Author: cxdig

Self-Organizing Systems: What, How, and Why?

Carlos Gershenson

I present a personal account of self-organizing systems. As such, it is necessarily biased and partial. Nevertheless, it should be useful to motivate useful discussions. The relevant contribution is not my attempts at answering questions (maybe all my answers are wrong), but the steps towards framing relevant questions to better understand self-organization, information, complexity, and emergence. With this aim, I start with a notion and examples of self-organizing systems (what?), continue with their properties and related concepts (how?), and close with applications (why?).

Read the full article at: www.preprints.org

Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships – Santa Fe Institute

We are accepting applications for the 2025 cohort until October 11, 2024.

The Santa Fe Institute Complexity Postdoctoral Fellowships, comprising the Omidyar Fellowships, are unique among postdoctoral appointments. The Fellowships offer early-career scholars the opportunity to undertake their own independent research within a collaborative research community that nurtures creative, transdisciplinary thought in pursuit of key insights about the complex systems that matter most for science and society. The Institute rejects compartmentalized thought common in academia. Instead, SFI scientists transcend boundaries between fields, freely synthesizing ideas spanning many disciplines – from math, physics, computer science and biology to the social sciences and the humanities – in pursuit of creative insights that advance our scientific frontiers.

Postdoctoral Fellows spend up to three years in residence at SFI, where they contribute to SFI’s research in the sciences of complexity and are trained to become leaders in interdisciplinary science. As thought leaders who shape the future of science, Postdoctoral Fellows also participate in a unique training program structured to develop leadership skills throughout their three-year residencies and beyond. The Institute provides an opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers worldwide, discretionary and collaborative funds, and a competitive salary with a generous benefit package including paid family leave.

The Institute has no formal programs or departments. Research is collaborative and spans the physical, natural, and social sciences. Most research is theoretical (SFI does not have lab facilities) and/or computational in nature, although it may include an empirical component. SFI has 21 postdoctoral researchers, 10 resident faculty, 100+ external faculty, and averages 1000 visitors per year. Descriptions of the research themes and interests of the faculty and current Fellows can be found at SFI Research.

More at: apply-sfi.smapply.org

School on Biological Physics across Scales: Pattern Formation. November 11 – 22, 2024,  São Paulo, Brazil

Systems as different as the cellular cytoskeleton, microbial communities in soil, and savanna landscapes have in common the emergence of patterns: random yet organized spatial structures that form in an otherwise translationally invariant space. These structures emerge due to the local, individual-level interactions of agents – proteins, cells, trees – that, on a larger scale, result in nonlinear dynamics for the density field. Crucial phenomena hinge on the formation of these patterns: mitosis, embryo development, bacterial population survival, ecosystem’s robustness to aridification.

While broadly different in scale, these systems can be theoretically described by similar statistical physics frameworks, an approach pioneered by Alan Turing in 1952 and still the focus of very active development. The goal of this school is to bring together experts on these different systems using mathematical modeling, experimental approaches and modern data-driven techniques to engage in an interdisciplinary dialogue about pattern formation in living systems.

There is no registration fee and limited funds are available for travel and local expenses.

More at: www.ictp-saifr.org

See Also: 3rd ICTP-SAIFR Symposium on Current Topics in Molecular Biophysics (CTMB3): October 7 – 9, 2024

COSMOS MIND AND MATTER: Is Mind in Spacetime?

Stuart Kauffman, Sudip Patra

BioSystems

We attempt in this article to formulate a conceptual and testable framework weaving Cosmos, Mind and Matter into a whole. We build on three recent discoveries, each requiring more evidence: i. The particles of the Standard Model, SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1), are formally capable of collective autocatalysis. This leads us to ask what roles such autocatalysis may have played in Cosmogenesis, and in trying to answer, Why our Laws? Why our Constants? A capacity of the particles of SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) for collective autocatalysis may be open to experimental test, stunning if confirmed. ii. Reasonable evidence now suggests that matter can expand spacetime. The first issue is to establish this claim at or beyond 5 sigma if that can be done. If true, this process may elucidate Dark Matter, Dark Energy and Inflation and require alteration of Einstein’s Field Equations. Cosmology would be transformed. iii. Evidence at 6.49 Sigma suggests that mind can alter the outcome of the two-slit experiment. If widely and independently verified, the foundations of quantum mechanics must be altered. Mind plays a role in the universe. That role may include Cosmic Mind.

Read the full article at: www.sciencedirect.com

The development of ecological systems along paths of least resistance

Jie Deng, Otto X. Cordero, Tadashi Fukami, Simon A. Levin, Robert M. Pringle, Ricard Solé, Serguei Saavedra

A long-standing question in biology is whether there are common principles that characterize the development of ecological systems (the appearance of a group of taxa), regardless of organismal diversity and environmental context. Classic ecological theory holds that these systems develop following a sequenced orderly process that generally proceeds from fast-growing to slow-growing taxa and depends on life-history trade-offs. However, it is also possible that this developmental order is simply the path with the least environmental resistance for survival of the component species and hence favored by probability alone. Here, we use theory and data to show that the order from fast-to slow-growing taxa is the most likely developmental path for diverse systems when local taxon interactions self-organize to minimize environmental resistance. First, we demonstrate theoretically that a sequenced development is more likely than a simultaneous one, at least until the number of iterations becomes so large as to be ecologically implausible. We then show that greater diversity of taxa and life histories improves the likelihood of a sequenced order from fast-to slow-growing taxa. Using data from bacterial and metazoan systems, we present empirical evidence that the developmental order of ecological systems moves along the paths of least environmental resistance. The capacity of simple principles to explain the trend in the developmental order of diverse ecological systems paves the way to an enhanced understanding of the collective features characterizing the diversity of life.

Read the full article at: www.biorxiv.org