Bruce Hannon’s Complexity Digest #5
Bruce Hannon is known to many for his weekly email digest highlighting interesting articles, published in various well regarded complexity sources, that span the gamut from all areas of research and inquiry, from the life sciences to the social sciences. What all the articles have in common is that they celebrate interesting findings, provocative theories, and the complexity of the world. Bruce has graciously agreed to allow InnoCentive to repost his “Complexity” Digest from time to time. Thank you Bruce!
Below, you will find Bruce’s “Complexity” Digest #5, we hope you enjoy. Please let us know your feedback and feel free to respond to the blog posts and share your thoughts and reactions with others.
Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Nature
Excerpt: Complex networks have been studied intensively for a decade, but research still focuses on the limited case of a single, non-interacting network. Modern systems are coupled together and therefore should be modelled as interdependent networks. A fundamental property of interdependent networks is that failure of nodes in one network may lead to failure of dependent nodes in other networks. This may happen recursively and can lead to a cascade of failures.
- Source: Catastrophic cascade of failures in interdependent networks, Sergey V. Buldyrev, Roni Parshani, Gerald Paul, H. Eugene Stanley, Shlomo Havlin, DOI: 10.1038/nature08932, Nature 64, 1025-1028, 2010/04/15
BuRSTS
Excerpt: BuRSTS is a performance in human dynamics, a game of cooperation and prediction, that will gradually unveil the full text of Bursts. In a nutshell, if you register at http://brsts.com, you will be able to adopt one of the 84,245 words of the book. Once you adopt, the words adopted by others will become visible to you — thus as each words finds a parent, the whole book will become visible to the adopters. But if you invite your friends (and please do!) and you are good at predicting hidden content, the book will unveil itself to you well before all words are adopted. We will even send each day free signed copied of Bursts to those with the best scores.
See Also: http://brsts.com
A peculiar rift must be confronted in going from the individual to the collective, as science writer Len Fisher explains in his book. The Perfect Swarm focuses on swarm intelligence: ” the emergence of purposeful, effective and flexibly adaptive group behaviour from interactions between members following simple rules. Fisher explores how this phenomenon unites the behaviour of ants, fish, birds and locusts, and how it links to all areas of complexity science, from neurobiology to ecology. He also embraces the tough challenge of translating the science into practical lessons for everyday life.
