Complexity Digest 2001.44 October-29-2001

Archive:  www.comdig.org, European Mirror:  www.comdig.de

Asian Mirror:  http://www.phil.pku.edu.cn/resguide/comdig/ (Chinese GB-Code)

"I think the next century will be the century of complexity." Stephen Hawking

  1. 1st International Conf On Web Intelligenc and Intelligent Agent Technologies, Video Report
  2. Artificiality Embodied, AI: Artificial Intelligence, HMS Beagle
  3. Forecasting Price Increments Using An Artificial Neural Network,  Advances in Complex Systems
  4. Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression, J. of Online Behavior
  5. Genetics Decodes Language Ancestry, BIO Mednet
  6. Pain Research Comes into Its Own, The Scientist
  7. Profiling Brain Transcription: Neurons Learn A Lesson From Yeast, Current Opinion in Neurobiology
  8. Unlocking the Paralysis Riddle, Wired News
  9. Stuttering: A Matter of Bad Timing, Science
  10. Songs that Cause The Brain to 'Itch', U.Cincinnati Press Release
  11. The Dynamics of Team Formation, HMS Beagle
  12. The Study Of  Nonlinear, Self-Organizing Family Dynamics , Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences
  13. Plague Genome: The Evolution Of a Pathogen, The Scientist
  14. Inwardly Rotating Spiral Waves in a Reaction-Diffusion System, Science
  15. The Complexity And Hierarchical Structure Of Tasks In Insect Societies, Animal Behaviour
  16. Discriminating the Relation Between Relations, J. Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes
  17. When Is An Ant Like A Bicycle?, Nature
  18. Aging And Dementia: More Gray Hair And Less Gray Matter, Amer. J. of Neuroradiology
  19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
    1. "Conflict Index" Warns When A Nation Faces Civil War", New Scientist
  20. Links & Snippets
    1. Santa Fe Institute Working Papers
    2. Other Papers
    3. Conference Announcements 

1. 1st International Conf On Web Intelligenc and Intelligent Agent Technologies, Video Report

Editor's Note:  This contains videos of the full plenary presentations and some short comments and non-technical summaries of contributed presentations of teh 1st International Conf On Web Intelligenc and Intelligent Agent Technologies, Maebashi City, Japan, 01/10/23-26. To view these videos you can download the (free) MediaPlayer. If you would prefer to use the RealMedia format, let us know. See also the videos of the related workshop: From Intelligent Networks to Global Brains - Evolutionary Social Organization through Knowledge Technology, The First Global Brain Workshop (GBrain 0), July 3-5, 2001, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium

Full Presentations:

  1. Conference Introduction (Ning Zhong), Web Intelligence Introduction: Research Challenges and TrendsY.Y. Yao, Ning Zhong, Jiming Liu, Setsuo Ohsuga
  2. From Computational Intelligence to Web Intelligence, Discussion, Nick Cercone
  3. Knowledge is Power: The Semantic Web Vision (Feigenbaum, Hendler), E.A. Feigenbaum, J. Hendler
  4. Approximate Reasoning by Agents in Distributed Environments, A. Skowron, D. Slezak
  5. Social Intelligence Design for Knowledge Creating Communities, Toyoaki Nishida
  6. Pedagogical Agents for Web-Based Learning, W. Lewis Johnson
  7. Query Answering based on Distributed Knowledge Mining, Zbigniew W. Ras
  8. 3D Object Recognition and Visualization on the Web, Patrick Wang
  9. Intelligent Agents for Market-Trend Prediction, Benjamin Wah
  10. Multi-agent Infrastructure for Agent Interoperation in Open Computational Environments, Katia Sycara
  11. Foundation of the Next Generation Knowledge Processing, Riichiro Mizoguchi
  12. Social Networks on the Web and in the Enterprise, Prabhakar Raghavan

Summaries and Comments:

  1. J. Hendler on Semantic Web, Terrorism, and Security Issues
  2. W. Lewis Johnson on Pedagogical Agents and their Application to Peace-Keeping and Anti-Terrorism
  3. A Multi-Agent Approach to Modelling Interaction in Human Mathematical Reasoning, Alison Pease
  4. Acquaintance Models in Coalition Planning for Humanitarian Relief Operation, M. Pechoucek, V. Marik, J. Barta
  5. An Evolutionary Distribution System for Web-Based Teaching Materials, T. Ishikawa, H. Matsuda, H. Takase
  6. iJADE IWShopper A New Age of Intelligent Mobile Web Shopping System based on Fuzzy-neuro Agent Technology, R.S.T. Lee
  7. Affect and Agent Control: Experiments with Simple Affective States, Matthias Scheutz
  8. Building Reusable and Adaptable Web-Based Courses, Paola Forcheri, Maria Teresa Molfino, Stefano Moretti, Alfonso Quarati
  9. A Distributed Algorithm for Coalition Formation Among E-Commerce Agents, Guillaume Vauvert, Amal El Fallah-Seghrouchni
  10. Automatic Web-Page Classification by Using Machine Learning Methods, Makoto Tsukada, Takashi Washio, Hiroshi Motoda
  11. The Use of Emergent Behaviour in a Multi-Agent System to Drive Self-Adaptation at the Interface, Peter Marshall, Sue Greenwood
  12. Web-Based Intelligent Call Center for an Intensive Care Unit/Emotions in Chat Avatars, Kyungsook Han, Dongkyu Lee
  13. AgentSalon: Supporting Face-to-Face Knowledge Exchanges in Communities, Yasuyuki Sumi, Kenji Mase
  14. An Intelligent Channel Allocation Scheme for Mobile Networks: An Application of Agent Technology, Eliane L. Bodanese, Laurie G. Cuthbert
  15. INFOPIPES: A Flexible Framework for M-Commerce Applications, Marcus Herzog

 

2. Artificiality Embodied, AI: Artificial Intelligence, HMS Beagle

Excerpt: From a scientific perspective, the film raised, but did not really get to grips with, the notion of artificial consciousness. This operated at several levels in the film: there was Teddy, the apparently indestructible supertoy, who gradually revealed more and more unbelievable abilities. An extra large dollop of anthropomorphism is clumsily thrown in here, as well as cognitive abilities so advanced in Teddy that David didn't seem to represent that much of an advance - just the addition of a "love" subroutine.

 

3. Forecasting Price Increments Using An Artificial Neural Network,  Advances in Complex Systems

Abstract: Financial forecasting is a difficult task due to the intrinsic complexity of the financial system. A simplified approach in forecasting is given by "black box" methods like neural networks that assume little about the structure of the economy. (…) able to forecast the sign of the price increments with a success rate slightly above 50% can be found.

Excerpts: The advantage of using a neural network as non-linear function approximator is (…) well suited in areas where the mathematical knowledge of the (…) time series is unknown and quite difficult to be rationalized.

 

4. Social Cognitive Explanations of Internet Use and Depression, J. of Online Behavior

Abstract: The Internet Paradox study found evidence of a causal link between Internet use and depression (…). The relationship (…) was reformulated drawing on social cognitive theory to account for the possible influence of self-efficacy, Internet-related stress, and perceived social support.

Excerpt: Internet use was associated with increases in loneliness and depression and tended to increase stress in a sample of 169 persons (…). These results seemed paradoxical indeed (…). To explain the paradox, the researchers reasoned that superficial relationships (weak ties) formed online displaced meaningful (strong tie) relationships in the real world.

 

5. Genetics Decodes Language Ancestry

Excerpts: Using single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and haplotype information, Stanford University researchers have discovered that African click-consonant languages likely represent the earliest language, and predate population divergence.

Click-consonant or Khoisan languages are now spoken by various African groups, including the geographically distant groups of the Hadzabe (or Hadza) people of Tanzania in the east, and the San in southwestern Africa. (…)

The results "suggest that the San and the Hadza have retained the click consonants since the time of us all,"(...)

 

6. Pain Research Comes into Its Own, The Scientist

Excerpts:  At the site of an injury, such as an infection or a wound, nerve growth factors and glial-derived neurotrophin factors make the injured tissue acidic (…). The combination of these different factors, known as the inflammatory soup, has the effect of making pain-sensing neurons more sensitive to stimuli. (…) This is because the sensitivity threshold readjusts to a lower threshold called hyperalgesia. At least part of the action that initiates this change probably occurs through the initial sensitization of the nerve terminals, (…)

 

7. Profiling Brain Transcription: Neurons Learn A Lesson From Yeast, Current Opinion in Neurobiology

Abstract: The application of microarray technologies to the brain poses unique challenges (…). Nevertheless, recent studies using DNA chips have made inroads into the molecular characterization of regional and functional brain units(…) and the discovery of transcriptional differences associated with behavioral and neuropathological traits.

Excerpt: (…) way to make neuro-array experiments more fruitful, is to reduce the complexity of the starting material to a homogeneous, enriched population, even, if possible, to a single cell (…). Clearly, the yeast teaches a lesson to the neuron: get simple and get genetics!

 

8. Unlocking the Paralysis Riddle, Wired News

Excerpt:  The question, in essence, is this: Does the brain rearrange the wiring of its motor command center (cortex) after a spinal injury?

In other words, if the nervous system were like a telephone network, would the loss of a fiber optic backbone on the West Coast also cause telecommunications in the East, Midwest and South to reroute?

One might certainly expect such measures from the ever-adaptive brain as it tries to compensate for losing contact with every nerve and muscle below an injury site.

 

9. Stuttering: A Matter of Bad Timing, Science

Excerpt:  Stuttering is an aberration of normal speech processing, which is a manifestation of synchronization of phonation (for speech power) with articulation (that shapes phonatory power into the sounds of speech). Any cause of stuttering has to account for why it can be involuntary, and, more to the point, how high-speed speech sounds can be produced with low-speed cognitive and linguistic equipment.

Synchronization speed is revealed by the syllable rate (no sound can be produced outside the context of a syllable) multiplied by the number of sounds per syllable

 

10. Songs that Cause The Brain to 'Itch',, U.Cincinnati Press Release

Excerpt: (...) What do these disparate works have in common? They were cited by respondents in a study of tunes that get "stuck in your head." Determining why such songs have that ability is the goal of James J. Kellaris, an associate professor of marketing in the University of Cincinnati College of Business Administration. (...) He has a sample of 1,000 respondents to work with in analyzing his theory that certain songs create a sort of "cognitive itch" - the mental equivalent of an itchy back. (...)

 

11. The Dynamics of Team Formation, HMS Beagle

Excerpt: (...) a team, may next progress into what Peck calls "chaos." As the group gets to this stage, it becomes increasingly obvious that differences of opinion and viewpoint do exist between the individuals in the group. This is a period where "individual differences are, unlike those in pseudocommunity, right out in the open. Only now, instead of trying to hide or ignore them, the group is attempting to obliterate them. . . . The stage of chaos is a time of fighting and struggle (...)

 

12. The Study Of  Nonlinear, Self-Organizing Family Dynamics, Nonlin Dyn, Psych, & Life Sciences

Abstract: Family systems theories have emerged (…) through clinical observations, resulting in diverse and internally inconsistent views of family structures, development, dynamics (…). The model is intended to unify the various family systems theories (…) using concepts and methodologies from non-linear dynamical systems theory.

Excerpt: The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of communication chaosticity and to test of its empirical viability. Communication chaosticity is the degree of complexity present within coherent patterns of human interaction (...).

Generally speaking, the more complex a system is, the more flexible its behavior will be (…).

 

13. Plague Genome: The Evolution Of a Pathogen

Excerpt: On a molecular level, the bacteria cut off the immune response by injecting proteins into macrophages with a syringe of sorts. "Some of the proteins block macrophages from engulfing, and other proteins cut the lines of communication between the macrophages and the T and B cells. Bacterial proteins also block the release of tumor necrosis factor and other cytokines, stopping the immune response to amplification of the bacteria," Dixon says. His work focuses on YopJ, a type of "Yersinia outer protein" that disables macrophages.6 The Yops are vital for pathogenesis-mutants cannot infect.

 

14. Inwardly Rotating Spiral Waves in a Reaction-Diffusion System

Abstract: Almost 30 years have passed since the discovery of concentric (target) and spiral waves in the spatially extended Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. Since then, rotating spirals and target waves have been observed in a variety of physical, chemical, and biological reaction-diffusion systems. All of these waves propagate out from the spiral center or pacemaker. We report observations of inwardly rotating spirals found in the BZ system dispersed in water droplets of a water-in-oil microemulsion. These "antispirals" were also generated in computer simulations.

 

15. The Complexity And Hierarchical Structure Of Tasks In Insect Societies, Animal Behaviour

Abstract: To understand the functioning and organizational complexity of insect societies, a combination of different approaches is needed. One such approach, which we adopt in this study, is to consider tasks in insect societies not based upon their function, as is traditional, but upon their structure. Four types of task in insect societies have been proposed: individual, group, team and partitioned tasks. We examine the relationships among these four task types and consider `task complexity' to mean the degree of cooperation and coordination required to complete a particular task successfully. In this respect, individual tasks are considered the simplest (low complexity), group tasks are more complex (medium), and team and partitioned tasks the most complex (high). We decompose tasks into their component subtasks to understand how the demands of a task influence how workers must work together to complete it successfully. We describe a simple method to measure the complexity of tasks using task deconstruction. Points are assigned to each subtask within the task and summed to give a total score. This measure, the task's score, allows objective comparison of tasks (different tasks may be ranked in order of their complexity) within and between species, or even higher taxa, and we hope it will be of practical use to researchers. We propose that both team and partitioned tasks may contain individual, group, team and partitioned subtasks. We examine each of the possible task-subtask relationships and provide examples from known social insect behaviour.

 

16. Discriminating the Relation Between Relations, J. of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes

Abstract: Two baboons ( Papio papio ) successfully learned relational matching-to-sample: They picked the choice display that involved the same relation among 16 pictures (same or different) as the sample display, although the sample display shared no pictures with the choice displays. The baboons generalized relational matching behavior to sample displays created from novel pictures. Further experiments varying the number of sample pictures and the mixture of same and different sample pictures suggested that entropy plays a key role in the baboons' conceptual behavior. Two humans ( Homo sapiens ) were similarly trained and tested; their behavior was both similar to and different from the baboons' behavior. The results suggest that animals other than humans and chimpanzees can discriminate the relation between relations. They further suggest that entropy detection may underlie same-different conceptualization, but that additional processes may participate in human conceptualization.

Contributing Editor's Note: Recent research is changing our views on how different we are from other animals. Biologically, we are quite similar to our close relatives. It seems that the development and transmission of culture allowed us to develop intellectually as we have, not only our genetic gifts. This raises issues on cognitive sciences, such as what makes us (and other animals or artificial creatures) intelligent and conscious.

 

17. When Is An Ant Like A Bicycle?, Nature Science Update

Excerpt: When army ants partner up to carry a lump of food too big for a single ant to transport, an unusually large worker ant takes the front, and an unusually small one, the back, Nigel Franks of the University of Bristol, UK, and his colleagues have found1. Two such ants can carry a load heavier than the sum of their individual abilities.

An ant duo is like a penny-farthing, says Franks, because the big front provides power and steers.

 

18. Aging And Dementia: More Gray Hair And Less Gray Matter, Amer. J. of Neuroradiology

Excerpts: The normal processes of the aging brain remain poorly understood, and some degree of memory loss is expected in usual senescence. Approximately 10% of the population over age 70 years will have significant memory loss(…).
Patients most commonly have subtle memory loss followed by gradual progressive cognitive decline over several years. The most significant pathologic abnormality is noted in the regions of the hippocampus, temporal cortex, and nucleus basalis. Some loss of gray matter function is likely related to the white matter disease.

 

  1. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks

    After several weeks of massive strategic bombing in Afghanistan it seems that predictions mentioned earlier in this columns could be confirmed: These tradititional ways of warfare cause more complicated responses and do not show the effectiveness as it was the case for a more classical enemy like the Serbian Army in Kosovo or the army of Iraq in Kuwait. Recent modeling work of Jenkins and Bond as discussed by Robert Adler in New Scientist shows that both Pakistan and Tajikistan are in a critical situation that is getting dangerously close to civil war:

    "While Jenkins emphasises that the CCC's ["Conflict Carrying Capacity", Ed.] forecasting ability needs to be evaluated and honed through further studies, he thinks it could already help governments spot crumbling regimes. He is particularly worried about Pakistan and Tajikistan, which, according to the index, are teetering on the edge of instability."

    See also the comments by Jim Hendler and W. Lewis Johnson on the role of the internet and agent based simulations in the struggle against terrorism.

     

20. Links & Snippets

  1. 20.1 Santa Fe Institute Working Papers
    1. Emulation, Inequality, and Work Hours: Was Thorsten Veblen Right?, Samuel Bowles, SFI WP 01-10-061
    2. The Evolution of Inequality, Samuel Bowles, SFI WP 01-10-060
    3. The Puzzle of Prosociality, Herbert Gintis, SFI WP 01-10-059
    4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Altruism: Gene-Culture Coevolution, and the Internalization of Norms, Herbert Gintis, SFI WP 01-09-058
    5. Neutral Evolution and Aesthetics: Vladimir Nabokov and Insect Mimicry , Victoria N. Alexander, SFI WP 01-10-057
    6. Circuit Bases of Strongly Connected Digraphs , Petra M. Gleiss, Josef Leydold, and Peter F. Stadler, SFI WP 01-10-056
    7. Path Integration on a Quantum Computer, Joseph F. Traub and Henryk Wozniakowski, SFI WP 01-10-055
    8. Inflationary Bias in a Simple Stochastic Economy, Ioannis Karatzas, Martin Shubik, William D. Sudderth, and John Geanakoplos , SFI WP 01-09-054
    9. Barrier Trees of Degenerate Landscapes , Christoph Flamm, Ivo L. Hofacker, Peter F. Stadler, and Michael T. Wolfinger, SFI WP 01-09-053
    10. Evolution in Systems of Ligation-Based Replicators, Baerbel M. R. Stadler, Peter F. Stadler, and Peter R. Wills, SFI WP 01-09-052

    20.2 Other Papers

    1. Plasticity and learning in a network of coupled phase oscillators, Philip Seliger, Stephen C. Young, and Lev S. Tsimring, arXiv. Paper ID: nlin.AO/0110044. 01/10/23
    2. Kolmogorov-Burgers Model for Star Forming Turbulence, Stanislav Boldyrev, arXiv. Paper ID: astro-ph/0108300. 01/10/23
    3. Hamming Distance Geometry Of A Protein Conformational Space. Application To The Clustering Of A 4 Ns Molecular Dynamics Trajectory Of The HIV-1 Integrase Catalytic Core, Cyril Laboulais, Mohammed Ouali, Marc Le Bret and Jacques Gabarro-Arpa, Los Alamos arXiv (biological physics, chemical physics), 10/23/01
    4. Spectral Regularization,Data Complexity And Agent Behavior, Alexander Ilyinsky, Advances in Complex Systems, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2001) 57-70
    5. Locally Critical Quantum Phase Transitions In Strongly Correlated Metals, Q Si, S Rabello, K Ingersent & J L Smith, Nature 413, 804 - 808 (2001)
    6. Tiny Capsules Float Downstream, Kristen Philipkoski, Wired News, 01/10/29
    7. Biodiversity and Ecosystem Functioning: Current Knowledge and Future Challenges, M. Loreau, S. Naeem, P. Inchausti, J. Bengtsson, J. P. Grime, A. Hector, D. U. Hooper, M. A. Huston, D. Raffaelli, B. Schmid, D. Tilman, and D. A. Wardle, Science 2001 294: 804

    20.3 Conference Announcements:

    1. International Conference on Systems Thinking Globally Concerned, Vienna, Austria, 01/11/01-04
    2. 2nd International Conference on Systems Biology: The Future of Biology in the 21st Century, Pasadena, CA, 01/11/04-07
    3. Developing A Cyber-Democracy: "Government of the Future", Brookings Inst., Washington, DC. , 01/11/05-09
    4. Digitizing Decisions and Markets, Decision Sciences Institute Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 01/11/17-20
    5. II World Congress of Citizens Networks, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 01/12/05-07
    6. "Horizons In Complex Systems" in honor of H. Eugene Stanley's 60th birthday, Univ. Messina, Sicily, 01/12/05-08
    7. From Worker to Colony: Understanding the Organisation of Insect Societies, Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, UK. , 01/12/07-08
    8. Intl Conf on Current Trends In Differential Equations And Dynamical Systems, Kanpur, India, 01/12/15-17
    9. Complex Systems, Modeling Nonlinear Natural and Human Systems, Hawaii International Conference On System Sciences, HICSS-35, Hawaii, 02/01/07-10
    10. 1st Biennial Seminar on Philosophical, Methodological & Epistemological Implications of Complexity Theory, La Habana, Cuba, 02/01/07-11
    11. Topics in Nonlinear Dynamics, Collective Phenomena and Complexity: Dynamical Model Formulation, Analysis and Symmetry, Canberra, Australia, 02/01/21-02/01
    12. AIS'2002: Towards Component-Based Modeling and Simulation, Lisbon, Portugal, 02/04/07-10
    13. World Conference NL 2002 - Networked Learning in a Global Environment: Challenges and Solutions for Virtual Education, Berlin, Germany, 01/05/01-04
    14. 7th International Conference on Music Perception & Cognition - ICMPC7, Sydney, 02/07/17-21
    15. Self-Organisation and Evolution of Social Behaviour, Monte Verità, Switzerland, 02/09/08-13

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