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Scoop.it!
They don't have a three-second memory. And one researcher thinks we've been dramatically underestimating their intelligence all along. 
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Scoop.it!
Despite the new agey title - interesting article at the design observer on mapping development timescales to those of the underpinning ecological systems that are required to support it, using balinese rice production as an example. Worth a read. Click on image or title to learn more.
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This European Public Sector Information Platform topic report focuses on the question of how improved access to and analysis of data can help increase transparency, accountability and effectiveness to improve our understanding of how aid can be made more effective. Link to PDF file on web page. Click the headline to learn more...
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Interesting article on social-ethographic research and social cognition. Key quote "it is important to pay attention to what people articulate as their own understanding of how social processes work and how they as individuals might negotiate the complex social terrain, rather than simply looking at their actions…." Worth a read
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A good review of Open House: Smarter cities, smarter thinking meeting on the 28 June, 2012 . This year’s conference centred on the cohesive development of our cities. Delegates from BDP, Hawkins Brown, Nicholas Hare Architects, Pick Everard and Foster + Partners were among those present at the second day of the Open House Worldwide Conference 2012 hosted by CBRE in London. Worth reading. Click on image or headline to learn more.
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via RKelwick
by Recent efforts have focused on forms of control that don't impose a huge fitness burden on the mosquito population. This general approach has been tested in the wild on the mosquitos that carry Dengue fever, which scientists infected with bacteria that block the spread of the virus. Now, researchers are reporting that they've developed genetically modified mosquitos that turn mosquitos into a dead-end for the malarial parasite. Their method: have the mosquitos express antibodies against the parasite whenever it feeds on blood. Antibodies have a relatively poor history when it comes to targeting malaria in humans. Vaccines against the parasite tend to be ineffective, because Plasmodium falciparum has evolved ways of evading an immune response, often completely changing the proteins that coat its surface in order to keep antibodies from recognizing it. But these changes are only triggered once the parasite is already inside the human body...." Via Gerd Moe-Behrens
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RT @tinholt: Open data and mapping for disasters and development: #opendata - it's about citizens creating it: http://t.co/gfOueJZ6...
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Sean Gourley's ted talk illustrates how through analysis of data we can gain insight into the underpinning organisation of highly complex systems - in this case War in Iraq. His Startup - Quid.com is certainly worth a look at as his research site - http://mathematicsofwar.com/ - read the Nature paper - its important!
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Biotech firm’s bid to control dengue fever using genetically modified insects faces growing public opposition. It took a decade for the biotechnology firm Oxitec to develop genetically modified mosquitoes whose progeny die before they can spread dengue fever. But it took only three months for Mila de Mier to gather 100,000 names from people opposed to the release of the mosquitoes in Key West, Florida, where the potentially lethal disease is making a comeback... the company says that the virus already evolves in humans to optimize its fitness. It also notes that male mosquitoes do not bite, and that although a few engineered females might be released, any DNA they might transmit is not toxic or allergenic. Entomologists say that no animals in Florida feast solely on this species of mosquito. Florida’s negative reaction contrasts with that in Bahia state, Brazil, where residents in Juazeiro cheered the opening of an Oxitec mosquito-production facility on 7 July. Some Brazilians initially voiced concerns similar to those of de Mier and others, says Margareth Capurro, a biologist at the University of São Paulo, who led the Juazeiro trial. But she and her team engaged the community through meetings, radio and local television before seeking approval for their trial from Brazil’s agency for biotechnological safety, CTNBio. Capurro continues to spread the message that GE mosquitoes are not a threat and that they fight a disease that residents know and fear. “We release the mosquitoes around 8 a.m., and the kids like to follow us,” she says. “Sometimes you see them running back to older people in the village to explain what we’re doing.” Dengue fever is a smaller problem in the United States than in Brazil, but health officials were alarmed when it reappeared in Florida three years ago after an absence of more than 70 years. Since 2009, 94 cases have been reported in Key West, and dengue prevention has become a top priority. Tourists often visit the area after stopping in dengue-infested countries, and a population of A. aegypti is there ready to spread the disease once it arrives, says entomologist Michael Doyle, director of the Florida Keys Mosquito Control District (FKMCD) in Stock Island, a taxpayer-funded operation that spends more than US$1 million a year to control A. aegypti in Key West with insecticides. Via Alexander J. Stein
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Policy makers the world over are drawing increasingly on complexity science to help them make sense of a whole range of economic, social, political and security issues. However, complexity science has far-reaching implications for how policy makers understand the world. IN a good article by Adrian W. J. Kuah on Eurasia review -- Kuah explores the dichotomy and its implications. Worth reading. Click on the title to learn more...
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famous paper by Dr. Richard Cook of the University of Chicago - “How Complex Systems Fail”. It offers a cross-discipline perspective on complex systems. Among other things, Dr. Cook emphasizes the following:
More robust system performance requires appreciation and experience with failure.
Complex systems run as broken systems (with many latent failures within, but functional because it contains redundancies).
Failures in complex systems require the combination of multiple factors (thus, looking for a single ‘root cause’ is fundamentally wrong.
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Society is complicated. But this book argues that this does not place it beyond the reach of a science that can help to explain and perhaps even to predict social behaviour. As a system made up of many interacting agents – people, groups, institutions and governments, as well as physical and technological structures such as roads and computer networks – society can be regarded as a complex system. In recent years, scientists have made great progress in understanding how such complex systems operate, ranging from animal populations to earthquakes and weather. These systems show behaviours that cannot be predicted or intuited by focusing on the individual components, but which emerge spontaneously as a consequence of their interactions: they are said to be ‘self-organized’. Attempts to direct or manage such emergent properties generally reveal that ‘top-down’ approaches, which try to dictate a particular outcome, are ineffectual, and that what is needed instead is a ‘bottom-up’ approach that aims to guide self-organization towards desirable states. This book shows how some of these ideas from the science of complexity can be applied to the study and management of social phenomena, including traffic flow, economic markets, opinion formation and the growth and structure of cities. Via Complexity Digest
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The Open Data for Development Camp is part of The Kenya Open Data Pre-Incubator Program. This is a six-month experiment to help accelerate the ability for the public to make sense of data and to galvanize engagement around critical public issues. This event will take place from Wednesday, June 27, 2012 at 10:00 AM - Thursday, June 28, 2012 at 6:00 PM at Strathmore University. It promises a combination of Keynote Speakers, Workshops, Best Practices, Speed Geeking, Hack Space, Networking, Exchange of knowledge and needs, Sharing Data Sets, Co-Creation, Open Data Visualizations, and Inspiration.
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From
cidpnsi
A recent (short) essay by Aniket Bhusan Senior Researcher at NSI and CIDP explains why “Big Data” is such a big deal for development was just published by USAID as part of their Frontiers in Development book. the book is free from the link on this page. Worth Reading. Learn more...
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From
ai-d
The underpinning concept that lead to Complex Insight is Data Driven Development - how we can use data that is either intrinsic to or generated by a complex system, to identify patterns, define models, gain insight and drive solutions that can help people improve their lives. AI-D - Artificial Intelligence for Development was created by Nathan Eagle and Eric Horvitz who pioneered the field of Data Driven Development through their work with identifying problems and potential solutions using mobile phone data from developing countries. Get involved. Learn more...
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This is an old presentation by Nathan Eagle, Omidyar Fellow, Santa Fe Institute from May 5, 2010. Petabytes of data about human movements, transactions, and communication patterns are continuously generated and may hold important insghts into global development.
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Culum Brown's research into fish behaviour is deeply revealing both for the insights into aquatic life and into human prejudice regarding other species capabilities. Good article on vox.com regarding fish sentience, perception and behavioural evolution - worth reading.