Now accepting applications for 2009 Global Sustainability Summer School
[read more...]Now accepting applications for 2009 Complex Systems Summer Schools - Santa Fe and Beijing
[read more...]Santa Fe Institute inaugurates its 25th Anniversary this weekend!
"The Road Less Traveled" Gala dinner will be held November 8 at 6:00 p.m. at the Eldorado Hotel. Limited tickets available for a $500/person tax-deductable donation. Call Shannon Larsen at 505-795-1072 for a reservation. Note: the $1,000/person tickets are sold-out. [read more...]Postdoc Borenstein and Profession Feldman Study “Seed Sets” in Metabolic Networks
SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Elhanan Borenstein and SFI External Professor Marcus Feldman introduce the concept of a metabolic network’s “seed set” and provide a methodological framework to computationally infer the seed set of a given network. The seed sets’ composition significantly correlates with several basic properties characterizing the species’ environments. Their findings suggest that the seed state is transient and that seeds tend either to be dropped completely from the network or to become non-seed compounds relatively fast. The “reverse ecology” approach presented lays the foundations for studying the evolutionary interplay between organisms and their habitats on a large scale. See “Large-scale Reconstruction and Phylogenetic Analysis of Metabolic Environments,” E. Borenstein, M. Kupiec, M. W. Feldman, and E. Ruppin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. 105(38) (2008): 14482-14487. [read more...]Election Maps Created by SFI Researchers Featured in ABC and BBC Election Coverage
Novel election maps created by SFI External Professors Mark Newman and Cosma Shalizi, and former SFI Postdoc Michael Gastner, were featured in the election night coverage on ABC and the BBC. Typical election maps, which color each state with a color representing the winning candidate or party (e.g., Red for Republications and Blue for Democrats) can be misleading. Such a map for this year's Presidential election implies that the Republications won because there is more red than blue on the map. In fact, however, the reverse is true; the Democrats won by a substantial margin. The explanation for this apparent paradox, as pointed out by many people, is that geographic maps fail to take account of the population distribution. Specifically, they fail to depict the fact that the population of the red states is on average significantly lower than that of the blue ones. The blue states may be small in area, but they represent a large number of voters, which is what matters in an election. Newman, Shalizi, and Gastner correct for this misimpression by making use of cartograms, which are maps in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population or electoral votes. The resulting cartograms are significantly more informative and compelling. Click for details. [read more...]SFI Receives $7.5 Million Challenge Grant From eBay Founder, Pierre Omidyar
to establish the Omidyar Fellows Program which aims to attract the brightest and most creative thinkers to spend two to three years as postdoctoral fellows at the Santa Fe Institute. Consistent with SFI's multidisciplinary approach, the fellowship program will draw scholars from across the social, physical and natural sciences with the common denominators being intense curiosity, creativity and a desire to delve deep into the major questions facing science and society. [read more...]Make a Gift to the Omidyar Challenge
The Omidyar Fellows Program provides unparalleled research training. As the postdoctoral graduates move onto academic positions elsewhere, they inform the research of other universities with the Santa Fe Institute's approach to science. Every dollar donated to the Omidyar Challenge is matched and therefor has twice as much impact. Learn more about the Omidyar Challenge and how you can get involved by visiting http://www.santafe.edu/about/support-anniversary-fund.php#omidyar [read more...]The Coevolution of Cultural Groups and Ingroup Favoritism
Cultural boundaries have often been the basis for discrimination, nationalism, religious wars, and genocide. Still, little is known about how cultural groups form or the evolutionary forces behind group affiliation and ingroup favoritism. Charles Efferson from the University of Zurich and SFI External Professor along with Rafael Lalive of the University of Lausanne and Ernst Fehr of Collegium Helveticum examine these forces and show that arbitrary symbolic markers evolve to play a key role in cultural group formation and ingroup favoritism because they enable a population of heterogeneous individuals to solve important coordination problems. The resulting social environment includes strong incentives to bias interactions toward others with the same marker, and subjects accordingly show strong ingroup favoritism. When markers do not acquire meaning as accurate predictors of behavior, players show a markedly reduced taste for ingroup favoritism. [read more...]NIH increases its support for high-impact research with $138 million
The National Institutes of Health announced today that it has increased its support of high-impact research with 2008 NIH Director’s Pioneer and New Innovator Awards to 47 scientists. Each Pioneer Award provides $2.5 million in direct costs over five years. New Innovator Awards are for $1.5 million in direct costs over the same time period. Included in the Pioneer Award recipients is Joshua M. Epstein, Ph.D., Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics director and Santa Fe Institute external professor, who will integrate behavioral factors into models of the development and progression of infectious and chronic diseases. [read more...]Hidden Infections Crucial to Understanding, Controlling Disease Outbreaks
Scientists at the University of Michigan, including Santa Fe Institute External Professor Mercedes Pascual, are researching the cycles of the infectious disease cholera by studying less dramatic, mild infections lurking in large numbers of people. Their findings will appear in Nature Magazine. Their goal was to understand the patterns of cholera, particularly the impact of infection-induced immunity on the dynamics of cholera outbreaks. Since it is difficult to get very sick from cholera, there are a lot of people who are walking around with the disease in high infection areas such as Bengal, and these researchers were interested in studying the consequences of this. Their findings showed that many more people are being exposed to the bacteria than are getting serious infections or dying, and that individuals with mild infections are losing their immunity quite quickly. [read more...]New Bluetooth System Orients Blind And Sighted Pedestrians
A new bluetooth system, called Talking Points, has been developed at the University of Michigan. The new system is primarily for the blind, but will also be useful for the sighted, and orients them to points of interest as they move around. It is the first step to an audio virtual reality. This is the first known system of its kind to use Bluetooth technology. "Location-based guide systems of one kind or another have been built and re-built by academic researchers for over a decade now, but this is the first project that has really focused on the needs of the visually impaired and gone out to make sure the system is being developed to meet those needs," said Mark Newman, co-author of the papers being presented and External Professor at Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]Peak oil "wrong," says Schwartz
Environmental futurist and Santa Fe Institute trustee Peter Schwartz says that peak oil is not a driver of clean technology and those that support it are wrong. The peak oil theory claims that US oil production would peak between 1965 – 1970. Schwartz, however, claims we do not know how much oil is out in the world, and that estimates are conservative. [read more...]Power emerges from consensus in monkey social networks
Santa Fe Institute researchers Jessica Flack and David Krakauer study how power structures arise from a status communication network in a monkey society, an area that is rarely studied. "When building a society, it is of utemost importance that signals be informative and any sources of ambiguity minimized," says Krakauer. In their study, they show that power emerges through consensus. [read more...]SFI External Professor Jim Hartle Wins 2009 American Physical Society Einstein Prize for Gravitational Physics
The Einstein Prize is awarded to recognize outstanding accomplishments in the field of gravitational physics. The prize consists of $10,000 and a certificate citing the contributions of the recipient. It also includes an allowance for the recipient to travel to a meeting of the Society to receive the award and deliver a lecture. It is awarded biennially in odd-numbered years. [read more...]Global Warming Heats Up Need for Malaria Vaccine
There has been much debate as to whether there is a link between climate change and the spread of infectious diseases. A 2006 study by University of Michigan ecologist and Santa Fe Institute External ProfessorMercedes Pascual, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, however, found that climate change, in addition to drug and pesticide resistance, changing land use patterns, and human migration, was responsible for the resurgence of malaria. He found that even small increases in temperature lead to the proliferation of mosquitoes in regions that were previously inhospitable to malaria-bearing mosquitoes. Malaria, often called the “forgotten epidemic”, is responsible for over 1 million deaths worldwide per year, and as global temperatures rise malaria will affect developing and developed countries alike in the years to come. Malaria continues to be one of the world’s deadliest diseases and a vaccine is the best hope of ridding the world of the disease. [read more...]The Great Map Debate
At a press conference at the United Nations in 1973, Arno Peters condemned the standard rectangular map, claiming that it is a symbol of subjugation of the Third World. Peters unveiled his own map where Africa and South America pretty much take up the majority of the planet, America and Europe are greatly reduced in size, and Greenland is almost completely gone from the map. Although he is now dead, his name and claims anger professional cartographers to this day, however a more politically correct map is still a hot subject. Cartographers have long sought ways to create maps whose appearance reflects key features of different regions. Research by members of the Worldmapper Project, including Dr Mark Newman of the University of Michigan and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, has now resulted in methods of solving this tricky jigsaw puzzle. When run on a computer, the result is a whole new family of maps – and an atlas which may well put cartography back on the political map. [read more...]Maybe you actually are connected to Kevin Bacon
The small world theory that states there are six degrees of separation between any two people on Earth was put to the test by a massive study of electronic communication. The research was conducted through 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 people around the world. The average length was 6.6 steps and 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less. For a piece of folklore, it wasn't bad," said Duncan Watts, one of the Columbia researchersa nd External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute . "It was off only in its detail." [read more...]Quantum mechanics could make sensors million time more effective
Revelations of new Quantum mechanics will be publicized in Science. By harnessing a property of quantum mechanics called entanglement, mechanical engineers, such as MIT professor and Santa Fe Institute External Professor Seth Lloyd, may be able to improve detectors and imaging systems. Theoretically, it could be used for medical purposes such as greatly reduced X-ray output, making it safer for the patient. [read more...]Tufts hosts experts from around the world to discuss 'compassionate leadership'
Tufts University recently held a panel discussion on "compassionate leadership" and its relevance to world events. Panelists included Queen Noor of Jordan, Rabbi Irwin Kula, and the Sakyong, Jamgon Miphon Rinpoche. The panel was moderated by Jerry Murdock, co-founder of Insight Venture Partners. Jerry is a member of the Board of Trustees for both the Santa Fe Institute and the Aspen Institute. [read more...]Professor Crutchfield Shows Global Complexity in Finitary Process Soup
SFI Professor James Crutchfield at the University of California, Davis, and past Graduate Fellow Olof Gornerup use their recently introduced model of the “finitary process soup” to explore the population dynamics of structural complexity. They show that global complexity in the finitary process soup is due to the emergence of successively higher levels of organization, that the hierarchical structure appears spontaneously, and that the process of structural innovation is facilitated by the discovery and maintenance of relatively noncomplex, but general, individuals in a population. See “Hierarchical Self-Organization in the Finitary Process Soup,” O. Gornerup and J. P. Crutchfield, Artificial Life 14(3) (summer 2008): 2452-54 [read more...]NIH extends commitment to transformative research with 2008 Pioneer, New Innovator Awards
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has increased its support of high-impact research with 2008 NIH Director's Pioneer and New Innovator Awards to 47 scientists. The grants, estimated to be up to $138 million over five years, enable recipients to pursue exceptionally innovative approaches that could transform biomedical and behavioral science. Joshua M. Epstein, Ph.D., Director of the Brookings Institution Center on Social and Economic Dynamics and Santa Fe Institute external professor, is among the prestigious scientists honored with the 2008 NIH Director's Pioneer Award. [read more...]MIT quantum insights could lead to better detectors
MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering and External Professor at Santa Fe Institute Seth Lloyd has found that a quantum-physics property called entanglement can be harnessed to make detectors--similar in principle to radar systems used to track airplanes in flight or ships at sea--that are as much as a million times more efficient than existing systems. In addition, beams of entangled light could be swept across a scene to reconstruct a detailed image, with a similar improvement in efficiency. In a year he believes it will be possible to build a laboratory-scale system to demonstrate the new concept. These new findings could improve military night vision systems, lower the x ray output form medical machines such as CT scans, and be used to create a safer microscope for living organisms. [read more...]Enhanced Sensitivity of Photodetection via Quantum Illumination
In his report in Science Magazine, MIT Professor of Mechanical Engineering and External Professor at Santa Fe Institute Seth Lloyd reports on his findings which show that a quantum-physics property called entanglement can be harnessed to make detectors--similar in principle to radar systems used to track airplanes in flight or ships at sea--that are as much as a million times more efficient than existing systems. In addition, beams of entangled light could be swept across a scene to reconstruct a detailed image, with a similar improvement in efficiency. In a year he believes it will be possible to build a laboratory-scale system to demonstrate the new concept. These new findings could improve military night vision systems, lower the x ray output form medical machines such as CT scans, and be used to create a safer microscope for living organisms. [read more...]Queuing Conundrums
In this article in The Economist, Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Michael Gastner, of the Santa Fe Institute, analysed the effects of drivers taking different routes on journeys in Boston, New York and London. Their study, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Physical Review Letters, found that when individual drivers each try to choose the quickest route it can cause delays for others and even increase hold-ups in the entire road network. They explain how when drivers all try to find the shortest route, the traffic flow settles into a Nash equilibrium, which is the point where no individual driver could arrive any faster by switching routes. They hypothesize that closing certain routes can actually reduce delays, and that planners should note that there is now evidence that even a well intentioned new road may make traffic jams worse. [read more...]Biology's Gift to a Complex World
In this article in The Scientist, John Holland, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, explains the various breakthroughs attributed to the application of biology to complex engineering problems. Today, scientists and engineers from fields as diverse as agriculture, synthetic biology, and mechanical engineering are using genetic algorithms to find efficient solutions to their problems. In his research, Holland applies these genetic algorithms to complex adaptive systems. After being introduced to one of the first computers and studying the use of real math in biology at the University of Michigan, Holland published a sketch of the basic ideas behind genetic algorithms in 1962. Soon after his engineer students began applying the algorithm to otherwise unsolvable problems. Today, genetic algorithms underlie a wide range of engineering algorithms that search for the optimal form or better designs. After joining the Santa Fe Institute, Holland began working with other scientists at the Institute to apply the genetic algorithm to everything from engineering to economics to possibly helping cure cancer. [read more...]Queuing Conundrums: strange as it might seem, closing roads can cut delays
Drivers are becoming better informed, thanks to more accurate and timely advice on traffic conditions. Some services now use sophisticated computer-modeling which is fed with real-time data from road sensors, satellite-navigation systems and the analysis of how quickly anonymous mobile phones pass from one phone mast to another. Providing motorists with such information is supposed to help them pick faster routes. But the latest research shows that in some cases it may slow everybody down. Hyejin Youn and Hawoong Jeong, of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and Michael Gastner, of the Santa Fe Institute, analyzed the effects of drivers taking different routes on journeys in Boston, New York and London. Their study, to be published in a forthcoming edition of Physical Review Letters, found that when individual drivers each try to choose the quickest route it can cause delays for others and even increase hold-ups in the entire road network. [read more...]UA prof fights odds to come back from stroke
After a debilitating stroke, Professor John Pepper’s future as a researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology seemed over. Pepper, who was a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute and had just received a job as Professor at the University of Arizona, had many serious side effects from the stroke, but was determined to continue with his research at the University of Arizona. Against all odds, and with the help of his friends and family (The Santa Fe Institute extended his contract so he would have medical insurance), Pepper is back at the University of Arizona and is working on research on the evolution of cancer cells as a way to curb the often deadly disease that is adept at developing resistances to drugs. [read more...]Quantum Computer or Red-Flag?
As companies like D-Wave inch closer to building the first quantum computer, Dr. Mae-Won Ho attempts to explain what quantum computation is, how it improves on classical computation, and what the difficulties are in building a quantum computer. D-Wave claims to have built the world’s first adiabatic quantum computer and Seth Lloyd, External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, is one of the pioneers of quantum computing and a collaborator in research with D-Wave. [read more...]MASTERS Program: Aims to give kids accelerated curriculum
John Bishop, President of Norsam Technologies, is proposing a program based at Santa Fe Community College for students in grades 10, 11 and 12 that emphasizes math, arts, science, technology, engineering, reading and service. The MASTERS Program students would enroll in community college courses and could earn up to two years of college credits along with their high-school diplomas. Supporters hope the program, designed for young people who want an accelerated curriculum and an affordable college education as well as at-risk students who need a flexible schedule, will help give students a jump on life. The new school will also be working with Los Alamos National Laboratory, the National Center for Genome Research, the Santa Fe Institute and the arts and culture communities on the service learning component of the program. [read more...]Taking One For The Team
Evolutionary biologists Laurent Lehmann and Santa Fe Institute External Professor Marcus Feldman of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California have built a mathematical formula that tracks the spread of hypothetical genes for belligerence and bravery in small groups of humans that engage in frequent combat. They hypothesize that while bravery that makes men great warriors may increase the chance of getting killed, the trait tends to live in on the warriors’ descendants. The model shows that while a sizable amount of these brave warriors would die, some would survive, and those survivors would be rewarded with mating with the females of the conquered tribe, passing on their genes for bravery. [read more...]Book Review: Investing By The Numbers
Investing By The Numbers, by Jarrod W. Wilcox, shares with readers many models for quantitative investing, rather that one overarching idea. The book offers readers useful tips for those interested in quantitative investing. The book follows the same idea as many books from the Santa Fe Institute, the idea that one has to look at investment using an ecological framework. Many strategies are competing for scarce returns, and often the best strategy is the one that has few following it. [read more...]iTherX Pharmaceuticals Appoints Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board for Hepatitis C Antiviral Drugs
iTherX Pharmaceuticals Inc, a privately held biopharmaceutical company, today announced that it has appointed a Scientific and Clinical Advisory Board to assist the company in the development of its novel therapeutic agents for Hepatitis C. iTherX is pioneering the introduction of a novel class of antivirals called entry inhibitors, which prevent the first step in virus infection: fusion with and entry into the liver cell. Included in the newly formed Advisory Board is Alan Perelson, PhD, Senior Fellow, Los Alamos National Laboratory and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]Simplexity: Where nothing is left to chance
In an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times, Jeffrey Kluger, science editor of Time Magazine, uses the events leading up to World War I as a prime example of what's known as simplexity - the idea that simple things can be surprisingly complex, and complex things can be deceptively simple. Kluger describes the major rules that govern complex and simple systems: phase changes, relaxation concepts, and, most importantly, choke points. This growing field of study reveals that all manner of phenomena - epidemics, traffic, even politics - move through tiny choke points, seemingly inconsequential junction boxes that may shape the very direction of history. The way small causes yield huge effects is itself only one piece of the much grander idea of simplexity, a science that is increasingly being studied at universities and institutes around the world, but nowhere more intensely than at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, where dozens of researchers from fields as diverse as economics, chemistry, physics, sociology and neuroscience study simple rules that underlie complex systems. [read more...]Fortune favours the brave; but the brave are motivated by favours of another kind
Biologists have long pondered why heroism exists in human beings. Evolutionary rules tell us bravery should not have evolved due to the dangers involved (injury and death), which hurt the chances of survival and reproduction. Stanford University professors Laurent Lehmann and Marcus Feldman, an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute, have provided research in a new study that suggests that great bravery can have evolutionary benefits under certain circumstances, despite its obvious dangers. Their research shows that brave soldiers may win more sexual partners as well as more battles, and that the extra chances to spread their genes can outweigh the risk of dying in combat. They have created a mathematical equation that shows it was overall beneficial for small groups of hunter gatherers living in an environment where rival groups competed intensely for food and shelter to be courageous during confrontations. Their model demonstrates that bravery genes could spread quickly, despite increased risk of death, if the conquest of neighboring tribes brought a group either increased opportunities for men to have sex or opportunities for extra territory or material resources. [read more...]Does male dominance get passed on genetically?
Many sociological and anthropological studies have shown that dominant men have more reproductive success because they can attract more partners. While short-term analysis does show that the genetic traits of top-ranked men are passed on more often than those of other men, the variance in male fitness does not influence the genetics of a population in the long run. That's what scientists from the University of Arizona, the Santa Fe Institute, and the Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology have concluded; they published their findings in a recent PNAS article. Overall, it appears that evolution does not favor dominant males for more than a few generations. On the evolutionary timescales, genetic contributions from the entire community take precedence. A man may be on top the world in his lifetime, but his genetic information won't stand out from those of everyone else in the distant future. [read more...]Scientists closer to creating life
Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life. They've already accomplished some steps needed to construct a simple, single-celled organism that's capable of evolving and reproducing itself - basic requirements for life. While there are many difficulties, the difficulties don't keep researchers from trying to simulate life, if not create it from a blank slate. Steen Rasmussen, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, heads a "Protocell Project." Its goal is to build lifelike artificial cells that are "self-reproducing and capable of evolution; self-containing, thereby possessing individual identity; self-sustaining in that they can maintain their complex structure." [read more...]The Human & The Humanities
The National Humanities Center will host the third and final conference on "The Human & The Humanities," November 13 - 15, 2008, once again attracting scientists and humanities scholars to discuss how developments in science are challenging traditional notions of "the human." Amongst the speakers and special guests at the event will be David Krakauer, from the Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]Purrsonality: Understanding Your Cat's Character
Managing Editor of The Daily Cat Jennifer Viegas attempts to explain personality in animals. "Personality is a complex of behavioral traits that go together without obvious reason," says Sander van Doorn, PhD, a researcher at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and one of the world's leading experts on the evolution of personality in animals. He says such traits are what help to characterize uniqueness among individuals. In other words, no two cats or humans -- not even among identical twins -- think and behave exactly alike. [read more...]Science Takes Steps Toward Artificial Life
Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life. They've already accomplished some steps needed to construct a simple, single-celled organism that's capable of evolving and reproducing itself - basic requirements for life. Steen Rasmussen, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, heads a "Protocell Project." Its goal is to build lifelike artificial cells that are "self-reproducing and capable of evolution; self-containing, thereby possessing individual identity; self-sustaining in that they can maintain their complex structure." [read more...]A Nudge Can open the Door To Destiny
Jeffrey Kluger is the science editor of Time magazine and the author of "Simplexity: Why Simple Things Become Complex (and How Complex Things Can Be Made Simple)," writes in a syndicated Los Angeles Times article about the Santa Fe Institute. "The way small causes yield huge effects is itself only one piece of the much grander idea of simplexity, a science that is increasingly being studied at universities and institutes around the world, but nowhere more intensely than at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. The institute was created in 1984 with Murray Gell-Mann -- the winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics -- as its founding director. It's grown into a multidisciplinary think tank where dozens of researchers from fields as diverse as economics, chemistry, physics, sociology and neuroscience study the simple rules that undergird pretty much everything. It's there that investigators are discovering how individual investors in a millions-strong stock market mirror the behavior of individual particles in an atomic collider, allowing software designers to write better programs that can help us understand both. It's there that scientists are exploring how cars on a highway or people fleeing a burning building mimic the motion of flowing water, and seeing if that can lead to safer roads or more evacuation-friendly office towers. [read more...]August 2008 Accolades
Accolades is a monthly column that recognizes the latest achievements of George Mason University faculty and staff members. Amongst others, Robert Hazan is recognized for his lectures on the origins of life and the early Earth at institutions including the Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]Science’s awesome challenge: Creating artificial life
WASHINGTON - Scientists are advancing slowly toward one of the most audacious goals humans have ever set for themselves: creating artificial life. There's hope for a synthetic cell within 10 years. Scientists have already accomplished some steps needed to construct a simple, single-celled organism that’s capable of evolving and reproducing itself - basic requirements for life. (SFI External Professor) Steen Rasmussen, a physicist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, heads a "Protocell Project." Its goal is to build lifelike artificial cells that are "self-reproducing and capable of evolution; self-containing, thereby possessing individual identity; self-sustaining in that they can maintain their complex structure." [read more...]Can we make software that comes to life?
The tinkering, refinement and self-organisation of natural selection that has allowed evolution to make such creative leaps in the history of life will be explored at an international conference in the UK this week. Explanations into the ways that self-organisation operates among birds, to help them form flocks, and in robots, children, flies and cells, will be examined. SFI External Professor Peter Schuster is among the speakers. With the Nobel Laureate Manfred Eigen, he came up with the idea of the "hypercycle" - different components "feeding on each others' waste" while maintaining an (often fragile) overall stability. This scheme was used to show how simple chemicals co-operated to create the first living things billions of years ago. [read more...]Invisible hand: Sometimes it needs a helping hand (The Hook)
In the June 20 issue of Science, Samuel Bowles, director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, looks at how market interactions can fail to optimize the rewards of participants— e.g., the micromanager who gets less than he wants from his employees. In this Essay in The Hook, author Ronald Bailey summarizes Bowles article and his thesis that policies designed for self-interested citizens may undermine "the moral sentiments." [read more...]Professor Wood Explores Wartime Transformation of Social Networks
SFI Professor Elizabeth Wood discusses how civil war may radically change the pace, direction, or consequences, with perhaps irreversible effects, of six social processes: political mobilization, military socializations, polarization of social identities, militarization of local authority, transformation of gender roles, and fragmentation of the local political economy. As she analyzes the effects of these processes as transformations in social networks, she traces the wide variation in these processes during the wars in Peru, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, and Sierra Leone. See “The Social Processes of Civil War: The Wartime Transformation of Social Networks,” E. J. Wood, Annual Review of Political Science 11 (2008): 539-561. [read more...]The end of science? SFI Innovation
Much like the scientific superpowers of France, Germany and Britain in centuries' past, the United States has a diminishing lead over other nations in financial investment and scholarly research output in science and engineering, say a group of historians and sociologists led by University of Wisconsin-Madison emeritus history professor J. Rogers Hollingsworth. Hollingsworth recommends a major investment in a new type of nimble and interdisciplinary science in the United States by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. He says the creation of more than two-dozen smaller-scale research institutes that would be autonomous from, but adjacent to, current universities could have great results. These would operate with little bureaucracy and without the constraints of conventional academic departments, and be more likely to fuel creative thinking, he says. These institutes would mirror the successes of smaller-scale campuses such as Rockefeller University in New York, the Salk Institute in California and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Each of these campuses, Hollingsworth says, produces a high percentage of breakthrough research advances despite their small size, and their successes stem from an organizational culture and structure that is nimble, collaborative and cross-disciplinary. For the past 15 years, Hollingsworth has been studying research organizations worldwide and looking at whether there are different approaches and structures around the world that are more conducive to promoting innovation. This essay put his ongoing work in an historical perspective. [read more...]Hollingsworth and Co-authors Recommend Major Investment in a New Type of Nimble and Interdisciplinary Science like SFI
These institutes would mirror the successes of smaller-scale campuses such as Rockefeller University in New York, the Salk Institute in California and the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. Each of these campuses, Hollingsworth says, produces a high percentage of breakthrough research advances despite their small size, and their successes stem from an organizational culture and structure that is nimble, collaborative and cross-disciplinary. [read more...]Editorial by SFI Professor J. Doyne Farmer Published in New Scientist
New Scientists links to SFI Professor Doyne Farmer's website as an example of one economist who is making headway in understanding the market's financial collapse through agent-based simulation models. "The regulation of markets ought to be based on the very best science, even if that does mean abandoning some of economists' most cherished ideas. " [read more...]Synthetic life forms and the emerging frontier in biology
The Guardian writes about the cutting edge of synthetic biology, "a rapidly expanding field in which researchers are rewriting the basic operating instructions of living cells. It opens up myriad possibilities for biotechnology in decades to come. Whichever definition of synthetic life is adopted, it seems now to be a question of 'when' rather than 'if.' "We are at the doorstep of being able to create life," said (SFI External Professor)Steen Rasmussen, a physicist trying to create artificial living systems at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. [read more...]Bigger is Better, Until You Go Extinct
Aaron Clauset of the Santa Fe Institute and (SFI External Professor) Douglas Erwin of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., created the most accurate computer model yet to predict how mammal species' body sizes change over time. Using fossil data from up to 60 million years ago to specify the form of the model, they were able to accurately reproduce the distribution of 4,000 known mammal body sizes in the last 50,000 years. Crucially, their model assumes that that when a new species appears, its size, on average, is slightly larger than its ancestor species. So why aren't all mammals the size of elephants by now? Because there's an opposing force at work, Clauset said. While evolution favors larger creatures, extinction seems to favor the small. The larger a species' body size, the more likely the species is to go extinct. "The tendency for evolution to create larger species is counter-balanced by the tendency of extinction to kill them off," Clauset told LiveScience. "The distribution of sizes over time is stabilized because these processes balance out." [read more...]Why Markets Go Bad
TMC reviews the research by SFI Professors and others describing the recent "phase transition" effects of financial markets. " In recent unpublished work, (SFI researchers) Thurner, Farmer and John Geanakoplos, a Yale University economist, have developed an agent model of the securities market that includes hedge funds, banks and ordinary investors. The model's hedge funds try to identify momentarily mispriced securities, and make a profit by buying or selling in the expectation that the price will return to a realistic value in the future. As in the real world, they "leverage" their investments by borrowing from the banks. The simulations have revealed some alarming consequences of this kind of activity. With no leverage, a hedge fund can only lose its own investors' money, but as leverage increases it can also lose money it has borrowed from a bank, possibly putting that bank into difficulties." "Lots of leverage begins to pose the threat of failures cascading through the market," says Thurner. Intriguingly, the risk of cascades like this occurring doesn't increase gradually. Things go smoothly until the amount of leverage reaches a certain threshold, at which point the model shows the market undergoing a sudden change, loosely akin to a physical phase transition, like water freezing into ice. [read more...]Novel Computational Model describes speed HIV escapes immune response
Researchers from Utrecht University, The Netherlands, have developed a model that illustrates how HIV evades the immune system. The study, published July 18th in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, incorporates detailed interactions between a mutating virus and the immune system. Drs. Christian Althaus and (SFI External Professor) Rob De Boer performed computer simulations to help interpret longitudinal data derived from HIV-infected patients. They illustrate that the virus often evades the immune response very slowly, on a timescale of years. Depending on the diversity of the immune system, the virus will either be controlled effectively or accumulate detrimental mutations. The results suggest an alternative strategy of vaccine design could be to reduce the replicative capacity of the virus. [read more...]Predicting the distribution of creatures great and small.
A model published in Science by SFI Fellow Aaron Clauset and SFI External Professor Doug Erwin shows that after millions of virtual years of new species evolving and old species becoming extinct, the model reaches an equilibrium in which the tendency of species to grow larger is offset by their tendency to become extinct more quickly. Because species size is fundamentally related to so many other characteristics like metabolism, life span and habitat, the researchers' simple evolutionary model offers support to idea that some aspects of evolutionary and ecological theory can be unified. [read more...]Albuquerque/Santa Fe New Breed of City: One of the 'mountain megas,' N.M. corridor needs supporting infrastructure, Brookings study says
Today, the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor is rapidly turning into one of the nation's major "megapolitan" areas, adding more than 100,000 people since 2000. And it needs to begin thinking and acting the part, according to a Brookings Institution study, "Mountain Megas: America's Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper." An idea can originate at the Santa Fe Institute or Los Alamos National Laboratory, for example, have its birth as a small startup company in Santa Fe, then move to Albuquerque when the company needs a bigger-city environment closer to a major airport to support its growth, explained Christopher Leinberger. The great strength of the Albuquerque-Santa Fe corridor in exploiting that new kind of connection is the brain power of two major national labs, a research university and all the institutions and businesses that surround them, Leinberger said."What New Mexico is known for," he said, "is the intellectual firepower that exists in Albuquerque and Santa Fe combined." [read more...]Professor Jackson Considers Categorization, Bias, and Unintentional Discrimination
SFI Professor Matthew Jackson at Stanford University coauthored a study on how categorization affects decision making and how specific biases emerge from categorization. In particular, types of experiences and objects that are less frequent in the population tend to be more coarsely categorized and lumped together. As a result, decision makers make less accurate predictions when confronted with such objects. This can result in discrimination against minority groups even when there is no malevolent taste for discrimination. See “A Categorical Model of Cognition and Biased Decision Making,” R. Fryer and M. O. Jackson, B. E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 8(1) (2008): p. NIL_2-NIL_44. [read more...]Synthetic life forms and the emerging frontier in biology
London's Guardian interviews (SFI External Professor) Norman Packard, founder and CEO of Venice-based Company ProtoLife, about his project to create synthetic life. (He) is one of the leaders of an ambitious project that has in its sights the lofty goal of life itself. His team is attempting what no one else has done before: to create a new form of living being from non-living chemicals in the laboratory. Some people have accused Packard of playing God; while others see him as the ultimate entrepreneur. But whichever way one looks at this effort, the practical pay-offs of creations like those being chased after by Packard and others could be enormous. Synthetic life could indeed be used to build living technologies: bespoke creatures that produce clean fuels or help heal injured bodies. The potential of synthetic organisms far outstrips what genetic engineering can accomplish today with conventional organisms like bacteria. "The potential returns are very, very large - comparable to just about anything since the advent of technology," says Packard. And there is no doubt that there is big money to be made too. [read more...]Captain's Blog, Stardate: 7/11/08
CNNMoney.com Managing Editor Andy Serwer stops by Santa Fe Institute while on vacation and runs into old friends. His travelogue and insights into the real estate market follow. [read more...]SFI External Professor Nina Fedoroff Awarded Honorary Degree at Rockefeller University
A prominent researcher in molecular biology and genetics, Fedoroff recently received the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for scientific research, at a White House ceremony in 2007. She currently is on leave from Penn State while serving the United States as the science and technology adviser to the Secretary of State and to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. [read more...]Study by SFI External Professor Pablo Marquet published in this week's Science
"A Significant Upward Shift in Plant Species Optimum Elevation During the 20th Century" by SFI External Professor and former International Fellow Pablo Marquet and collaborators is featured in this week's issue of Science Magazine [read more...]Universal scaling laws from cells to cities:
Sign up to View a lecture by SFI President Geoffrey West at Imperial College, London, on his work developing a unified quantitative theory of biological and social structure and organization. Here he describes scaling -- whereby many of life’s most fundamental and complex phenomena scale with size in a surprisingly simple fashion. [read more...]Will the QC kill the PC?
Traditional computers shuffle information in the form of binary numbers, the digits 1 and 0, which are remembered by the "on" and "off" positions of tiny switches, or "bits", on the circuit boards. Quantum computers use atoms and subatomic particles as the switches that perform the memory and processing tasks. As the threat posed by internet viruses and hackers to people's personal computers increases, quantum cryptography could become a standard feature of desktop computers to ensure safe internet communication. (SFI External) Professor Seth Lloyd, a quantum mechanical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes this property of quantum computing has opened up another new possibility, that is of growing concern to internet users. His research has revealed a way of using quantum computing to keep personal information private. Currently, internet sites and search engines can keep large amounts of information about people's computer and search practices. "If you use what I am calling quantum private queries, it would allow you to ask a question of a search engine like Google, but keep your own information private. If they try to keep your information, you will know about it. It will allow computer users to know no one else is snooping on their information," said Professor Lloyd. [read more...]Policies Designed for Self-Interested Citizens May Undermine "The Moral Sentiments": Evidence from Economic Experiments
Writing in Science magazine, SFI Professor Sam Bowles says, "Many of these unintended effects of incentives occur because people act not only to acquire economic goods and services but also to constitute themselves as dignified, autonomous, and moral individuals. Good organizational and institutional design can channel the material interests for the achievement of social goals while also enhancing the contribution of the moral sentiments to the same ends. [read more...]The Economics Of Nice Folks
(SFI Professor) Sam Bowles argues in Science June 20 that economics will get it wrong then, sometimes badly so. He points to new experimental evidence that people do often act against their own personal self-interest in favor of the common good, and they do so in predictable, understandable ways. Poorly-designed economic institutions fail to take advantage of intrinsic moral behavior and often undermine it. . [read more...]Legg Mason Value Trust Newsletter
In his recent letter to Legg Mason Value Trust investors, Manager and SfI Trustee Bill Miller singles out the work of an SFI External Professor in improving the economy.... "The weak dollar is another culprit in the commodity cycle. Oil began to rise in earnest when the dollar index broke down sharply in February. The Fed could help a lot by halting its interest rate cuts. Real short rates are now negative. It is not the price of credit that is the problem, it is its availability. If the Fed stopped cutting rates, that would help the dollar, which in turn ought to stall the commodity price rises, and thus also help the inflation picture. More technically, the Fed, in my opinion, needs to focus on the value of collateral and not on the price of credit. It appears they are beginning to do this, which is a very healthy sign. This is a topic for another letter, but anyone interested in it should consult the work of John Geanakoplos, a distinguished economics professor at Yale and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, who has written extensively on this issue, and presented to the Fed on it as well. He and Chairman Bernanke were grad students together at MIT." [read more...]Open Systems Model for Powering Electronic Products Moves Closer to Reality
The Alliance for Universal Power Supplies (AUPS) held its second conference in San Francisco in June to explore making power supplies universal and reusable. Santa Fe Institute was one of the participants. The participants are seeking digital collaboration, so that manufacturers can eliminate costs and consumers can enjoy the convenience of powering any product with any power supply. They believe significant reductions in solid waste can be achieved. [read more...]Perfecting a Solar Cell by Adding Imperfections
Nanotechnology is paving the way toward improved solar cells. New research shows that a film of carbon nanotubes may be able to replace two of the layers normally used in a solar cell, with improved performance at a lower cost. Researchers have found a surprising way to give the nanotubes the properties they need: add defects. "This study is an example of using nanostructuring of materials – changing things like defect density and tube length at very small scales – to shift trade-offs between materials properties and get more performance out of a given material," (SFI Fellow Jessica) Trancik says. "Making inexpensive materials behave in advanced ways is critical for achieving low-carbon emissions and low cost energy technologies." [read more...]Is Information a Virus?
New research suggests that “viral information” spreads in a very different way than an actual biological or computer virus does. According to mathematician (and SFI External Professor) Steven Strogatz, online social networks can be “incestuous”; that is, information tends to travel within a limited social circle. In contrast, viruses—caught from someone who sneezes on the bus, for example—aren’t limited or discriminatory. [read more...]Roadrunner Supercomputer Puts Research At A New Scale
Los Alamos researchers, including SFI External Professor Luis Bettencourt have just powered up a new (Petaflop) computer to mimic extremely complex neurological processes. "The prefix "peta" stands for a million billion, also known as a quadrillion. For the Roadrunner supercomputer, operating at petaflop/s performance means the machine can process a million billion calculations each second. In other words, Roadrunner gives scientists the ability to quickly render mountainous problems into mere molehills, or model systems that previously were unthinkably complex." [read more...]The Art of Simplexity
Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize--winning physicist and a co-founder of SFI, and neuroscientist Chris Wood of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) in New Mexico, "a multidisciplinary think tank devoted to complexity theory" are quoted in a Time magazine article on what it means for something to be simple or complex. "A guppy, with its symphony of biological systems and subsystems, is vastly more complicated than a star.The ability to balance on the simplicity-complexity fulcrum is producing results (in science and industry.)" [read more...]Before Darwin
(A new (simpler) view of the origins of life,(pre-dating Mendel's and Darwin's theories) deserves public attention, argues SFI Professor Eric Smith in his commentary in the Scientist. "Carbon fixation is one of the most conserved reactions throughout the biosphere. It suggests that a bridge between geochemistry and life may be found in the mechanisms of metabolism and the principles of ecology, not in compartments or memory molecules, which could have come later."... "(These), ecological principles become the foundations for the rest of biology, rather than merely secondary consequences of relations among individuals. Second, we should be warned that when we act as engineers in the living world, imagining that we can manipulate properties of individuals but remain ignorant of principles of ecology, we should expect the biosphere's response to be complex and not necessarily in accordance with our designs. The rapidly rising cost of industrial agriculture, and its fragility to shocks in energy supply, to pests, and to weather, is directly tied to the loss of natural ecological sources of stability in industrially managed agricultural systems. [read more...]SFI Researcher Harold Morowitz to appear on the History Channel on June 16
[read more...]Investmanet Research: What's New
The Journal of Financial Planning recommended and linked to (SFI Trustee) Michael Mauboussin's recent paper for being among the better practitioner-oriented research papers. “Fat Tails and Nonlinearity” (Michael Mauboussin, Legg Mason, December 20, 2007, http://www.leggmason.com/individualinvestors/documents/insights/D4114-FatTailsNonlinearityLMIS.pdf). (... this (is an ) excellent non-journal article. Bringing Nassim Taleb’s now well-known black swan metaphor to the worlds of investment planning, Mauboussin introduces the reader to the concept and risk associated with the complex system we call “the market.” [read more...]New Edition of Dictionary of Economics
STEVEN N. DURLAUF has edited anothe edition of The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics, established as the leading reference work in the field. Durlauf is the Kenneth J. Arrow Professor of Economics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, USA. He has served as Co-Director of the Economics Program at the Santa Fe Institute for which he currently serves as a Science Board and external faculty member. A Fellow of the Econometric Society, Durlauf's research covers a range of topics in macroeconomics, econometrics, and income inequality. The second edition will retain many individual classic essays of enduring importance from its predecessor plus over one thousand new or heavily revised articles. [read more...]Study Finds Culture Influences Reaction to Reward, Rebuke
A Wall Street Journal article about what happens in various societies to people who don't share, solicits the opinion of SFI Professor Howard Gintis. The article notes, "social appearances and the good opinion of others do regulate our behavior. In the only other major cross-cultural study of this sort, Dr. Gintis and his colleagues several years ago examined 15 primitive societies of farmers, foragers, hunters and nomads in 12 countries, not unlike those in which humanity might have first evolved. The researchers found that these people all cared as much about fairness as the economic outcome of a trade." "They care about the ethical value of what they do," said Dr. Gintis. [read more...]Factors That Make Bacteria More Modular Detailed
ScienceDaily (May 29, 2008) — Many bacteria break their metabolic processes into chunks. That may be logically tidy, but it's often metabolically inefficient. Researchers have now figured out the factors that tend to make bacteria more modular. Elhanan Borenstein of the Santa Fe Institute and Stanford University, (and others) constructed the metabolic networks of many species of bacteria and measured how much those networks broke into pieces, or modules. Then they looked for factors that correlate. Many bacteria transfer genes among themselves, instead of simply handing them from ancestor to descendant. Bacteria that do more of this also tend to be more modular. "If you are going to give away and get parts of different networks, it makes sense for your network to be modular," Borenstein says. That way, the transfers are more likely to be useful. In this case, the greater rate of transfer could easily be both cause and effect of modularity, Borenstein points out. [read more...]Most HIV cases traced to transmission of single virus
Most HIV cases can be traced to the transmission of a single virus, according to a study published online Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (and involving research by the Santa Fe Institute,) the Birmingham News reports. According to researcher George Shaw, a professor at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, the findings are surprising and could have an impact on HIV/AIDS vaccine development. The findings are significant because they indicate that if researchers are "trying to develop a vaccine or microbicide or whatever to prevent [HIV] infection, the only thing it has to do is prevent the transmission of a single virus," Shaw said. He added, "That should be possible. All you have to do is provide some additional block to what already is an efficient process." The findings "provide light on what was previously a very cloudy area of HIV infection," Shaw said, adding, "It puts acute and early transmission of HIV-1 in very sharp focus." [read more...]Book Review The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 And What It Means by George Soros
In a review of George Soros' book about the current financial market volatility the reporter describes Soros' and (SFI Trustee) Legg Mason Value Trust Manager Bill Miller's mistake on buying the ailing Bear Stearns "On March 16, (Soros) observed that "The panic is palpable," and bought into ailing Bear Stearns, expecting some return on a Federal Reserve brokered auction of the company. He got burned admitting that, "We forgot to take into account that Bear is disliked by the establishment, and the Fed would use the occasion to deal with a moral hazard by punishing shareholders." For those who might be confused by Soros' analysis there, Bill Miller, manager of the Legg Mason Value Trust explains: "Bear had been very aggressive in seizing the capital of Askin Capital in 1994 and precipitating its failure. In 1998 it opted out of rescuing Long Term Capital Management. That's the kind of thing where, if you're Merrill, Citigroup or the Fed, you remember." Miller also bought shares in Bear, for the same reasons Soros did. The trading diary ends with Soros losing money. While he wishes he could have reached a more triumphant ending, he notes that the result "may be more appropriate for the purposes of the book." [read more...]Zuni student's program helps identify remains
SANTA FE, May 27, 2008 (Albuquerque Journal - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Daniel Pedro's family was a little taken aback when he announced his intent to study ancestral human remains. On the 19-year-old's native Zuni Pueblo, it is taboo to handle remains. But as a budding anthropologist, Pedro was troubled by one method used to identify where Indian remains came from. It involves crushing bone to extract DNA. There must be a better way, Pedro thought. For three years, he has been working on a computer program that might one day determine the ethnicity of skeletal remains simply by analyzing facial structure. The Santa Fe Indian School senior's project was honored last month with a creativity and innovation award at the New Mexico Supercomputing Challenge, as well as a $1,000 award from the Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]U.S. Medical Research Gets $600 Million From Institute
Hughes Supplements Gap As Government Funds Lag One new investigator (receiving a piece of a $600 Million Howard Hughes grant) is (SFI External Professor) Mercedes Pascual, who was born in Uruguay, grew up in Argentina and Brazil and now has a lab at the University of Michigan. She is trying to determine how global climate change affects outbreaks of infectious diseases. Pascual wants to build a mathematical model to help scientists identify when and how cholera, malaria and other diseases might balloon into epidemics, enabling public health agencies to prepare for, or even preempt, deadly outbreaks. ... Aware of the potential of her model, the Hughes Institute is banking on Pascual to deliver it. "There is a tremendous freedom in terms of time to focus on the research, time for creativity, time to pursue whatever area you think is important," Pascual said. [read more...]Former Santa Fe Institute Researcher Traces Migration Patterns of Flu Virus
It's the case of the missing flu virus. When the flu isn't making people sick, it seems to just vanish. Yet, every year, everywhere on Earth, it reappears in the appropriate season and starts its attack. "In order to try to predict how flu viruses might evolve, we have to understand how they're moving around the world and where they're evolving," says Derek Smith, now of the University of Cambridge and formerly of the Santa Fe Institute. [read more...]Tracking influenza's every movement
Former Santa Fe Institute researcher traces migration patterns of flu virus “In order to try to predict how flu viruses might evolve, we have to understand how they’re moving around the world and where they’re evolving,” says Derek Smith, now of the University of Cambridge and formerly of the Santa Fe Institute, corresponding author of the research. Asia, the study suggests, is the best place to look for up-and-coming strains. The team published its findings April 18 in Science (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/320/5874/340 [read more...]Professor Pascual Suggests General Model for Food Web Structure
SFI External Professor Mercedes Pascual and co-authors develop a likelihood-based approach for the direct comparison of alternative models based on the full structure of the network. Results drive a new model that is able to generate all the empirical data sets and to do so with the highest likelihood. See “A General Model for Food Web Structure,” S. Allesina, D. Alonso, and M. Pascual, Science 320(5876) (May 2, 2008): 658-661. [read more...]Potential Vulnerabilities Discovered In HIV Infection
A new study reveals the genetic identity of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the version responsible for sexual transmission, in unprecedented detail. [read more...]SFI Researcher Jennifer Dunne featured in today's Santa Fe New Mexican
[read more...]The Evolving Web of Future Wealth
The web of connections among goods and services in an economy may be the long-missing key to understanding how novel innovations and new wealth arise. Scientific American is gauging readers' reactions to a new book by (SFI Complexity Researcher) Stuart Kauffman's where he posits that traditional economists are unable to explain something that seems obvious but isn't: How does innovation drive growth? [read more...]Professor Stadler Uses Nearby Intron Pairs as Phylogenetic Markers
SFI External Professor Peter Stadler and co-authors tackle deep branches of the evolutionary tree for insect phylogeny. They show that the analysis of phylogenetically nested, nearby intron pairs is suitable to identify evolutionarily younger intron positions and to determine their relative age, which should be of equal importance for the understanding of intron evolution and the reconstruction of the eukaryotic tree. See “Near Intron Positions are Reliable Phylogenetic Markers: An Application to Holometabolous Insects,” V. Krauss, C. Thummler, F. George, J. Lehmann, P. F. Stadler, and C. Eisenhardt, Molecular Biology and Evolution 25(2) (May 2008): 821-830. [read more...]Quantum Internet Could Protect Batman's Secret Identity
As researchers like (SFI External Professor) Seth Lloyd of MIT make progress toward the goal of quantum computing, they've found that the same architecture used to build quantum random access memory (QRAM) could apply across the whole of the internet. This could put an end to internet spying for good, and would mean that Batman could send email to the JLA without fear of discovery.... Lloyd admits, the QRAM set-up is a little slower than the RAM. "You'd have to be willing to make that trade-off." That brings Lloyd back to the idea of quantum Internet search. "If you had a quantum Internet, then this would be useful," he points out. "This offers a huge decrease in energy used and an increase in robustness." The other interesting aspect is the possibility of completely anonymous Internet search. Not even your service provider would know who you are or what you search for. [read more...]Subsea storage may fix our CO2 problem
A growing body of research predicts deep subsea rock formations may be ideal for carbon sequestration — the process of storing carbon dioxide emissions underground to keep them from entering the Earth's atmosphere and contributing to climate change. A number of researchers already are conducting projects to inject CO2 in onshore formations to see if large amounts of the greenhouse gas can be stored underground indefinitely. Daniel Schrag, a professor at Harvard University's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, says the high pressures and low temperatures found below the sea floor — 10,000 feet or more underwater — provide a nearly foolproof way to keep CO2 stored. In those conditions CO2 becomes a liquid more dense than water that will not rise up to the ocean floor. "It's a pretty simple idea that has much lower risks than carbon sequestration on land," Schrag said. "And there's truly a huge capacity for storage under the sea floor." [read more...]Mapmaker for the World of Influenza
Science April 18, 2008 DEREK SMITH DIDN’T WANT TO DO ROCKET science—literally. That’s how he ended up becoming an internationally recognized expert in influenza virus evolution.... “I’m not a pacifist,” Smith says, “but I didn’t want anything to do with work directly related to the military.” Instead, he started looking for a job in which his expertise might benefit public health. He found it in a Ph.D. project to model the immune system’s recognition of influenza viruses at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. He never regretted the choice. Now at the University of Cambridge, U.K., Smith has become the unofficial cartographer of the influenza world. He has developed a technique to produce colorful maps visualizing the never-ending changes in the influenza virus, and over the past 4 years, his lab has become a global nerve center that analyzes influenza data from around the world. [read more...]New Breed of Business Gurus Rises
An article in the Wall Street Journal reviews the popularity of speakers noting that psychologists and CEOs Climb in Influence, Draw Hits and Big Fees. No matter who's preaching, managers (should be) wary of blindly embracing advice. "People have to use all these gurus with some caution," says Michael Mauboussin, chief investment strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management. He is a fan of Clayton Christensen, the Harvard professor known for his writings on "disruptive innovation," who ranks No. 17 on the list, up from 49 in 2003. Mr. Mauboussin says gurus often idolize certain companies during good times, and then chastise the same ones during bad. "The reality is, they were never so good, and they were never so bad," he says. [read more...]Scientists Develop Technique For Extracting Hierarchical Structure Of Networks
In a May 1 Nature paper, "Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks," Santa Fe Institute (SFI) researchers Aaron Clauset, Cristopher Moore, and Mark Newman show that many real-world networks can be understood as a hierarchy of modules, where nodes cluster together to form modules, which themselves cluster into larger modules -- arrangements similar to the organization of sports players into teams, teams into conferences, and conferences into leagues, for example. This hierarchical organization, the researchers show, can simultaneously explain a number of patterns previously discovered in networks, such as the surprising heterogeneity in the number of connections some nodes have, or the prevalence of triangles in a network diagram. Their discovery suggests that hierarchy may, in fact, be a fundamental organizational principle for complex networks. [read more...]Killing the Rational Man
When studying economic theory, one learns early on about the concept of the "rational man." The idea is that in any market economy, decisions are made based on rationality. . In order to understand how the market works, one is told, one has to simply accept that man is rational and would never buy something for more than it is worth, or sell it for less than the market value. .. about a decade ago, a group of physicists met with a group of economists at the Santa Fe Institute and questioned them on this point. The physicists, having experienced real human beings, could not understand how anyone could create an entire discipline based around the assumption that humans are rational. In the 1970s, two professors, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, decided to test just how rational people are when making decisions involving risk. They conducted an enormous number of studies that show that, most of the time, people make decisions that are demonstrably irrational... The work of Kahneman and Tversky did change the science of economics. It even spawned a new field called behavioral economics. Unfortunately, it has not been widely adopted within the discipline of risk management. It is important to the profession that this work take a more prominent role. [read more...]Hierarchical structure and the prediction of missing links in networks
SFI's Aaron Clauset in a letter to Nature reports on Networks' research..".which has in recent years emerged as an invaluable tool for describing and quantifying complex systems in many branches of science... recent studies suggest that networks often exhibit hierarchical organization, in which vertices divide into groups that further subdivide into groups of groups, and so forth over multiple scales. In many cases the groups are found to correspond to known functional units, such as ecological niches in food webs, modules in biochemical networks (protein interaction networks, metabolic networks or genetic regulatory networks) or communities in social networks..... Taken together, our results suggest that hierarchy is a central organizing principle of complex networks, capable of offering insight into many network phenomena. [read more...]Postdoctoral Fellow Trancik Considers Innovative Uses of Nanotube Films
SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Jessika Trancik and co-authors report on the synthesis of thin, transparent, and highly catalytic carbon nanotube films. Nanotubes catalyze an important reaction in dye-sensitized solar cells. This research may have application to batteries, fuel cells, and electroanalytical devices. See J. E. Trancik, S. C. Barton, and J. Hone, “Transparent and Catalytic Carbon Nanotube Films,” NANO Letters 8(4) (April 2008): 982-987. [read more...]Ancient Ecosystems Organized Much Like Our Own
ScienceDaily (Apr. 28, 2008) — Similarities between half-billion-year-old and recent food webs point to deep principles underpinning the structure of ecological relationships, as shown by researchers from the Santa Fe Institute, Microsoft Research Cambridge and elsewhere. Analyses of Chengjiang and Burgess Shale food-web data suggest that most, but not all, aspects of the trophic structure of modern ecosystems were in place over a half-billion years ago. It was an Anomalocaris-eat-trilobite world, filled with species like nothing on today's Earth. But the ecology of Cambrian communities was remarkably modern, say researchers behind the first study to reconstruct detailed food webs for ancient ecosystems. Their paper suggests that networks of feeding relationships among marine species that lived hundreds of millions of years ago are remarkably similar to those of today. "Paleontologists have long known that food webs were important but we have lacked a rigorous method for studying them in deep time," comments co-author and paleontologist Doug Erwin of the Santa Fe Institute and the Smithsonian Institution. "We have shown that we can reconstruct ancient food webs and compare them to modern webs, opening up new avenues of paleoecology. We were surprised to see that most aspects of the basic structure of food webs seem to have become established during the initial explosion of animal life." [read more...]Ancient ecosystems organized much like our own
Conducted by researchers from the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, Microsoft Research Cambridge, and other institutions, the study is the first to reconstruct detailed food webs for ancient ecosystems. The researchers compiled data from the 505 million-year-old Burgess Shale in British Columbia, Canada and the even earlier Chengjiang Shale of eastern Yunnan Province, China, dating from 520 million years ago. "There are a few intriguing differences with modern webs, particularly in the earlier Chengjiang Shale web. However, in general, it doesn’t seem to matter what species, or environment, or evolutionary history you’ve got, you see many of the same sorts of food-web patterns,” explained Dunne. (ANI) The discovery of strong and enduring regularities in how such webs are organized will help in the understanding of the history and evolution of life, and could provide insights for modern ecology - such as how ecosystems will respond to biological extinctions and invasions. [read more...]Physicists quantify the 'coefficient of inefficiency'
(SFI External Professor) Stefan Thurner.. with the Medical University of Vienna and colleagues are trying to quatify why groups with more than 20 members are much more ineffectual at making decisions that smaller groups, as observed by Parkinson's law.... The dynamics of a cabinet with a fixed number of members was simulated by starting the model with each node in a specific state. The state of a node is then flipped if enough of its influencers are in the opposite state. This process is repeated many times until the system settles into a stable configuration of coalitions of “fors” and “againsts”. Their findings indicate that the dynamics of the cabinet change just where, and how, Parkinson predicted... Thurner and his colleagues believe that this change occurs at the point where a cabinet can support multiple independent factions — something that could impair its ability to make good decisions. Thurner hopes that the team’s research could help committee-driven organizations such as the European Union create effective decision making bodies. This will become more difficult as the EU admits more members (there are currently 27). Indeed, the EU is considering reducing the number of commissioners on its executive council from 27 to 18, to avoid the curse of Parkinson’s coefficient of inefficiency. [read more...]Physicist seeks ‘deeper’ view of nature, societies
Crossing the boundaries of physics and biology, Santa Fe Institute fellow Geoffrey West has moved beyond establishing the relationship between blood flow in the body and traffic flow in cities. Speaking yesterday to an audience of students, faculty and community members at the University of Missouri’s Monsanto Auditorium, West said studying how the natural environment reacts to problems can give clues for how cities should solve problems such as crime, pollution and global warming. "We better understand cities if we’re going to solve these problems," West said. "We cannot in my opinion we will not - solve the problem by focusing on global warming, by focusing on energy and the environment and then focusing on the market. … We need to create a generation of people very quickly that think in broader terms, seeing these as integrated problems." [read more...]Professor Pagel Considers Genomes, Language, and the Transition to Multicellular Organisms
SFI External Professor Mark Pagel writes that both genomes and language suggest that biological and social complexity emerge from how information is used, not from how much of it there is. Similarly, he poses that the emergence of digital regulation derived from unused stretches of junk DNA may have precipitated the transition from single cells to complex multicellular organisms. See M. Pagel, “Rise of the Digital Machine,” Nature 452 (7188) (2008): 699. [read more...]The 3rd International Workshop on Clinical Pharmacology of Hepatitis Therapy
The Workshop was held April 9-10, 2008 in New Orleans, Louisiana. (SFI External Professor) Dr. Avidan Neumann (Bar-Ilan University) discussed the role of mathematical modeling of viral dynamics in the development of new antiviral compounds. Dr. Neumann demonstrated the role of models in understanding Hepatitis C Viral infection and replication, providing insight into the mechanisms of action of (current medications) PegINF and RBV and the time course of response to therapy, and evaluating antiviral dynamics and resistance evolution with investigational HCV compounds. These mathematical models will undoubtedly be useful tools for understanding the mechanisms of action of therapies, resistance evolution patterns, determining optimal treatment durations, and for early prediction of response to therapy. [read more...]Legg Mason Value Trust Letter to Shareholders: First Quarter 2008
In his quarterly letter to shareholder's (SFI Trustee Chair) and Legg Mason's Bill Miller quotes SFI's John Geanakoplos. Dear Shareholder..... The weak dollar is another culprit in the commodity cycle. Oil began to rise in earnest when the dollar index broke down sharply in February. The Fed could help a lot by halting its interest rate cuts. Real short rates are now negative. It is not the price of credit that is the problem, it is its availability. If the Fed stopped cutting rates, that would help the dollar, which in turn ought to stall the commodity price rises, and thus also help the inflation picture. More technically, the Fed, in my opinion, needs to focus on the value of collateral and not on the price of credit. It appears they are beginning to do this, which is a very healthy sign. This is a topic for another letter, but anyone interested in it should consult the work of John Geanakoplos, a distinguished economics professor at Yale and an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute, who has written extensively on this issue, and presented to the Fed on it as well. He and Chairman Bernanke were grad students together at MIT. [read more...]Maps Point the Way to Fighting the Flu Virus
An international team of researchers has crafted software that illustrates interactions between immune systems and the flu strains trying to breach their defenses--on a global scale. The software allows them to map the clashes between immune systems and germs, starting with the influenza virus. This difference between viruses—as our immune system interprets them—is known as the "antigenic difference," says Derek Smith, professor of infectious disease informatics at the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology, who wrote the antigenic cartography software in collaboration with Alan Lapedes, a computational biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and Ron Fouchier, a virologist at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Smith earned a PhD in computer science from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque while a fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. "You take antibodies raised for different strains of flu and see how well they bind to different strains of influenza," he adds, "and you end up with a table with these measurements." [read more...]Jim Cramer Blog; Give Drug Stocks a Chance
"Nobody thinks "buy defense" any more when oil spikes. They just think buy oil and ag. And they sell retail. I find that pretty amazing. Higher oil prices mean a slowdown in the economy, which means buy drugs and foods, or at least drugs. But the group is bizarrely despised.... I read this terrific article last night in SFI, the Santa Fe Institute magazine, that talked about this market's inherent emotional irrationality. Today's Exhibit A about how right that article is." [read more...]Professor Lillo Considers Financial Markets and the Effect of Large Orders
SFI External Professor Fabrizio Lillo and his coauthors discuss how agents strategically adjust the properties of large orders in order to meet their preferences and minimize their impact. They show that heterogeneity of agents is a key ingredient for the emergence of some aggregate properties characterizing this complex system. See G. Vaglica, F. Lillo, E. Moro, and R. N. Mantegna, “Scaling Laws of Strategic Behavior and Size Heterogeneity,” Physical Review E 77 (3 pt. 2) (2008): nil_1253-nil1258. [read more...]The Prize Lagrange-Foundation CRT to an SFI Professor
The economist W. Brian Arthur of the Santa Fe Institute (USA) and mathematician Yakov G. Sinai of the University of Princeton (USA) are the winners of the Prize Lagrange-Foundation CRT on Complex Systems. The ceremony will be held April 22 in Torino, Italy. [read more...]8 Traits of Successful Entrepreneurs
An Associated Press (AP) article asks —Do you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur? According to “If at First You Don’t Succeed,” a book by Brent Bowers, you’re a natural-born capitalist if you exhibit all eight of these entrepreneurial traits: 1. Seizing opportunities. Have a knack for spotting and grabbing opportunities that nobody else seems to notice? In the early days of the Internet, many people talked about starting an online auction house. Pierre Omidyar and his collaborators organized a business plan that created eBay. Other characteristics include showing innovative behavior since childhood, turning on a dime, pragmatism, tenacity and self confidence bordering on delusions of grandeur. [read more...]State Department's 2008 Earth Day Commemoration
Science and Technology Advisor to the Secretary of State Nina Fedoroff will examine how science and technology are applied to environmental issues during the State Department's Earth Day celebrations. [read more...]Edward N. Lorenz, a Meteorologist and a Father of Chaos Theory, Dies at 90
Edward N. Lorenz, a meteorologist who tried to predict the weather with computers but instead gave rise to the modern field of chaos theory, died Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 90. Dr. Lorenz published his findings in 1963. “The paper he wrote in 1963 is a masterpiece of clarity of exposition about why weather is unpredictable,” said J. Doyne Farmer, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. The following year, Dr. Lorenz published another paper that described how a small twiddling of parameters in a model could produce vastly different behavior, transforming regular, periodic events into a seemingly random chaotic pattern. [read more...]The Complexity of Evolution
Scientists usually study natural selection at a single level, such as genes or individuals or even a population, says (SFI External Professor) and biophysical complexity researcher Maya Paczuski -- but it takes place at all these levels simultaneously, and what happens at each scale resonates through the web of life in ways we're just beginning to comprehend. Paczuski, founder of the University of Calgary's Complexity Science Group, talked to Wired.com on the expansion of evolutionary theory to include complexity and emergence. These phenomena don't replace the classic mechanisms of genetic mutation and natural selection, but work with them; and accompanying this expanded conception of evolution is the multi-scale perspective espoused by Paczuski. "One of the things that complexity theory teaches us is that you have emergent properties -- like ecosystems -- so you have to think of selection happening at many different scales. That problem hasn't been addressed in any coherent way in scientific literature. It's one of the great complex problems of the future." [read more...]First Step Towards a Quantum Internet
A gate using qubit made of entangled photon pairs could lead to 'automatically secure' networks. (SFI External Professor) Professor Seth Lloyd, a quantum-computing researcher at MIT, told Personal Computer World magazine of an important step towards creating a quantum Internet in which communication would be 'automatically secure'. Prem Kumar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, has created a quantum 'controlled NOT' logic gate within an optical fibre. [read more...]Scientists sift clues to mysterious migration
Anasazi - Artifacts point to possible ideological or religious struggles behind the move south 700 years ago...The migration raises the most vexing and persistent question in Southwestern archaeology: Why, in the late 13th century, did thousands of Anasazi abandon Kayenta, Mesa Verde and the other magnificent settlements of the Colorado Plateau and move south into Arizona and New Mexico? (SFI External Professor) Timothy Kohler of Washington State University and members of the Village Ecodynamics Project are collaborating with archaeologists at Crow Canyon on a computer simulation of population changes in southwest Colorado from 600 to about 1300. Amid the swirl of competing explanations, one thing is clear: The pueblo people didn't just dry up and blow away like so much parched corn. They restructured their societies and tried to adapt. When all else failed, they moved on. [read more...]NM technology association honors seven women
New Mexico Business Weekly reports that The New Mexico Information Technology and Software Association honored seven women on April 3 for outstanding contributions to the technology industry. Among them was Irene Anne Lee from the Santa Fe Institute. NMITSA firmly believes that only a full-time regional information technology association (RITA) can raise the competitiveness and presence of New Mexico's IT sector relative to other competitor regions throughout the United States and the world. [read more...]Physicists model how we form opinions
Stefan Thurner of the Medical University of Vienna and the Santa Fe Institute and other researchers in a recent issue of Europhysics Letters, say our individual opinions both influence and are influenced by our surroundings. By following a set of rules, the researchers have modeled the opinion formation process in societies where individuals’ opinions are strongly influenced by others they interact with. The scientists found that, depending on two criteria – how strongly individuals are influenced by each other and how many connections individuals have – a society’s overall state can exhibit either large segregated patches of consensus, or areas with closely intermingled opinions. [read more...]Gorbachev calls for more international cooperation
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev decries America's military buildup since the Cold War and he is calling for more international cooperation in addressing political and environmental problems. Gorbachev says the growing U.S. defense budget is pushing other countries to do the same and he contends that the expansion of conventional weapons also will undermine efforts to abolish nuclear weapons. Gorbachev, who left office in 1991, was in Santa Fe to deliver a speech to benefit the Santa Fe Institute, a research and education center. He made his comments at a news conference before his lecture. [read more...]SFI Researchers quoted in today's SF New Mexican
When it comes to understanding HIV, looking at the big picture sometimes isn't enough. What's really needed to understand how truly prolific the virus is, is to look at the big movie. That's what Los Alamos National Laboratories researcher (SFI External Faculty) Alan Perelson did when he was trying to figure out how fast the disease replicates throughout the human body. [read more...]External Professor Wagner resolves robustness and evolvability paradox
SFI External Professor Andreas Wagner considers RNA genotypes and their secondary structure phenotypes to resolve the paradox between robustness and evolvability. He writes that, while genotype robustness and evolvability share an antagonistic relationship, the phenotype robustness promotes structure evolvability. See Andreas Wagner, "Robustness and Evolvability: A Paradox Resolved," Proceedings of the Royal Society B - Biological Sciences 275, no. 1630 (2008): 91-100. [read more...]External Professor Schuster calls for joint effort in mathematics
Professor Peter Schuster suggests that, in addition to dynamic systems theory, different mathematical disciplines must jointly develop methods for handling the enormously complex networks of gene regulation and metabolism. He provides selected examples from his lab. See Monatshefte für Chemie - Chemical Monthly: An International Journal of Chemistry (v.139, #4). [read more...]Do words have definitions?
(SFI External Professor) Ray Jackendoff, a linguist at Tufts University, argued in his recent Foundations of Knowledge, that words do in fact have definitions. However, those definitions themselves are not made up of words composed into sentences Jackendoff has proposed that a very different system (lexical semantics) using different rules is employed when we learn the meanings of new words by combining little bits of meaning (that themselves may not map directly on to any words). [read more...]How to Turn a Herd on Wall St.
What makes a herd, financial or otherwise, stop and turn around? Specifically, behavioral experts want to know if there are psychological cues that can help transform this bear market into a bullish one. Experiments testing various versions of this game have shown that many players flip strategies in the middle of playing, apparently simply because they have set some private threshold for changing, like trying one strategy three times, “and if it doesn’t work, switch to the other one,” said Willemien Kets, a postdoctoral fellow at the Santa Fe Institute. Dr. Kets contends that this switching strategy can be successful precisely because others decide to stick to a congested road. “You see this ‘grass is always greener’ kind of behavior emerging,” Dr. Kets said in an interview, “which suggests that a variety of contrarian strategies will evolve naturally in the course of any such game because there are people who are more conservative in their strategies.” [read more...]SFI Workshop Featured in the Santa Fe New Mexican
An article by Santa Fe New Mexican science writer Sue Vorenberg explores the discussions from "Dominance, Leveling and Egalitarianism in Primates and Other Animals," a Workshop organized by SFI Professor Sam Bowles. [read more...]
