Complex Insight - Understanding our world
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A few things the Symbol Research team are reading.  Complex Insight is curated by Phillip Trotter (www.linkedin.com/in/phillip-trotter) from Symbol Research
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Artificial Life 14

Artificial Life 14 | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From mitpress.mit.edu - July 11, 2014 1:30 AM

ALIFE 14, the Fourteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems, presents the current state of the art of Artificial Life—the highly interdisciplinary research area on artificially constructed living systems, including mathematical, computational, robotic, and biochemical ones. The understanding and application of such generalized forms of life, or “life as it could be,” have been producing significant contributions to various fields of science and engineering.
This volume contains papers that were accepted through rigorous peer reviews for presentations at the ALIFE 14 conference. The topics covered in this volume include: Evolutionary Dynamics; Artificial Evolutionary Ecosystems; Robot and Agent Behavior; Soft Robotics and Morphologies; Collective Robotics; Collective Behaviors; Social Dynamics and Evolution; Boolean Networks, Neural Networks and Machine Learning; Artificial Chemistries, Cellular Automata and Self-Organizing Systems; In-Vitro and In-Vivo Systems; Evolutionary Art, Philosophy and Entertainment; and Methodologies.

 

Artificial Life 14

Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems

Edited by Hiroki Sayama, John Rieffel, Sebastian Risi, René Doursat and Hod Lipson

http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/artificial-life-14


Via Complexity Digest
Phillip Trotter's insight:

I remember reading the first one of these and my imagination being captured by Chris Langton's introduction. Look forward to reading this one.

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Biotech, farmer associations key for climate adaptation - panel - Reuters AlertNet (blog)

Biotech, farmer associations key for climate adaptation - panel - Reuters AlertNet (blog) | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From www.trust.org - October 22, 2013 2:54 PM
Biotech, farmer associations key for climate adaptation - panel Reuters AlertNet (blog) LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - An increasingly extreme climate is presenting new challenges to farmers across the world, and biotechnology and greater...
Phillip Trotter's insight:

The potential for genetically modified crops and relation to climate change - which recently helped drive Monsanto to acquire The Climate Corporation  is once again in the headlines. At the recent Iowa discussion, five farmers from Malawi, India, Portugal, Argentina and Kenya said they were strong believers in using biotech crops to survive and thrive in the face of a changing climate, and said that farmers needed to share ideas and help each other improve farming techniques.  Trust.org does a great job in summarizing the ideas discussed at the event. Worth reading.

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Complexity Economics: A Different Framework for Economic Thought

From www.santafe.edu - July 15, 2013 5:00 AM

This paper provides a logical framework for complexity economics. Complexity economics builds from the proposition that the economy is not necessarily in equilibrium: economic agents (firms, consumers, investors) constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create. This further changes the outcome, which requires them to adjust afresh. Agents thus live in a world where their beliefs and strategies are constantly being “tested” for survival within an outcome or “ecology” these beliefs and strategies together create. Economics has largely avoided this nonequilibrium view in the past, but if we allow it, we see patterns or phenomena not visible to equilibrium analysis. These emerge probabilistically, last for some time and dissipate, and they correspond to complex structures in other fields. We also see the economy not as something given and existing but forming from a constantly developing set of technological innovations, institutions, and arrangements that draw forth further innovations, institutions and arrangements.(...) 

 

Complexity Economics: A Different Framework for Economic Thought
W. Brian Arthur
SFI WP 13-04-012

http://www.santafe.edu/research/working-papers/abstract/36df2f7d8ecd8941d8fab92ded2c4547/


Via Complexity Digest, Ashish Umre
Phillip Trotter's insight:

Brian Arthur was an early pioneer of applying concepts of complex systems to economic systems and its good to see an update publication that builds on his earlier work and other work in this area. Certainly worth reading.

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Bill Aukett's curator insight, July 16, 2013 10:24 PM

If you've read Waldrop's account of the development of the complexity paradigm at the Sante Fe Institute (Waldrop, M, (1992) Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos, Simon & Schuster, New York), the name Brian Arthur will be familiar.
Betty Cares's curator insight, July 17, 2013 9:39 AM

Another interesting paper from one of our great complexity thinkers, Brian Arthur, author of the El Farol Problem.  I will publish that here soon too!
Luciano Lampi's curator insight, July 18, 2013 8:11 AM

does democracy represent the best tool to face non-equilibrium states and emergence? 
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Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study shows

Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study shows | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From newsroom.ucla.edu - June 16, 2013 6:13 PM

UCLA researchers now have the first evidence that bacteria ingested in food can affect brain function in humans. In an early proof-of-concept study of healthy women, they found that women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics through yogurt showed altered brain function, both while in a resting state and in response to an emotion-recognition task.

Phillip Trotter's insight:

Gut instinct and trust your gut are expressions we use often - researchers at UCLA have now shown there is more to it that simply vernacular expression. Understanding the role of bacteria and human health ecology is becoming far more important to human health than our initial approach of bombing them with anti-biotics first suggested. The new study from UCLA has implications for use of anti-biotics with neonatal care, diet and development and potentially areas such as depression. Much more research following these initial findings will be needed but we are only just starting to discover just how complex we actually are.

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It's time to redesign our economic system

It's time to redesign our economic system | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From www.guardian.co.uk - November 22, 2012 8:55 AM

John Fullerton asks what it will take for mainstream economists and financial theorists to understand the vital connection between economics and ecosystem. Click on the image or title to learn more.

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Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future — Medium

Imagining the Post-Antibiotics Future — Medium | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From medium.com - November 21, 2013 12:02 AM
A few years ago, I started looking online to fill in chapters of my family history that no one had ever spoken of.
Phillip Trotter's insight:

Maryn McKenna has been writing a number of articulate well informed and frankly terrifying articles in Wired on the rise of drug resistant antibiotics and their societal implications. This 4000 word essay on medium is certainly worth reading and explains her personal interest in the subject. 

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Microsoft's virtual ecosystem aims to simulate the entire world - NBC News.com

Microsoft's virtual ecosystem aims to simulate the entire world - NBC News.com | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From www.nbcnews.com - October 9, 2013 12:55 AM

Microsoft Research and UN scientists are embarking on a highly ambitious project: A computational model of an entire ecosystem, from the soil to the creatures that live on it and interact with it...

Phillip Trotter's insight:

This is a research topic very close to home for the team at complex insight since we work on related developments. Microsoft Research are aiming to accurately simulate an entire ecosystem.  Drew Purves at Microsoft Research in Cambridge thinks the time has come for what the company describes as a General Ecosystem Model (also known as GEM) — capable of simulating just about any ecosystem in the world. Purves wrote an article for the journal Nature announcing the team's intentions, and calling for others to help out — because it's not a small project. Microsoft have developed a prototype called the Madingley Model -see http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/gef/madingley.aspx ; and work is now underway with the Untied Nations Environment Programe to refine the developments.

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Didier Sornette: How we can predict the next financial crisis

From www.ted.com - June 24, 2013 3:05 AM

The 2007-2008 financial crisis, you might think, was an unpredictable one-time crash. But Didier Sornette and his Financial Crisis Observatory have plotted a set of early warning signs for unstable, growing systems, tracking the moment when any bubble is about to pop. (And he's seeing it happen again, right now.)


Via Complexity Digest
Phillip Trotter's insight:

Didier Sornette and team's work .- highlights role of how system feedback can drive a variety of systems through phase transition resulting in dramatic structural and behavioural change in system behaviour.  While many of the underpinning ideas presented have been discussed extensively in the fields of chaos and complex systems - his teams methods of  analysis and publication combined with the variety of systems he and his team study will hopefully help gain a wider acceptance of using these methods to understand, model and steer systems behaviour. A video well worth watching.

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Luciano Lampi's curator insight, June 18, 2013 3:30 PM

si non é vero...é ben trovato!
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Big Data for Conflict Prevention

Big Data for Conflict Prevention | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From irevolution.net - April 14, 2013 5:54 PM
I had the great pleasure of co-authoring the International Peace Institute's (IPI) unique report on "Big Data for Conflict Prevention" (PDF) with my two colleagues Emmanuel Letouzé and Patrick Vinc...
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PLOS ONE: Metagenomic Exploration of Viruses throughout the Indian Ocean

PLOS ONE: Metagenomic Exploration of Viruses throughout the Indian Ocean | Complex Insight - Understanding our world | Scoop.it
From www.plosone.org - October 20, 2012 1:13 PM

The characterization of global marine microbial taxonomic and functional diversity is a primary goal of the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition. As part of this study, 19 water samples were collected aboard the Sorcerer II sailing vessel from the southern Indian Ocean in an effort to more thoroughly understand the lifestyle strategies of the microbial inhabitants of this ultra-oligotrophic region. No investigations of whole virioplankton assemblages have been conducted on waters collected from the Indian Ocean or across multiple size fractions thus far. Therefore, the goals of this study were to examine the effect of size fractionation on viral consortia structure and function and understand the diversity and functional potential of the Indian Ocean virome. Interesting paper - find more info on the findings of the study by clicking on the image or title.

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