The Cultural Wealth Of Nations, Nature 
Excerpts: Why, when the human race shows comparatively little genetic variation, are cultural differences so widespread and enduring? Thinking about cultures in terms of biological species provides some provocative answers. (...)
Just as species carry genetic adaptations to their environments,we believe that cultural adaptations have evolved in response to social life, and that such adaptations work to maintain cultural identity and coherence.Like species that do not interbreed, human cultures are surprisingly resistant to influences from other cultures and often act as barriers to gene flow.
Geneticists Study Chimp-Human Divergence, Nature
Excerpts: Scientists combing the draft of the chimpanzee genome sequence are finding tantalizing hints about the differences between humans and our closest relatives. (...)
Researchers (...), for example, are working on genes that encode enzymes called proteases. These genes are almost identical in humans and chimps except for one subset, found in the immune system, that varies greatly between the two species. (...)
They could also explain why chimps are less severely affected than humans by AIDS or Alzheimer's disease, and might lead to treatments for such conditions.
RNA Finds A Simpler Way, Nature
Excerpts: Is there no end to the versatility of RNA? The latest feat to be revealed is RNA's ability to switch off genes through a neatly straightforward mechanism. So it isn't only proteins that can repress gene activity.
Organisms profit from synthesizing only those enzymes whose products are in demand. (...) A standard textbook mechanism by which this is achieved is repression. (...) describe a bacterial gene-regulation system with a twist. The repressor is not a protein, but instead is a switchable (on-off) self-cleavage element within the mRNA itself.
Parallel Evolution Is in the Genes, Science
Excerpts: The pages of any bird guide reveal a spectacular diversity of colors and color patterns. Although color patterns vary within species, often they also distinguish closely related species. Variations in color are thought to have evolved through the interplay of sexual selection and natural selection. What is less obvious--because the birds are on different pages of the guide--is the repeated appearance of similar color patterns among distantly related species (parallel evolution).
(...) molecular basis of a similar plumage trait in two very different arctic birds.
Agent-based Model Construction In Financial Economic System, arXiv
Abstract: The paper gives picture of enrichment to economic and financial system analysis using agent-based models as a form of advanced study for financial economic data post-statistical-data analysis and micro-simulation analysis. Theoretical exploration is carried out by using comparisons of some usual financial economy system models frequently and popularly used in econophysics and computational finance. Primitive model, which consists of agent microsimulation with fundamentalist strategy, chartist, and noise, was established with an expectation of adjusting micro-simulation analysis upon stock market in Indonesia. The result of simulation showing how financial economy data resulted analysis using statistical tools such as data distribution and central limit theorem, and several other macro-financial analysis tools previously shown (Situngkir & Surya, 2003b). This paper is ended with several further possible advancements from the model built.
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Abstract: This article assesses the consequences of EU enlargement for east-west migration. It is argued that expectations on future economic, social and political variables are crucial for immediate immigration. Specifically, if EU membership is refused, fear of future restrictions on immigration will lead to increased current migration. Moreover, EU accession is likely to reduce income gaps between the accession countries and the current Member States reducing the incentives to emigrate. We conclude that granting EU accession to eastern European countries will not necessarily induce massive east-west migration flows
- Source: EU Enlargement And Immigration, M. Kraus, R. Schwager, Journal of Common Market Studies, Mar. 2004
- Contributed by Pritha Das - prithadas01
yahoo.com
Methane Poses Mars Life Puzzle, BBC News Online
Excerpts: Methane has been found in the Martian atmosphere, which scientists say could be a sign of present-day life on Mars.
It was detected by telescopes on Earth and has recently been confirmed by instruments onboard the European Space Agency's orbiting Mars Express craft.
Methane lives for a short time in the Martian atmosphere so it must be being constantly replenished.
There are two possible ways to do this. Either active volcanoes, but none have yet been found on Mars, or microbes.
Quantum Channel Capacities, Science
Summary: Virtually all of today's information technology is based on the manipulation of classical bits. Quantum systems offer the potential of a much more powerful computing technology, however. In their Perspective, Bennett and Shor discuss an important aspect of quantum computing--the theoretical capacity of a quantum information channel. Although a number of concepts can be carried over from classical information theory, quantum systems have their own unusual properties. Recently, researchers have been able to show that these unique quantum aspects can provide much higher information flow than previously expected.
Bell's Inequalities and Quantum Communication Complexity, Physical Review Letters
Abstract: We prove that for every Bell's inequality, including those which are not yet known, there always exists a communication complexity problem, for which a protocol assisted by states which violate the inequality is more efficient than any classical protocol. Violation of Bell's inequalities is the necessary and sufficient condition for quantum protocol to beat the classical ones
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Excerpt: The researchers found that for some rules, the low-res version behaved simply and predictably, even when the high-res version was computationally irreducible and therefore unpredictable. In other words, the complexity was only in the unimportant details. Goldenfeld concludes that if you only need approximate results, they are predictable in many complex problems, and "computational irreducibility is not the right way to measure complexity."
Wolfram says the "nice, small paper" is useful, if not very surprising. The interesting issue, he says, is "under what circumstances will large-scale rules emerge" that allow a simple, predictable description of a complex phenomenon.
Turning Points, From 'Not Wrong' To (Maybe Right), Nature
Excerpts: When I tried to write up our work for publication, there was a certain feeling of unreality and embarrassment about the complexity and arbitrariness of what we had come up with.(...)
We put aside the ‘not wrong' complicated models with spontaneous supersymmetry breaking,and wrote a short paper that,taken literally (with unbroken supersymmetry), was wrong. But it presented a result that was so straightforward and successful that it made the idea of putting gauge symmetry and supersymmetry unification together seem (maybe) right.We put offthe problem ofhow supersymmetry gets broken.
Thou Shalt Not Make Scientific Progress, Salon.com
Excerpts: Supporters of the president often point out that private funds can still be used to conduct research on embryonic stem cells, and valuable research is in fact going on at biotech firms. But the work is much impeded without the help of the federal government. "Frankly, from a selfish, capitalistic perspective, we're thrilled as can be that we get to hold all the patents and we don' have to pay royalties to Harvard or MIT," says Michael West, of Advanced Cell Technology.
Pentagon Attempts To Bend Light To Its Will, Nature
Excerpts: Negative refraction bends light in an unusual way.
Although some physicists were sceptical about the results (see Nature 420, 119-120; 2002), subsequent experiments have led most to accept the finding, says John Pendry, a physicist at Imperial College in London who works on negatively refracting materials. For example, George Eleftheriades and Anthony Grbic, physicists at the University of Toronto, have recently created a microwave lens from a negatively refracting structure (G. Eleftheriades and A. Grbic Phys. Rev. Lett. in the press).
Browning says that such advances convince her that the effect is real. But she still has questions about how the materials work. For example, some predict that the structures will amplify light waves that are normally dissipated by glass optics. If true, the material could make lenses that are more powerful than any possible with conventional optics. "But we're still unsure of the physics," Browning adds.
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Excerpts:
This diagram shows a benzene molecule configured as an XOR logic gate. Each sphere represents an atom. The red and dark blue spheres represent the molecule's side groups, which can be rotated to change the molecule's electrical conductance. The green shapes are electrodes.
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The scheme could eventually be used to produce small, fast computers and to store large amounts of data in very small spaces. The method could also be modified to make sensors for detecting individual molecules.
The researchers' plan calls for connecting a pair of benzene molecules to two gold electrodes. The molecules contain nitrogen-oxygen side groups whose rotational positions can represent the 1s and 0s of computer information.
Buckminsterfullerenes: A Non-Metal System For Nitrogen Fixation, Nature
Abstract: In all nitrogen-fixation processes known so far - including the industrial Haber-Bosch process, biological fixation by nitrogenase enzymes and previously described homogeneous synthetic systems - the direct transformation of the stable, inert dinitrogen molecule (N2) into ammonia (NH3) relies on the powerful redox properties of metals. Here we show that nitrogen fixation can also be achieved by using a non-metallic buckminsterfullerene (C60) molecule, in the form of a water-soluble C60:-cyclodextrin (1:2) complex, and light under nitrogen at atmospheric pressure. This metal-free system efficiently fixes nitrogen under mild conditions by making use of the redox properties of the fullerene derivative.
Health Concerns in Nanotechnology, NY Times
Excerpts: Buckyballs, a spherical form of carbon discovered in 1985 and an important material in the new field of nanotechnology, can cause extensive brain damage in fish, (...).
(...) buckyballs also altered the behavior of genes in liver cells of the juvenile largemouth bass she studied.
such particles can enter the brain. The fish studies, however, were the first to indicate destruction of lipid cells, the most common form of brain tissue. (...)
(...) had not been coated, (...) limit the toxicity of such materials (...).
The Many Roles of Computation in Drug Discovery, Science
Excerpts: First, it is the rare case today when an unmodified natural product like taxol becomes a drug. It is also inconceivable that a human with or without computational tools could propose a single chemical structure that ends up as a drug; there are far too many hurdles and subtleties along the way. Most drugs now arise through discovery programs that begin with identification of a biomolecular target of potential therapeutic value through biological studies including, for example, analysis of mice with gene knockouts.
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Excerpts: Researchers have identified genes that control the way mosquitoes respond to the malaria parasite. Their discovery could aid the development of anti-malarial strategies by using a mosquito's own immune system to curb the disease.
The parasite that causes malaria, known as Plasmodium, usually goes unnoticed by the mosquito in which it grows. But if the insect was tweaked to detect and attack the intruder, the mosquito would destroy the parasite before it has a chance to spread to humans.
Rare Stem Cells Appear To Drive Cancers, Science News
Excerpts: Why are many brain tumors and other cancers so difficult to treat?
For decades, cancer researchers have wrestled with two competing visions of tumors. In one scenario, all the cells of a tumor are pretty much the same. That is, they have an equal capacity to divide and form new tumors.
In the other scenario, only a few select cells from a tumor have the capacity to initiate new, full-fledged tumors. These bad seeds are the cancer stem cells.
Cancer: Survival Pathways Meet Their End, Nature
Excerpts: Conventional chemotherapeutic approaches to treating tumours can be hit-and-miss. One way to ensure successful treatment may be to go for the jugular of cancer-cell survival signalling as well.
Chemotherapy uses powerful drugs designed to induce cancer cells to commit suicide. So why don't all tumours succumb to these drugs? The answer is that cancer cells have an inbuilt urge to survive, so any genetic change that favours survival amidst adverse conditions will be selected for. (...) targeting specific molecules will impart sensi-tivity to chemotherapy - a combinatorial approach.
Cancer: Dangerous Liaisons, Nature
Excerpts: The cells of multicellular organisms are highly communicative and so can strongly influence one another's behaviour. One line of communication is particularly important in keeping cell growth in check. A single cell destined to become a tissue or an organism can't go it alone (...).Communication,in the form ofdirect contacts between cells, interactions between cells and their surroundings, or the transmission of biochemical signals, is essential. Unravelling these networks ofcommunication has provided gainful employment for biologists, geneticists and mathematicians in their quest to understand how the body forms.
How And Why Brains Create Meaning From Sensory Information, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos
Abstract: Semantics is the essence of human communication. Information technology is faced with the problem of using intelligent machines as intermediaries for interpersonal communication. The problem (...) has been intractable because brains and machines work on very different principles. Machines process information that is fed to them. Brains construct hypotheses and test them by acting and sensing. Brains sample information, hold it briefly, construct meaning, and then discard the information. A solution (...) is to simulate how brains create meaning and express it as information by making a symbol to represent the meaning to another brain in pairwise communication.
The Brain? It's A Jungle in There, NY Times
Excerpts: Dr. Edelman calls his theory "neural Darwinism." He believes that what organizes the brain is precisely what led to the organization of the eye - or the evolution of species. It is also the process he found at work in immunology: he showed that the body produces the precise antibody required not by manufacturing it according to a specific set of rules, but by making available an incredible diversity of material from which the appropriate antibody is selected.
The brain develops in a similar way, (...).
Entropy And Complexity Analysis Of Intracranially Recorded EEG, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos
Abstract: We present an entropy and complexity analysis of intracranially recorded EEG from patients suffering from a left frontal lobe epilepsy. Our approach is based on symbolic dynamics and Shannon entropy. In particular, we will discuss the possibility to monitor long-term dynamical changes in brain electrical activity. This might offer an alternative approach for the analysis and more fundamental understanding of human epilepsies.
Information Processing In Brain And Behavior, Int. J. Bifur. & Chaos
Abstract: We discuss a notion of information processing in brain and behavioral dynamics, in particular the processing of meaningful information, which is testable by means of an experimental coordination and transition paradigm. Two hypotheses on the existence and persistence of mappings between the dynamics of behavioral and brain signals are formulated. A mathematical foundation for the first hypothesis is suggested (...). Brain signals are captured as cortical currents, as well as the resulting scalp topographies, such as electroencephalograms (EEG) and magnetoencephalograms (MEG). Experimental evidence is provided to support the hypothesis on the existence of such spatiotemporal mappings between behavioral and brain signals.
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Abstract: During reading, our eyes perform complicated sequences of fixations on words. Stochastic models of eye movement control suggest that this seemingly erratic behavior can be attributed to noise in the oculomotor system and random fluctuations in lexical processing. Here, we present a qualitative analysis of a recently published dynamical mode and propose that deterministic nonlinear control accounts for much of the observed complexity of eye movement patterns during reading. Based on a symbolic coding technique we analyze robust statistical features of simulated fixation sequences.
- Source: Complexity Of Eye Movements In Reading, R. Engbert, R. Kliegl, A. Longtin, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127404009491, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, Feb. 2004
- Contributed by Atin Das - dasatinyahoo.co.in
A 'Snowball Earth' Climate Triggered By Continental Break-Up, Nature
Excerpts: Geological and palaeomagnetic studies indicate that ice sheets may have reached the Equator at the end of the Proterozoic eon, 800 to 550 million years ago, leading to the suggestion of a fully ice-covered 'snowball Earth'. Climate model simulations indicate that such a snowball state for the Earth depends on anomalously low atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, in addition to the Sun being 6 per cent fainter than it is today. (...) This indicates that tectonic changes could have triggered a progressive transition from a 'greenhouse' to an 'icehouse' (...).
On the Cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl, Science
Abstract: During the 1930s, the United States experienced one of the most devastating droughts of the past century. The drought affected almost two-thirds of the country and parts of Mexico and Canada and was infamous for the numerous dust storms that occurred in the southern Great Plains. In this study, we present model results that indicate that the drought was caused by anomalous tropical sea surface temperatures during that decade and that interactions between the atmosphere and the land surface increased its severity. We also contrast the 1930s drought with other North American droughts of the 20th century.
- Source: On the Cause of the 1930s Dust Bowl, Siegfried D. Schubert, Max J. Suarez, Philip J. Pegion, Randal D. Koster, Julio T. Bacmeister, DOI: 10.1126/science.1095048, Science 1855-1859., 04/03/19
Society and Sea Level Rise, Science
Excerpts: Most of the world's shorelines are in a state of erosion. The only major exceptions are areas of high sediment supply, (...). Many developed nations have experienced a four-decade rush to the shore, with concomitant beachfront development and exponentially increasing total values for beachfront real estate, infrastructure, and buildings. That this unprecedented accelerating coastal development has unfortunately coincided with a century of accelerating global sea level rise (SLR) means that the prediction of the future rate of shoreline retreat has become a major societal priority.
Laboratory Earthquakes, Science
Excerpts: We report on the experimental observation of spontaneously nucleated supershear rupture and on the visualization of sub-Rayleigh-to-supershear rupture transitions in frictionally held interfaces. The laboratory experiments mimic natural earthquakes. The results suggest that under certain conditions supershear rupture propagation can be facilitated during large earthquake events.
Whether and how supershear rupture occurs during earthquakes has important implications for seismic hazards, because the rupture speed influences the character of near-field ground motions.
To answer the above-stated questions, we conducted experiments that mimic the earthquake rupture processes.
Identifying the Role that Individual Animals Play in their Social Network, arXiv
Abstract: Techniques recently developed for the analysis of human social networks are applied to the social network of bottlenose dolphins living in Doubtful Sound, New Zealand. We identify communities and subcommunities within the dolphin population and present evidence that sex- and age-related homophily play a role in the formation of clusters of preferred companionship. We also identify brokers who act as links between subcommunities and who appear to be crucial to the social cohesion of the population as a whole. The network is found to be similar to human social networks in some respects but different in some others such as the level of assortative mixing by degree within the population. This difference elucidates some of the means by which the network formed and evolves.
Sticklebacks Exploit The Most Reliable Source When Public And Private Information Conflict, Alphagalileo & Proc. Biol. Sc.
Abstract: Hitherto, little attention has been given to the circumstances under which animals rely on their own experience and when they copy others. This study presented nine-spined sticklebacks with conflicting private and public information about the profitability of two foraging patches and then tested the fish for a patch preference. The findings suggest that sticklebacks flexibly adjust their decision making to exploit the most reliable information available. Fish preferentially based their decisions on personal information when it was clear and consistent (...), but switched to copying others when their personal information was unclear or outdated.
Self-organization of Collaboration Networks, arXiv
Abstract: We study collaboration networks in terms of evolving, self-organizing bipartite graph models. We propose a model of a growing network, which combines preferential edge attachment with the bipartite structure, generic for collaboration networks. The model depends exclusively on basic properties of the network, such as the total number of collaborators and acts of collaboration, the mean size of collaborations, etc. The simplest model defined within this framework already allows us to describe many of the main topological characteristics (degree distribution, clustering coefficient, etc.) of one-mode projections of several real collaboration networks, without parameter fitting. We explain the observed dependence of the local clustering on degree and the degree--degree correlations in terms of the ``aging'' of collaborators and their physical impossibility to participate in an unlimited number of collaborations.
Networks, Fields, and Organizations: Micro-Dynamics, Scale and Cohesive Embeddings, SFI Working Papers
Abstract: Social action is situated in fields that are simultaneously composed of interpersonal ties and relations among organizations, which are both usefully characterized as social networks. We introduce a novel approach to distinguishing different network macro-structures in terms of cohesive subsets and their overlaps. We develop a vocabulary that relates different forms of network cohesion to field properties as opposed to organizational constraints on ties and structures. We illustrate differences in probabilistic attachment processes in network evolution that link on the one hand to organizational constraints versus field properties and to cohesive network topologies on the other. This allows us to identify a set of important new micro-macro linkages between local behavior in networks and global network properties. The analytic strategy thus puts in place a methodology for Predictive Social Cohesion theory to be developed and tested in the context of informal and formal organizations and organizational fields. We also show how organizations and fields combine at different scales of cohesive depth and cohesive breadth. Operational measures and results are illustrated for three organizational examples, and analysis of these cases suggests that different structures of cohesive subsets and overlaps may be predictive in organizational contexts and, similarly, for the larger fields in which they are embedded, and for predictions of feedback from the field context back to organizations.
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Abstract: An element of the contemporary dispute amongst evolution minded psychologists and social scientists hinges on the conception of mind as being adapted as opposed to adaptive. This dispute is not trivial. The possibility that human minds are both adapted and adaptive courtesy of selection pressures that were social in nature is of particular (...). I suggest that the notion of an evolved psychological adaptation in social psychology can be retained only if it is accepted that this adaptation is for social interaction and has no rigidly fixed function and cannot be described in terms of algorithmic decision rules or fixed inferential procedures.
What Happened To The "Social" In Social Psychology?, J. Theor. Social Behav.
Abstract: This article describes the historical abandonment of the distinctive conception of the social dimensions of cognition, emotion and behavior embraced by American social psychologists in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is suggested that part of the reason why the original conception of the social was abandoned by American psychologists was because of its association with theories of the "group mind," (...). It is suggested that while these factors partly explain the neglect of the social in American social psychology, none represent particularly good reasons for abandoning the original conception of the social.
L.A. Sheriff Frees Inmates, Cites Budget, NPR ATC
Excerpts: The Los Angeles County sheriff has released thousands of jail inmates in the past year, long before they finished serving their sentences. Sheriff Lee Baca says budget cuts made him do it -- otherwise, he'd have to take some patrolling deputies off the streets. NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports.
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Excerpts: It spread first across the city and then the country, multiplying itself through mobile phones, emails and the internet. (...)
From 6pm the day before, until long into the evening, 5,000 people gathered in the Spanish captial to vent their anger at what they saw as a deliberate government cover-up regarding the perpetrators of the recent bombings.(...)
Most remarkable of all, the protests were organised in just a few hours, via text message and email, by a disillusioned electorate that had decided to take matters into their own hands.
Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
Europe, U.S. Diverge on How to Fight Terrorism, Washington Post
Excerpts: "Europe is not at war," (...). "We have to energetically oppose terrorism, but we mustn't change the way we live."
Between those two declarations lies a gap that reflects the different modern histories, cultures and approaches to terrorism of the United States and Europe, according to politicians and analysts on the continent. (...)
At a summit that ended Friday, EU leaders announced several measures designed to increase cooperation among their police forces and intelligence services. But the attacks have not led to a fundamental shift in Europe's approach.
Analysis: Politics Played a Role in Sept. 11 Attacks, NPR ATC
Excerpts: NPR's Mike Shuster reports that despite all the missed signals, poor intelligence and lousy communication between counter-terrorist agencies, politics did play a role in early 2001 in the inability of the U.S. government to anticipate al Qaeda attacks in the United States. Testimony before the commission investigating the government's actions before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks paints a picture of an incoming Bush administration unwilling to see the threat from al Qaeda as urgently as the outgoing Clinton administration did.
Editor's Note: Much of the current public terrorist discussion is not so much about how to prevent future terrorist attacks but much more about the public perceived reality of the events related to 9/11. There is certainly immense evolutionary pressure on the two political parties in the U.S. to spin reality in a way favorable to partisan interests. On the other hand one can claim (using the demise of the Soviet Union as a recent historical example) that the divergence of "composed realities" compared to the observed ones can act as a critical parameter that can destabilize the overall political system.
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Excerpts: Mr. Clarke said that from Oct. 1998 until Dec. 2000, the National Security Council in the Clinton administration failed to make any new recommendations on how to deal with the burgeoning al Qaeda threat. By contrast, in the summer of 2001, Mr. Clarke said, the Bush administration changed U.S. policy from the "rollback of al Qaeda over the course of five years" to its elimination. All of these points, however, are ignored or glossed over in his new book - which depicts the administration as laggards in dealing with the al Qaeda terrorist threat.
Bush's War -- Against Richard Clarke, Salon.com
Excerpts: The controversy raging around Richard Clarke's book -- and his testimony before the 9/11 Commission that Bush ignored warnings about terrorism that might have prevented the attacks -- revolves around his singularly unimpeachable credibility. In response, the Bush administration has launched a full-scale offensive against him: impugning his personal motives, claiming he is a disappointed job-hunter, that he is publicity mad, a political partisan (Clarke, in fact, voted for Republican Sen. John McCain for president in the Republican primaries in 2000) -- as well as ignorant, irrelevant and a liar.
Links & Snippets
Other Publications
- Spin-Glass Complexity, A. Crisanti, L. Leuzzi, G. Parisi, T. Rizzo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 127203 (2004), DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.127203
- A Molecular Elevator, Jovica D. Badjic, Vincenzo Balzani, Alberto Credi, Serena Silvi, J. Fraser Stoddart, Science 19 March 2004: 1845-1849.
- Electrical or Photocontrol of the Rotary Motion of a Metallacarborane, M. Frederick Hawthorne, Jeffrey I. Zink, Johnny M. Skelton, Michael J. Bayer, Chris Liu, Ester Livshits, Roi Baer, Daniel Neuhauser, Science 19 March 2004: 1849-1851
- Comparative Losses of British Butterflies, Birds, and Plants and the Global Extinction Crisis, J. A. Thomas, M. G. Telfer, D. B. Roy, C. D. Preston, J. J. D. Greenwood, J. Asher, R. Fox, R. T. Clarke, J. H. Lawton, Science 19 March 2004: 1879-1881.
- Biochemistry:Water Photolysis in Biology, A. W. Rutherford, A. Boussac, Science 19 March 2004: 1782-1784
- Academy, GAO to Study Possible Robotic Hubble Mission, Andrew Lawler, Science 19 March 2004: 1745
- Particle Physics:Gamma Rays Spotlight a Dark Horse for Dark Matter, Charles Seife, Science 19 March 2004: 1746
- Radio Search For ET Draws A Blank, David Whitehouse, BBC News Online
- Clarke's Critique Reopens Debate on Iraq War , Glenn Kessler, Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 28, 2004; Page A22
- Hornbills Know Which Monkey Calls To Heed, Hornbills can tell the difference between two kinds of alarm calls given by monkeys.
- Cortical Activity Reductions During Repetition Priming Can Result From Rapid Response Learning, Ian G. Dobbins, David M. Schnyer, Mieke Verfaellie, Daniel L. Schacter, 04/03/18, Nature 428, 316 - 319 , DOI: 10.1038/nature02400
- Environment 'Stunts Young Brains', Alex Kirby, 04/03/25, BBC News Online
- Maths 'Nobel' Awarded, Mark Peplow, 04/03/26, Pair get prize for formula that counts solutions to problems.
- Digital Paper Makes Device Debut, 04/03/26, BBC News, Soon you could be reading a book printed on electronic paper. Sony, Philips and digital paper pioneer E-Ink have announced an electronic book reader that is due to go on sale in Japan in late April for $375 (£204).
- Europe's Eye on Terrorism , 04/03/28, Washington Post Sunday Page B06
- Voting for Better Voting , 04/03/28, Washington Post Sunday, Page B06
- World Getting 'Literally Greener', Alex Kirby, 04/03/29, BBC News Online, http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39828000/jpg/_39828625_ferns_bruijnzeel_203.jpg
About a third of the world is still covered with forests...
- Penguin-Mounted Cameras Glimpse Underwater Group Behaviour, A. Takahashi, K. Sato, Y. Naito, M. J. Dunn, P. N. Trathan, J. P. Croxall, 2004/03/23, Alphagalileo & Biology Letters
- Four Kingdoms On Glacier Ice: Convergent Energetic Processes Boost Energy Levels As Temperatures Fall, M. J. Napolitano, D. H. Shain, 2004/03/23, Alphagalileo & Biology Letters
- Artist And Scientists Create A "Walk-In Brain", J. Bealing - j.a.bealingsussex.ac.uk, 2004/03/24, Alphagalileo
- Once Bitten, Twice Shy, Y. van Bergen - y.vanbergenlancaster.ac.uk, 2004/03/24, Alphagalileo
- A Little Music With Exercise Boosts Brain Power, Study Suggests, 2004/03/24, ScienceDaily & Ohio State University
- Human Studies Show Feasibility Of Brain-machine Interfaces, 2004/03/24, ScienceDaily & Duke University Medical Center
- Big Cats Need Cat Food: New Model Directly Links Tiger Numbers To Amount Of Prey, Study Says, 2004/03/25, ScienceDaily & Wildlife Conservation Society
- Simulated Electrocortical Activity At Microscopic, Mesoscopic And Global Scales, J. J. Wright - jjwmhri.edu.au, C. J. Rennie, G. J. Lees, P. A. Robinson, P. D. Bourke, C. L. Chapman, E. Gordon, D. L. Rowe, Feb. 2004, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127404009569
- Attention-Locked Computation With Chaotic Neural Nets, C. Lourenço, Feb. 2004, International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, DOI: 10.1142/S0218127404009442
- A Noisy Self-Organizing Neural Network With Bifurcation Dynamics For Combinatorial Optimization, Kwok, T., Smith, K. A., Jan. 2004, Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions on
- Communicating With The Uncommunicative: Music Therapy With Pre-Verbal Adults, J. Graham, Mar. 2004, British Journal of Learning Disabilities
- Cognition And Emotion? The Dead End In Self-Esteem Research, T. J. Scheff, D. S. Fearon, Mar. 2004, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour
- Disguising Adult Neural Stem Cells, Sribunruangrit N., Marque C., Lenay C., Hanneton S., Gapenne O., Vanhoutte C., online 2004/01/20, Current Opinion in Neurobiology, DOI: 10.1016/j.conb.2004.01.008
- Memory And A Priori Best Strategy In Complex Adaptive Systems, M. Quito Jr., C. Monterola, C. Saloma - csalomanip.upd.edu.ph, Online:2004/03/23, Complexity, DOI: 10.1002/cplx.20008
Webcast Announcements
- Voices of Public Intellectuals Lecture Series: Democracy's Response to the Terrorist Threat Now in its fifth year, the Radcliffe Institute Voices of Public Intellectuals lecture series brings issues affecting civic life to a public forum. This year's series of three lectures features experts in the study of terrorism and the prosecution of terrorists to explore the effects of terrorism on democracy. These lectures take place in Cambridge on February 26, March 4, and March 11 at 4 p.m.
- World Economic Forum 2004, Davos, Switzerland
- Riding the Next Democratic Wave, Al-Thani, Khan, Vike-Freiberga, Wade, Soros, Zakaria, World Economic Forum, 04/01/25
- The Future of Global Interdependence, Kharrazi, Held, Owens, Shourie, Annan, Martin, Schwab, World Economic Forum, 04/01/25
- Why Victory Against Terrorism Demands Shared Values
- The Process of Curricular Review: Redefining a World-Class Education, Benedict Gross, Thomas Bender, Harvard@home, 04/01/21, Dean of Harvard College Benedict Gross discusses Harvard's first comprehensive review of the undergraduate curriculum in almost 3 decades. This program introduces the process of curricular review by presenting two segmented lectures. The first, by Dean Gross, outlines the approach and considerations in undertaking the current review. The second lecture, presented by NYU Professor Thomas Bender, presents a historical perspective on academic culture.
- Cancer Biology , NPR Talk of the Nation, 04/01/16, How the spread of cancer is like wound healing gone awry.
- Tracking Ebola , NPR Talk of the Nation, 04/01/16, A new study might help scientists predict where Ebola may! strike next.
- Animal Thought and Communication, NPR Talk of the Nation, 04/01/16, How do animals think and communicate with each other? And what can studying animals tell us about the evolution of language in humans? In this hour, NPR's Ira Flatow and guests look at thought and communication in apes, gorillas and monkeys. What can non-human primates tell us about communication in humans?
- CODIS 2004, International Conference On Communications, Devices And Intelligent Systems, 2004 Calcutta, India, 04/01/09-10
- EVOLVABILITY & INTERACTION: Evolutionary Substrates of Communication, Signaling, and Perception in the Dynamics of Social Complexity, London, UK, 03/10/08-10
- The Semantic Web and Language Technology - Its Po tential and Practicalities, Bucharest, Romania, 03/07/28-08/08
- ECAL 2003, 7th European Conference on Artificial Life, Dortmund, Germany, 03/09/14-17
- New Santa Fe Institute President About His Vision for SFI's Future Role, (Video, Santa Fe, NM, 03/06/04)
- SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise, Santa Fe, NM, 2003/06/01-04
- NAS Sackler Colloquium on Mapping Knowledge Domains, Video/Audio Report, 03/05/11
- 13th Ann Intl Conf, Soc f Chaos Theory in Psych & Life Sciences, Boston, MA, USA, 2003/08/08-10
- CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
- Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
- Edge Videos
Conference & Call for Papers Announcements
- Fractal 2004,
"Complexity and Fractals in Nature", 8th Intl
Multidisciplinary Conf, Vancouver, Canada, 04/04/04-07
- 6th German Workshop on Artificial Life 2004 (GWAL-6), Bamberg, Germany, 04/04/14-16
- The
9th IEEE Intl Conf on Engineering of Complex Computer
Systems, Florence, Italy, 04/04/14-16
- Complexity Science and the Exploration of the Emerging World, Austin, TX, 04/04/17
- 2004
Advanced Simulation Technologies Conference (ASTC'04),
Arlington, VA., USA, 04/04/18-22
- NKS
(New Kind of Science) 2004 Conference and Minicourse,
Boston, Massachusetts, 04/04/22-25
- IDS'04 - Intentional Dynamic Systems Symposium, Memphis, TN, USA, 04/04/24-26
-
New Horizons In Search Theory
, Newport, RI, 04/04/26-28
-
Human Systems Dynamics at Work: Complexity Tools for Today, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 04/04/27-28
-
Life, a Nobel Story , Brussels, BE, 04/04/28
- Urban
Vulnerability and Network Failure: Constructions and Experiences
of Emergencies, Crises and Collapse, Manchester, UK,
04/04/29-30
-
What Really Matters ?The Global Forum 2004, Santa Fe, NM, 04/05/02-04
- International Conference on the Ontology of Spacetime,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 04/05/11-14
- 5th
International Conference on Complex Systems (ICCS2004),
Boston, MA, USA, 04/05/16-21
- 3rd Intl Conf on
Systems Thinking in Management (ICSTM 2004) "Transforming
Organizations to Achieve Sustainable Success",
Philadelphia, Pa, USA, 04/05/19-21
- 4th Intl Conf on
Fractals And Dynamic Systems In Geoscience, München, Germany, 04/05/19-22
- 9th
Annual Workshop on Economics and Heterogeneous Interaction Agents
(WEHIA04), Kyoto, Japan, 2004/05/27-29
- 13th
International Symposium on HIV & Emerging Infectious
Diseases, Toulon, France, 04/06/03-05
!
- ECC8
Experimental Chaos Conference, Florence, Italy,
04/06/14-17
- An Intl Tribute to Francisco Varela, Paris,04/06/18-20
- 7th
Intl Conf on Linking Systems Thinking, Innovation,Quality, Entrepreneurship and Environment (STIQE),
MARIBOR, SLOVENIA, 04/06/24-26
-
Biannual Meeting Society for Research on Biological Rhythms, Whistler, BC, 04/06/24-26
-
NAACSOS 2004, North American Association for Computational Social and Organizational Science, Pittsburgh PA, 04/06/27-29
-
Statphys - Kolkata V An International Conference on Complex Networks: Structure, Function and Processes , Kolkata, India, 04/06/27-30
-
ICAD 2004 10th International Conference on Auditory Display, Sydney, Australia, 04/07/06-09
-
3rd Intl School Topics in Nonlinear Dynamics Discrete Dynamical Systems and Applications , Urbino (Italy), 04/07/07-09
- `Perspectives on Nonlinear Dynamics 2004 (PNLD-2004), Chen!
nai, India, 04/07/12-15
- From Animals To Animats
8, 8th Intl Conf On The Simulation Of Adaptive Behavior
(SAB'04), Los Angeles, USA, 04/07/13-17
- 14th Annual International Conference The Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences , Milwaukee, WI, USA, 04/07/15-18
-
Facing Complexity, Wellington, NZ, 04/07/15-17
-
Interdisciplinary Colloquium, Security Bytes, Security/Life/Terror
, Lancaster, 04/07/17-19
- Gordon Research Conference on "Oscillations & Dynamic Instabilities In Chemical Systems", Lewiston, ME, 04/07/18-23
- 3rd
Intl Conf Autonomous Agents & Multi-Agent Systems Conference (AAMAS 2004), New York City, 04/07/19-23
- 7th
Intl Workshop on: Trust in Agent Societies , New York City, 04/07/19-20
- 8th
World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and
Informatics, Orlando, Florida, USA, 04/07/18-21
- 2004
Summer Simulation MultiConference (SummerSim'04), San Jose
Hyatt, San Jose, California, 04/07/25-29
- SME 2004 Symposium on Modeling
and Control of Economic Systems , University in Redlands, CA, 04/01/28-31
- 6th
International Mathematica Symposium (IMS 2004), Banff,
Canada, 04/08/02-06
- Fractals and Natural Hazards at
32nd Intl Geological Congress (IGC), Florence, Italy, 04/08/20-28
-
ICCC 2004, IEEE International Conference on Computational Cybernetics, ,
Vienna, Austria, 04/08/30-09/01
- ANTS
2004, 4th International Workshop on Ant Colony
Optimization and Swarm Intelligence, Brussels, Belgium,
04/09/05-08
- Dynamic
Ontology,
An Inquiry into Systems, Emergence, Levels of Reality,
and Forms of Causality, Trento, Italy,
04/09/08-11
- 9th
Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems
(ALIFE9), Boston, Massachusetts, 04/09/12-15
- The
Verhulst 200 on Chaos, Brussels, BELGIUM, 04/09/16-18
- The
8th Intl Conf on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature
(PPSN VIII), Birmingham, UK, 04/09/18-22
- XVII Brazilian
Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Sao Luis, Maranhao -
Brazil, 04/09/22-24
- TEDMED Conference ,
Charleston SC, 04/10/12-15
- Wolfram
Technology Conference, Champaign, Illinois,
04/10/21-23
- 6th Intl Conf on Electronic Commerce
ICEC'2004: Towards A New Services Landscape, Delft, The Netherlands, 04/10/25-27
- Complexity and Philosophy Workshop - 2-Day Conference , Rio de Janeiro, 04/11
-
Excerpts:
 Recognizing the world as one vast interconnected system is essential to understanding the level of complexity in today's global environment. |
This course is designed to give you a working knowledge of complexity science, and to show how to apply insights from the new science to your life and work, and to world events.
