Complexity Digest 2011.15

2011/08/05

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

For individual e-mail subscriptions go to Subscriptions.
Previous issue 2011.14 | Next issue 2011.16

Content

  1. Doom or Vroom?, Science
    1. 9 Billion?, Science
    2. A World of Chronic Disease, Science
  2. Cities, Productivity, and Quality of Life, Science
  3. Computing giants launch free science metrics, Nature
  4. Paul Cilliers (1956-2011), News from Stellenbosch University
  5. Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations, TED.com
    1. Luciano Floridi - "The fourth technological revolution", TEDxMaastricht
    2. Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys?, TED.com
    3. Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb, TED.com
  6. Robin Chase: Redesigning Cities, People Empowered by Technology, Futur en Seine
  7. Evidence for Network Evolution in an Arabidopsis Interactome Map, Science
  8. Statistics: Known unknowns, Nature
  9. Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology, PLoS Biol
  10. Evolution: Not so selfish, Nature
  11. Hint of Higgs, but little more, Nature
  12. ‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive!’ Maybe Right Here on Earth, New York Times
  13. Information Content of Colored Motifs in Complex Networks, Artificial Life
  14. Information Dynamics in Small-World Boolean Networks, Artificial Life
    1. Modular Random Boolean Networks, Artificial Life
    2. Fisher Information at the Edge of Chaos in Random Boolean Networks, Artificial Life
  15. Acquiring Contextualized Concepts: A Connectionist Approach, Cognitive Science
  16. Predicting Cellular Automata, Complex Systems
  17. A Model of City Traffic Based on Elementary Cellular Automata, Complex Systems
  18. Non-Uniform Cellular Automata: classes, dynamics, and decidability, arXiv
  19. Book Announcements
    1. Complexity, Cognition and the City, Springer
    2. The Second Law of Economics: Energy, Entropy, and the Origins of Wealth, Springer
    3. Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications, Birkhuser Boston
    4. Chaos-based Cryptography: Theory, Algorithms and Applications, Springer
    5. Evolution and the Stability of Complex Systems, Kindle Edition
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Other Publications
    2. Event Announcements
    3. Webcast Announcements
    4. Other Announcements

  1. Doom or Vroom?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Social scientists can be a contentious lot. Since Thomas Malthus issued his dire warning in 1798"and probably before then"scholars have been arguing over how many people the planet can support. There are “doomsters” who continue to predict the worst, and there are “boomsters” who argue that population growth, while worrisome in many ways, can be an engine of economic growth.
    See Also: http://www.scim.ag/pop2011
    • Source: Doom or Vroom?, Gilbert Chin, Tara Marathe, Leslie Roberts, DOI: 10.1126/science.333.6042.538, Science Vol. 333 no. 6042 pp. 538-539, 2011/07/29

    1. 9 Billion?, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: In 1900, there were 1.6 billion people on earth. By 2000, that number had skyrocketed to 6.1 billion. This astounding rate of growth has slowed, but the trend is still heading dramatically upward. It varies substantially by region, however, with the less developed countries growing rapidly and the more developed countries growing slowly, if at all. World population is expected to pass 7 billion in late October and is projected to top 9 billion by 2050 (...)
      • Source: 9 Billion?, Leslie Roberts, DOI: 10.1126/science.333.6042.540, Science Vol. 333 no. 6042 pp. 540-543, 2011/07/29

    2. A World of Chronic Disease, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt:
      Chronic problems. Of all noncommunicable diseases, cardiovascular disease and cancer are the biggest killers of people under 70.
      CREDIT: SOURCE: WHO
      (...) cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, and respiratory diseases like asthma now kill more people worldwide than all other causes combined. And the trend will only accelerate as the global population ages and sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy food become more common around the world.
      • Source: A World of Chronic Disease, Sara Reardon, DOI: 10.1126/science.333.6042.558, Science Vol. 333 no. 6042 pp. 558-559, 2011/07/29

  2. Cities, Productivity, and Quality of Life, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: The tight correlation between urbanization and economic development throughout the world reflects a global transition from poverty to prosperity. However, urban density also brings enormous challenges, including crime, congestion, and contagious disease, and these challenges are being poorly met by many of the governments of the developing world. Some look at the problems of the developing world’s megacities and think that things would be better if their residents just remained in rural areas, but there is little upside in rural poverty. To ensure that the world’s cities are going to be places of pleasure, as well as places of productivity, they need governments that can do a better job of providing the basics of city living: clean water, safe neighborhoods, and fluid streets.

  3. Computing giants launch free science metrics, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Mapping the landscape of science is about to get easier than ever before. Google and Microsoft are rolling out free tools that will enable researchers to analyse citation statistics, visualize research networks and track the hottest research fields.

  4. Paul Cilliers (1956-2011), News from Stellenbosch University Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: “The sudden passing of Prof Paul Cilliers is a tremendous loss for Stellenbosch University. His knowledge of complex systems and his passion for his field of study, served as an inspiration to his students and his colleagues. Above all, he was has a thought leader who’s sharp insight will be remembered at Stellenbosch University for a long time. His death leaves a huge void.”

  5. Geoffrey West: The surprising math of cities and corporations, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

    About this talk: Physicist Geoffrey West has found that simple, mathematical laws govern the properties of cities -- that wealth, crime rate, walking speed and many other aspects of a city can be deduced from a single number: the city's population. In this mind-bending talk from TEDGlobal he shows how it works and how similar laws hold for organisms and corporations.

    1. Luciano Floridi - "The fourth technological revolution", TEDxMaastricht Next Article Bookmark and Share

    2. Philip Zimbardo: The demise of guys?, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      About this talk: Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons -- and he asks for your help! Watch his talk, then take his short 10-question survey: http://on.ted.com/PZSurvey

    3. Harald Haas: Wireless data from every light bulb, TED.com Next Article Bookmark and Share

      About this talk: What if every light bulb in the world could also transmit data? At TEDGlobal, Harald Haas demonstrates, for the first time, a device that could do exactly that. By flickering the light from a single LED, a change too quick for the human eye to detect, he can transmit far more data than a cellular tower -- and do it in a way that's more efficient, secure and widespread.

  6. Robin Chase: Redesigning Cities, People Empowered by Technology, Futur en Seine Next Article Bookmark and Share

  7. Evidence for Network Evolution in an Arabidopsis Interactome Map, Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Plants have unique features that evolved in response to their environments and ecosystems. A full account of the complex cellular networks that underlie plant-specific functions is still missing. We describe a proteome-wide binary protein-protein interaction map for the interactome network of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana containing about 6200 highly reliable interactions between about 2700 proteins. A global organization of plant biological processes emerges from community analyses of the resulting network, together with large numbers of novel hypothetical functional links between proteins and pathways. (...)

  8. Statistics: Known unknowns, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:
    Considering the widespread effectiveness of Bayesian inference in physics and astronomy, genetics, imaging and robotics, Internet communication, finance and commerce, it is surprising that it has remained controversial for so long. Many twentieth-century scientists who used the Bayesian approach in their work " including mathematician Alan Turing and physicists Enrico Fermi and Richard Feynman " declined to use the 'B' word in public.

  9. Darwin in Mind: New Opportunities for Evolutionary Psychology, PLoS Biol Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Evolutionary Psychology (EP) views the human mind as organized into many modules, each underpinned by psychological adaptations designed to solve problems faced by our Pleistocene ancestors. We argue that the key tenets of the established EP paradigm require modification in the light of recent findings from a number of disciplines, including human genetics, evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, developmental psychology, and paleoecology.

  10. Evolution: Not so selfish, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt:
    Humans are capable of remarkable feats of cooperation. Warfare is an extreme example: when under attack, hundreds or even millions of people might join forces to provide a mutual defence. In A Cooperative Species, economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis update their ideas on the evolutionary origins of altruism. Containing new data and analysis, their book is a sustained and detailed argument for how genes and culture have together shaped our ability to cooperate.

  11. Hint of Higgs, but little more, Nature Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: When its experiments started in earnest earlier this year, many scientists hoped that the world's most powerful collider would turn up new particles, additional dimensions and perhaps even a small black hole or two. But beyond a handful of unusual events, the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are frustratingly ordinary.

  12. ‘It’s Alive! It’s Alive!’ Maybe Right Here on Earth, New York Times Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Biologists do not agree on what the definition of life should be or whether it is even useful to have one. But most do agree that the ability to evolve and adapt is fundamental to life. And they also agree that having a second example of life could provide insight to how it began and how special life is or is not in the universe, as well as a clue for how to recognize life if and when we do stumble upon it out there among the stars.

  13. Information Content of Colored Motifs in Complex Networks, Artificial Life Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: We study complex networks in which the nodes are tagged with different colors depending on their function (colored graphs), using information theory applied to the distribution of motifs in such networks. We find that colored motifs can be viewed as the building blocks of the networks (much more than the uncolored structural motifs can be) and that the relative frequency with which these motifs appear in the network can be used to define its information content.

  14. Information Dynamics in Small-World Boolean Networks, Artificial Life Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Small-world networks have been one of the most influential concepts in complex systems science, partly due to their prevalence in naturally occurring networks. It is often suggested that this prevalence is due to an inherent capability to store and transfer information efficiently. We perform an ensemble investigation of the computational capabilities of small-world networks as compared to ordered and random topologies. (...) Information storage and information transfer are somewhat balanced (crossed over) near the small-world regime, providing quantitative evidence that small-world networks do indeed have a propensity to combine comparably large information storage and transfer capacity.

    1. Modular Random Boolean Networks, Artificial Life Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Abstract: Random Boolean networks (RBNs) have been a popular model of genetic regulatory networks for more than four decades. However, most RBN studies have been made with random topologies, while real regulatory networks have been found to be modular. In this work, we extend classical RBNs to define modular RBNs. Statistical experiments and analytical results show that modularity has a strong effect on the properties of RBNs. In particular, modular RBNs have more attractors, and are closer to criticality when chaotic dynamics would be expected, than classical RBNs.

    2. Fisher Information at the Edge of Chaos in Random Boolean Networks, Artificial Life Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Excerpt: Fisher information, which measures how much system dynamics can reveal about the control parameters, offers a natural interpretation of the phase diagram in RBNs. We report that this measure is maximized near the order-chaos phase transitions in RBNs, since this is the region where the system is most sensitive to its parameters. Furthermore, we use this study of RBNs to clarify the relationship between Shannon and Fisher information measures.

  15. Acquiring Contextualized Concepts: A Connectionist Approach, Cognitive Science Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Excerpt: Conceptual knowledge is acquired through recurrent experiences, by extracting statistical regularities at different levels of granularity. At a fine level, patterns of feature co-occurrence are categorized into objects. At a coarser level, patterns of concept co-occurrence are categorized into contexts. We present and test CONCAT, a connectionist model that simultaneously learns to categorize objects and contexts. (...)

  16. Predicting Cellular Automata, Complex Systems Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: We explore the ability of a locally informed individual agent to predict the future state of a cell in systems of varying degrees of complexity using Wolfram's one-dimensional binary cellular automata. We then compare the agent's performance to that of two small groups of agents voting by majority rule. We find stable rules (class I) to be highly predictable, and most complex (class IV) and chaotic rules (class III) to be unpredictable. However, we find rules that produce regular patterns (class II) vary widely in their predictability. We then show that the predictability of a class II rule depends on whether it produces vertical or horizontal patterns. We comment on the implications of our findings for the limitations of collective wisdom in complex environments.

  17. A Model of City Traffic Based on Elementary Cellular Automata, Complex Systems Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: Several highway traffic models based on cellular automata have been proposed. The simplest one is elementary cellular automaton rule 184. We extend this model to city traffic with cellular automata coupled at intersections using only rules 184, 252, and 136. We study the model properties by simulating a single intersection. We describe the different dynamical phases of the model with velocity-density and flux-density diagrams. The model is useful for studying the problem of traffic light coordination for very large systems.

  18. Non-Uniform Cellular Automata: classes, dynamics, and decidability, arXiv Next Article Bookmark and Share

    Abstract: The dynamical behavior of non-uniform cellular automata is compared with the one of classical cellular automata. Several differences and similarities are pointed out by a series of examples. Decidability of basic properties like surjectivity and injectivity is also established. The final part studies a strong form of equicontinuity property specially suited for non-uniform cellular automata.

  19. Book Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Complexity, Cognition and the City, Springer Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      This book aims at a deeper understanding of urbanism, while invoking, on an equal footing, the contributions both the hard and soft sciences have made, and are still making, when grappling with the many issues and facets of regional planning and dynamics. The author goes beyond merely seeing the city as a self-organized, emerging pattern of some collective interaction between many stylized urban "agents" - he makes the crucial step of attributing cognition to his agents and thus raises the question on how to deal with a complex system composed of many interacting complex agents in clearly defined settings. (...)

    2. The Second Law of Economics: Energy, Entropy, and the Origins of Wealth, Springer Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      Nothing happens in the world without energy conversion and entropy production. These fundamental natural laws are familiar to most of us when applied to the evolution of stars, biological processes, or the working of an internal combustion engine, but what about industrial economies and wealth production, or their constant companion, pollution? Does economics conform to the First and the Second Law of Thermodynamics? In this important book, Reiner Kmmel takes us on a fascinating tour of these laws and their influence on natural, technological, and social evolution. (...)

    3. Towards an Information Theory of Complex Networks: Statistical Methods and Applications, Birkhuser Boston Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      For over a decade, complex networks have steadily grown as an important tool across a broad array of academic disciplines, with applications ranging from physics to social media. A tightly organized collection of carefully-selected papers on the subject, this book presents theoretical and practical results about information-theoretic and statistical models of complex networks in the natural sciences and humanities. The book's major goal is to advocate and promote a combination of graph-theoretic, information-theoretic, and statistical methods as a way to better understand and characterize real-world networks. (...)

    4. Chaos-based Cryptography: Theory, Algorithms and Applications, Springer Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      Chaos-based cryptography is a research field across two fields, i.e., chaos (nonlinear dynamic system) and cryptography (computer and data security). Chaos' properties, such as randomness and ergodicity, have been proved to be suitable for designing the means for data protection. The book gives a thorough description of chaos-based cryptography, which consists of chaos basic theory, chaos properties suitable for cryptography, chaos-based cryptographic techniques, and various secure applications based on chaos. Additionally, it covers both the latest research results and some open issues or hot topics. (...)

    5. Evolution and the Stability of Complex Systems, Kindle Edition Next Article Bookmark and Share

      Summary:
      What do organisms, ecosystems, and economies have in common? They are all complex systems, they have all evolved, and understanding them is of great importance to us humans. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould and Carl Sagan, the author explores how theoretical research into the behavior of complex systems should influence our understanding of the real systems that impact our lives, and how understanding of evolutionary biology provides insight into both the fragility and resilience of ecosystems and economies. Too long to be an article, too short to be a book, it�s only available in e-format.

  20. Links & Snippets Next Article Bookmark and Share

    1. Other Publications Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. Replicator Dynamics of Co-Evolving Networks, Aram Galstyan, Ardeshir Kianercy, and Armen Allahverdyan, 2011/07/26, arXiv:1107.5354

    2. Event Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. ECAL 11: European Conference on Artificial Life, Paris, France, 2011/08/8-12
      2. The Effect of DNA Sequence and Structure on Genome Evolution, Rutgers University, NJ, USA, 2011/08/9-11
      3. 1st Annual Conference on Integral Biomathics, Stirling, Scotland, 2011/08/29-31
      4. TAROS 2011: 12th Conference Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems, Sheffield, UK, 2011/08/31-09/02
      5. The Future of the Embodied Mind, eSMCs Summer School 2011, San Sebastián, Spain, 2011/09/5-9
      6. The 2011 International Conference on Adaptive & Intelligent Systems - ICAIS'11, Klagenfurt, Austria, 2011/09/06-08
      7. Fourth International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2011), University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, 2011/09/8-10
      8. ICMC 2011 - 2nd International Conference on Morphological Computation, Venice, Italy, 2011/09/12-14
      9. European Conference on Complex Systems 2011, Vienna, Austria, 2011/09/12-16
      10. The 15th WOSC INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS on CYBERNETICS and SYSTEMS, Nanjing, China, 2011/09/15-18
      11. Interdisciplinary Symposium on Complex Systems, Halkidiki, Greece, 2011/09/19-25
      12. ICCCI 2011 3rd International Conference on Computational Collective Intelligence: Technologies and Applications, Gdynia, Poland, 2011/09/21-23
      13. World Conference on Marine Biodiversity, Aberdeen, Scotland, UK, 2011/09/26-30
      14. SCIENCE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT - ENVIRONMENT FOR SOCIETY, Aarhus, Denmark, 2011/10/5-6
      15. The Third International Conference on Social Informatics (SocInfo2011), Singapore, 2011/10/6-8
      16. SSS 2011 - 13th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, Grenoble, France, 2011/10/10-12
      17. EPIA2011 - 15th Portuguese Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Lisbon, Portugal, 2011/10/10-13
      18. XII Latin American Workshop on Nonlinear Phenomena (LAWNP-2011), San Luis Potosi, Mexico, 2011/10/10-15
      19. Complexity in Business Conference, Washington, DC, USA, 2011/10/14
      20. 2nd International Business Complexity & the Global Leader Conference, Boston, MA, USA, 2011/10/17-19
      21. Third World Congress on Nature and Biologically Inspired Computing (NaBIC2011), Salamanca, Spain, 2011/10/19-21
      22. AMBIENT 2011: The First International Conference on Ambient Computing, Applications, Services and Technologies and SIMUL 2011: The Third International Conference on Advances in System Simulation, Barcelona, Spain, 2011/10/23-28
      23. 3rd International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence, Paris, France, 2011/10/24-26
      24. Complex Adaptive Systems: Energy, Information, and Intelligence, AAAI Fall Symposium; Arlington, VA, 2011/11/4-6
      25. Workshop on Complex Systems as Computing Models (WCSCM2011), Mexico City, Mexico, 2011/11/9-10
      26. VI Congreso Bienal Internacional Complejidad 2012, Havana, Cuba, 2012/01/10-13
      27. 38th International Conference on Current Trends in Theory and Practice of Computer Science, Špindlerův Mlýn, Czech Republic, 2012/01/21"27
      28. 4th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence - ICAART 2012, Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal, 2012/02/6-8
      29. evostar - the main european events on evolutionary computation eurogp, evocop, evobio, evomusart and evoapplications, Málaga, Spain, 2012/03/11-13
      30. IWSOS'12 (Sixth International Workshop on Self-Organizing Systems), Delft, The Netherlands, 2012/03/15-16
      31. Collective Intelligence 2012, Cambridge, MA, USA, 2012/04/18-20

    3. Webcast Announcements Next Article Bookmark and Share

      1. IFISC@uib.es seminars, ongoing.
      2. Complex Systems: The Challenge of Prediction, Yaneer Bar-Yam, NECSI and MIT/ESD Seminar, 2011/04/08
      3. Lakeside Research Days 2010.
      4. Smarter Cities NYC. Posted on 2009/10/05
      5. ASSYST Digital Library. Since 09/09
      6. Complex Systems Teleconferences. Since 09/09
      7. Symmetry Festival 2009, Budapest, Hungary, 09/08/1-4.
      8. International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, Zurich, Switzerland, 09/06/8-12
      9. Memorial Service for Dr Gottfried Mayer, Founding Editor Complexity Digest, Taipei, Taiwan (1954-2009). Video [RM], 09/02/13
      10. Making Connections: In Memory and Celebration of the Life of Dr. Gottfried Mayer (1954-2009). Video [RM] [MPG], 09/02/13
      11. Eulogy for Gottfried Mayer by Dean LeBaron [WMV, 25 Mb], [RM, 10 Mb], 09/02/10
      12. Can Ants Solve Traffic Jams?, Danielle Parsons, Slatev.com, 08/07/22
      13. Reseau Nationale des Systemes Complexes , (in French), 2007
      14. World Economic Forum , Davos, Switzerland, 08/01/22-27
      15. TED Talks, TED Conferences LLC , since 2006
      16. Talking Robots: The PodCast on Robotics and AI, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 06/11/03
      17. Potentials of Complexity Science for Business, Governments, and the Media 2006, Budapest, Hungary, 06/08/03-05
      18. 6th Intl Conf on Complex Systems (ICCS), Boston, MA, 06/06/25-30
      19. Artificial Life X, 10th Intl Conf on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems, Bloomington, IN, USA. 2006/06/03-07
      20. 6th Understanding Complex Systems Symposium, Urbana-Champaign, Il, 06/05/15-18
      21. Illuminating the Shadow of the Future, Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25
      22. Open Network of Centres of Excellence in Complex Systems - Brainstorming Meeting, Paris, France 05/09/19-23
      23. Complexity, Science & Society Conference 2005, U. Liverpool, UK 2005/09/11-14
      24. ECAL 2005 - VIIIth European Conference on Artificial Life, Canterbury, Kent, UK 2005/09/5-9
      25. T. Irene Sanders, Executive Director and Founder, The Washington Center for Complexity & Public Policy, 05/08/27, QuickTime video (10:38 min), Podcast
      26. 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
      27. Understanding Complex Systems - Computational Complexity and Bioinformatics, Virtual Conference Network, Urbana-Champaign, Il, UIUC, 05/05/16-19
      28. 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
      29. 1st European Conference on Complex Systems, Torino, Italy, 04/12/5-7
      30. From Autopoiesis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela (1946-2001), Paris, France, 2004/06/18-20
      31. Evolutionary Epistemology, Language, and Culture, Brussels, Belgium, 04/05/26-28
      32. International Conference on Complex Systems 2004, Boston, 04/05/16-21
      33. Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: Lab Demonstrations, Strogatz, Steven H., Internet-First University Press, 1994
      34. CERN Webcast Service, Streamed videos of Archived Lectures and Live Events
      35. Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video Commentary, Ongoing Since February 1998
      36. Edge Videos

    4. Other Announcements Bookmark and Share


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