Perspectives on Innovation

Excerpts from Complexity Digest 2010.10   (5/11) by Bruce Hannon

A telescope for spotting global crises, The Great Beyond

Excerpt: The good news is that your future can be predicted. The bad news is that it’ll cost a billion euros. That, at least, is what a team of scientists led by Dirk Helbing of the ETH in Switzerland believes. And as they point out, a billion euros is small fare compared with the bill for the current financial crisis” which might conceivably have been anticipated with the massive social-science simulations they want to establish.

• Source: A telescope for spotting global crises, Philip Ball, The Great Beyond [Nature blog], 2010/04/30

Meaning-Making Neurons, Science

Excerpt: In The Brain and the Meaning of Life, philosopher, psychologist, and computer scientist Paul Thagard (University of Waterloo) has elegantly employed the pithiness principle. He offers a tightly reasoned, often humorous, and original contribution to the emerging practice of applying science to areas heretofore the province of philosophers, theologians, ethicists, and politicians: What is reality and how can we know it? Are mind and brain one or two? What is the source of the sense of self? What is love? What is the difference between right and wrong, and how can we know it? What is the most legitimate form of government? What is the meaning of life, and how can we find happiness in it?

• Source: Meaning-Making Neurons, Michael Shermer, DOI: 10.1126/science.1189752, Science Vol. 328. no. 5979, pp. 693 – 694, 2010/05/07

(more…)

Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences. What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world. Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time. Thank you Bruce!

Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #5, we hope you enjoy. Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.

Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Nature

Excerpt: Complex networks have been studied intensively for a decade, but research still focuses on the limited case of a single, non-interacting network. Modern systems are coupled together and therefore should be modelled as interdependent networks. A fundamental property of interdependent networks is that failure of nodes in one network may lead to failure of dependent nodes in other networks. This may happen recursively and can lead to a cascade of failures.

• Source: Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Sergey V. Buldyrev, Roni Parshani, Gerald Paul, H. Eugene Stanley, Shlomo Havlin, DOI: 10.1038/nature08932, Nature 64, 1025-1028, 2010/04/15

BuRSTS

Excerpt: BuRSTS is a performance in human dynamics, a game of cooperation and prediction, that will gradually unveil the full text of Bursts. In a nutshell, if you register at http://brsts.com, you will be able to adopt one of the 84,245 words of the book. Once you adopt, the words adopted by others will become visible to you — thus as each words finds a parent, the whole book will become visible to the adopters. But if you invite your friends (and please do!) and you are good at predicting hidden content, the book will unveil itself to you well before all words are adopted. We will even send each day free signed copied of Bursts to those with the best scores.
See Also: http://brsts.com

• Source: BuRSTS, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

(more…)

Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences. What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world. Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time. Thank you Bruce!

Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #4, we hope you enjoy. Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.

Ageing, Nature

Excerpt: It is now clear that by tinkering with particular signalling pathways and by balancing nutrition, the lifespan of many organisms, including yeast, worms, flies and mice, can be extended. Crucially, the same tweaks often bring about substantial health benefits and seem to delay the onset of age-related diseases. Most of the pathways involved are evolutionarily conserved, so it is likely that some of this research will eventually benefit human health.

• Source: Ageing, Marie-Thérèse Heemels, DOI: 10.1038/464503a, Nature 464, 503, 2010/03/25

(more…)

Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences. What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world. Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time. Thank you Bruce!

Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #3, we hope you enjoy. Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.

Why you shouldn’t always follow the crowd, Nature

Excerpt:

A peculiar rift must be confronted in going from the individual to the collective, as science writer Len Fisher explains in his book. The Perfect Swarm focuses on swarm intelligence:  ” the emergence of purposeful, effective and flexibly adaptive group behaviour from interactions between members following simple rules. Fisher explores how this phenomenon unites the behaviour of ants, fish, birds and locusts, and how it links to all areas of complexity science, from neurobiology to ecology. He also embraces the tough challenge of translating the science into practical lessons for everyday life.

• Source: Why you shouldn’t always follow the crowd, Mark Buchanan, DOI: 10.1038/464035a, Nature 464, 35, 2010/03/04

(more…)

Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences.   What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world.  Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time.  Thank you Bruce!

Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #2, we hope you enjoy.   Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.

The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems: Consequences of Change, Changing Consequences, SFI Working Papers

Abstract: Short-term survival and an exuberant plunge into building our future are generating a new kind of unintended consequence – “hidden fragility. This is a direct effect of the sophistication and structural complexity of the socio-technical systems humans create. It is inevitable. And so the challenge is, How much can we understand and predict about these systems and about the social dynamics that lead to their construction?

• Source: The Hidden Fragility of Complex Systems: Consequences of Change, Changing Consequences, James Crutchfield, DOI: SFI-WP 09-12-045, SFI Working Papers

(more…)