Complexity Digest 2009.06

2009/03/13

Editor-in-Chief: Carlos Gershenson
Founding Editor: Gottfried Mayer

For individual e-mail subscriptions go to Subscriptions.
Previous issue 2009.05 | Next issue 2009.07

Content

  1. Web Usage Data Outline Map of Knowledge, News@Nature
    1. Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science, PLoS One
  2. Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution, PNAS
  3. A smarter way to combat hunger, Nature
  4. Circadian rhythms: Of owls, larks and alarm clocks, Nature
  5. Matters of Principal, New York Times
    1. Minimal agent based model for financial markets I, EPJ B
  6. Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as Important as Google, Twine
  7. Obama overturns stem-cell ban, News@Nature
    1. Virus-free pluripotency for human cells, News@Nature
  8. Nonlinear Energy Harvesting, Phys. Rev. Lett.
    1. Harvesting Ocean Wave Energy, Science
    2. The energy should always work twice, Nature
  9. Evolution of cooperation on scale-free networks subject to error and attack, arXiv
    1. Socio-economical dynamics as a solvable spin system on co-evolving networks, EPJ B
    2. Epidemic spreading with nonlinear infectivity in weighted scale-free networks, arXiv
  10. What does it all mean?, News@Nature
  11. Geographic Range Limits Of Species, Proc. Biol. Sc.
  12. Discovering The Secret Code Behind Photosynthesis, ScienceDaily
    1. On the Origin of Photosynthesis, Science
  13. Toward Synthetic Life: Scientists Create Ribosomes -- Cell Protein Machinery, ScienceDaily
  14. The Evolution And Genetics Of Cerebral Asymmetry, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
    1. Why Are Some People Left-Handed? An Evolutionary Perspective, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
    2. Mechanisms And Functions Of Brain And Behavioural Asymmetries, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc.
  15. Engineered viruses fight bacteria, News@Nature
  16. Belief-Free Equilibria In Games With Incomplete Information, Econometrica
  17. Search, Obfuscation, And Price Elasticities On The Internet, Econometrica
  18. Watching as Ants Go Marching--and Deciding--One by One, Science
  19. Suicide In The Workplace 'Contagious,' Swedish Study Suggests, ScienceDaily
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Webcast Announcements
    3. Conference Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Web Usage Data Outline Map of Knowledge, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: When users click from one page to another while looking through online scientific journals, they generate a chain of connections between things they think belong together. Now a billion such 'clickstream events' have been analysed by researchers to map these connections on a grand scale.

    1. Clickstream Data Yields High-Resolution Maps of Science, PLoS One Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Conclusions:
      This "Map of Science" illustrates the online behavior of Scientists accessing different scientific journals, publications, aggregators, etc. Colors represent the scientific discipline of each journal (...) while lines reflect the navigation of users from one journal to another(...)
      Credit: Los Alamos National Laboratory
      Maps of science resulting from large-scale clickstream data provide a detailed, contemporary view of scientific activity and correct the underrepresentation of the social sciences and humanities that is commonly found in citation data.

  2. Restrictions on biological adaptation in language evolution, PNAS Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Language acquisition and processing are governed by genetic constraints. A crucial unresolved question is how far these genetic constraints have coevolved with language, perhaps resulting in a highly specialized and species-specific language “module,” and how much language acquisition and processing redeploy preexisting cognitive machinery. (...) The genetic basis of human language acquisition and processing did not coevolve with language, but primarily predates the emergence of language. As suggested by Darwin, the fit between language and its underlying mechanisms arose because language has evolved to fit the human brain, rather than the reverse.

  3. A smarter way to combat hunger, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:
    P. SANCHEZ
    After decades of progress in the fight to vanquish world hunger, the number of undernourished people is growing again. Estimates from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations suggest that 963 million people1 in poor countries are chronically or acutely hungry " up 109 million from 2004 estimates2. The underlying causes " changes in food and energy prices3 " have been exacerbated by the financial crisis and obsolete development policies.

  4. Circadian rhythms: Of owls, larks and alarm clocks, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: By some estimates, more than half of the population in industrialized societies may have circadian rhythms that are out of phase with the daily schedule they keep. Such people are said to have 'social jet lag' (...) If larks and owls are forced to follow normal schedules, they run into all kinds of problems with disabling insomnia and sleepiness. But disrupted rhythms could have graver consequences than that.

  5. Matters of Principal, New York Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: To stanch the hemorrhage of foreclosures, we don’t need another bailout. What we need is a fix " and the wisdom to see what is in our own self-interest. An avalanche of foreclosures is coming " as many as eight million in the next several years. The plan announced by the White House will not stop foreclosures because it concentrates on reducing interest payments, not reducing principal for those who owe more than their homes are worth. The plan wastes taxpayer money and won’t fix the problem.

    1. Minimal agent based model for financial markets I, EPJ B Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: We introduce a minimal agent based model for financial markets to understand the nature and self-organization of the stylized facts. The model is minimal in the sense that we try to identify the essential ingredients to reproduce the most important deviations of price time series from a random walk behavior. We focus on four essential ingredients: fundamentalist agents which tend to stabilize the market; chartist agents which induce destabilization; analysis of price behavior for the two strategies; herding behavior which governs the possibility of changing strategy. Bubbles and crashes correspond to situations dominated by chartists, while fundamentalists provide a long time stability (on average). (...)

  6. Wolfram Alpha is Coming -- and It Could be as Important as Google, Twine Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: In a nutshell, Wolfram and his team have built what he calls a "computational knowledge engine" for the Web. OK, so what does that really mean? Basically it means that you can ask it factual questions and it computes answers for you. It doesn't simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn't just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. It doesn't simply parse natural language and then use that to retrieve documents, like Powerset, for example. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions -- like questions that have factual answers such as "What is the location of Timbuktu?" or "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?," "What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?," "What is the 307th digit of Pi?," or "what would 80/20 vision look like?".
    See Also: Wolfram Blog.

  7. Obama overturns stem-cell ban, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Scientists and research advocates worldwide are celebrating the removal of rules limiting research on human embryonic stem cells in the United States, which they say have restricted the field's progress for seven and a half years.

    1. Virus-free pluripotency for human cells, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: For the first time, specialized human cells have been transformed into a state similar to that seen in embryonic stem cells, without using viruses. The advance edges stem-cell biologists closer to clearing a barrier to using reprogrammed cells for therapies and drug screening.

  8. Nonlinear Energy Harvesting, Phys. Rev. Lett. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Ambient energy harvesting has been in recent years the recurring object of a number of research efforts aimed at providing an autonomous solution to the powering of small-scale electronic mobile devices. Among the different solutions, vibration energy harvesting has played a major role due to the almost universal presence of mechanical vibrations. Here we propose a new method based on the exploitation of the dynamical features of stochastic nonlinear oscillators. Such a method is shown to outperform standard linear oscillators and to overcome some of the most severe limitations of present approaches. We demonstrate the superior performances of this method by applying it to piezoelectric energy harvesting from ambient vibration.
    • Source: Nonlinear Energy Harvesting, F. Cottone, H. Vocca, and L. Gammaitoni, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.102.080601, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 080601, 2009

    1. Harvesting Ocean Wave Energy, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Offshore structures that generate electrical power from ocean waves have been deployed but engineering challenges remain.
      • Source: Harvesting Ocean Wave Energy, Jeff Scruggs and Paul Jacob, DOI: 10.1126/science.1168245, Science Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1176 - 1178, 2009/02/27

    2. The energy should always work twice, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Waste heat from industrial plants and electricity-generating stations represents a huge amount of lost energy. David Lindley finds out what engineers and regulators need to do to get it back.

  9. Evolution of cooperation on scale-free networks subject to error and attack, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We study the evolution of cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma and the snowdrift game on scale-free networks that are subjected to intentional and random removal of vertices. We show that, irrespective of the game type, cooperation on scale-free networks is extremely robust against random deletion of vertices, but declines fast if vertices with the maximal degree are targeted. In particular, attack tolerance is lowest if the temptation to defect is largest, whereby a small fraction of removed vertices suffices to decimate cooperators. The decline of cooperation can be directly linked to the decrease of heterogeneity of scale-free networks that sets in due to the removal of high degree vertices. We conclude that the evolution of cooperation is characterized by similar attack and error tolerance as was previously reported for information readiness and spread of viruses on scale-free networks.

    1. Socio-economical dynamics as a solvable spin system on co-evolving networks, EPJ B Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: We consider social systems in which agents are not only characterized by their states but also have the freedom to choose their interaction partners to maximize their utility. We map such systems onto an Ising model in which spins are dynamically coupled by links in a dynamical network. In this model there are two dynamical quantities which arrange towards a minimum energy state in the canonical framework: the spins, si, and the adjacency matrix elements, cij. The model is exactly solvable because microcanonical partition functions reduce to productsof binomial factors as a direct consequence of the cij minimizing energy. We solve the system for finite sizes and for the two possible thermodynamic limits and discuss the phase diagrams.

    2. Epidemic spreading with nonlinear infectivity in weighted scale-free networks, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the epidemic spreading for SIR model in weighted scale-free networks with nonlinear infectivity, where the transmission rate in our analytical model is weighted. Concretely, we introduce the infectivity exponent $alpha$ and the weight exponent $beta$ into the analytical SIR model, then examine the combination effects of $alpha$ and $beta$ on the epidemic threshold and phase transition. We show that one can adjust the values of $alpha$ and $beta$ to rebuild the epidemic threshold to a finite value, and it is observed that the steady epidemic prevalence $R$ grows in an exponential form in the early stage, then follows hierarchical dynamics. Furthermore, we find $alpha$ is more sensitive than $beta$ in the transformation of the epidemic threshold and epidemic prevalence, which might deliver some useful information or new insights in the epidemic spreading and the correlative immunization schemes.

  10. What does it all mean?, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: When scientific words become fashionable, haziness is an exploitable commodity. One begins to suspect that there are few areas of science that cannot be portrayed as involving 'complexity' or 'nanotechnology'. (...) Science is full of concepts that lack sharp definition, or even logic, but help us to understand the world. It is possible that one day the notion of a gene may create more confusion than enlightenment, but at present it doesn't seem feasible to understand heredity or evolution without it.

  11. Geographic Range Limits Of Species, Proc. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Understanding the forms that the geographic range limits of species take, their causes and their consequences are key issues in ecology and evolutionary biology. They are also topics on which understanding is advancing rapidly. This themed issue of Proc. R. Soc. B focuses on the wide variety of current research perspectives on the nature and determinants of the limits to geographic ranges. The contributions address important themes, including the roles and influences of dispersal limitation, species interactions and physiological limitation, the broad patterns in the structure of geographic ranges, and the fundamental question of why at some point species no longer evolve (...).
    • Source: Geographic Range Limits Of Species, K.J Gaston - k.j.gastonasheffield.ac.uk, DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2009.0100, Proceedings B: Biological Sciences, 2009/04/22, Online 2009/02/25
    • Contributed by Atin Das - dasatinayahoo.co.in

  12. Discovering The Secret Code Behind Photosynthesis, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: (...) discovered that an ancient system of communication found in primitive bacteria, may also explain how plants and algae control the process of photosynthesis. Two-component signal transduction systems (TCSTs) have long been recognised as the main way in which bacteria coordinate their responses to changes in their environment. But recent research has shown that these 'bacterial' two-component systems have also survived in plants and algae, as a way of sending signals within their cells. These systems, which are thought to have evolved from ancient cyanobacteria, are found in chloroplasts - the part of a cell of a plant which conducts photosynthesis, converting light to chemical energy. (...)

    1. On the Origin of Photosynthesis, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Where would we be without photosynthesis? In the third essay in Science's series in honor of the Year of Darwin, Mitch Leslie details researchers' efforts to piece together how and when organisms first began to harness light's energy.

  13. Toward Synthetic Life: Scientists Create Ribosomes -- Cell Protein Machinery, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Harvard scientists have cleared a key hurdle in the creation of synthetic life, assembling a cell's critical protein-making machinery in an advance with both practical, industrial applications and that advances the basic understanding of life's workings. George Church, (...) reported the creation of billions of synthetic ribosomes that readily create a long, complex protein called firefly luciferase. (...) "We have not made artificial life, and that is not our primary goal, but this is a huge milestone in that direction," Church said in comments on the work before the event. (...)

  14. The Evolution And Genetics Of Cerebral Asymmetry, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Handedness and cerebral asymmetry are commonly assumed to be uniquely human, and even defining characteristics of our species. This is increasingly refuted by the evidence of behavioural asymmetries in non-human species. Although complex manual skill and language are indeed unique to our species and are represented asymmetrically in the brain, some non-human asymmetries appear to be precursors, and others are shared between humans and non-humans. In all behavioural and cerebral asymmetries so far investigated, a minority of individuals reverse or negate the dominant asymmetry, suggesting that such asymmetries are best understood in the context of the overriding bilateral symmetry of the brain and body, (...).

    1. Why Are Some People Left-Handed? An Evolutionary Perspective, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Since prehistoric times, left-handed individuals have been ubiquitous in human populations, exhibiting geographical frequency variations. Evolutionary explanations have been proposed for the persistence of the handedness polymorphism. Left-handedness could be favoured by negative frequency-dependent selection. Data have suggested that left-handedness, as the rare hand preference, could represent an important strategic advantage in fighting interactions. However, the fact that left-handedness occurs at a low frequency indicates that some evolutionary costs could be associated with left-handedness. Overall, the evolutionary dynamics of this polymorphism are not fully understood. Here, we review the abundant literature available regarding the possible mechanisms and consequences of left-handedness. We point out that hand preference is heritable, (...).

    2. Mechanisms And Functions Of Brain And Behavioural Asymmetries, Phil. Tran. Biol. Sc. Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: For almost a century the field of brain and behavioural asymmetries has been dominated by studies on humans, resting on the evidence that the anatomical structures underlying language functions are asymmetrical, and that human handedness is lateralized at the population level. Today, there is not only evidence of population-level lateralization of brain and behaviour across a variety of vertebrate and invertebrate species, but also a growing consensus that the comparative analysis of the environmental and developmental factors that give origin to neural and behavioural laterality in animal models, together with theoretical analyses of their costs and benefits, will be crucial for understanding the evolutionary pathways (...).

  15. Engineered viruses fight bacteria, News@Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Biologists have engineered viruses to weaken the bacteria they infect, leaving the bugs more vulnerable to antibiotics. With more bacteria becoming resistant to the most commonly used antibiotics, the viral approach could extend the useful lifetime of these drugs.

  16. Belief-Free Equilibria In Games With Incomplete Information, Econometrica Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We define belief-free equilibria in two-player games with incomplete information as sequential equilibria for which players' continuation strategies are best replies after every history, independently of their beliefs about the state of nature. We characterize a set of payoffs that includes all belief-free equilibrium payoffs. Conversely, any payoff in the interior of this set is a belief-free equilibrium payoff. The characterization is applied to the analysis of reputations.

  17. Search, Obfuscation, And Price Elasticities On The Internet, Econometrica Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We examine the competition between a group of Internet retailers who operate in an environment where a price search engine plays a dominant role. We show that for some products in this environment, the easy price search makes demand tremendously price-sensitive. Retailers, though, engage in obfuscation-practices that frustrate consumer search or make it less damaging to firms-resulting in much less price sensitivity on some other products. We discuss several models of obfuscation and examine its effects on demand and markups empirically.

  18. Watching as Ants Go Marching--and Deciding--One by One, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The "Ant Idea Man" challenges established views by using paint and radio tags to see each ant as an individual.

  19. Suicide In The Workplace 'Contagious,' Swedish Study Suggests, ScienceDaily Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpts: Each year some 1,500 Swedes decide to end their lives. The reasons are often personal and can be numerous, such as mental or physical disease. Previous research has shown that people's choices are affected by their surroundings. Various types of behavior, feelings, and attitudes are spread in social networks. The researchers (...) have studied whether such a drastic step as taking your life can also be influenced by others. The study is based on comprehensive data on all individuals who lived and worked in Stockholm County during the 1990s. (...)

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Collaborate, compete and share, Emanuele Pugliese, Claudio Castellano, Matteo Marsili and Luciano Pietronero, 2009/02, EPJ B Volume 67, Number 3, DOI: 10.1140/epjb/e2009-00027-5
      2. In Bad Taste: Evidence for the Oral Origins of Moral Disgust, H. A. Chapman, D. A. Kim, J. M. Susskind, A. K. Anderson, 2009/02/27, Science Vol. 323. no. 5918, pp. 1222 - 1226, DOI: 10.1126/science.1165565
      3. Species Response to Environmental Change: Impacts of Food Web Interactions and Evolution, Jason P. Harmon, Nancy A. Moran, Anthony R. Ives, 2009/03/06, Science Vol. 323. no. 5919, pp. 1347 - 1350, DOI: 10.1126/science.1167396
      4. Humans Can Sense 'Smell Of Fear' In Sweat, Psychologist Says, 2009/03/08, ScienceDaily & Rice University
      5. Protein Helps Immune Cells To Divide And Conquer, 2009/03/09, Innovations-report
      6. Scientists Identify The Neural Circuitry Of First Impressions, 2009/03/09, Innovations-report
      7. Why Dreams Are So Difficult To Remember: Precise Communication Discovered Across Brain Areas During Sleep, 2009/03/09, ScienceDaily & California Institute of Technology
      8. Gene Mutations That Cause Childhood Brain Cancer Identified, 2009/03/09, ScienceDaily & Canadian Cancer Society
      9. The Role of Tag Suggestions in Folksonomies, Dirk Bollen, Harry Halpin, 2009/03/10, arXiv 0903.1788
      10. The Balance Of Great-Power Influence In Contemporary Southeast Asia, J. D. Ciorciari - ciorciariagmail.com, Jan. 2009, online 2008/10/28, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, DOI: 10.1093/irap/lcn017
      11. International Relations In Malaysia: Theories, History, Memory, Perception, And Context, K.S. Balakrishnan, Jan. 2009, online 2008/10/28, International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, DOI: 10.1093/irap/lcn022

    2. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Making Connections: In Memory and Celebration of the Life of Dr. Gottfried Mayer (1954-2009). Video [MPG], 09/02/13

      2. Eulogy for Gottfried Mayer by Dean LeBaron [WMV, 25 Mb], [RM, 10 Mb], 09/02/10

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

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

    3. Conference Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. EmergeNET2: Evolution and Emergence, Glasgow, Scotland, 09/03/23-24
      2. 2009 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence, Nashville, Tennessee, USA,09/03/30-04/02
      3. Inaugural Meeting of the Nonlinear and Complex Physics Group, University of Manchester, UK, 09/04/01-02
      4. INFORMATION PROCESSING IN CELLS AND TISSUES (IPCAT 2009) "From Small Scale Dynamics To Understanding Systems Behavior", Ascona, Switzerland, 09/04/05-09
      5. 7th Annual Bio-IT World Conference & Expo, 09/04/27-29, Boston, MA
      6. 2nd Chaotic Modeling and Simulation International Conference (CHAOS2009), Chania, Crete, Greece, 09/06/01-05
      7. International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, Zurich, Switzerland, 09/06/8-13
      8. 20th Intl Conf on Noise and Fluctuations, Pisa, Italy, 09/06/14-19
      9. First International Workshop on Morphogenetic Engineering, Paris, France, 09/06/19
      10. 17th Intl Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics of Electronic Systems (NDES 2009), Rapperswil, Switzerland, 09/06/21-24
      11. First Latin American Conference on Computing and Philosophy, Mexico City, Mexico, June 22-23, 2009
      12. Emergence in Chemical Systems, , Anchorage, Alaska, 09/06/22-26
      13. From Systemic Thinking to Systems Design and Systems Practice, Xanthi, Greece, 09/06/24-27
      14. CCSA 2009 The 3rd International Conference on Complex Systems and Applications, University of Le Havre, France. 09/06/29-07/02
      15. 7th Intl Conf on Computing, Communications and Control Technologies: CCCT 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA. 09/07/10-13
      16. Complex Systems and Social Simulations, Budapest, Hungary, 09/07/13-24
      17. Second International Workshop on Nonlinear Dynamics and Synchronization (INDS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/07/20-21
      18. The 19th Annual Intl Conf Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences , Milwaukee, WI USA, 09/07/23-25
      19. 2009 Intl Conf of the System Dynamics Society, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 09/07/26-30
      20. 5th Intl Conf on Fractals and Dynamic Systems in Geoscience, Townsville, Australia, 09/08/13-14
      21. Darwin Meets von Neumann: European Conference on Artificial Life 2009, Budapest, Hungary, 09/09/13-16
      22. IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems , San Francisco, California, 09/09/14-18
      23. 6th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association, Guilford, UK, 09/09/14-18
      24. European Conference on Complex Systems 2009 (ECCS'09), University of Warwick, UK, 09/09/21-25
      25. The 2009 International Conference on Adaptive & Intelligent Systems (ICAIS'09), Klagenfurt, Austria, 09/09/24-26
      26. 9th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications, Pisa, Italy, 09/11/30-12/02
      27. 5th Biennial Convention about the philosophical, epistemological, and methodological implications of the Theory of Complexity, Havana, Cuba, 10/01/6-8

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share

      • Note to our subscribers: The mailing address from which ComDig is sent has changed from comdig'at'ms68.hinet.net to comdigadmin'at'turing.iimas.unam.mx. Please update your mail filters if necessary.

      • New Book: Complexity: A Guided Tour, by Melanie Mitchell. Oxford University Press, 2009.
        What enables individually simple insects like ants to act with such precision and purpose as a group? How do trillions of individual neurons produce something as extraordinarily complex as consciousness? What is it that guides self-organizing structures like the immune system, the World Wide Web, the global economy, and the human genome? These are just a few of the fascinating and elusive questions that the science of complexity seeks to answer.
        In this remarkably accessible and companionable book, leading complex systems scientist Melanie Mitchell provides an intimate, detailed tour of the sciences of complexity, a broad set of efforts that seek to explain how large-scale complex, organized, and adaptive behavior can emerge from simple interactions among myriad individuals. Comprehending such systems requires a wholly new approach, one that goes beyond traditional scientific reductionism and that re-maps long-standing disciplinary boundaries. Based on her work at the Santa Fe Institute and drawing on its interdisciplinary strategies, Mitchell brings clarity to the workings of complexity across a broad range of biological, technological, and social phenomena, seeking out the general principles or laws that apply to all of them. She explores as well the relationship between complexity and evolution, artificial intelligence, computation, genetics, information processing, and many other fields.
        Richly illustrated and vividly written, Complexity: A Guided Tour offers a comprehensive and eminently comprehensible overview of the ideas underlying complex systems science, the current research at the forefront of this field, and the prospects for the field's contribution to solving some of the most important scientific questions of our time.

Also available in: Simple HTML format | TXT format | TXT format with links | Print