificial Life: An Overview (Complex Adaptive Systems) 8211 Christopher G.

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The Science of Complexity: Understanding the Global Financial Crisis

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:19:00 +0200

The Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason University and the Santa Fe Institute are jointly offering a three day symposium entitled “The Science of Complexity: Understanding the Global Financial Crisis” May 16-18, 2012. The event will take place at the new Founders Hall facility on the GMU Arlington campus. Through the lenses of finance, economics, complex systems, neuroeconomics, and computational social science, the symposium will explore the structure and dynamics of the 2008 financial crisis and its reverberations through time, including the current Eurozone crisis. Attendees will come away with a high-level understanding of the tools the sciences of complexity bring to an emerging view of these crises, including cutting-edge insights from the application of non-linear dynamics, social networks, systemic risk, experimental economics and related approaches.

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Connectionism: Theory and Practice

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:16:00 +0200

Connectionism: Theory and Practice (Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science) 8211 Steven Davis - e Books

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Ayah Bdeir: Building blocks that blink, beep and teach | Video on TED.com

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 21:28:00 +0200

TED Talks Imagine a set of electronics as easy to play with as Legos. TED Fellow Ayah Bdeir introduces littleBits, a set of simple, interchangeable blocks that make programming as simple and important a part of creativity as snapping blocks together.

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CrowdScanner Tag Challenge CrowdSourcing Team

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:54:00 +0200

Join our mission to find 5 people in different cities around the world in a day! If you help us win the challenge to locate all 5 of them, you will earn yourself a share of the cash prize!

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Regina Dugan: From mach-20 glider to humming bird drone

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:25:00 +0200

"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?" asks Regina Dugan, then director of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. In this breathtaking talk she describes some of the extraordinary projects -- a robotic hummingbird, a prosthetic arm controlled by thought, and, well, the internet -- that her agency has created by not worrying that they might fail. (Followed by a Q&A with TED's Chris Anderson)

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Structured Financial Data in the Age of Complexity

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:56:00 +0200

Center for Business Complexity and Global Leadership

Structured Financial Data in the Age of Complexity:
Exploring XBRL use and application
Today and into the Future

Boston, MA
April 30, 2012

Suffolk University, Sargent Hall, 120 Tremont Street, Boston

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CAMUSS - International Symposium on Cellular Automata Modeling for Urban and Spatial Systems

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:40:00 +0200

International Symposium on Cellular Automata Modeling for Urban and Spatial Systems (CAMUSS, Int Symp on CA Modeling for Urban Spatial Systems, Oporto, Portugal Nov 8-10, 2012 deadline abstracts Mar 31 http://t.co/AJSh5Itf...)...

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Brazilian Workshop on Social Simulation

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:39:00 +0200

BWSS 2012 - The Third Brazilian Workshop on Social Simulation
Curitiba, Brazil, 20-21 October 2012

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6th International Workshop on Natural Computing

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:39:00 +0200

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James Fowler: Power of Networks | PopTech! Popcasts

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 20:37:00 +0200

Can your social network make you fat? Affect your mood? Political scientist James H. Fowler reveals the dynamics of social networks, the invisible webs that connect each of us to the other. With Nicholas A Christakis, Fowler recently coauthored, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives..

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Cybernetics and Systems Sciences Conference

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:24:00 +0200

Vienna as a strong and traditional hub of the current cybernetics and systems sciences in Europe After 40 successful years a relaunch of the international research meeting occurs.

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epiSTEME 5

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 19:14:00 +0200

epiSTEME 5

Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, Mumbai, India
January 7, 2013 – January 11, 2013

Conference epiSTEME-5 is the fifth in a series of biennial conferences aimed at reviewing research conducted world-wide in science, technology and mathematics education. It is being organised by the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education, a National Centre of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India.

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Networks - An Introduction. Mark E.J. Newman (Book Review)

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:19:00 +0100

MIT Press - Artificial Life.

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Emergence and Non-Fundamentalist Metaphysics

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:18:00 +0100

Emergence and
Non-Fundamentalist Metaphysics
2012, May 14th | 15th | 16th

Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon

Center for Images in Science and Art _ University of Lisbon

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FuturICT - Participatory Computing for Our Complex World

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:47:00 +0100

Welcome and Goals
21.03.2012, Gutscher, Heinz
Presentation of the FuturICT Project
21.03.2012, Helbing, Dirk; Hedström, Peter
Questions/Discussion
21.03.2012, Helbing, Dirk; Hedström, Peter
Significance and Perspectives of FuturICT for Economics
21.03.2012, Kirman, Alan; Hedström, Peter
Significance and Perspectives of FuturICT for the Social Sciences
21.03.2012, Nowak, Andrzej; Hedström, Peter
Significance and Perspectives of FuturICT for Future Cities
21.03.2012, Batty, Michael; Hedström, Peter
Significance and Perspectives of FuturICT for Information and Communication Technologies
21.03.2012, Kossmann, Donald; Hedström, Peter
Round Table
21.03.2012, Kossmann, Donald; van den Hoven, Jeroen; Helbing, Dirk; Batty, Michael; ...

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The Most Human Human: What Artificial Intelligence Teaches Us About Being Alive | Santa Fe Institute

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 16:34:00 +0100

Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo, and The Guardian.

Each year Turing Test sponsors confer the title of "Most Human Computer" to the machine most successful at persuading the judges it’s human. But there is another prize, bizarre and intriguing, for the real person who does best; the "Most Human Human" award.

Using his experiences as a “confederate” in the 2009 Turing test, and drawing on science, philosophy, literature and the arts, Brian Christian discusses the profound ways in which computers are reshaping our ideas of what it means to be human.

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ISCV | Instituto de Sistema complejos de Valparaíso

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 04:15:00 +0100

Valparaíso Complex Systems Institute website has a new image

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ECAL 2013, 12th European Conference on Artificial Life

Thu, 22 Mar 2012 20:11:00 +0100

Taormina, Italy, 2-6 September, 2013.

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Complex Systems Principles and Education: Focusing on Universal Principles and Individual Differences | NECSI

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 21:56:00 +0100

Yaneer Bar-Yam

I will present a few perspectives on the current trends in education from the point of view of a complex systems scientist. Among the likely topics: centrally prescribed metrics and standardized testing, charter schools, and innovations in mathematics education. The discussion will be based upon analysis of complexity and scale, the substructure of neural cognition, and other relevant complex systems insights.

This talk was delivered on March 14, 2012 at the Kaput Center at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth

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How Networks Changed the "Scale" of Our World

Tue, 20 Mar 2012 16:46:00 +0100

Collective Dynamics of Complex Systems Research Group Seminar Series February 22, 2012 Hiroki Sayama (Bioengineering & Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, Binghamton University) "How Networks Changed the "Scale" of Our World"...

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The Playful Machine: Theoretical Foundation and Practical Realization of Self-Organizing Robots: Ralf Der, Georg Martius

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:25:00 +0100

Autonomous robots may become our closest companions in the near future. While the technology for physically building such machines is already available today, a problem lies in the generation of the behavior for such complex machines. Nature proposes a solution: young children and higher animals learn to master their complex brain-body systems by playing. Can this be an option for robots? How can a machine be playful? The book provides answers by developing a general principle---homeokinesis, the dynamical symbiosis between brain, body, and environment---that is shown to drive robots to self- determined, individual development in a playful and obviously embodiment- related way: a dog-like robot starts playing with a barrier, eventually jumping or climbing over it; a snakebot develops coiling and jumping modes; humanoids develop climbing behaviors when fallen into a pit, or engage in wrestling-like scenarios when encountering an opponent. The book also develops guided self-organization, a new method that helps to make the playful machines fit for fulfilling tasks in the real world. The book provides two levels of presentation. Students and scientific researchers interested in the field of robotics, self-organization and dynamical systems theory may be satisfied by the in-depth mathematical analysis of the principle, the bootstrapping scenarios, and the emerging behaviors. But the book additionally comes with a robotics simulator inviting also the non- scientific reader to simply enjoy the fabulous world of playful machines by performing the numerous experiments.

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Workshop on "Cognitive Dynamics in Neural Systems: Mathematical and Computational Modeling", Lyon, France, March 29-30

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:24:00 +0100

Animals are proof that complete cognitive systems can be realized in neural substrates. It is thus natural that engineers from AI and machine learning have tried to design advanced cognitive systems on the basis of artificial neural networks. This has led to illuminating concepts and architectures in fields like computational linguistics, dynamic pattern recognition, autonomous agents, or evolutionary robotics. However, if one takes a close and critical look, one finds that nowhere do artificial systems close to biological levels of performance. One important cause for this gap is a lack of appropriate mathematical concepts. Biological neural systems are high-dimensional, nonlinear, heterogeneous, multiscale, nonstationary, stochastic, and heavily input-driven - a cocktail of properties which overwhelms current dynamical systems theory. Inasmuch as we do not possess mathematical models for such systems, we cannot understand them; and inasmuch as we do not understand, we cannot engineer. ...

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Complex Systems Society

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 04:24:00 +0100

The Complex Systems Society is launching a Liquid Journal of Complex Systems. It is an online journal that allows the possibility of the publication to evolve with community feedback until it reaches a state ready for printed publication.

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Dynamical Systems: Examples of Complex Behaviour, by Jürgen Jost

Sat, 17 Mar 2012 02:01:00 +0100

This book presents a survey of the field of dynamical systems and its significance for research in complex systems and other fields, based on a careful analysis of specific important examples It also explains the fundamental underlying mathematical concepts, with a particular focus on invariants of dynamical systems, including a systematic treatment of Morse-Conley theory Entropy and related concepts in the topological, metric, measure theoretic and smooth settings and some connections with information theory are discussed, and cellular automata and random Boolean networks are presented as specific examples

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Complexity of Complexity

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:41:00 +0100

Online talks by Peter Allen, Bruce Edmonds and Jean Boulton given at University of Bath

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Jonathan Haidt: Religion, evolution, and the ecstasy of self-transcendence | Video on TED.com

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:33:00 +0100

Psychologist Jonathan Haidt asks a simple, but difficult question: why do we search for self-transcendence? Why do we attempt to lose ourselves? In a tour through the science of evolution by group selection, he proposes a provocative answer.

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Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:32:00 +0100

Can government be run like the Internet, permissionless and open? Coder and activist Jennifer Pahlka believes it can -- and that apps, built quickly and cheaply, are a powerful new way to connect citizens to their governments -- and their neighbors.

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Shawn Achor: The happy secret to better work

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:27:00 +0100

TED Talks We believe that we should work to be happy, but could that be backwards? In this fast-moving and entertaining talk from TEDxBloomington, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that actually happiness inspires productivity.

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Our Place in the Cosmos

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 22:24:00 +0100

Google Tech Talk (more info below) December 1, 2011 Presented by Raja (Puragra) GuhaThakurta. ABSTRACT The lecture "Our Place in the Cosmos" explains how we (and, for that matter, all complex life forms) are connected to the Universe around us. This connection relies on the fact that our Milky Way and other galaxies like it play host to cosmic recycling processes that involve the formation of stars and their planetary systems inside nebulae (dense gas/dust clouds), nuclear fusion reactions that occur within stars, and the death of massive stars in explosions known as supernovae. As a result of these processes the Earth contains elements like carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, all of which are essential ingredients of protein molecules that are basic building blocks of life on Earth. To understand our origin we must therefore understand how galaxies form as part of the so-called cosmic web and evolve via galaxy cannibalism: merging and destruction of small satellite galaxies whereby their stars are incorporated into larger galaxies. This portion of the story will take us back to the earliest imaginable times in the history of the Universe. The talk will be illustrated with the latest astronomical images obtained using space-/ground-based telescopes and state-of-the-art computer simulations.

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ASSYST - Action for the Science of complex SYstems and Socially intelligent icT

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:44:00 +0100

One of the main goals of the ASSYST Coordination Action is to promote Complex Systems for Socially Intelligent ICT (COSI-ICT) and, more generally, Complex Systems (CS) Science in Europe and Worldwide. We do this by communicating widely with scientists, policy makers, and business people, and by showcasing success stories of CS applications.

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Postdoctoral and Student Researchers | NECSI

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:44:00 +0100

NECSI welcomes applications for postdoctoral and student positions for research projects on unified approaches relevant to describing and analyzing complex systems.

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Amazon.com: Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe (9780375422775): George Dyson: Books

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:42:00 +0100

“It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence,” twenty-four-year-old Alan Turing announced in 1936. In Turing’s Cathedral, George Dyson focuses on a small group of men and women, led by John von Neumann at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, who built one of the first computers to realize Alan Turing’s vision of a Universal Machine. Their work would break the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things—and our universe would never be the same.

Using five kilobytes of memory (the amount allocated to displaying the cursor on a computer desktop of today), they achieved unprecedented success in both weather prediction and nuclear weapons design, while tackling, in their spare time, problems ranging from the evolution of viruses to the evolution of stars.

Dyson’s account, both historic and prophetic, sheds important new light on how the digital universe exploded in the aftermath of World War II. The proliferation of both codes and machines was paralleled by two historic developments: the decoding of self-replicating sequences in biology and the invention of the hydrogen bomb. It’s no coincidence that the most destructive and the most constructive of human inventions appeared at exactly the same time.

How did code take over the world? In retracing how Alan Turing’s one-dimensional model became John von Neumann’s two-dimensional implementation, Turing’s Cathedral offers a series of provocative suggestions as to where the digital universe, now fully three-dimensional, may be heading next.

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Vijay Kumar: Robots that fly ... and cooperate

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:24:00 +0100

TED Talks In his lab at Penn, Vijay Kumar and his team build flying quadrotors, small, agile robots that swarm, sense each other, and form ad hoc teams -- for construction, surveying disasters and far more.

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Peter Diamandis: Abundance is our future

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 19:23:00 +0100

TED Talks Onstage at TED2012, Peter Diamandis makes a case for optimism -- that we'll invent, innovate and create ways to solve the challenges that loom over us. "I’m not saying we don’t have our set of problems; we surely do.

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