Complexity Digest 2003.23

09-Jun-2003

Complexity News Event:
New Santa Fe Institute President About His Vision for SFI's Future Role, (Video, Santa Fe, NM, 03/06/04) http://www.comdig2.de/Conf/SFI/Eisenstein64.ASF

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Content

  1. SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise, Webcast
  2. On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and Confused, NYTimes
    1. Action Video Game Modifies Visual Selective Attention, Nature
    2. Models Come Alive, PC Forum
    3. 'Sims' Creator Inks TV Deal With Fox, Reuters
  3. Violence Viewed By Psychopathic Murderers, Nature
  4. Is Democracy More Expropriative Than Dictatorship? Tocquevillian Wisdom Revisited, J. Development Econ.
  5. Farmer Education And The Weather: Evidence From Taiwan, J. Development Econ.
    1. Farm Salmon Threaten Native Species, Alphagalileo
  6. Quantifying The Complexity Of Flow Networks: How Many Roles Are There?, Complexity
    1. The Third Era Starts Here, The Guardian
    2. Competitive Dynamics Of Web Sites, J. Econ. Dyn. & Control
  7. Cell Division: Genome Maintenance, Nature
  8. Home-grown Arteries a Step Closer, BBC News
    1. Shocking Cells Into Submission, Wired News
  9. Modulating Mutation Rates in the Wild, Science
  10. Evolutionary Foundations Of Number: Spontaneous Representation, Alphagalileo & Proc. B
  11. Research Shows Similarities Between Infants Learning To Talk, Birds Learning To Sing, ScienceDaily
  12. The Mechanism of Self-recognition in Humans, Behavioural Brain Research
    1. Time Course Of Regional Brain Activations During Facial Emotion Recognition In Humans, Neurosc. Lett.
    2. New Research Shows We Are Not What We Think, Alphagalileo
    3. Embodied Cognition: A field guide, Artificial Intelligence
  13. Imagine Machines That Can See, Wired News
  14. Disrupted Timing of Discontinuous But Not Continuous Movements by Cerebellar Lesions, Science
    1. The Theoretical Limits To The Power Output Of A Muscle-Tendon Complex, Alphagalileo & Proc. B
    2. Spiderman Becomes A Reality, Alphagalileo
  15. Scientists Starve Malaria Parasite, BBC News
  16. Special Section On Martian Exploration: Mars Attracts!, Nature
  17. Water-Soluble Quantum Dots for Multiphoton Fluorescence Imaging in Vivo, Science
  18. Broken Cooper Pairs Caught Bouncing Around, Science
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects, NYTimes
    2. Atty. Gen. Ashcroft Testimony on Patriot Act Implementation, s-span video
    3. Excerpt From Analysis of Detention of Foreigners After 9/11 Attacks, NYTimes
    4. Smartcams Take Aim at Terrorists, Wired News
    5. Dear Darpa Diary, NYTimes
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Coming and Ongoing Webcasts
    3. Conference Announcements & Call for Papers
      1. Public Conference Calls
    4. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test

  1. SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise, Webcast Next Article Bookmark and Share


  2. On Video Games, the Jury Is Out and Confused, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Sorting out the debate about the effects of electronic games on children and deciding on a set of guidelines can be an endless, and thankless, task. Even experts disagree. One prominent group consisting mainly of censorship opponents has said that much of the research that links video games to violent behavior is flawed; it joined a court fight against a St. Louis law that barred minors from buying or renting violent games. The law was overturned by a federal appeals court on Tuesday.

    1. Action Video Game Modifies Visual Selective Attention, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: As video-game playing has become a ubiquitous activity in today's society, it is worth considering its potential consequences on perceptual and motor skills. It is well known that exposing an organism to an altered visual environment often results in modification of the visual system of the organism. (...) But perceptual learning, when it occurs, tends to be specific to the trained task; that is, generalization to new tasks is rarely found. Here we show, by contrast, that action-video-game playing is capable of altering a range of visual skills.

    2. Models Come Alive, PC Forum Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Social networks are the most interesting of all. They explain a lot and have a lot of applicability. This slide shows a map of the terrorist network from 9/11. (...) So you can look at this map of the terrorists that participated in that attack, and you can quickly identify the hubs. (...) Next I want to show you a demo of how we use some of this stuff. Here is a simulation of The Sims Online, itself a simulation. (...) When they come into the game, they start emitting these little interaction particles.

    3. 'Sims' Creator Inks TV Deal With Fox, Reuters Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "I'd like to fast-forward into the future a bit and explore how machines and artificial intelligence will impact human beings and how robots will help us define ourselves," Wright said (...) "I think there are ways to get a deeper level of creative input from an audience of a TV show," Wright said. "I'd like to explore ways to connect the loop between a show and its audience, going beyond the current methods of phoning in a vote."

  3. Violence Viewed By Psychopathic Murderers, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Adapting a revealing test may expose those psychopaths who are most likely to kill. Psychopathic murderers are often portrayed as cold-blooded, emotionless and lacking in remorse, but they are also adept at lying and at feigning the emotions in which they are deficient. Here we adapt a test known as the Implicit Association Test (IAT), which was previously used to assess concealed prejudices, to show that psychopathic murderers have abnormal cognitive associations regarding violence, which may underpin their actions. Such implicit measures may provide us with an important insight (...)

  4. Is Democracy More Expropriative Than Dictatorship? Tocquevillian Wisdom Revisited, J. Development Econ. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We reexamine the incentive effect of political democracy on the tax rate by defining a political regime over two dimensions: the extent of the franchise and the extent that the redistribution of tax revenues is biased towards the rich. Standard Tocquevillian models assume that, even if there is limited franchise, there is no redistribution bias; from this, it follows that democracy is more expropriative than oligarchy because a poorer median voter opts for higher taxes. (...) we find a countervailing effect: democratization decreases exploitation by the rich on the disenfranchised poor; since tax revenues are redistributed over a larger base (...).

  5. Farmer Education And The Weather: Evidence From Taiwan, J. Development Econ. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: This paper uses farm household and weather data from 1976 to 1992 in Taiwan to measure the role of unusual weather conditions in explaining time and geographical variation of the return to education in farming. For a set of schooling variables, this effect is found to increase with adverse weather. It implies that education provides a higher relative advantage--and therefore has a higher economic value--when the environment is more unstable and more difficult to deal with. This gives empirical support to the notion that education improves the capacity to adapt to change (...).

    1. Farm Salmon Threaten Native Species, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Young male salmon raised in fish farms mate more aggressively than their counterparts in the wild. This means that fish escaping from farms are likely to pose a greater threat to native species than previously thought, by depleting wild fish populations and reducing their genetic diversity. Farmed salmon are bred to grow rapidly in crowded conditions, and this makes them more aggressive than wild fish. Environmentalists have been concerned that fish escaping from farms are displacing wild salmon from their natural habitats, but (...) adult escapees are less successful than native fish at reproducing in the wild.

  6. Quantifying The Complexity Of Flow Networks: How Many Roles Are There?, Complexity Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Weighted flow networks are structures that arise naturally when analyzing complex systems. The countable properties of unweighted networks are not easily generalized to weighted networks. One candidate measure of complexity is the number of roles, or specialized functions in a network. There is only one logically consistent way to generalize the measures of nodes, flows, connectivity, and roles into weighted networks, and these generalizations are equivalent to indices derived from information theory and used by ecologists since the late seventies. Data from ecosystem networks suggests that ecosystems inhabit a narrow window of the parameter space defined by these measures.

    1. The Third Era Starts Here, The Guardian Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The programmable web is different for two main reasons. First, instead of going to look at a web page, you can get a computer to extract the information for you. Second, you don't have to view that information in a browser: you could use it in a different application, or on a different device, such as a mobile phone. When websites make information available in this way, they are called web services. (...) The major problem with web services is that everybody has to agree on standards to make them work.

    2. Competitive Dynamics Of Web Sites, J. Econ. Dyn. & Control Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: We present a dynamical model of web site growth in order to explore the effects of competition among web sites and to determine how they affect the nature of markets. We show that under general conditions, as the competition between sites increases, the model exhibits a sudden transition from a regime in which many sites thrive simultaneously, to a "winner-take-all market" in which a few sites grab almost all the users, while most other sites go nearly extinct. This is in agreement with recent measurements on the nature of electronic markets.
      • Source: Competitive Dynamics Of Web Sites, S. M. Maurer, B. A. Huberman - hubermanahpl.hp.com, DOI: 10.1016/S0165-1889(02)00121-5, Sep. 2003
      • Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01ayahoo.com

  7. Cell Division: Genome Maintenance, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Early fruitfly embryos have an unusual means of halting the division of any nuclei containing damaged DNA. A key component of this mechanism has now been identified, and might have implications for cancer. Maintaining the integrity of the genome is a crucial task for any cell. Two proteins, called checkpoint kinases 1 (Chk1) and 2 (Chk2), help to achieve this in many species, and mutations in the genes encoding these proteins have been linked to the generation of cancer in humans.

  8. Home-grown Arteries a Step Closer, BBC News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The arteries could be used in many operations which currently require mean surgeons have to insert plastic tubing to form new vessels.(...) The normal formation of new blood vessels in the body is also complicated, with "smooth muscle cells" migrating to surround a lining of epithelial cells.(...) A human cell can only divide a finite number of times, and the muscle cells being used by the researchers simply ran out of time.(...) Researchers from Duke University Medical Center in the US believe they have found a way around this, with a secret taken from cancerous cells. Some tumours manage to cheat this limit because they have the genetic ability to perform many more divisions.(...) One of the genes responsible for this "immortality" is called hTERT. The Duke researchers introduced hTERT into smooth muscle cells, and found that this time, they could grow fully functional arteries.

    1. Shocking Cells Into Submission, Wired News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Viruses are good at getting inside cells, so researchers have tried to piggyback genes on them while altering the virus to remove its harmful qualities. But that method resulted in the death of 18-year-old Jesse (...). Electroporation, on the other hand, doesn't require a viral vector, since it uses a transient electric current to open up the cell wall. Researchers at Genetronics have made progress recently using this method to deliver an HIV vaccine, as well as to grow new blood vessels in animals.

  9. Modulating Mutation Rates in the Wild, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: In evolution, the environment selects the fittest genetic variants, but does it also provoke the generation of genetic variants? And if it does, can this speed up the rate of evolution? Both of these ideas have been supported by work on laboratory strains of bacteria and yeast over the past 15 years. Bacterial cultures exposed to growth-limiting stress, such as starvation, sometimes produce mutants, apparently in response to stress. This process has been variously termed adaptive, stationary-phase, or stress-inducible mutation.

  10. Evolutionary Foundations Of Number: Spontaneous Representation, Alphagalileo & Proc. B Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Most of the evidence for numerosity discrimination in animals comes from experiments involving laboratory training, with discrimination limited by the ratio between numbers as opposed to their absolute value. Here we provide the first evidence that this number system is also spontaneously available to animals, and is similarly limited to ratios. We show that when cotton-top tamarin monkeys are presented with auditory stimuli (speech syllables) that differ in number, but no other continuous dimension, they spontaneously discriminate sequences of 4 vs 8, 4 vs 6, and 8 vs 12, but not 4 vs 5 and 8 vs 10 syllables.

  11. Research Shows Similarities Between Infants Learning To Talk, Birds Learning To Sing, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: "The main point of our research is how the reaction of the babies to their mother's touches and smiles changes how they talk, and this corresponds to what birds do when learning to sing. This research takes advantage of infants' sociality to understand development as it is constructed by interactions with caregivers and it shows that social learning is a crucial part of vocal development. (...) babies change how they vocalize in response to social responses - not sounds, but sights - by using more mature sounds."

  12. The Mechanism of Self-recognition in Humans, Behavioural Brain Research Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Recognizing oneself as the owner of a body and the agent of actions requires specific mechanisms which have been elucidated only recently. One of these mechanisms is the monitoring of signals arising from bodily movements, i.e. the central signals which contribute to the generation of the movements and the sensory signals which arise from their execution. The congruence between these two sets of signals is a strong index for determining the experiences of ownership and agency, which are the main constituents of the experience of being an independent self. This mechanism, however, does not account from the frequent cases where an intention is generated but the corresponding action is not executed. In this paper, it is postulated that such covert actions are internally simulated by activating specific cortical networks or representations of the intended actions. This process of action simulation is also extended to the observation and the recognition of actions performed or intended by other agents. The problem of disentangling representations that pertain to self-intended actions from those that pertain to actions executed or intended by others, is a critical one for attributing actions to their respective agents. Failure to recognize one's own actions and misattribution of actions may result from pathological conditions which alter the readability of these representations.

    1. Time Course Of Regional Brain Activations During Facial Emotion Recognition In Humans, Neurosc. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Recognition of facial expressions of emotions is very important for communication and social cognition. Neuroimaging studies showed that numerous brain regions participate in this complex function. Source reconstructions revealed that several cortical and subcortical brain regions produced strong neural activity in response to emotional faces at latencies between 100 and 360 ms that were much stronger than those to neutral as well as to blurred faces. Orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala showed affect-related activity at short latencies already within 180 ms after stimulus onset. Some of the emotion-responsive regions were repeatedly activated during the stimulus presentation period (...).

    2. New Research Shows We Are Not What We Think, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: (...) rather than body image being ''hard-wired'', it is in fact very malleable and that we continually update our body image based on information from vision and touch. "We used hand illusion experiments - where people can't see their own hand but can see a fake rubber hand. When both are tapped and stroked, people experience the illusion that the touch sensation came from the dummy hand. (...) injure the fake hand and also record skin conductance response. This showed whether people were affected when the fake hand was injured, as they would have been if it was their own."

    3. Embodied Cognition: A field guide, Artificial Intelligence Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: The nature of cognition is being re-considered. Instead of emphasizing formal operations on abstract symbols, the new approach foregrounds the fact that cognition is, rather, a situated activity, and suggests that thinking beings ought therefore be considered first and foremost as acting beings. The essay reviews recent work in Embodied Cognition, provides a concise guide to its principles, attitudes and goals, and identifies the physical grounding project as its central research focus.
      • Source: Embodied Cognition: A field guide, Michael L. Anderson, DOI: 10.1016/S0004-3702(03)00054-7, Artificial Intelligence, Article in Press, Corrected Proof, 2003-05-30

  13. Imagine Machines That Can See, Wired News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The system imitates small eye movements that humans use to gather information about objects in their visual fields. (...) Rucci and Desbordes used computers and an eye-tracking device to confirm that the slight jittering of the eyes contributes not only to the gathering of three-dimensional information in the human brain, but to overall visual sensitivity as well. By stabilizing an on-screen image within 1 millisecond of each eye jitter, Rucci and Desbordes found that visual sensitivity declined by as much as 20 percent in the absence of small eye movements.

  14. Disrupted Timing of Discontinuous But Not Continuous Movements by Cerebellar Lesions, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Patients with cerebellar damage are known to exhibit deficits in the temporal control of movements. We report that these deficits are restricted to discontinuous movements. Cerebellar patients exhibited no deficit in temporal variability when producing continuous, rhythmic movements. We hypothesize that the temporal properties of continuous movements are emergent and reflect the operation of other control parameters not associated with the cerebellum. In contrast, discontinuous movements require an explicit representation of the temporal goal, a function of the cerebellum. The requirement for explicit temporal representation provides a parsimonious account of cerebellar involvement in a range of tasks.

    1. The Theoretical Limits To The Power Output Of A Muscle-Tendon Complex, Alphagalileo & Proc. B Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: When animals jump the power they can put into accelerating their body can be surprisingly high. This is thought to be because energy stored in springy tendons contributes power for brief periods. Is it necessary to have a catch mechanism to release the spring? Perhaps not because an inertial load can act as a restraint while energy is stored by a muscle in a tendon. However, this paper shows by mathematical analysis that there is a quite low limit to how much this catch-less mechanism can contribute. The conclusion is that catches must be used.

    2. Spiderman Becomes A Reality, Alphagalileo Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new type of adhesive, which mimics the mechanism employed by geckos (a type of lizard) to climb surfaces, including glass ceilings. Now they have been able to manufacture self-cleaning, re-attachable dry adhesives, and the research team believes it won't be long before 'Spiderman' gloves become a reality - particularly useful for rock climbers and window cleaners. The new adhesive ('gecko tape') contains billions of tiny plastic fibres, less than a micrometer in diameter, which are similar to natural hairs covering the soles of geckos.

  15. Scientists Starve Malaria Parasite, BBC News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Malaria kills 3,000 children every day and the parasite that causes the disease is becoming harder to treat as it develops resistance to more and more drugs.(...) A team from St George's Hospital Medical School in London, UK, are confident they have come up with one such solution. The malaria parasite needs sugar in the form of glucose to grow and multiply in human red blood cells where it lives. The St George's team has effectively starved the parasite of its supply by knocking out a specialised transport protein that it uses to absorb glucose from its surroundings. With its supply lines cut, even drug resistant strains of the parasite cannot survive.

  16. Special Section On Martian Exploration: Mars Attracts!, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: One example is the 'mole', a bicycle-pump-shaped device that will crawl along the planet's surface and can be directed vertically into the soil (...). The device will collect samples in a cavity at its head; (...). A mass spectrometer on Beagle 2 will then reveal, amongst other things, the relative amounts of different carbon isotopes in the rock. Living organisms, such as bacteria, take up these isotopes in different ways, so the analysis could reveal whether life was present when the rocks formed.

  17. Water-Soluble Quantum Dots for Multiphoton Fluorescence Imaging in Vivo, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The use of semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) as fluorescent labels for multiphoton microscopy enables multicolor imaging in demanding biological environments such as living tissue. We characterized water-soluble cadmium selenide-zinc sulfide quantum dots for multiphoton imaging in live animals. These fluorescent probes have two-photon action cross sections as high as 47,000 Goeppert-Mayer units, by far the largest of any label used in multiphoton microscopy. We visualized quantum dots dynamically through the skin of living mice, in capillaries hundreds of micrometers deep. We found no evidence of blinking (fluorescence intermittency) in solution on nanosecond to millisecond time scales.

  18. Broken Cooper Pairs Caught Bouncing Around, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: They use laser pulses to temporarily degrade the superconductivity in a cuprate by breaking up the "Cooper pairs" of electrons and holes that carry electrical currents without resistive losses. They then track the erstwhile partners while they are bouncing off the remains of other broken Cooper pairs and other obstacles in their way. (...) A nonequilibrium population of "hot" electrons is generated by an intense "pump" beam from a pulsed laser, and the response of the material is monitored by a weaker "probe" beam at regular time intervals (...).

  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Ashcroft Seeks More Power to Pursue Terror Suspects, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: But Mr. Ashcroft stressed repeatedly that he believed the policy of detaining people for as long as it took to clear them of terrorist ties was the right one, and he said that several illegal immigrants did have terrorist connections that are still considered suspicious. One suspect was the roommate of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers, and another was found with "jihad material" and more than 30 pictures of the World Trade Center, Mr. Ashcroft said.

    2. Atty. Gen. Ashcroft Testimony on Patriot Act Implementation, s-span video Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Video: In a House Judiciary Cmte. oversight hearing, Attorney General John Ashcroft testifies on implementation of the Patriot Act.

    3. Excerpt From Analysis of Detention of Foreigners After 9/11 Attacks, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Even in the chaotic aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, we believe the F.B.I. should have taken more care to distinguish between aliens who it actually suspected of having a connection to terrorism from those aliens who, while possibly guilty of violating federal immigration law, had no connection to terrorism but simply were encountered in connection with a Penttbom lead. (...) should have reviewed those cases and kept on the list of Sept. 11 detainees only those for whom it had some basis to suspect a connection to terrorism.

    4. Smartcams Take Aim at Terrorists, Wired News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: These distributed digital video arrays, or DIVAs, are collections of really smart cameras able to detect and identify an individual in a crowded train station and track him wherever he goes -- out of the station, into the parking lot, onto the freeway and so on. They also notify authorities when they "think" the individual engages in suspicious activity or meets with questionable cohorts. (...) What's unique is the DIVA systems' ability to communicate with each other automatically and intelligently in order to better detect and then follow individuals (...).

    5. Dear Darpa Diary, NYTimes Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: "To build a cognitive computing system," says proto-PAL, "a user must store, retrieve and understand data about his or her past experiences. This entails collecting diverse data. . . . The research will determine the types of data to collect and when to collect it." This diverse data can include everything you ("the user") see, smell, taste, touch and hear every day of your life. (...) "The goal of the data collection is to `see what I see' rather than to `see me.'

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Attacking the Stomach Lining, This week in Science, 03/05/30, The majority of peptic ulcers are the result of infection by Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium that can adhere to and weaken epithelial cells that line the stomach. Amieva et al. (p. 1430) have determined that the corrupt behavior of H. pylori is unlike that of other bacteria, (...).
      2. Chain Letters and Evolutionary Histories, Charles H. Bennett, Ming Li and Bin Ma Scientific American, 03/05/11, A study of chain letters shows how to infer the family tree of anything that evolves over time, from biological genomes to languages to plagiarized schoolwork
      3. Deadly Spread Of Cancer Halted, KurzweilAI.net, 03/06/05, Metastasis of cancers through the body could be halted by targeting a protein named galectin-3 that helps cells latch on to each other, reveals a new study in Clinical Cancer Research June issue....
      4. New I.B.M. Supercomputer to Begin Its Weather Work, KurzweilAI.net, 03/06/06, The nation's most powerful supercomputer for weather forecasting is scheduled to go online today, I.B.M. said yesterday, a machine that may eventually rival the Japanese Earth Simulator as the world's fastest...
      5. Building A Backyard Cruise Missile, KurzweilAI.net, 03/06/05, A New Zealand handyman is building a cruise missile in his backyard using parts and technology freely available over the Internet for under $5,000. He said he would publish step-by-step instructions on his Web site to "prove the point that nations need to be prepared for this type of...
      6. Quantum Cryptography Stretches 100 Kilometers, KurzweilAI.net, 03/06/05, A team from Toshiba Research Europe has developed a quantum photon detector capable of significantly reducing the amount of random noise picked up as cryptographic keys are generated. This boosts the fiber optic distance over which quantum cryptography is feasible to 100...
      7. Self-organization of Hierarchical Structures in Non-locally Coupled Replicator Models, Hidetsugu Sakaguchi, 2003/05/20, Physics Letters A
      8. Why Are Our Traditional Farmland Birds Disappearing?, Alphagalileo book announcement:  Birds, Scythes and Combines: A History of Birds and Agricultural Change, M. Shrubb, Cambridge Univ. Press, 2003/07/24
      9. Artificial Color, H. J. Caulfield, Neurocomputing, Vol. 51, pp: 463-465, Apr. 2003, doi:10.1016/S0925-2312(02)00698-7
      10. Privacy Through Pseudonymity In User-Adaptive Systems, A. Kobsa & J. Schreck, ACM Tran. Internet Tech., Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp: 149-183, May 2003
      11. The Use Of Web Structure And Content To Identify Subjectively Interesting Web Usage Patterns, R. Cooley, ACM Tran. Internet Tech., Vol. 3, Issue 2, pp: 93-116, May 2003
      12. Size-Based Scheduling To Improve Web Performance, M. Harchol-Balter, B. Schroeder, N. Bansal &  M. Agrawal, ACM Tran. Comp. Sys., Vol. 21, Issue 2, pp:207-233, May 2003
      13. The Role Of Phenotypic Plasticity In Driving Genetic Evolution, T. D. Price, A. Qvarnstrom & D. E.  Irwin, Alphagalileo & Proc. B, 2003/06/02
      14. 9/11 Has Led To Greater Prudence In Designing Systems That Can Withstand Extreme Events, Cornell Engineers Say, ScienceDaily, 2003/05/30
      15. Cells Of The Ever Young: Getting Closer To The Truth, ScienceDaily, 2003/06/02
      16. Chemical Turns Stem Cells Into Neurons Say Scientists At Scripps Research Institute, ScienceDaily & Scripps Res. Inst., 2003/06/03
      17. New Software Helps Teams Deal With Information Overload, ScienceDaily, 2003/06/04
      18. Study Finds Space Shuttle Exhaust Creates Night-shining Clouds, ScienceDaily & Naval Res. Lab., 2003/06/04
      19. International / Middle East: Bush Tells Troops the Truth Will Emerge About Weapons Hidden, Hussein David E. Sanger, NYTimes, 03/06/06, President Bush, addressing American troops, insisted that evidence shows that Saddam Hussein was capable of unleashing biological agents.
      20. U.S. Report Faults the Roundup of Illegal Immigrants After 9/11, Eric Lichtblau, NYTimes, 03/06/02
      21. Excerpt From Analysis of Detention of Foreigners After 9/11 Attacks, Following is an excerpt from the conclusion of a report by the Justice Department's inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, on the detention of hundreds of immigrants after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, NYTimes, 03/06/03
      22. Ashcroft Defends Detentions as Immigrants Recount Toll, Eric Lichtblau, NYTimes, 03/06/05, As the attorney general spoke of progress against terrorism at one forum, at another immigrants testified on the toll they felt the fight against terrorism had taken on them.
      23. Pentagon Expanding Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction, David Stout, NYTimes, 03/05/30, The Pentagon announced today a "significant expansion" of the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
      24. Some Analysts of Iraq Trailers Reject Germ Use, Judith Miller, William J. Broad, NYTimes, 03/06/07, Analysts said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.
      25. More Than 13,000 May Face Deportation, Rachel L. Swarns, NYTimes, 03/06/07, Roughly 16 percent of the Arab and Muslim men who voluntarily registered with federal authorities earlier this year may be deported, although few have been linked to terrorism.
      26. A Spiritual Journey Evokes Mysticism Informed by Complexity, Anna Kisselgoff, NYTimes, 03/06/02, Christopher Wheeldon's wondrous new duet had its premiere at the New York City Ballet on Saturday night.
      27. Instead of Going Home, G.I.'s Get a New Mission, Michael R. Gordon, NYTimes, 03/06/02, The soldiers from the Spartan Brigade, who thought their war was all but over, are being sent to bring order to a sector west of Baghdad.
      28. Week In Review: There's a New Enemy in Iraq: The Nasty Surprise, Patrick E. Tyler, NYTimes, 03/06/01, A series of attacks that killed six U.S. soldiers has impelled military officials to re-examine assumptions about what kind of behavior to expect from liberated Iraqis.
      29. Bomb and Switch, Maureen Dowd, NYTimes, 03/06/04, For the first time in history, America is searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over.
      30. Because We Could, Thomas L. Friedman, NYTimes, 03/06/04, The "real reason" for the war in Iraq was that after 9/11 America needed to hit someone in the Arab-Muslim world.
      31. Aide Denies Shaping Data to Justify War, Eric Schmitt, NYTimes, 03/06/05, The Pentagon's top policy adviser refuted accusations that policy makers had politicized intelligence to justify war to topple Saddam Hussein.
      32. France Arrests Two in 9/11 Investigation, The Associated Press, NYTimes, 03/06/06, French authorities have arrested two men, a German who is believed to be a top recruiter for Al Qaeda and a Moroccan, in the past two days at the Paris airport.

    2. Coming and Ongoing Webcasts Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise, Santa Fe, NM, 2003/06/01-04
      2. < B>U.S. Militarism Threatens the Destiny of Humanity, Ramsey Clark, c-span, 03/05/12
      3. NAS Sackler Colloquium on Mapping Knowledge Domains, Video/Audio Report, 03/05/11
      4. Uncertainty and Surprise: Questions on Working with the Unexpected and Unknowable, The University of Texas Austin, Texas USA, 2003/04/10-12
      5. New Trends In Industrial Partnership And Innovation Management At European Research Laboratories, CERN, Geneva, 2003/03/19 (with webcast)
        1. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      6. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998

       


    3. Conference Announcements & Call for Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Summer School on Nonlinear Phenomena In Computational Chemical Physics, Barcelona, Spain, 2003/06/09-14
      2. 17th Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS 2003), San Diego, California, 2003/06/10-13
      3. One-Week Intensive Course: Complex Physical, Biological and Social Systems, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, 2003/06/16-20
      4. 2003 Summer Computer Simulation Conference (SCSC '03), Montreal, Canada, 2003/06/20-24
      5. 5th Intl Conf "Symmetry in Nonlinear Mathematical Physics", Kiev, Ukraine, 2003/06/23-29, Mirror
      6. The 2003 World Technology Summit & World Technology Awards, San Francisco, 03/06/24-25
      7. Workshops of Dynamical Systems with Applications to Biology, Hsinchu, Taiwan, 2003/06/24-28 (Postponed!)
      8. NKS 2003 Conference & Minicourse, Boston, MA, 03/06/27-29
      9. The 2003 World Technology Summit & World Technology Awards, San Francisco, CA
      10. UQÀM Summer Institute in Cognitive Sciences 2003: Categorization In Cognitive Sciences, Montreal, 2003/06/30-07/11
      11. 9th International Conference on Auditory Display, Boston, MA, 2003/07/07-09, Wkshp on Assistive Technologies for the Blind, 2003/07/07-09
      12. 47th Meeting of the Intl Soc for the System Sciences: Conscious Evolution Of Humanity: Using Systems Thinking To Construct Agoras Of The Global Village, Iraklion, Crete, Greec, 2003/07/07-11
      13. 2nd International School Topics In Nonlinear Dynamics, Siena (Italy), 2003/07/09-11
      14. 2003 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2003), Chicago, IL,2003/07/12-16
      15. 2nd Intl Joint Conf on Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems (AAMAS-2003), Melbourne, Australia, 2003/07/14-18
      16. 7th World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics (SCI 2003), Orlando, Florida, 2003/07/27-30
      17. BIFURCATIONS 2003, Southampton, UK, 03/07/28-30
      18. Intl Conf on Socio Political Informatics and Cybernetics: SPIC '03, Orlando, Fl, USA, 2003/07/31-08/02
      19. 13th Annual International Conference, Soc f Chaos Theory in Psych & Life Sciences,Boston, MA, USA, 2003/08/08-10
      20. Call for Papers on Dynamical Hierarchies, Special Issue of Artificial Life, Deadline: 2003/09/05
      21. A Dual International Conference on Ethics, Complexity & Organisations & Creativity, London WC2, UK, 2003/09/16-18
      22. 1st German Conference on Multiagent System Technologies (MATES'03), Erfurt, Germany, 2003/09/22-25
      23. Dynamics Days 2003, XXIII Annual Conference, 4 Decades of Chaos 1963-2003, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, 03/09/24-27
      24. Emerging Technologies Conference at MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2003/09/24-25
      25. 7th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL-2003), Dortmund, Germany, 2003/09/14-17
      26. 2003 IEEE/WIC Intl Joint Conf. Web Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Technology, Beijing, China, 2003/10/13-17
      27. American Society for Cybernetics (ASC) 2003 Conference (H.v.Foerster), Vienna, Austria , 2003/11/10-15
      28. Trends And Perspectives In Extensive And Non-Extensive Statistical Mechanics, In Honour Of The 60th Birthday Of Constantino Tsallis, Angra Dos Reis, Brazil, 2003/11/19-21
      29. ICDM '03: The Third IEEE International Conference on Data Mining, Melbourne, Florida, USA, 2003/11/19-22
      30. 3rd International Workshop on Meta-Synthesis and Complex System, Guangzhou, China, 2003/11/29-30
      31. 2nd International Workshop on the Mathematics and Algorithms of Social Insects, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 2003/12/15-17
      32. 4th Intl ICSC Symposium Engineering Of Intelligent Systems (EIS 2004), Island of Madeira, Portugal, 04/02/29-03/02
      33. Fractal 2004, "Complexity and Fractals in Nature", 8th Intl Multidisciplinary Conf , Vancouver, Canada, 2004/04/04-07
      34. Fifth International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2004), Boston, MA, USA, 2004/05/16-21
      35. International Symposium on HIV & Emerging Infectious Diseases, Toulon, France, 04/06/03-05

       


      1. Public Conference Calls Next Article Bookmark and Share

        1. PlexusCalls: "Surprise! Surprise!", McDaniel, Reuben, Audio File Available Now, mp3
        2. Complexity And Medical Practice, Pat Rush & Bob Lindberg, PlexusCalls, 2003/01/10, Audio File Available Now, mp3
        3. John Holland in Conversation, PlexusCalls, - Audio File Available Now, mp3
        4. Are Disease and Aging Information/Complexity Loss Syndromes?, PlexusCalls, 2002/11/08, 1 - 2 pm EST (To learn more about Ary Goldberger’s work and HeartSongs, Music of the Heart.) Audio File Available Now, mp3
        5. Brenda Zimmerman in Conversation, PlexusCalls, Audio File Available Now, mp3
        6. The Complexity of Entrepreneurship: A Launchcyte Story, Tom Petzinger, PlexusCalls, 2002/11/22, Audio File Available Now, mp3
        7. A Practical and Appreciative Approach to Complex and Chronic Challenges, Keith McCandless, PlexusCalls, Jan 2003, Audio File Available Now, mp3

    4. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test Bookmark and Share

      We are in the process of upgrading the Complexity Digest archives to a format with improved search capabilities. Also, we will finally be able to adequately publish the valuable feedback and comments from our knowledgable readers. You are cordially invited to become a beta tester of our new ComDig2 archive.

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