Complexity Digest 2001.24

11-Jun-2001

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Content

  1. Are There Bugs In Our Genome?, Science
    1. Rarely Sharing Their Genes?, Science
    2. Microbial Genes In The Human Genome: Lateral Transfer Or Gene Loss?, Science
    3. Complex Genetic Determinants Of Circadian Behavior In Mice, Genome Res
  2. Clicking on a Mouse Model, Science
    1. In Silico Mapping Of Complex Disease-Related Traits In Mice, Science
  3. Increasing Threat Of Potato Late Blight, Cornell Press Release
  4. Neural Representations of Temporally Asymmetric Stimuli In The Auditory Cortex, J. Neurophysiol.
  5. Earliest Evidence For Efficient Oral Processing In A Terrestrial Herbivore, Nature
  6. Leptin's Effect On Body Weight Is More Complex Than Previously Thought, Science Daily/ Yale U.
  7. Tracking Wakes: The Nocturnal Predatory Strategy Of Piscivorous Catfish, PNAS
  8. Can Organisms Speed Their Own Evolution?, Science
  9. Physical Stress And Diversity-Productivity Relationships: The Role Of Positive Interactions, PNAS
  10. Synaptic Pattern Formation During Cellular Recognition, PNAS
  11. The Signal Recognition Particle, Annu. Rev. Biochem.
  12. Folding Of Newly Translated Proteins In Vivo: The Role Of Molecular Chaperones, Annu. Rev. Biochem.
  13. Intact Implicit Learning In Schizophrenia, Am. J. Psychiatry
  14. Cancer: Telomerase Meets Its Mismatch, Nature
    1. Defects In Mismatch Repair Promote Telomerase-Independent Proliferation, Nature
  15. Toward Diamond Lasers, Science
    1. Making Diamond Shine
    2. Room-Temperature Ultraviolet Nanowire Nanolasers, Science
    3. Ultraviolet Emission From A Diamond Pn Junction, Science
  16. Reasoning About Commitments And Penalties For Coordination Between Autonomous Agents, Agents-2001
  17. Model Behaviour (US, European, Asian Capitalism), World Link
  18. Corporate Academia, HMS Beagle
  19. Trash-Burning Neighbors, Taipei Times
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Papers
    2. TheScientificWorld Pub Alert: "Complexity"
    3. Announcements

  1. Are There Bugs In Our Genome?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (…) the most exciting news from the human genome sequencing project has been the claim by the "public effort" that between 113 and 223 genes have been transferred from bacteria to humans (or to one of our vertebrate ancestors) over the course of evolution. (…) These authors argue that there are other biologically plausible explanations besides lateral gene transfer that could account for the presence of bacterial genes in our genome.

    (…) differential gene loss (…) may yield similar gene distribution patterns.


    1. Rarely Sharing Their Genes?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The possibility of transfer of genes across species (lateral gene transfer) is of interest in understanding the evolution of species and in considering the possibility that bacterial infections can result in the transfer of genetic material to humans or other hosts. Salzberg et al. (p. 1903; see the Perspective by Andersson et al.), in a careful analysis of all available sequences of the human genome, present evidence that fewer than 50 genes are shared exclusively by bacteria and humans and are candidates for being the product of lateral transfer. This finding reduces previous estimates, but alternative explanations--sampling effects, gene loss, and rate variation within a genome--still exist.


    2. Microbial Genes In The Human Genome: Lateral Transfer Or Gene Loss?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: The human genome was analyzed for evidence that genes had been laterally transferred into the genome from prokaryotic organisms. Protein sequence comparisons of the proteomes of human, fruit fly, nematode worm, yeast, mustard weed, eukaryotic parasites, and all completed prokaryote genomes were performed, and all genes shared between human and each of the other groups of organisms were collected. About 40 genes were found to be exclusively shared by humans and bacteria and are candidate examples of horizontal transfer from bacteria to vertebrates. Gene loss combined with sample size effects and evolutionary rate variation provide an alternative, more biologically plausible explanation.


    3. Complex Genetic Determinants Of Circadian Behavior In Mice, Genome Res Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Genetic heterogeneity underlies many phenotypic variations observed in circadian rhythmicity. Continuous distributions in measures of circadian behavior observed among multiple inbred strains of mice suggest that the inherent contributions to variability are polygenic in nature. To identify genetic loci that underlie this complex behavior, we have carried out a genome-wide complex trait analysis in 196 (C57BL/6J X BALB/cJ)F2 hybrid mice. We have characterized variation in this panel of F2 mice among five circadian phenotypes: free-running circadian period, phase angle of entrainment, amplitude of the circadian rhythm, circadian activity level, and dissociation of rhythmicity. Our genetic analyses of these phenotypes have led to the identification of 14 loci having significant effects on this behavior, including significant main effect loci that contribute to three of these phenotypic measures: period, phase, and amplitude. We describe an additional locus detection method, genome-wide genetic interaction analysis, developed to identify locus pairs that may interact epistatically to significantly affect phenotype. Using this analysis, we identified two additional pairs of loci that have significant effects on dissociation and activity level; we also detected interaction effects in loci contributing to differences of period, phase, and amplitude. Although single gene mutations can affect circadian rhythms, the analysis of interstrain variants demonstrates that significant genetic complexity underlies this behavior. Importantly, most of the loci that we have detected by these methods map to locations that differ from the nine known clock genes, indicating the presence of additional clock-relevant genes in the mammalian circadian system. These data demonstrate the analytical value of both genome-wide complex trait and epistatic interaction analyses in further understanding complex phenotypes, and point to promising approaches for genetic analysis of such phenotypes in other mammals, including humans.

      • Complex Genetic Determinants Of Circadian Behavior In Mice, Kazuhiro Shimomura, Sharon S. Low-Zeddies, David P. King, Thomas D.L. Steeves, Andrew Whiteley, Jani Kushla, Peter D. Zemenides, Andrew Lin, Martha Hotz Vitaterna, Gary A. Churchill, And Joseph S. Takahashi, Genome Res. 2001 June 1; 11(6): P. 959-980

  2. Clicking on a Mouse Model, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: In recent years, certain human diseases have been linked to changes in particular chromosomal regions. However, many diseases involve multiple genetic loci, thus compounding the complexity of the problem. The mouse hasproven to be a useful model for studying human disease. Using genotype and phenotype information from common inbred mouse strains, Grupe et al. (p.1915; see the news story by Davenport) have developed a Web-accessible database that can be computationally analyzed to identify chromosomal regions regulating complex disease-related traits in mice. This molecular genetic analysis can be performed in milliseconds and does not require laborious, time-consuming, and costly genetic mouse studies.

    1. In Silico Mapping Of Complex Disease-Related Traits In Mice, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Experimental murine genetic models of complex human disease show great potential for understanding human disease pathogenesis. To reduce the time required for analysis of such models from many months down to milliseconds, a computational method for predicting chromosomal regions regulating phenotypic traits and a murine database of single nucleotide polymorphisms were developed. After entry of phenotypic information obtained from inbred mouse strains, the phenotypic and genotypic information is analyzed in silico to predict the chromosomal regions regulating the phenotypic trait.


  3. Increasing Threat Of Potato Late Blight, Cornell Press Release Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Journalists are invited to visit Poland June 6 - 8 to see evidence of the increasing threat of potato late blight, the fungus-like pathogen responsible for the Irish potato famine. As the pathogen gains resistance to metalaxyl, the commonly applied fungicide, it is again becoming virulent. (...) The main objective of the workshop, "Collaborative Research on Potato Late Blight: Building Strategies and Synergies," will be to review progress and shape the future for research on potato late blight control. (...) Potato late blight is the disease blamed for the Irish potato famine that resulted in more than a million deaths in the 1840s. In recent decades, it has been kept under control (...). However, new strains of late blight are now able to overcome the plant's single-gene resistance.


  4. Neural Representations of Temporally Asymmetric Stimuli In The Auditory Cortex, J. Neurophysiol. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The representation of rapid acoustic transients by the auditory cortex is a fundamental issue that is still unresolved. Auditory cortical neurons have been shown to be limited in their stimulus-synchronized responses, yet the perceptual performances of humans and animals in discriminating temporal variations in complex sounds are better than what existing neurophysiological data would predict. This study investigated the neural representation of temporally asymmetric stimuli in the primary auditory cortex of awake marmoset monkeys. The stimuli, ramped and damped sinusoids, were systematically manipulated (by means of half-life of the exponential envelope) within a cortical neuron's presumed temporal integration window. The main findings of this study are as follows: 1) temporal asymmetry in ramped and damped sinusoids with a short period (25 ms) was clearly reflected by average discharge rate but not necessarily by temporal discharge patterns of auditory cortical neurons. There was considerable response specificity to these stimuli such that some neurons were strongly responsive to a ramped sinusoid but almost completely unresponsive to its damped counterpart or vice versa. Of 181 neurons studied, 140 (77%) showed significant response asymmetry in at least one of the tested half-life values of the exponential envelope. Forty-six neurons showed significant response asymmetry over all half-lives tested. Sustained firing, commonly observed under awake conditions, contributed to greater response asymmetry than that of onset responses in many neurons. 2) A greater proportion of the neurons (32/46) that exhibited significant overall response asymmetry showed stronger responses to the ramped sinusoids than to the damped sinusoids, possibly contributing to the difference in the perceived loudness between these two classes of sounds. 3) The asymmetry preference of a neuron to ramped or damped sinusoids did not appear to be correlated with its characteristic frequency or minimum response latency, suggesting that this is a general phenomenon that exists across populations of cortical neurons. Moreover, the intensity of the stimuli did not have significant effects on the measure of the asymmetry preference based on discharge rate. 4) A population measure of response preference, based on discharge rate, of cortical neurons to the temporally asymmetric stimuli was qualitatively similar to the performance of human listeners in discriminating ramped versus damped sinusoids at different half-life values. These findings suggest that rapid acoustic transients embedded in complex sounds can be represented by discharge rates of cortical neurons instead of or in the absence of stimulus-synchronized discharges.

  5. Earliest Evidence For Efficient Oral Processing In A Terrestrial Herbivore, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Herbivores can increase their digestion rate by mechanically reducing particle size through oral trituration. Groups of terrestrial vertebrates with the greatest capacity to reduce tough plant foods orally are also the most abundant and diverse, (…). Thus, the effective oral processing of high-fibre plant material seems to represent an evolutionary innovation of both functional and macroevolutionary significance. However, evidence for oral processing is poorly documented in the fossil record, especially during the initial stages of terrestrial vertebrate diversification.

  6. Leptin's Effect On Body Weight Is More Complex Than Previously Thought, Science Daily/ Yale U. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Leptin, a hormone known for its hunger-blocking effect on the brain, operates in a more complex way than previously thought, researchers from Yale and The Vollum Institute find, possibly leading to development of drugs that can better interfere with appetite and eating behavior to fight obesity and diabetes.

    The researchers say the new finding furthers understanding of how the area of the brain known as the hypothalamus regulates food intake and body weight.

    "For the first time, we've shown that leptin does not work like a traditional hormone and affects the brain in more complex ways than a simple hormone does," said Tamas Horvath, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and neurobiology at Yale School of Medicine and an author on the study. "Our results show that leptin affects many different levels of neurotransmission."


  7. Tracking Wakes: The Nocturnal Predatory Strategy Of Piscivorous Catfish, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Swimming fish leave wakes containing hydrodynamic and chemical traces. These traces mark their swim paths and could guide predators. We now show that nocturnal European catfish (Silurus glanis) locate a piscine prey (guppy, Poecilia reticulata) by accurately tracking its three-dimensional swim path before an attack in the absence of visible light. Wakes that were up to 10 s old were followed over distances up to 55 prey-body lengths in our setup. These results demonstrate that prey wakes remain sufficiently identifiable to guide predators, and to extend considerably the area in which prey is detectable. Moreover, wakes elicit rear attacks, which may be more difficult to detect by prey. Wake tracking may be a common strategy among aquatic predators.

  8. Can Organisms Speed Their Own Evolution?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Intriguing hints from cell and molecular biologists suggest that in times of stress, organisms may be able to crank up their mutation rates, helping accelerate their own evolution. But evolutionary biologists caution that the evolutionary origins and effects of the newly discovered processes remain uncertain.

  9. Physical Stress And Diversity-Productivity Relationships: The Role Of Positive Interactions, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract:If environmental stress provides conditions under which positive relationships between plant species richness and productivity become apparent, then species that seem functionally redundant under constant conditions may add to community functioning under variable conditions. Using naturally co-occurring mosses and liverworts, we constructed bryophyte communities to test relationships between species diversity (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 24, or 32 species) and productivity under constant conditions and when exposed to experimental drought. We found no relationship between species richness and biomass under constant conditions. However, when communities were exposed to experimental drought, biomass increased with species richness. Responses of individual species demonstrated that facilitative interactions rather than sampling effects or niche complementarity best explained results survivorship increased for almost all species, and those species least resistant mechanism linking high diversity to high productivity under stressful environmental conditions.

  10. Synaptic Pattern Formation During Cellular Recognition, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Editor's note: At school they tought us that the immune systemworks like a lock and key mechanism. Now it appears that the situation is much more complex with self-organized, spatio-temporal pattern pormation in the contact area between cells.

    Excerpts: we demonstrate that the essential characteristics of synaptic patterns observed in living cells can result from spontaneous self-assembly processes. Active cellular interventions are superimposed on these self-organizing tendencies and may also serve to regulate the spontaneous processes. We find that the protein binding/dissociation characteristics, protein mobilities, and membrane constraints measured in the cellular environment are delicately balanced such that the length and time scales of spontaneously evolving patterns are in near-quantitative agreement with observations for synapse formation between T cells and supported membranes (…). The model we present provides a common way of analyzing immunological synapse formation in disparate systems (…).


  11. The Signal Recognition Particle, Annu. Rev. Biochem. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The signal recognition particle (SRP) and its membrane-associated receptor (SR) catalyze targeting of nascent secretory and membrane proteins to the protein translocation apparatus of the cell. Components of the SRP pathway and salient features of the molecular mechanism of SRP-dependent protein targeting are conserved in all three kingdoms of life. Recent advances in the structure determination of a number of key components in the eukaryotic and prokaryotic SRP pathway provide new insight into the molecular basis of SRP function, and they set the stage for future work toward an integrated picture that takes into account the dynamic and contextual properties of this remarkable cellular machine.
    • The Signal Recognition Particle, Robert J. Keenan, Douglas M. Freymann, Robert M. Stroud, Peter, Walter, Annu. Rev. Biochem. 2001 January 1; 70(1): p. 755-775


  12. Folding Of Newly Translated Proteins In Vivo: The Role Of Molecular Chaperones, Annu. Rev. Biochem. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Recent years have witnessed dramatic advances in our understanding of how newly translated proteins fold in the cell and the contribution of molecular chaperones to this process. Folding in the cell must be achieved in a highly crowded macromolecular environment, in which release of nonnative polypeptides into the cytosolic solution might lead to formation of potentially toxic aggregates. Here I review the cellular mechanisms that ensure efficient folding of newly translated proteins in vivo. De novo protein folding appears to occur in a protected environment created by a highly processive chaperone machinery that is directly coupled to translation. Genetic and biochemical analysis shows that several distinct chaperone systems, including Hsp70 and the cylindrical chaperonins, assist the folding of proteins upon translation in the cytosol of both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. The cellular chaperone machinery is specifically recruited to bind to ribosomes and protects nascent chains and folding intermediates from nonproductive interactions. In addition, initiation of folding during translation appears to be important for efficient folding of multidomain proteins.

  13. Intact Implicit Learning In Schizophrenia, Am. J. Psychiatry Next Article Bookmark and Share

    OBJECTIVE: Schizophrenia impairs performance on explicit, but not implicit, memory tasks, indicating that conscious awareness at retrieval is a critical determinant of impaired memory. The authors investigated implicit learning, i.e., knowledge acquisition in the absence of conscious awareness, in patients with schizophrenia. METHOD: An artificial grammar learning task was used to assess implicit learning in 48 patients with schizophrenia and 24 healthy comparison subjects. The subjects were first presented with letter strings that were generated according to the rules of a finite-state grammar paradigm. They were then required to indicate whether new letter strings were "grammatical," depending on whether or not the strings corresponded to the rules. IQ, working memory, explicit memory, verbal fluency, and speed of processing were also assessed. RESULTS: Patients performed significantly worse than the comparison subjects on cognitive tasks that assessed episodic memory, verbal fluency, working memory, and speed of processing. In contrast, patients classified as being correct more grammatical than nongrammatical letter strings, and the magnitude of the difference was similar to that observed in healthy comparison subjects. CONCLUSIONS: Implicit learning, as assessed with an artificial grammar learning task, is intact in patients with schizophrenia. Conscious awareness might be a critical determinant of memory impairment both at encoding and at retrieval.

  14. Cancer: Telomerase Meets Its Mismatch, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Cells cannot survive without telomeres, the sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes, so cancer cells activate a telomere-generating enzyme. Studies of yeast now hint that they have a second way to make telomeres.

    (…) mutations in mismatch-repair genes also allow yeast cells to survive in the absence of an enzyme called telomerase - a result that has implications for human cancer.

    (…) recombination between chromosome ends provides another means of telomere maintenance(…). A similar mechanism for maintaining telomeres seems to work in telomerase-defective immortalized human cells.


    1. Defects In Mismatch Repair Promote Telomerase-Independent Proliferation, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Cells cannot survive without telomeres, the sequences that cap the ends of chromosomes, so cancer cells activate a telomere-generating enzyme. Studies of yeast now hint that they have a second way to make telomeres.

      (…) mutations in mismatch-repair genes also allow yeast cells to survive in the absence of an enzyme called telomerase - a result that has implications for human cancer.

      (…) recombination between chromosome ends provides another means of telomere maintenance(…). A similar mechanism for maintaining telomeres seems to work in telomerase-defective immortalized human cells.


  15. Toward Diamond Lasers, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Editor's note: Data storage capacity is one of the limiting factors for computer applications. Whereas the use of floppy disks (1.4MB) limited the use to text or numerical data, the advent of CD's (680 MB) made the use of sound and still images possible and wide-spread. The transition to DVD format increased the storage capacity again by an order of magnitude and that made the use of video feasible.

    The increase in capacity was mode possible to a large degree my shortening the wavelength of the lasers -used to read and write the data-by about 20% (from 780nm (infrared) to 635/650nm (red)).

    Now it seems that with thin film of diamond one can build ultra violet lasers with a wavelength of 235nm or more than 60% shorter than that of DVD lasers. One cannot expect that a simple extrapolation can predict the capacity of discs that are formatted with ultra-violet lasers but it seems quite possible to expect another order of magnitude increase. This would bring us to disks the size of CDs with a capacity of the order of 100GB. It is hard to estimate which qualitative change in use of data this quantitative change might induce.

    Excerpts: For light emission at even shorter wavelengths, diamond is a potentially promising material because of its large band gap (about 5.5 eV). Optimism for diamond electronics has, however, been tempered by the difficulty of synthesizing single-crystal diamond by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), necessary to achieve sufficiently high charge carrier mobility for electronic applications. (…) Koizumi et al. report a diamond-on-diamond (homoepitaxial) pn junction made by CVD that emits at 235 nm. This report is an important milestone and complements similar reports by Tokyo Gas Company and Kobe Steel.


    1. Making Diamond Shine Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: In addition to the desirable structural and thermal properties of diamond, its wide band gap makes it an attractive material for opto-electronic applications in the ultraviolet regime. Natural diamond is a p-type conductor (the charge carriers are "holes"), but the creation of its counterpart, n-type diamond (in which the carriers are electrons), has beenparticularly difficult because of problems in artificially doping diamond. This limitation has so far hindered the development of diamond-based opto-electronics. Koizumi et al. (p. 1899; see the Perspective by John) report on the preparation of n-type diamond grown epitaxially on a p-type diamond substrate that exhibits the electrical characteristics of a good pn junction. They show that the junction emits ultraviolet light when placed under forward bias.


    2. Room-Temperature Ultraviolet Nanowire Nanolasers, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Wide-band gap metal oxides prepared as low-dimensional structures could be used to create novel opto-electronic devices. Huang et al. (p. 1897) demonstrate room-temperature ultraviolet lasing from self-organized, oriented zinc oxide nanowire arrays deposited on sapphire substrates and synthesized using a simple vapor transport and condensation process. Grown in a preferred direction, these wide-band gap semiconductor nanowires form natural laser cavities with diameters varying from 20 to 150 nanometers and lengths up to 10 micrometers. Under optical excitation, surface-emitting lasing action is observed at a near-ultraviolet wavelength of ~385 nanometers with emission linewidth of less than 0.3 nanometer. This performance was achieved at a fairly low threshold of 40 kilowatts per square centimeter.

    3. Ultraviolet Emission From A Diamond Pn Junction, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: We report the realization of an ultraviolet light-emitting diode with the use of a diamond pn junction. The pn junction was formed from a boron-doped p-type diamond layer and phosphorus-doped n-type diamond layer grown epitaxially on the {111} surface of single crystalline diamond. The pn junction exhibited good diode characteristics, and at forward bias of about 20 volts strong ultraviolet light emission at 235 nanometers was observed and was attributed to free exciton recombination.


  16. Reasoning About Commitments And Penalties For Coordination Between Autonomous Agents, Agents-2001 Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: This paper develops and evaluates a new decision theoretic framework in which autonomous agents can make rational choices about coordinating their actions. The framework covers the decisions that are involved in determining when and how to coordinate, when to respond to requests for coordination and when it is profitable to drop contracts in order to exploit better opportunities. Our motivating hypothesis is that enabling agents to dynamically set and reassess both their degree of commitment to one another and the sanctions for decommitment according to their prevailing circumstances will make coordination more effective. This hypothesis is evaluated, empirically, in a grid-world scenario, taking into account three levels of commitments (total, partial and loose) and three kinds of sanctions (fixed, partially sanctioned and sunk cost).


  17. Model Behaviour (US, European, Asian Capitalism), World Link Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Fashions in economic commentary change rapidly and memories are short. Ten years ago many people were convinced that the Japanese and German variant of capitalism was superior to the American model. US writers such as Edward Luttwak and Clyde Prestowitz warned of the threat to the American dream. European writers such as Michel Albert lauded the superiority of the Rhineland model, and at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos in 1990 a key session was entitled "Coping with Japan’s Economic Might".

    Since then we have passed through at least four other conventional wisdoms. (...)

    Five conventional wisdoms in just a decade. We should at least be wary of intellectual fashion. But beneath the flip-flops of short-term sentiment, the direction of change in the intellectual climate has been clear. Two related ideas have enjoyed increasingly wide acclaim. The first sees inherent advantages in the US model of capitalism and preaches structural reform, deregulation, liberalisation and free-market incentives as the route to prosperity. The second argues that globalisation severely constrains the choices available to individual nation-states, with capital and skilled-labour mobility eroding tax bases, and European levels of welfare provision becoming unsustainable whatever the social preferences of electorates. Those propositions still carry deep resonance, whatever the short-term trends.


  18. Corporate Academia, HMS Beagle Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Down one stream, we can ensure that every last modicum of data is patent protected, that intellectual property rights are sealed and hand-delivered to the lawyers, and that the tiniest of results are tightly bound in red tape. Follow the other flow and science is purely altruistic, with fully disclosed, communally peer-reviewed results, and not a lawyer in sight. Certainly, in corporate R and D, the goal is to maximize the value of intracompany sharing and communication. But, society now faces the question of how to maximize the value of publicly funded R and D.

    Editor's note: Universities have always played a central role in the evolution of the societies that support them and there always has been the problem of defining the proper "fitness function" that would determine the characteristics of the academic faculty that the universities would attract. Is it better for society to have universities with a large number of Nobel laureates, patents, or spin-off companies. Maybe like in biological evolution a sufficient degree of diversity is the key to sustainable success.


  19. Trash-Burning Neighbors, Taipei Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Editor's note: In his work on the evolution of norms in societies, Robert Axelrod points out several important parameters that determine which norms will emerge in a given society. Among them are the average cost for individual agents to ignore the rules, and the costs for individual agents to report the violation of rules by others. In the area of environmental laws one can see clear differences between different cultures that might not be explained purely on economic grounds.

    We did some simple studies on how environmental laws are enforced against the practice of private trash-burning in Taiwan. Our preliminary conclusions are that different agencies (police, environmental bureau) are not cooperating in environmental areas and that citizens are discouraged form reporting violations.

    In preparing a more detailed report, we would be interested in reports on related practices in other communities.

    Excerpts: A foreign resident has come into conflict with some of his neighbors, who insist on setting their garbage ablaze rather than carry it to the garbage truck. (…)

    It turned out that the police failed to report the case or to pass information about the matter to the environmental protection bureau. (...)

    Although Wang Ta-chun, first division chief of the environmental protection bureau, said that there is little the bureau can do but to issue tickets to offenders and to conduct more aggressive patrols, he promised to send some people to take care of Mayer's problem.


  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share


    2. TheScientificWorld Pub Alert: "Complexity" Next Article Bookmark and Share

      These references can be found in http://www.thescientificworld.com/. To retrieve the articles connect to the site and search for the title.
      1. Development of a Complex Web-Based Advertising System, Fertalj, K.; Helman, T.; Mornar, V., JOURNAL OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
      2. Forest genetics: pattern and complexity, Namkoong, G., CANADIAN JOURNAL OF FOREST RESEARCH
      3. On the Parallel Complexity of Tree Automata, Lohrey, M., LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
      4. Simplicity Through Complexity: Immunoblot With Recombinant Antigens as the New Gold Standard in Epstein-Barr Virus Serology, Bauer, G., CLINICAL LABORATORY
      5. Analysis of Different Low Complexity Nonlinear Filters for Acoustic Echo Cancellation, Fermo, A.; Carini, A.; Sicuranza, G. L., JOURNAL OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
      6. Complex associates of plasmid DNA and a novel class of block copolymers with PEG and cationic segments as new vectors for gene delivery, Laus, M.; Sparnacci, K.; Ensoli, B.; Butto, S.; Caputo, A.; Mantovani, I.; Zuccheri, G.; Samori, B.; Tondelli, L., JOURNAL OF BIOMATERIALS SCIENCE POLYMER EDITION
      7. An attempt for complex assessment of the elderly patients' compliance, Petkova, V.; Dimitrova, Z.; Getov, I., BOLLETTINO CHIMICO FARMACEUTICOFT
      8. A technique addressing fault criticality & interactions in complex consumer communications, Verbitsky, D. E.; Franklin, P. H., PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL RELIABILITY AND MAINTAINABILITY SYMPOSIUM
      9. The Function of General Medicine: 2 Coping with Complex Health Model, Mukobara, S., IRYO
      10. A macro-level scheduling method using lagrangian relaxation, ZHANG (Y.); LUH (P. B.); NARIMATSU (K.); MORIYA (T.); SHIMADA (T.); FANG (L.), IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation
      11. The Effects of Grade Level, Type of Motion, Cueing Strategy, Pictorial Complexity, and Color on Children's Interpretation of Implied Motion in Pictures, Downs, E.; Jenkins, S. J., JOURNAL OF EXPERIMENTAL EDUCATION
      12. Complex Task Implementation in Ada, Crespo, A.; Balbastre, P.; Terrasa, S., LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
      13. Complex wetting phenomena in liquid mixtures: frustrated-complete wetting and competing intermolecular forces, Bonn, D.; Bertrand, E.; Shahidzadeh, N.; Ragil, K.; Dobbs, H. T.; Posazhennikova, A. I.; Broseta, D.; Meunier, J.; Indekeu, J. O., JOURNAL OF PHYSICS CONDENSED MATTER
      14. Efficient recursive algorithm for the operational space inertia matrix of branching mechanisms, CHANG (K. S.); KHATIB (O.), Advanced Robotics
      15. Clutter Suppression in Radar by Quasi-Continuous Complex Signal and Processing Algorithm Structure Optimization, Kalenitchenko, S. P.; Rodionov, R. V., RECORD OF THE IEEE NATIONAL RADAR CONFERENCE
      16. Effects of figural complexity and target-distracter similarity on decay rate in short-term visual memory, Sakai, K.; Inui, T., JAPANESE JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY
      17. Controlling Defect Structure and Properties of Complex Thermoelectric Materials, Rogacheva, E., JAPANESE JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS -SUPPLEMENT-
      18. Embedded random matrix ensembles for complexity and chaos in finite interacting particle systems, Kota, V. K., PHYSICS REPORTS
      19. Nonterminal Complexity of Programmed Grammars, Fernau, H., LECTURE NOTES IN COMPUTER SCIENCE
      20. A low-complexity and high-performance algorithm for the fast correlation attack, MIHALJEVIC (Miodrag J.); FOSSORIER (Marc P. C.); IMAI (Hideki); SCHNEIER (Bruce), Lecture notes in computer science
      21. Joint detection with low computational complexity for hybrid TD-CDMA systems, BENVENUTO (N.); SOSTRATO (G.), IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
      22. Aligning logical and psychological perspectives on diagrammatic reasoning, STENNING (K.); LEMON (O.), Artificial Intelligence Review
      23. Complexity in dislocation dynamics: experiments, Weiss, J.; Grasso, J. R.; Miguel, M. C.; Vespignani, A.; Zapperi, S., MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING -LAUSANNE-
      24. A Psychophysical Analysis of Complex Odor Mixtures, Laing, D. G.; Jinks, A. L., CHIMIA -ZURICH-
      25. Complexity in dislocation dynamics: model, Miguel, M. C.; Vespignani, A.; Zapperi, S.; Weiss, J.; Grasso, J. R., MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING -LAUSANNE- A
      26. Internet: A life-changing experience, COOPER (M.); DIMITROVA (N.), IEEE Multimedia
      27. Learning logic programs with structured background knowledge, HORVATH (T.); TURAN (G.), Artificial Intelligence
      28. Sequential signal encoding from noisy measurements using quantizers with dynamic bias control, PAPADOPOULOS (H. C.); WORNELL (G. W.); OPPENHEIM (A. V.), IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
      29. Complexity in Environmental Education, Gonzalez-Gaudiano, E., EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEORY
      30. Formation of Fancy Yarns in One Process with Application of a Complex Model, Petrulyte, S., FIBRES AND TEXTILES IN EASTERN EUROPE
      31. The Role of Subjective Task Complexity in Goal Orientation, Self-Efficacy, and Performance Relations, Mangos, P. M.; Steele-Johnson, D., HUMAN PERFORMANCE
      32. Detection of complex chromosomal rearrangements in a woman with repeated spontaneous abortions, Dubey, S.; Mathur, R.; Kabra, M.; Menon, P. S. N., ACTA OBSTETRICIA ET GYNECOLOGICA SCANDINAVIC
      33. A Supersymmetry, Witten Complex and Asymptotics for Directional Lyapunov Exponents in Zd, Wang, W.-M., ANNALES- HENRI POINCARE
      34. Powerful influences at work Dealing with drugs and alcohol in the workplace is a critical, but complex, issue for the HR professional, Unknown Author, HR MONTHLY
      35. Gastrointestinal effects of complex polyphenols from red wine and tea in experimental animal models, Dolara, P., PROCEEDINGS- PHYTOCHEMICAL SOCIETY OF EUROPE
      36. Understanding the colour of red wines: from anthocyanins to complex pigments, Rivas-Gonzalo, J. C., PROCEEDINGS- PHYTOCHEMICAL SOCIETY OF EUROPE


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