Complexity Digest 2008.41

9-Oct-2008

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Content

  1. Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception, Science
    1. The Origin And Evolution Of Religious Prosociality, Science
  2. Between-Group Competition And Human Cooperation, Proc. Biol. Sc.
  3. Making The World Safe For Partial Democracy? Questioning The Premises Of Democracy Promotion, Int. Security
  4. Neuroeconomics: The Promise And The Profit, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
    1. Neural Correlates Of Economic Game Playing, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
    2. How Markets Slowly Digest Changes in Supply and Demand, SFI Working Papers
  5. Musicians Use Both Sides Of Their Brains More Frequently Than Average People, ScienceDaily
  6. Video Game Helps Math Students Vanquish an Archfiend: Algebra, NY Times
  7. Why Model?, SFI Working Papers
  8. Zooming Out On Complex Networks, Physics
    1. Inequality and Network Structure, SFI Working Papers
  9. Nobel Prize In Physics Shared For Work That Unifies Forces Of Nature, Science News
    1. Rebels? No, Simply Scientists, PLoS Biol
    2. When A Light Goes On During Thought Processes, Innovations-report
  10. Attacking Cancer Stem Cells - A Screening Approach Identifies Drugs That Halt Cells That Feed Tumors., Technology Review
    1. Cancer Biology: Ensuring A Welcome, Nature
  11. HIV Immunology Needs A New Direction, Nature
  12. Metabolomics: Biochemistry's New Look, Nature
  13. DNA Could Reveal Your Surname, PhysOrg.com
    1. Physics of Evolution: Selection without Fitness, arXiv
  14. Ecology: Bugs' Bugs, Science
    1. Sensory Ecology: In Sight Of Speciation, Nature
  15. When Trees Grew In Antarctica, Science News
  16. Atmospheric Science: From Ocean To Stratosphere, Science
    1. World's Largest Tsunami Debris, Science News
    2. Glaciology: Winds, Not Just Global Warming, Eating Away At The Ice Sheets, Science
  17. Astronomy: The Shining Make-Up Of Our Star, Science
  18. Global Research, Learning Network Continues To Grow, Penn State Live
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. Assessing The Dangers Of Illicit Networks: Why Al-Qaida May Be Less Threatening Than Many Think, Int. Security
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Lacking Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: We present six experiments that tested whether lacking control increases illusory pattern perception, which we define as the identification of a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of random or unrelated stimuli. Participants who lacked control were more likely to perceive a variety of illusory patterns, including seeing images in noise, forming illusory correlations in stock market information, perceiving conspiracies, and developing superstitions. Additionally, we demonstrated that increased pattern perception has a motivational basis by measuring the need for structure directly and showing that the causal link between lack of control and illusory pattern perception is reduced by affirming the self.

    1. The Origin And Evolution Of Religious Prosociality, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: We examine empirical evidence for religious prosociality, the hypothesis that religions facilitate costly behaviors that benefit other people. Although sociological surveys reveal an association between self-reports of religiosity and prosociality, experiments measuring religiosity and actual prosocial behavior suggest that this association emerges primarily in contexts where reputational concerns are heightened. Experimentally induced religious thoughts reduce rates of cheating and increase altruistic behavior among anonymous strangers. Experiments demonstrate an association between apparent profession of religious devotion and greater trust. Cross-cultural evidence suggests an association between the cultural presence of morally concerned deities and large group size in humans.

  2. Between-Group Competition And Human Cooperation, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: A distinctive feature of human behaviour is the widespread occurrence of cooperation among unrelated individuals. Explaining the maintenance of costly within-group cooperation is a challenge because the incentive to free ride on the efforts of other group members is expected to lead to decay of cooperation. However, the costs of cooperation can be diminished or overcome when there is competition at a higher level of organizational hierarchy. Here we show that competition between groups resolves the paradigmatic ‘public goods' social dilemma and increases within-group cooperation and overall productivity. Further, group competition intensifies the moral emotions of anger and guilt (...).

  3. Making The World Safe For Partial Democracy? Questioning The Premises Of Democracy Promotion, Int. Security Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Democracy promotion is a favored strategy to advance the cause of world peace, especially in the Greater Middle East, but undifferentiated democracy promotion has two faulty premises. First, all progress toward the establishment of democratic regimes does not necessarily make the global community safer. Second, regime change is not something external actors have the capacity to direct along desired pathways. The first assumption fails to consider the well-documented security problems caused by partial democracies. The second assumption overstates the ability of powerful outsiders to induce transitions to full democracy. These research findings are grounds for cautious and selective democracy promotion, (...).

  4. Neuroeconomics: The Promise And The Profit, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Neuroeconomics investigates the neural mechanisms underlying decisions about rewarding or punishing outcomes (‘economic' decisions). It combines the knowledge about the behavioural phenomena of economic decisions with the mechanistic explanatory power of neuroscience. Thus, it is about the neurobiological foundations of economic decision making. It is hoped that by ‘opening the box' we can understand how decisions about gains and losses are directed by the brain of the individual decision maker. Perhaps we can even learn why some decisions are apparently paradoxical or pathological. The knowledge could be used to create situations that avoid suboptimal decisions and harm.

    1. Neural Correlates Of Economic Game Playing, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The theory of games provides a mathematical formalization of strategic choices, which have been studied in both economics and neuroscience, and more recently has become the focus of neuroeconomics experiments with human and non-human actors. This paper reviews the results from a number of game experiments that establish a unitary system for forming subjective expected utility maps in the brain, and acting on these maps to produce choices. Social situations require the brain to build an understanding of the other person using neuronal mechanisms that share affective and intentional mental states. These systems allow subjects to better predict other players' choices, (...).

    2. How Markets Slowly Digest Changes in Supply and Demand, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: In this article we revisit the classic problem of tatonnement, reviewing a recent body of theoretical and empirical work explaining how fluctuations in supply and demand are slowly incorporated into prices. For strategic reasons large orders to buy or sell are only traded incrementally, over periods of time that can be as long as months. Because of this fluctuations in supply and demand form a long-memory process, manifesting itself as highly persistent order flow. Liquidity dynamics plays a key role in determining volatility and in allowing the market to absorb large swings in supply and demand while remaining efficient. We review a body of theory that makes detailed quantitative predictions about the volume and time dependence of market impact, the bid ask spread, and order book dynamics, and show that the predictions of this body of theory compare well with empirical data. This approach suggests a novel interpretation of financial information, in which all agents are at best only weakly informed, price formation is extremely noisy, and most information comes from within rather than from outside the market. We review some preliminary studies of market ecology and argue that this should play a central role in the future.

  5. Musicians Use Both Sides Of Their Brains More Frequently Than Average People, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Supporting what many of us who are not musically talented have often felt, new research reveals that trained musicians really do think differently than the rest of us. Vanderbilt University psychologists have found that professionally trained musicians more effectively use a creative technique called divergent thinking, and also use both the left and the right sides of their frontal cortex more heavily than the average person. (...) One possible explanation the researchers offer for the musicians' elevated use of both brain hemispheres is that many musicians must be able to use both hands independently to play their instruments. (...)

  6. Video Game Helps Math Students Vanquish an Archfiend: Algebra, NY Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: This fall, New York City is rolling out Dimension M - M stands for math - (...)

    Whether such educational video games are effective teaching tools is among the key questions behind the new Games for Learning Institute, a $3 million research effort at New York University that was publicly unveiled on Tuesday. The institute, a partnership between the Microsoft Corporation and six universities (N.Y.U., Columbia, the City University of New York, Dartmouth, Parsons the New School for Design, and the Rochester Institute of Technology) will study games used in middle school classrooms and then create prototypes for new ones.

  7. Why Model?, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The modeling enterprise extends as far back as Archimedes, and so does its misunderstanding. This paper treats some enduring misconceptions about modeling; one of these is that the goal is always prediction. The paper distinguishes between explanation and prediction as modeling goals, and offers sixteen reasons other than prediction to build a model. It also challenges the common assumption that scientific theories arise from and "summarize"¯ data, when often, theories precede and guide data collection; without theory, in other words, it is not clear what data to collect. Among other things, it also argues that the modeling enterprise enforces habits of mind essential to freedom.
    • Source: Why Model?, Joshua M. Epstein, DOI: SFI-WP 08-09-040, SFI Working Papers

  8. Zooming Out On Complex Networks, Physics Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Complex networks appear in extremely diverse contexts, such as telecommunications, protein interactions, and social interactions. Yet many of these networks appear to share certain nontrivial, similar patterns of connection between their elements. Understanding the origins of these patterns and identifying and characterizing new ones is one of the main driving forces for research in complex networks. An interesting and open question pertinent to this effort is how the structural organization of a network evolves as it is observed on increasingly larger scales - from individual nodes to the network as a whole.

    1. Inequality and Network Structure, SFI Working Papers Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: This paper explores the manner in which the structure of a social network constrains the level of inequality that can be sustained among its members. We assume that any distribution of value across the network must be stable with respect to coalitional deviations, and that players can form a deviating coalition only if they constitute a clique in the network. We show that if the network is bipartite, there is a unique stable payoff distribution that is maximally unequal in that it does not Lorenz dominate any other stable distribution. We obtain a complete ordering of the class of bipartite networks and show that those with larger maximum independent sets can sustain greater levels of inequality. The intuition behind this result is that networks with larger maximum independent sets are more sparse and hence offer fewer opportunities for coalitional deviations. We also demonstrate that standard centrality measures do not consistently predict inequality. We extend our framework by allowing a group of players to deviate if they are all within distance k of each other, and show that the ranking of networks by the extent of extremal inequality is not invariant in k.

  9. Nobel Prize In Physics Shared For Work That Unifies Forces Of Nature, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: "The basic laws of physics seem to be incredibly symmetric," Greene adds, "but to get the kinds of things that we're used to in the word around us - stars, planets and people - that symmetry needs to be reduced in order for that kind of structure to emerge."

    It's like adding paint to a blank canvas, notes Greene. On a bare canvas, every point is the same as every other - there's complete symmetry. But to see the beauty of a painting emerge, a painter adds splashes of color, which reduces the symmetry, "and that's what needed to happen in the universe," he says.

    1. Rebels? No, Simply Scientists, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: The problem of creativity is common to the arts and sciences. What distinguishes geniuses from ordinary mortals? In the arts, from Mozart to van Gogh, creativity has frequently been associated with the artist's opposition to the society of their time. A good artist is a rebel. Paradoxically, whereas science might appear as a progressive rational construction of new knowledge, the same relation has been postulated between rebellion and scientific creativity. There are many historical accounts of how scientists who made decisive breakthroughs saw their ideas rejected, and became "rebels."

    2. When A Light Goes On During Thought Processes, Innovations-report Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: A nerve cell is a major hub for the exchange of valuable information. The nose, eyes, ears, and other sense organs perceive our environment through various antennae known as receptors. The numerous stimuli are then passed on to the neurons. All of this information is collected, processed, and finally transferred to specific brain centers at these hubs - the human brain consists of almost 100 billion nerve cells. The nerve cell uses a special means of transport for this purpose: the action potential which codes the information, thus enabling communication between the nerve cells. An action potential of this kind is an electrical excitation (...).

  10. Attacking Cancer Stem Cells - A Screening Approach Identifies Drugs That Halt Cells That Feed Tumors., Technology Review Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Capturing cancer stem cells: A new method allows scientists to grow leukemic stem cells from mice (in red) outside the body when supporting cells from the bone marrow (green) are present. The method makes it possible to perform high-throughput screening for drugs that target cancer stem cells.
    Credit: Kimberly Hartwell
    Dubbed cancer stem cells, they can divide indefinitely to perpetuate the cancer over time. They may also be the reason why some therapies fail to wipe out a cancer entirely: cancer stem cells seem to be particularly resistant to standard cancer treatments and can remain behind like the roots of a weed.

    If this hypothesis holds true, cancer stem cells could be the most promising target for new therapies. A team of researchers at Harvard Medical School has now developed a new way to find drugs that selectively kill cancer stem cells or prevent them from dividing.

    1. Cancer Biology: Ensuring A Welcome, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Before travelling to new organs - or metastasizing - some cancers send chemical signals to prepare the target organ for their arrival. (...)

      (...) primary tumours in mice secrete growth factors that stimulate lung cells to produce chemoattractant proteins. These recruit white blood cells into the lungs, and the resulting inflammation recruits cancer cells to the site.

  11. HIV Immunology Needs A New Direction, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Researchers need to get past the standard model of vaccine development and focus on how immune responses are specifically tailored to retroviruses (...).

    HIV has evaded the attempts of vaccinologists for 25 years partly because of the unique characteristics of the virus, including its extremely high mutation rate, which enables immune evasion, and its ability to infect and deplete the major orchestrators of the immune response - the CD4+ T cells.

  12. Metabolomics: Biochemistry's New Look, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Until now, metabolomics researchers have had to adapt technology developed mainly for proteomics. But there are now solutions designed with them in mind. (...)

    Metabolomics - the comprehensive study of metabolic reactions - is gaining ground alongside its older siblings genomics and proteomics. "Unlike some of the other 'omics' that we have seen, metabolomics is going to produce a lot of useful information right from the start,"(...).

  13. DNA Could Reveal Your Surname, PhysOrg.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Dr King said: "In Britain, surnames are passed down from father to son. A piece of our DNA, the Y chromosome, is the one part of our genetic material that confers maleness and is passed, like surnames, from father to son. Therefore, a link could exist between a man's surname and the type of Y chromosome he carries. A simple link between name and Y chromosome could in principle connect all men sharing a surname into one large family tree.

    1. Physics of Evolution: Selection without Fitness, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Traditionally evolution is seen as a process where from a pool of possible variations of a population (e.g. biological species or industrial goods) a few variations get selected which survive and proliferate, whereas the others vanish. Survival probability is typically associated with the 'fitness' of a particular variation. In this paper we argue that the notion of fitness is an a posteriori concept, in the sense that one can assign higher fitness to species that survive but one can generally not derive or even measure fitness - or fitness landscapes - per se. For this reason we think that in a 'physical' theory of evolution such notions should be avoided.

  14. Ecology: Bugs' Bugs, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Focused on only a single (but well-known) species of beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis, Scott et al. on page 63 of this issue dramatically illustrate that, as numerous as they may be, beetles may represent just the tip of the biodiversity iceberg. A single beetle species itself can house an entire community of associated species. D. frontalis infests pine trees but is dependent on two symbiotic fungi--Entomocorticum sp. A, and to a lesser extent, Ceratocystiopsis ranaculosus--which both grow in the vascular system of the tree and provide food for the beetle larvae.

    1. Sensory Ecology: In Sight Of Speciation, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Adaptation of a fish's eyes to its visual environment can bias females to mate with different males according to their coloration. This sensory preference can contribute to the formation of new species. (...)

      (...) the cichlid fish in the Great Lakes of Africa. These fish are the most rapidly speciating organisms on Earth, and this explosion of life has produced a panoply of colour, morphology and behaviour, a sampling of which can be seen at your local pet shop. The fish in Lake Victoria, where the present study was done, show a fantastically high rate of speciation. More than 500 species inhabit the lake.

  15. When Trees Grew In Antarctica, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    The fossils of ancient trees that grew in Antarctica (top image) show that only 5 to 12 percent the rings of the prehistoric trees were made of small, thick-walled cells, compared with 40 percent in the rings of modern trees that grow in temperate latitudes. A study of the Antarctic fossils suggests the trees grew much differently than today's trees.
    Credit: Ryberg and Taylor
    The Antarctic trees, Ryberg says, were exposed to 24-hour sunshine during the height of summer and might have grown continuously then.

    Typically, three factors - cold temperature, lack of water and lack of sunlight - can strongly limit the growth rates of modern trees. The Antarctic fossils don't show signs that the trees ever suffered frost damage. Also, the fossils were found in sediments usually deposited on the floodplains of rivers, so the trees probably didn't experience drought often.

  16. Atmospheric Science: From Ocean To Stratosphere, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The increasing burden of greenhouse gases from human activities, such as carbon dioxide, is warming the troposphere (the lowest part of Earth's atmosphere), whereas in the stratosphere (above the troposphere and extending from ~16 to 50 km), higher greenhouse gas concentrations cause a net radiative cooling that may delay ozone hole recovery in the Antarctic. But the picture is even more complex. Recent studies have shed light on how mass exchange between troposphere and stratosphere may be affected by tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) that are rising as a result of global warming.

    1. World's Largest Tsunami Debris, Science News Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts:
      BIG CHUNK OF CORAL. On an expedition to a Tongan island, a scientist investigates the top of a three-story-tall, 1,200-metric-ton coral boulder, which probably was tossed 100 meters inland by an ancient tsunami.
      Credit: Hornbach et al
      About 35 kilometers offshore sits a submarine volcano that rises to within 100 meters of the water's surface. That peak is about twice the width of Mount St. Helens and, like that volcano, has a large, crescent-shaped portion of its flank missing - a volume of material that could have suddenly slumped during an eruption and is large enough to have caused a megatsunami that could have carried the boulders inland.

      Previously, the largest known tsunami debris was a 600-metric-ton coral boulder. It was flung onshore by a 35-meter-tall wave that was triggered by the 1883 eruption and collapse of the volcano Krakatau.

    2. Glaciology: Winds, Not Just Global Warming, Eating Away At The Ice Sheets, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: The surge of glaciers draining both the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets has alarmed scientists and the public alike. Global warming appeared to be taking an early toll on the planet's largest stores of ice while accelerating the rise of sea level. But two new studies point to random, wind-induced circulation changes in the ocean--not global warming--as the dominant cause of the recent ice losses through those glaciers. In Greenland, at least, "you're going to have trouble blaming this on global warming," says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College.

  17. Astronomy: The Shining Make-Up Of Our Star, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: The chemical composition of a star like the Sun is inferred from its spectrum, which provides the elemental fingerprint in the form of absorption lines. To convert the strength of a spectral line to an elemental abundance requires detailed modeling of the stellar atmosphere and the processes between atoms and radiation that shape the emergent solar spectrum. A major complication here comes from convection, which reaches up to the surface in the Sun and thereby modifies the atmospheric structure and spectrum formation.

  18. Global Research, Learning Network Continues To Grow, Penn State Live Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts:
    Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment Penn State researchers set up equipment to study water movement at the Susquehanna Shale Hills Critical Zone Observatory. Leading U.S. researchers are working with European scientists through weathering research collaborations initially sponsored by the Worldwide Universities Network.
    From rapid climate change to nursing shortages, from spintronics technology to entrepreneurship, the Worldwide Universities Network (WUN) is seeking to solve some of the most pressing challenges in the world through multinational collaborations.

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

    1. Assessing The Dangers Of Illicit Networks: Why Al-Qaida May Be Less Threatening Than Many Think, Int. Security Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpts: Theoretical work on networked organization informs a large swathe of the current literature on international organized crime and terrorism in the field of international relations. (...) Closer attention to a wider body of historical and contemporary research on dynamics of participation in underground movements, the life cycle of terrorism and insurgency, and vulnerabilities in organized crime reveals that clandestine networks are often not as adaptable or resilient as they are made out to be. An analysis of the al-Qaida network suggests that as al-Qaida adopts a more networked organization, it becomes exposed to a gamut of organizational dilemmas that threatens to reduce its unity, (...).

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. A Story of Growing Confusion: Genes and Their Regulation, Sonja J. Prohaska and Peter F. Stadler, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 08-08-039
      2. The Coevolution of Cooperation and Dispersal in Social Groups and its Implications for the Emergence of Multicellularity, Michael E. Hochberg, Daniel J. Rankin, and Michael Taborsky, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 08-08-032
      3. Dynamics of Human Behavior, Douglas R. White, SFI Working Papers, DOI: SFI-WP 08-09-042
      4. Chemistry: A Light Touch Catalyzes Asymmetric Carbon-Carbon Bond Formation, Philippe Renaud, Paul Leong, 08/10/03, Science: 55-56. The cooperation between a photoactivated catalyst and an organocatalyst enables a so far elusive stereoselective synthetic transformation.
      5. Time Reversal and Negative Refraction, J. B. Pendry, 08/10/03, Science, Optically active materials with nonlinear optical properties are predicted to mimic negatively refractive materials but without losses associated with true negative refraction., DOI: 10.1126/science.1162087
      6. Rates of Molecular Evolution Are Linked to Life History in Flowering Plants, Stephen A. Smith, Michael J. Donoghue, 08/10/03, Science : 86-89. A phylogenetic analysis shows that long-lived trees and shrubs have lower rates of molecular evolution than short-lived herbaceous plants.
      7. Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus During Free Recall, Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Roy Mukamel, Michal Harel, Rafael Malach, Itzhak Fried, 08/10/03, Science : 96-101. Published online 4 September 2008 [DOI: 10.1126/science.1164685] (in Science Express Reports) The firing patterns of brain neurons recorded from people watching a video episode were the same as those recorded during later recall of the same show.
      8. It's Not How Fat You Are, It's What You Do with It That Counts, Samuel Virtue, Antonio Vidal-Puig, 2008/09/23, PLoS Biol 6(9): e237, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0060237
      9. Social Expansion versus Social Fragmentation, Ingo Piepers, 2008/09/30, arXiv, DOI: 0809.5196
      10. Tissue Sample Suggests HIV Has Been Infecting Humans for a Century, Heidi Ledford, 2008/10/01, News@Nature, DOI: 10.1038/news.2008.1143
      11. Review. Neuroethology Of Reward And Decision Making, K. K. Watson, M. L. Platt, 2008/10/01, Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0159
      12. Brain Signal Persists Even In Dreamless Sleep, 2008/10/02, Innovations-report
      13. Cells that Avoid Suicide May Become Cancerous, 2008/10/02, Innovations-report
      14. Keeping Computing Compatible, 2008/10/02, ScienceDaily & ICT Results
      15. Artificial Cells: Models Of Eel Cells Suggest Electrifying Possibilities, 2008/10/03, ScienceDaily & National Institute of Standards and Technology
      16. Train Crash May Be Linked To SMS: Investigators Confirm Engineer Sent Message Seconds Before Collision, S. Nichols, 2008/10/04, vnunet.com
      17. Antisocial Behavior May Be Caused By Low Stress Hormone Levels, 2008/10/05, ScienceDaily & University of Cambridge
      18. Return From 9/11 PTSD To Global Leader, Y. Kato - yoichikatoaaol.com, Autumn 2008, Online 2008/08/20, Washington Quarterly, DOI: 10.1162/wash.2008.31.4.165
      19. Characterization Of The Drosophila Gene-Switch System In Aging Studies: A Cautionary Tale, L. Poirier, A. Shane, J. Zheng, L. Seroude - seroudelabiology.queensu.ca, Oct. 2008, Online 2008/08/01, Aging Cell, DOI: 10.1111/j.1474-9726.2008.00421.x

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Can Ants Solve Traffic Jams?, Danielle Parsons, Slatev.com, 08/07/22

        As roads and highways become ever more clogged, Danielle Parsons tells us how researchers are studying ways to learn from nature's own traffic-flow experts: ants.

      2. 7th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 07/10/28-11/02
      3. Reseau Nationale des Systemes Complexes , (in French), 2007
      4. World Economic Forum , Davos, Switzerland, 08/01/22-27
      5. TED Talks, TED Conferences LLC , since 2006
      6. Talking Robots: The PodCast on Robotics and AI, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 06/11/03
      7. Potentials of Complexity Science for Business, Governments, and the Media 2006, Budapest, Hungary, 06/08/03-05
      8. 6th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 06/06/25-30
      9. Artificial Life X, 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Bloomington, IN, USA. 2006/06/03-07
      10. 6th Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Il, 06/05/15-18
      11. Ralph Abraham on Complexity Digest, , Calcutta, India, 05/12/27
      12. An Afternoon with Michael Crichton, Washington, 05/11/06
      13. Illuminating the Shadow of the Future, Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25
      14. Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems - Brainstorming Meeting, Paris, France 05/09/19-23
      15. Complexity, Science & Society Conference 2005, U. Liverpool, UK 2005/09/11-14
      16. ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK 2005/09/5-9
      17. T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder, The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy, 05/08/27, QuickTime video (10:38 min), Podcast
      18. North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity 2005 Conference, Virtual Conference Network, St. Pete's Beach, Florida, 05/06/09-11
      19. Understanding Complex Systems - Computational Complexity and Bioinformatics, Virtual Conference Network, Urbana-Champaign, Il, UIUC, 05/05/16-19
      20. Nonlinearity, Fluctuations, and Complexity, with a celebration of the 65th birthday of Gregoire Nicolis. , Complexity Session, Universite' Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, 05/03/16
      21. 1st European Conference on Complex Systems, Torino, Italy, 04/12/5-7
      22. From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
      23. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
      24. International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
      25. Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
      26. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      27. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
      28. Edge Videos

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Spatial Evolutionary Dynamics Workshop, Paris, France, 08/10/17
      2. OD Network Conference 2008 - Advancing The Theory And Practice Of OD, Austin, Texas, 08/10/19-22
      3. International Congress on Complex Thought, Hermosillo , Sonora , Mexico, 08/10/21-24
      4. What Is Computation? (How) Does Nature Compute? - 2008 Midwest NKS Conference, Bloomington, IN, 08/10/30-11/02
      5. 2nd Intl Congress of Complex Systems in Sport (2nd ICCSS) and 10th European Workshop of Ecological Psychology. (10th EWEP), Funchal, in Madeira Island, Portugal, 08/11/05-08
      6. 2008 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI-08), Sydney, Australia, 08/12/09-12
      7. "Approaching Complexity" Workshop, IT Revolutions, Venice, 08/12/17-19
      8. COMPLEX'2009, First Intl Conf on Complex Systems: Theory and Applications, Shanghai, China, 09/02/23-25
      9. Models and Simulations 3 Conference, Charlottesville, USA 09/03/05-07
      10. 2nd Conf on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-09.org), Arlington, Virginia, 09/03/06-09
      11. 2009 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Nashville, Tennessee, USA,09/03/30-04/02
      12. 2nd Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference (CHAOS2009), Chania, Crete, Greece, 09/06/01-05
      13. 2009 Intl Conf of the System Dynamics Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 09/07/26-30
      14. 5th Intl Conf on Fractals and Dynamic Systems in Geoscience, Townsville, Australia, 09/08/13-14

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      1. A short notice from Dean LeBaron

        Dear ComDig Readers,

        Our editor, Dr. Gottfried Mayer, is affectionately esteemed by many of you -- as readers, you know he devotes himself unselfishly to widening our knowledge of complexity science. He was recently diagnosed with advanced colon cancer and given a timetable of a very few years. Knowing Gottfried, you can imagine that, in addition to the customary processes of chemotherapy, he would explore other frontier therapies, especially those arising out of interdisciplinary applications of complexity. These are expensive ... if he can find them.

        Many of you have sent your good wishes and indicated your desire to assist. With Gottfried's permission, I am posting this note with information, below, about how to send contributions to him. Please indicate the source since Gottfried will want to express his warm gratitude.

        I know that Gottfried, the good scientist that he is, will explain from time to time what he is doing and what the results are ... and we will follow his progress with great interest and hope.

        Dean LeBaron
        Publisher, Complexity Digest

        Bank Information:

        If your contribution is made by check:
        Please mail the check, payable to "Gottfried Mayer", to:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall
        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        (on the back of the check, please write: "For Deposit Only: Account # 983 338 3814")

        If your contribution is made by wire:
        Manufacturers & Traders Trust
        2080 Western Avenue
        20 Mall

        Guilderland, NY 12084 USA
        SWIFT Code# MANTUS33
        UID: 209 791
        ABA routing # 022 00 00 46 [for US wire transfers]
        Account # 983 338 3814
        Ref. Gottfried Mayer


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