Carlos Gershenson's blog... scattered ideas, random notes, and a bit of science...
We created a calendar to aggregate seminars and events from and for members of the Complex Systems Society . Please share and subscribe. You can access it here , or download for iCal . If you would like to add events to this calendar, please send me an email .
Self-organization can be broadly defined as the ability of a system to display ordered spatiotemporal patterns solely as the result of the interactions among the system components. Processes of this kind characterize both living and artificial systems, making self-organization a concept that is at the basis of several disciplines, from physics to biology and engineering. Placed at the frontiers…
//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in September, 2020 . Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last five years to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems, artificial life, information,…
The Center for Complexity Sciences (C3) at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is seeking candidates for a one year researcher position (extensible for a second year). The candidates should have more than ten publications in indexed journals and to have directed at least one thesis (doctorate, masters, or bachelors). Projects can be individual or related to current research at the C3.…
A month late, but I share a draft where we propose a simple measure of antifragility and apply it to random and biological Boolean networks. Spoiler: biological networks are antifragile. Abstract: Antifragility is a property that enhances the capability of a system in response to external perturbations. Although the concept has been applied in many areas, a practical measure of antifragility has…
My first philosophical text in years, comments welcome. Information theory has been developed for seventy years with technological applications that have transformed our societies. The increasing ability to store, transmit, and process information is having a revolutionary impact in most disciplines. The goal of this work is to compare the formal approach to information with Buddhist philosophy.…
I’m turning 40. Given the current life expectancy, statistically it’s about half of my life. A proper moment to reflect on what I’ve done, what I could have done, and what I would still like to do. The dominating emotion is gratitude: for all that I have experienced, it has been amazing. Grateful to my parents, family, teachers, mentors: my origins. Grateful to my wife, my friends, my colleagues:…
The recent dramatic increase in online data availability has allowed researchers to explore human culture with unprecedented detail, such as the growth and diversification of language. In particular, it provides statistical tools to explore whether word use is similar across languages, and if so, whether these generic features appear at different scales of language structure. Here we use the…
Two generalizations of the traveling salesman problem in which sites change their position in time are presented. The way the rank of different trajectory lengths changes in time is studied using the rank diversity. We analyze the statistical properties of rank distributions and rank dynamics and give evidence that the shortest and longest trajectories are more predictable and robust to change,…
The Computer Science Department of the Instituto de Investigaciones en Matemáticas Aplicadas y en Sistemas (IIMAS) of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) has a open call for a research professor in data science for the new UNAM campus in Mérida, Yucatán . This position, aimed at young researchers, consists of renewable one-year contracts with the possibility of tenure after three…
The equal headway instability—the fact that a configuration with regular time intervals between vehicles tends to be volatile—is a common regulation problem in public transportation systems. An unsatisfactory regulation results in low efficiency and possible collapses of the service. Computational simulations have shown that self-organizing methods can regulate the headway adaptively beyond the…
Two generalizations of the traveling salesman problem in which sites change their position in time are presented. The way the rank of different trajectory lengths changes in time is studied using the rank diversity. We analyze the statistical properties of rank distributions and rank dynamics and give evidence that the shortest and longest trajectories are more predictable and robust to change,…
Traffic signals are ubiquitous devices that first appeared in 1868. Recent advances in information and communications technology (ICT) have led to unprecedented improvements in such areas as mobile handheld devices (i.e., smartphones), the electric power industry (i.e., smart grids), transportation infrastructure, and vehicle area networks. Given the trend towards interconnectivity, it is only a…
Self-organizing traffic lights have shown considerable improvements compared to traditional methods in computer simulations. Self-organizing methods, however, use sophisticated sensors, increasing their cost and limiting their deployment. We propose a novel approach using simple sensors to achieve self-organizing traffic light coordination. The proposed approach involves placing a computer and a…
We present a set of Matlab/Octave functions to compute measures of emergence, self-organization, and complexity applied to discrete and continuous data. These measures are based on Shannon’s information and differential entropy. Examples from different datasets and probability distributions are provided to show how to use our proposed code. Santamaría-Bonfil, G., Gershenson, C. & Fernández, N.…
Highlights • The useful of quantitative indicators of ecological complexity is evaluated. • Chaos should not be confused with complexity. • Light and temperature cause different ranges of complexity in the gradient. • Homoeostasis variation is related to the seasonal changes and transitions. • Autopoiesis reveals groups with higher and lower degree of autonomy. Abstract Measuring complexity is…
//Please forward to whom might be interested CCS'17: The Conference on Complex Systems 2017 Cancun, Mexico. September 17-22. http://ccs17.unam.mx The flagship conference of the Complex Systems Society will go to Latin America for the first time in 2017. The Mexican complex systems community is enthusiast to welcome colleagues to one of our richest destinations: Cancun. The conference will include…
//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in September, 2017 . Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last five years to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. There will be another call to begin March, 2018 closing around June 2017. The area of interests of…
We apply game theory to a vehicular traffic model to study the effect of driver strategies on traffic flow. The resulting model inherits the realistic dynamics achieved by a two-lane traffic model and aims to incorporate phenomena caused by driver-driver interactions. To achieve this goal, a game-theoretic description of driver interaction was developed. This game-theoretic formalization allows…
With the recent refugee wave from countries with a Muslim majority, we have been flooded by a wave of fear-fueled propaganda against them. Muslims treat their women badly. Muslims are violent. Muslims are this, Muslims are that. The Koran says this, the Koran says that. Europe is not what it used to be, it is getting full of Muslims. After living four years in Brussels and dealing with plenty of…
Cities are changing constantly. All urban systems face different conditions from day to day. Even when averaged regularities can be found, urban systems will be more efficient if they can adapt to changes at the same speeds at which these occur. Technology can assist humans in achieving this adaptation. Inspired by cybernetics, we propose a description of cities as adaptive systems. We identify…
//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in March 1st, 2017 . Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last three years and be under 36 years, both to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems,…
Urban mobility systems are composed multiple elements with strong interactions, i.e. their future is co-determined by the state of other elements. Thus, studying components in isolation, i.e. using a reductionist approach, is inappropriate. I propose five recommendations to improve urban mobility based on insights from the scientific study of complex systems: use adaptation over prediction,…
ALife XV: The Fifteenth International Conference on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems will take place in Cancun, Mexico, on July 4-8, 2016. The deadline for paper and abstract submissions was extended to February 29th . This extension is final. All accepted contributions will be published by MIT Press as open online proceedings. There are two submission options: Full papers (8 pages)…
//Please forward to whom may be interested. The National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) has an open call for postdoctoral fellowships to start in September, 2016 . Candidates should have obtained a PhD degree within the last three years and be under 36 years, both to the date of the beginning of the fellowship. The area of interests of candidates should fall within complex systems,…