Month: October 2017

Call for Postdoctoral position in Data Science at Central European University

The Intellectual Theme Initiative “Just data” at Central European University is looking for an exceptional candidate to fill one open postdoctoral position in data science, broadly defined.

The research will be conducted with the research group directed by Prof. Roberta Sinatra and Prof. Michael Szell, with unique opportunities for collaborations with other excellent faculty at Central European University. The group currently focuses on quantitative projects at the boundary of computational social science and network science, including science of science, social dynamics, urban sustainability, data visualization, and fundamental questions in complex systems.

We welcome applicants with strong background in fields including statistical physics, applied mathematics, machine learning, artificial intelligence, social network analysis, complex systems, or other closely related fields. Our priority is to attract technically strong researchers who are interested in asking bold, new questions with data. A stated passion in data analysis is a must; excellent organizational and interpersonal skills are essential. The applicant will conduct research using large data sets, and be involved in the development of interactive data visualization tools.

Source: www.robertasinatra.com

The future of work

Robots did not write this sentence, or any other part of Nature. But that could change. Dramatic shifts in labour are reshaping society, the environment and the political landscape. Consider this disorienting estimate from the World Economic Forum: 65% of children entering primary schools now will grow up to work in jobs that do not yet exist. This week, Nature asks: what light is research shedding on the future of work, and how will the changes affect scientists’ working world?

Source: www.nature.com

Introduction to Focus Issue: Complex Cardiac Dynamics

Even after over a century of active research, the heart continues to reveal new complexities in behavior and remains difficult to understand fully. Multi-scale dynamics ranging from cellular and subcellular behavior to chambers of the heart and the full organ make analysis complicated. In addition, different types of heart functions, including electrical wave signaling, mechanical contraction, and blood flow, present separate challenges. Theory, numerical modeling, and experiments provide different contributions to our understanding of cardiac processes and behavior. This Focus Issue includes papers from across all these spectra and addresses a number of interesting open questions regarding the complex dynamics of the heart.

 

Introduction to Focus Issue: Complex Cardiac Dynamics featured

Elizabeth M. Cherry, Flavio H. Fenton, Trine Krogh-Madsen, Stefan Luther, and Ulrich Parlitz

Chaos 27, 093701 (2017); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.5003940

Source: aip.scitation.org

Compressibility, laws of nature, initial conditions and complexity

We critically analyse the point of view for which laws of nature are just a mean to compress data. Discussing some basic notions of dynamical systems and information theory, we show that the idea that the analysis of large amount of data by means of an algorithm of compression is equivalent to the knowledge one can have from scientific laws, is rather naive. In particular we discuss the subtle conceptual topic of the initial conditions of phenomena which are generally incompressible. Starting from this point, we argue that laws of nature represent more than a pure compression of data, and that the availability of large amount of data, in general, is not particularly useful to understand the behaviour of complex phenomena.

 

Compressibility, laws of nature, initial conditions and complexity
Sergio Chibbaro, Angelo Vulpiani

Source: arxiv.org