Complexity Digest 2005.44 05/11/03 Archive: http://comdig.unam.mx "I think the next century will be the century of complexity." Stephen Hawking, 2000 _________________________________________________________________ Two Most Recent Web Cast + Podcast : Intl. Waste Treatment Conference Taipei, Taiwan, 05/10/30 complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/05WasteTaipei/ [b][green]Illuminating the Shadow of the Future Ann Arbor, Mi 05/09/23-25 complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/05ISF/index.html [b][red]WebcastArchive: http://complexity.vub.ac.be/~comdig/ _________________________________________________________________ 01. Because That's The Way It's Always Been Done, Optimize 02. The Passive-Aggressive Organization, Harvard Business Review 03. Creative-Class Struggle, Fastcompany.com 04. The Road Ahead, Time 05. The Future May Bring Simplicty (We Hope), European Business Forum 06. Pushing Past Post-Its, Business 07. Out-of-Equilibrium Economics and Agent-Based Modeling, SFI Working Papers 08. An Empirical Behavioral Model of Price Formation, SFI Working Papers 09. Chimps Indifferent To Needs Of Others 10. Genomics: New Haplotype Map May Overhaul Gene Hunting, Science 10.01. SNPs Ahoy! Scientists Complete Map Of Genetic Differences, Science News 10.02. Geneticists Hail Variety Show, Nature News 11. UC Santa Barbara Researchers Light Up 'Dark' Spins in Diamond, UC Santa Barbara News 12. Future Nanotech Tools Made From Clay, CNET News.com 12.01. Nanotech Pushes Out Medical, Energy Frontiers, Scientist Says, USInfo 13. Robot Surgeons Scrub Up, Nature News 13.01. Defend Yourself Against The Coming Robot Rebellion, Post-Gazette 14. Atmospheric Science: Tipping Points in the Tundra, Science 15. Virology: What Links Bats to Emerging Infectious Diseases?, Science 16. Changes In Brain, Not Age, Determine One's Ability To Focus On Task, ScienceDaily 17. In Western Bluebird As Well As Human Families, Accumulated Wealth Encourages Stability, ScienceDaily 18. Complexity And Criticality, Imperial College Press 19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Network 19.01. America Tightens Up Its Digital Security: Fortress US Gets Tighter, vnunet.com 19.02. CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons, Washington Post 19.03. Terror Television:Al-Qaida Launches A Weekly News Show, Asian Tribune 20. Links & Snippets 20.01. Other Publications 20.02. Webcast Announcements 20.03. Conference Announcements 20.04. Call for Papers - Book Announcements _________________________________________________________________ 01. Because That's The Way It's Always Been Done , Optimize Excerpts: ¡§People always talk about the learning curve. The hardest thing is the forgetting curve. You have to discard what you think you know. And the higher you go in management, the more difficult it is...There's a psychological term called inattentional blindness. It comes from an experiment where people were asked to watch a video of a basketball game and count the number of passes. Halfway through the video, a gorilla walked in one door of the arena and out the other, but half of the people didn't see it. When you tell people to focus on one thing, they frequently don't see something that wasn't in the original plan. When people have acquired a certain amount of knowledge, the same thing happens. Everything is filtered through their expertise. They don't see what's happening. They don't see the signs of change. It's called educated incapacity¡Xthe more you know, the harder it is to see anything new. You have to get people to become more objective.¡¨ * Because That's The Way It's Always Been Done, Arnold Brown , 05/10, Optimize _________________________________________________________________ 02. The Passive-Aggressive Organization , Harvard Business Review Excerpts: Passive-aggressive organizations are friendly places to work: People are congenial, conflict is rare, and consensus is easy to reach. But, at the end of the day, even the best proposals fail to gain traction, and a company can go nowhere so imperturbably that it's easy to pretend everything is fine. Such companies are not necessarily saddled with mulishly passive-aggressive employees. Rather, they are filled with mostly well-intentioned people who are the victims of flawed processes and policies. (...) In such organizations, information does not circulate freely, and that makes it difficult for workers to understand the impact of their actions on company performance and for managers to appraise employees' value to the organization correctly. A failure to match incentives to performance accurately stifles initiative, and people do just enough to get by. (full article available for purchase online) * The Passive-Aggressive Organization, Gary L. Neilson , Bruce A. Pasternack , Karen E. Van Nuys , 05/10/01, Harvard Business Review _________________________________________________________________ 03. Creative-Class Struggle , Fastcompany.com Excerpts: Does the importance of the Creative Class in driving innovation fly in face of the notion that technology makes geography insignificant? Are we becoming a world where free-agents work entrepreneurially, as 'nowhereians' with a global soul, in Pico Iyer's term -- or a world where geography becomes even more important than it has been? Both phenomena are at work, but in the end geography will remain as important as it's ever been. I wrote an article on this very subject ...taking on Tom Friedman's assertions that 'The World is Flat' and 'you don't have to emigrate to innovate.' In fact, the world is 'spikier' than it's ever been, with economic growth and especially cutting-edge science and innovation concentrating in its major urbanized regions. Between these regions are the valleys of this Spiky World, struggling to keep pace in the global economy. Now, obviously free-agents are free to hop from peak to peak in this world, but it's a dangerous misconception that just because the world is 'flat' for the privileged few (admittedly, an increasing number), it's flat for everyone.¡¨ * Creative-Class Struggle, Adam Hanft , 05/11, Fastcompany.com, Issue 100 _________________________________________________________________ 04. The Road Ahead , Time Excerpts: I'm generally optimistic because I feel that with the pace of development in China and India and other parts of the developing world, we're just adding to the available brainpower and unlocking these large populations of people and their ingenuity and giving them an education. How much easier will it be to solve the problems of the world when we've got 10 times as many brains working on them.¨ * The Road Ahead, Malcolm Gladwell , 05/10/24, Time _________________________________________________________________ 05. The Future May Bring Simplicty (We Hope) , European Business Forum Excerpts: More is going to happen over the next ten years than it did in the past ten. By 2015, the world will again experience the kind of dramatic shift that the internet brought, which is a pretty exciting notion. A lot of this change is going to happen through software...Workers and organisations are already nearing the point of so-called information overload, where the sheer volume of data and the complexity of the applications necessary to work with it threaten to overwhelm the powers of human cognition. These distractions have a demonstrable effect on the productivity and health of workers. Along with the proliferation of channels and features that IT offers, we are looking to offer simplification and insight with our products. That means we are trying to address things like prioritisation, context, attention management, and also to bring in better and smarter ways to visualise and control volumes of complex data.¨ * The Future May Bring Simplicty (We Hope), Jean-Philippe Courtois , 05/Fall, European Business Forum _________________________________________________________________ 06. Pushing Past Post-Its , Business Excerpts: So what's 3M's secret to monetizing the research? Some credit goes to its Six Sigma sophistication and streamlined commercialization processes -- not to mention a $1 billion R&D budget -- but Wendling [of 3M] thinks it has much more to do with shifting people and priorities around than with rearranging molecules. 'The best way to transfer ideas,' he says, 'is to transfer people.' * Pushing Past Post-Its, Daniel Del Re , 05/10/21, Business 2.0 _________________________________________________________________ 07. Out-of-Equilibrium Economics and Agent-Based Modeling , SFI Working Papers Excerpt: Standard neoclassical economics asks what agents’ actions, strategies, or expectations are in equilibrium with (consistent with) the outcome or pattern these behaviors aggregatively create. Agent-based computational economics enables us to ask a wider question: how agents’ actions, strategies, or expectations might react to “might endogenously change with” the patterns they create. In other words, it enables us to examine how the economy behaves out of equilibrium (...) * Out-of-Equilibrium Economics and Agent-Based Modeling, W. Brian Arthur , DOI: SFI-WP 05-09-037, SFI Working Papers _________________________________________________________________ 08. An Empirical Behavioral Model of Price Formation , SFI Working Papers Excerpt: Although behavioral economics has demonstrated that there are many situations where rational choice is a poor empirical model, it has so far failed to provide quantitative models of economic problems such as price formation. We make a step in this direction by developing empirical models that capture behavioral regularities in trading order placement and cancellation using data from the London Stock Exchange. (...) * An Empirical Behavioral Model of Price Formation, Szabolcs Mike , J. Doyne Farmer , DOI: SFI-WP 05-10-039, SFI Working Papers _________________________________________________________________ 09. Chimps Indifferent To Needs Of Others Excerpts: Behavior in experiment raises questions about origins of human benevolence.The experiment gave the animals the opportunity to pull a lever and provide treats for chimps in adjacent cages - without receiving anything in return and at no cost to themselves. (...) Samuel Bowles, an economist who directs the behavioral sciences program at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, said this is not the end of the debate, "but it's a very persuasive indication that humans are absolutely unique in their ability to care about others, even others they do not know.¨ * Chimps Indifferent To Needs Of Others, 05/10/27, Cox News Service _________________________________________________________________ 10. Genomics: New Haplotype Map May Overhaul Gene Hunting , Science Excerpts: The map allows gene hunters to get away with less (and thus cheaper) DNA sequencing while still, it's hoped, homing in on disease genes. The current HapMap--a finer-resolution version will come out next year--includes more than 1 million SNPs drawn from the DNA of 269 individuals from four different populations, because haplotype frequencies vary based on evolutionary history. (...) (...), as hoped, a select set of SNPs reliably defines the DNA surrounding them, making it possible to locate relevant genes by comparing haplotype patterns in different groups. * Genomics: New Haplotype Map May Overhaul Gene Hunting, Jennifer Couzin , 05/10/28, Science: 60 _________________________________________________________________ 10.01. SNPs Ahoy! Scientists Complete Map Of Genetic Differences , Science News Excerpts: Researchers have long known that complex diseases such as cancer and heart disease have genetic components that heavily affect their onset, progression, and response to treatment. But because these conditions involve many different genes interacting with each other as well as with factors in a person's environment, teasing out these elements has been difficult. A newly completed map that plots where small genetic differences can exist among people may be a powerful tool for figuring out why some individuals get certain diseases and even for custom designing treatments. * SNPs Ahoy! Scientists Complete Map Of Genetic Differences, Christen Brownlee , 05/10/29, Science News _________________________________________________________________ 10.02. Geneticists Hail Variety Show , Nature News Excerpts: Map of DNA differences will help experts tailor drugs. An international team has tracked a million DNA variations in volunteers around the world, as part of an effort to map the diversity of human genes. Experts say the growing catalogue, called the HapMap, will help to pinpoint genetic causes of disease and develop more effective treatments. "It's a major leap for genetic research," says Tom Hudson of McGill University in Montreal, who led the Canadian contribution to the HapMap. * Geneticists Hail Variety Show, Roxanne Khamsi , 05/10/26, Nature News _________________________________________________________________ 11. UC Santa Barbara Researchers Light Up 'Dark' Spins in Diamond , UC Santa Barbara News Excerpts: Discovery Could Lead to Room Temperature Quantum Computing. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara have potentially opened up a new avenue toward room temperature quantum information processing. By demonstrating the ability to image and control single isolated electron spins in diamond, they unexpectedly discovered a new channel for transferring information to other surrounding spins ... an initial step towards spin-based information processing. * UC Santa Barbara Researchers Light Up 'Dark' Spins in Diamond, 05/10/27, UC Santa Barbara News _________________________________________________________________ 12. Future Nanotech Tools Made From Clay , CNET News.com Excerpts: Credit: NaturalNano, Dragon Mine deposits in Utah are significantly rich in nanotube content. The tubes could even have agricultural uses. The next big nanotech product, according to start-up NaturalNano, will be dug out of the ground. The Rochester, N.Y.-based company has found a way to use Halloysite, a naturally occurring tubular clay, as an unobtrusive carrier in metals, perfumes and other substances. NaturalNano says that by filling Halloysite tubes with copper and then mixing the tubes into a polymer, a manufacturer could make an electrically conductive plastic. If filled with fungicides, the Halloysite particles--which consist of aluminum, oxygen, silicon and hydrogen--could be swirled into paint to make it more resistant to mildew and mold. Time-released coatings could also be added to make all-day deodorant. * Future Nanotech Tools Made From Clay, Michael Kanellos , 05/10/26, CNET News.com _________________________________________________________________ 12.01. Nanotech Pushes Out Medical, Energy Frontiers, Scientist Says , USInfo Excerpts: 10,000 years ago, humans began to domesticate plants and animals. Now it's time to domesticate molecules. (...) Biotechnology, which is known primarily by its medical and agricultural applications, is increasingly being focused on the building of new biological materials and machines in an astonishing diversity of structures, functions, and uses. The advent of nanotechnology has accelerated this trend. Learning from nature, which over billions of years has honed and fashioned molecular architectural motifs to perform a myriad of specific tasks, nanobiotechnologists are now designing completely new molecular patterns -- bit by bit, from the bottom up -- to build novel materials and sophisticated molecular machines. Over the next generation, advances such as new materials to repair damaged tissues and molecular machines to harness solar energy from the smallest molecular amino acids and lipids will likely have an enormous impact on our society and the world's economy. * Nanotech Pushes Out Medical, Energy Frontiers, Scientist Says, Shuguang Zhang , 05/10/27, USInfo _________________________________________________________________ 13. Robot Surgeons Scrub Up , Nature News Excerpts: Meet the robots that can perform surgery from within your own body. Their creators hope that the remote-controlled surgeons are a step towards a time when traditional open surgery is a thing of the past. Just 8 centimetres long, the devices are designed to be slipped inside a patient's abdomen through a tiny incision. Once inside the body, the robots can be controlled by surgeons either on-site or hundreds of kilometres away. * Robot Surgeons Scrub Up, Mark Peplow , 05/10/27, Nature News _________________________________________________________________ 13.01. Defend Yourself Against The Coming Robot Rebellion , Post-Gazette Excerpts: "Any machine could rebel, from a toaster to a Terminator," says CMU roboticist Daniel H. Wilson, in his satirical new book. "Any robot could rebel, from a toaster to a Terminator, and so it is crucial to learn the strengths and weaknesses of every robot enemy," author Daniel H. Wilson warns in "How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion." What makes the book cool -- and unlike some other survival books -- is that Wilson is an actual roboticist, who got his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon last month. While his scenarios are outlandish -- describing attacks by humanoid robots, some of them with creepy tails, some that can climb walls or swim -- the research on how to build and attack the robot creatures is quite real. * Defend Yourself Against The Coming Robot Rebellion, Timothy McNulty , 05/10/30, Post-Gazette _________________________________________________________________ 14. Atmospheric Science: Tipping Points in the Tundra , Science Excerpts: The recent news from the Arctic is troubling. A new report (1) from NASA and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) indicates that the extent of sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean is now at its lowest level in more than a century. The NASA-NSIDC team has observed four straight years of substantially below-average sea ice, with earlier spring melting and sharp declines in winter ice cover. This comes on the heels of another report by Overpeck et al. (2), supported by the NSF Arctic System Science program, which suggests that the Arctic is heading toward a new, seasonally ice-free state--a condition not seen for at least a million years. * Atmospheric Science: Tipping Points in the Tundra, Jonathan A. Foley , 05/10/28, Science : 627-628 _________________________________________________________________ 15. Virology: What Links Bats to Emerging Infectious Diseases? , Science Excerpts: Three species of horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus spp.) have now been officially recorded as the natural reservoir host of the coronavirus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) [see the report by Li et al. on page 676 of this issue (1) and the report by Lau et al. (2)]. The emergence of this pathogen (SARS-CoV) in southern China in 2002-2003 almost brought the burgeoning economy of Southeast Asia to its knees (3,