复杂性文摘 NO：2003.30

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Complexity Digest 2003.31 Archive: http://www.comdig.org, European Mirror:
http://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

_________________________________________________________________

Content:

01. IMA International Conference Bifurcation 2003
02. Electronic Voting System Is Vulnerable To Tampering For US Elections ,
ScienceDaily
02.01. Suit Says Machines Missed 60,000 Votes in 2000 Race , NYTimes
03. Brain scans 'reveal baby thoughts' , BBC News
04. A Neural Networks-Based Approach To Options Pricing , Int. J. Theor. &
Appl. Finance
04.01. Emerging Behavior In Electronic Bidding , Phys. Rev. E
05. Neurobiology: A New Way To Network , Nature
05.01. Dynamical Networks In Function Dynamics , Physica D
06. Coarse-Grained Probabilistic Automata Mimicking Chaotic Systems , arXiv
07. From Uzbek to Klingon, the Machine Cracks the Code , NYTimes
07.01. Romancing the Rosetta Stone , EurekAlert
08. Hierarchical Small Worlds in Software Architecture , SFI Working Papers
09. Basic Principles Of Direct Chaotic Communications , Nonlin. Pheno. In
Complex Sys.
09.01. Press 'N' Peel Lasers: Coaxing Light Beams Out Of Cheap Plastic ,
Science News
10. At What Time Scale Does The Nervous System Operate? , Neurocomputing
11. From Nonlinearity to Optimality: Pheromone Trail Foraging by Ants ,
Animal Behaviour
12. Birds Are Overlooked Top Predators In Aquatic Food Webs , Ecology
13. Bees Trade Off Foraging Speed For Accuracy , Nature
14. Adaptive Walks in a Gene Network Model of Morphogenesis: Insights into
the Cambrian Explosion ,
SFI Working Papers
14.01. A Genetic Melting-Pot , Nature
15. Cyborg Liberation Front , The Village Voice
16. Late Date for Siberian Site Challenges Bering Pathway , Science
16.01. The Archaeology of Ushki Lake, Kamchatka, and the Pleistocene
Peopling of the Americas ,
Science
17. Video Violence: Playing With Fire? , Nature
18. Chaos Theory: Managing DHS , Legal Times
19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks
19.01. Central Asia: Terrorism, Religious Extremism, and Regional Stability
, Brookings Testimony
19.02. Did The Government Let Bin Laden's Trail Go Cold? , New Yorker
19.03. Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies , NYTimes
19.04. Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks , NYTimes
19.05. Futuremap Program Canceled , DARPA Press Resease
19.06. All Bets Are Off , NYTimes
20. Links & Snippets
20.01. Other Papers
20.02. Webcast Announcements
20.03. Conference & Call for Papers Announcements
20.04. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test

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01. IMA International Conference Bifurcation 2003


   M. Thompson, Global
   Bifurcations Creating Order from Chaos (video
   summary)

   T. Mullin, Collective
   Chaos (video summary)

   S. Nachmachchivaya, Dynamics
   of Noisy Nonlinear Systems (video summary)

   P. Manneville, Intermittency
   in Dynamical Systems (video Interview)

   M. Wiercigroch, Design
   of Nonlinear Systems and Processes (video
   summary)

   P. T. Arecchi, Transition
   to Phase Synchronisation in Chaotic System
   (video summary)

   F. Radjai, Chaos
   and Fluctuation in Dense Granular Flow (video
   summary)

   S. Lenci, Bifurcation,
   Chaos and Control in Mechanical System (video
   summary)

   T. Griffin, Effect
   of Noise on Border-collision Bifurcation (video
   summary)

   P. Das, Effect
   of Forcing Term on a Three Dimensional Artificial Neural
   Network Model (video summary)



* IMA International Conference Bifurcation 2003, 27-30 July, 2003, Univ.
Southampton, UK
Reported by Atin Das


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02. Electronic Voting System Is Vulnerable To Tampering For US Elections ,
ScienceDaily

Excerpts: The software believed to be at the heart of an electronic voting
system being marketed
for use in elections across the nation has weaknesses that could easily
allow someone to cast
multiple votes for one candidate, computer security (...) determined. In
particular, they pointed
to the use of a "smart card," (...) inserted into the electronic voting
machine, is designed to
ensure that each person casts only one ballot. But the researchers believe
a voter could hide a
specially programmed counterfeit card in a pocket, withdraw it inside the
booth and use it to cast
multiple votes for a single candidate.

* Electronic Voting System Is Vulnerable To Tampering: Computer Researchers
Find Critical Flaws In
Popular Software Produced For US Elections, K. E. Arnold, R. Griffiths, D.
J. Stevens, K. J. Orr,
A. Adam & D. C. Houston, 2003/07/28, ScienceDaily & Johns Hopkins Univ.
* Contributed by Atin Das


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02.01. Suit Says Machines Missed 60,000 Votes in 2000 Race , NYTimes

Excerpts: At issue was the decision to disable special sensor latches
designed to prevent people
from accidentally pulling back the levers to record their votes before they
had finished picking
their candidates.
For reasons that still remain a mystery, the city's election workers
disabled those latches in
1964, taking away a built-in safeguard that advocates say would have
prevented thousands of
residents from losing their votes in every election.

(?, seeks to force city election officials to restore the latches on every
machine, at an
estimated cost of $275,000.

* Suit Says Machines Missed 60,000 Votes in 2000 Race, Winnie Hu, 03/08/02,
NYTimes


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03. Brain scans 'reveal baby thoughts' , BBC News

Excerpts: The researchers involved, from Birkbeck College, and University
College London, believe
their finding could begin to settle a controversial argument on baby brain
development. When an
object is shown to six-month-old babies, then hidden, they often behave as
if it is no longer
present.(...) The London team wired up their babies to a harmless
"hair-net" of sensors which
measured electrical activity in the brain.   (...) They were looking for a
burst of activity that
might correspond to the infant thinking about the object while it was
hidden. One of the
traditional tests used for these experiments is a toy train that is pushed
into and out of a
tunnel. What they found was a distinctive burst of electrical activity over
a part of the brain
called the temporal lobe at key stages in the game. It happened both when
the object was
"occluded", or hidden, and again at around the time the baby might expect
the train to reappear
from the tunnel.

* Brain scans 'reveal baby thoughts', 2003-07-29, BBC News
* Contributed by Nadia Gershenson


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04. A Neural Networks-Based Approach To Options Pricing , Int. J. Theor. &
Appl. Finance

Abstract: The paper presents two alternative schemes for pricing European
and American call
options, both based on artificial neural networks. The first method uses
binomial trees linked to
an innovative stochastic volatility model. The volatility model is based on
wavelets and artificial
neural networks. Wavelets provide a convenient signal/noise decomposition
of the volatility in the
non-linear feature space. Neural networks are used to infer future
volatility levels from the
wavelets feature space in an iterative manner. In the second approach
neural networks are trained
with genetic algorithms (...). Market options prices as quoted on the
Chicago Board Options
Exchange are used for performance comparison (...).

* Beyond Black-Scholes: A Neural Networks-Based Approach To Options
Pricing, C. A. Zapart, Aug.
2003, DOI: 10.1142/S0219024903002006
* Contributed by Pritha Das


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04.01. Emerging Behavior In Electronic Bidding , Phys. Rev. E

Abstract: We characterize the statistical properties of a large number of
agents on two major
online auction sites. The measurements indicate that the total number of
bids placed in a single
category and the number of distinct auctions frequented by a given agent
follow power-law
distributions, implying that a few agents are responsible for a significant
fraction of the total
bidding activity on the online market. We find that these agents exert an
unproportional influence
on the final price of the auctioned items. This domination of online
auctions by an unusually
active minority may be a generic feature of all online mercantile processes.

* Emerging Behavior In Electronic Bidding, I. Yang, H. Jeong, B. Kahng & A.
L. Barabási,
2003/07/03, DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevE.68.016102
* Contributed by Atin Das


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05. Neurobiology: A New Way To Network , Nature

Excerpts: During the development of the nervous system, nerve cells must
extend projections called
axons over considerable distances to construct a complex network of
connections. How axons extend
in the correct direction is conceptually simple: the extremity of the axon
(? explores its local
environment for molecular cues, which guide it along the right trajectory.
In practice, however,
guidance of the growth cone is a complex, tightly regulated mechanism that
involves several
different families of guidance molecules. (? acts on nerve-cell axons to
ensure that the brain
develops normally.

* Neurobiology: A New Way To Network, Patrick Mehlen, 24 July 2003, DOI:
10.1038/424381a, Nature
424, 381 - 382


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05.01. Dynamical Networks In Function Dynamics , Physica D

Abstract: As a first step toward realizing a dynamical system that evolves
while spontaneously
determining its own rule for time evolution, function dynamics (FD) is
analyzed. FD consists of a
functional equation with a self-referential term, given as a dynamical
system of a one-dimensional
map. Through the time evolution of this system, a dynamical graph (a
network) emerges. This graph
has three interesting properties: (i) vertices appear as stable elements,
(ii) the terminals of
directed edges change in time, and (iii) some vertices determine the
dynamics of edges, and edges
determine the stability of the vertices, complementarily.

* Dynamical Networks In Function Dynamics, N. Kataoka, 2003/07/15, DOI:
10.1016/S0167-2789(03)00100-3
* Contributed by Atin Das


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06. Coarse-Grained Probabilistic Automata Mimicking Chaotic Systems , arXiv

Abstract: Discretization of phase space usually nullifies chaos in
dynamical systems. We show that
if randomness is associated with discretization dynamical chaos may survive
and be
indistinguishable from that of the original chaotic system, when an
entropic, coarse-grained
analysis is performed. Relevance of this phenomenon to the problem of
quantum chaos is discussed.

* Coarse-Grained Probabilistic Automata Mimicking Chaotic Systems, M.
Falcioni, A. Vulpiani, G.
Mantica, S.Pigolotti, 2003-07-28, DOI: nlin.CD/0307051, arXiv
* Contributed by Carlos Gershenson


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07. From Uzbek to Klingon, the Machine Cracks the Code , NYTimes

Excerpts: Statistical machine translation - in which computers essentially
learn new languages on
their own instead of being "taught" the languages by bilingual human
programmers - has taken off.
The new technology allows scientists to develop machine translation systems
for a wide number of
obscure languages at a pace that experts once thought impossible.
Dr. Knight and others said the progress and accuracy of statistical machine
translation had
recently surpassed that of the traditional machine translation programs
used by Web sites like
Yahoo and BabelFish.

* From Uzbek to Klingon, the Machine Cracks the Code, Christopher John
Farah, 03/07/31, NYTimes


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07.01. Romancing the Rosetta Stone , EurekAlert

Excerpt: Och is a standout exponent of a newer method of using computers to
translate one language
into another that has become more successful in recent years as the ability
of computers to handle
large bodies of information has grown, and the volume of text and matched
translations in digital
form has exploded, on (for example) multilingual newspaper or government
web sites.

Och's method uses matched bilingual texts, the computer-encoded equivalents
of the famous Rosetta
Stone inscriptions. Or, rather, gigabytes and gigabytes of Rosetta Stones.

* Romancing the Rosetta Stone, 03/07/25, EurekAlert


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08. Hierarchical Small Worlds in Software Architecture , SFI Working Papers

Abstract: The components of a large software application do not interact in
random ways. Instead,
class diagrams exhibit remarkable topological similarities to other natural
and artificial systems.
The components of a large software application are very well connected
because the mean shortest
distance between them is very low in spite of having a relatively small
number of connections per
class. In addition, these diagrams are very heterogeneous. These
measurements are of a general
nature and are largely independent of the particular semantics of the
application. As shown in this
paper, and irrespective of the specific features of each system analyzed,
the final outcome of
software evolution is a small world, hierarchical class diagram with
well-defined statistical
properties. The consequences for software evolution are outlined.

* Hierarchical Small Worlds in Software Architecture, Sergi Valverde,
Ricard V. Sol? DOI: SFI-WP
03-07-044
* Contributed by Carlos Gershenson


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09. Basic Principles Of Direct Chaotic Communications , Nonlin. Pheno. In
Complex Sys.

Excerpts: Basics of the theory of direct chaotic communications is
presented. We introduce the
notion of chaotic radio pulse and consider signal structures and modulation
methods applicable in
direct chaotic schemes. Signal processing in non-coherent and coherent
receivers is discussed. The
efficiency of direct chaotic communications is investigated by means of
numerical simulation.
Potential application areas are analyzed, including multiple access systems.

* Basic Principles Of Direct Chaotic Communications, A.S.Dmitriev,
M.Hasler, A.I.Panas,
K.V.Zakharchenko, 2003
* Contributed by Atin Das


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09.01. Press 'N' Peel Lasers: Coaxing Light Beams Out Of Cheap Plastic ,
Science News

Excerpts: The key to the new technique is a hard mold with a shallow
grating on its surface. The
nanometer-scale depths and spacing of the ultrafine, parallel ridges
provide a fine structure that
stimulates laser action.
To make each laser, the researchers press their mold into a droplet of
solution. It contains a
semiconducting polymer, known by the acronym MEH-PPV, (?. When the coating
dries, the polymer
retains a negative replica of the mold's ridges. That structure, which the
researchers peel from
the mold, acts as a laser.

* Press 'N' Peel Lasers: Coaxing Light Beams Out Of Cheap Plastic, Peter
Weiss, 03/07/26, Science
News, Vol. 164, No. 4 Also available in  Audible format


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10. At What Time Scale Does The Nervous System Operate? , Neurocomputing

Abstract: A novel statistical strategy, the spike jitter method, was
developed to assess temporal
structure in spike trains from neuronal ensembles. Its key feature is the
introduction of a null
hypothesis that assumes a uniform relative likelihood of observing a spike
at one temporal location
versus another within a small temporal window. We applied the method to
simultaneously recorded
motor cortical neurons in behaving monkeys and examined the occurrence of
finely timed synchrony
between neuron pairs. Evidence was found for millisecond synchrony that
could only be accounted for
by assuming fine temporal structure in the constituent neurons' spike trains.

* At What Time Scale Does The Nervous System Operate?, N. Hatsopoulos, Jun.
2003, DOI:
10.1016/S0925-2312(02)00773-7
* Contributed by Atin Das


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11. From Nonlinearity to Optimality: Pheromone Trail Foraging by Ants ,
Animal Behaviour

Abstract: Pheromone trails laid by foraging ants serve as a positive
feedback mechanism for the
sharing of information about food sources. This feedback is nonlinear, in
that ants do not react in
a proportionate manner to the amount of pheromone deposited. Instead,
strong trails elicit
disproportionately stronger responses than weak trails. Such nonlinearity
has important
implications for how a colony distributes its workforce, when confronted
with a choice of food
sources. We investigated how colonies of the Pharaoh's ant, Monomorium
pharaonis, distribute their
workforce when offered a choice of two food sources of differing energetic
value. By developing a
nonlinear differential equation model of trail foraging, and comparing
model with experiments, we
examined how the ants allocate their workforce between the two food
sources. In this allocation,
the most profitable feeder (i.e. the feeder with the highest concentration
of sugar syrup) was
usually exploited by the majority of ants. The particular form of the
nonlinear feedback in trail
foraging means that when we offered the ants a choice between two feeders
of equal profitability,
foraging was biased to the feeder with the highest initial number of
visitors. Taken together, our
experiments illuminate how pheromones provide a mechanism whereby ants can
efficiently allocate
their workforce among the available food sources without centralized control.

* From Nonlinearity to Optimality: Pheromone Trail Foraging by Ants, David
J. T. Sumpter, Madeleine
Beekman, 2003-07-22, DOI: 10.1006/anbe.2003.2224, Animal Behaviour, Article
in Press, Corrected
Proof
* Contributed by Carlos Gershenson


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12. Birds Are Overlooked Top Predators In Aquatic Food Webs , Ecology

Abstract: Most freshwater food web models assume that fish occupy the top
trophic level. Yet many
diet studies and a few caging and artificial stream experiments suggest
that birds may be top
predators in many freshwater systems. We conducted a large-scale field
experiment to test whether
avian predators affect the size distribution and abundance of fish in two
midwestern streams. We
show that these species of piscivorous birds can alter the abundance of
common prey and thus need
to be considered more fully when attempting to explain the structure of
aquatic food webs.

* Birds Are Overlooked Top Predators In Aquatic Food Webs, J. Steinmetz, S.
L. Kohler & D. A.
Soluka, May 2003
* Contributed by Pritha Das


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13. Bees Trade Off Foraging Speed For Accuracy , Nature

Excerpts: Bees have an impressive cognitive capacity 1-4, but the
strategies used by individuals in
solving foraging tasks have been largely unexplored. Here we test
bumblebees (Bombus terrestris) in
a colour-discrimination task on a virtual flower meadow and find that some
bees consistently make
rapid choices but with low precision, whereas other bees are slower but
highly accurate. Moreover,
each bee will sacrifice speed in favour of accuracy when errors are
penalized (?. To our
knowledge, bees are the first example of an insect to show
between-individual and within-individual
speed- accuracy trade-offs.

* Bees Trade Off Foraging Speed For Accuracy, Lars Chittka, Adrian G. Dyer,
Fiola Bock, Anna
Dornhaus, 24 July 2003, DOI: 10.1038/424388a, Nature 424, 388


_________________________________________________________________

14. Adaptive Walks in a Gene Network Model of Morphogenesis: Insights into
the Cambrian Explosion ,
SFI Working Papers

Abstract: The emergence of complex patterns of organization close to the
Cambrian boundary is known
to have happened over a (geologically) short period of time. It involved
the rapid diversification
of body plans and stands as one of the major transitions in evolution. How
it took place is a
controversial issue. Here we explore this problem by considering a simple
model of pattern
formation in multicellular organisms. By modeling gene network-based
morphogenesis and its
evolution through adaptive walks, we explore the question of how
combinatorial explosions might
actually have been involved in the Cambrian event. Here we show that a
small amount of genetic
complexity, including both gene regulation and cell-cell signaling, allows
one to generate an
extraordinary repertoire of stable spatial patterns of gene expression that
are compatible with
observed anteroposterior patterns in the early development of metazoans.
The consequences for the
understanding of the tempo and mode of the Cambrian event are outlined.

* Adaptive Walks in a Gene Network Model of Morphogenesis: Insights into
the Cambrian Explosion,
Ricard V. Sol? Pau Fernandez, Stuart A. Kauffman, DOI: SFI-WP 03-07-043
* Contributed by Carlos Gershenson


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14.01. A Genetic Melting-Pot , Nature

Excerpts: The issue of whether race is a biologically useful or even
meaningful concept when
applied to humans in a medical context is controversial (?. But there is no
contradiction between
these two well-substantiated bodies of data, as they actually deal with two
different questions
that have become confused with one another.

The first question is: "Is it possible to find DNA sequences that differ
sufficiently between
populations to allow correct assignment of major geographical origin with
high probability?" The
answer to this question is yes, (?.

* A Genetic Melting-Pot, Marcus W. Feldman, Richard C. Lewontin,
Mary-Claire King, 24 JULY 2003,
Nature, VOL 424


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15. Cyborg Liberation Front , The Village Voice

Excerpts: From the first walking stick to bionic eyes, neural chips, and
Stephen Hawking's
synthesized voice, they would argue we've long been in the process of
becoming cyborgs. A "hybrot,"
a robot governed by neurons from a rat brain, is now drawing pictures.
Dolly the sheep broke the
barrier on cloning, and new transgenic organisms are routinely created. The
transhumanists gathered
because supercomputers are besting human chess masters, and they expect a
new intelligence to
pole-vault over humanity-in this century.

* Cyborg Liberation Front, Erik Baard, 03/07/30, The Village Voice


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16. Late Date for Siberian Site Challenges Bering Pathway , Science

Excerpts: (? the first people to arrive in the Americas have tended to
appear and vanish with each
new twist in the archaeological record. (? casts another shadow over a
once-cherished idea: that
Asian big-game hunters crossed the Bering Land Bridge to give rise to the
Clovis people, who were
considered the first Americans. New dates show that a crucial Siberian
site, thought to be a way
station along the Bering road, wasn't occupied until after the Clovis had
begun killing mammoths in
North America.

* Late Date for Siberian Site Challenges Bering Pathway, Richard Stone,
Science 2003 301: 450-451


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16.01. The Archaeology of Ushki Lake, Kamchatka, and the Pleistocene
Peopling of the Americas ,
Science

Excerpts: The Ushki Paleolithic sites of Kamchatka, Russia, have long been
thought to contain
information critical to the peopling of the Americas, especially the
origins of Clovis. New
radiocarbon dates indicate that human occupation of Ushki began only 13,000
calendar years
ago-nearly 4000 years later than previously thought. (?, these data suggest
that late-glacial
Siberians did not spreadinto Beringia until the endof the Pleistocene,
perhaps too recently to have
been ancestral to proposedpre-Clovis populations in the Americas.

* The Archaeology of Ushki Lake, Kamchatka, and the Pleistocene Peopling of
the Americas, Ted
Goebel, Michael R. Waters, Margarita Dikova, Science 2003 301: 501-505


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17. Video Violence: Playing With Fire? , Nature

Excerpts: Different experiments often measure different proxies for
aggression, for example. Some
merely record signs of physiological arousal, such as increased heart rate
and blood pressure,
after subjects play violent games. Others try to assess violent thoughts,
based, for example, on
how subjects complete a partial story given to them. Few studies have
looked at actual acts, such
as blasting another person with sound in the lab, or hitting other children.
(? carefully designed longitudinal studies - tracking the real-life
histories of heavy game
players - would advance our understanding.

* Video Violence: Playing With Fire?, Tony Reichhardt, 24 July 2003, DOI:
10.1038/424367a, Nature
424, 367 - 368


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18. Chaos Theory: Managing DHS , Legal Times

Excerpts: The Department of Homeland Security is seeking a few good lawyers
-- 68 to be exact. (?

Not only will they be organizing their own newly created office, but also
they'll be assisting with
the massive government restructuring of 22 federal agencies and a
bureaucracy of more than 170,000
employees that make up the Department of Homeland Security.

(? it remains unclear what role DHS lawyers will play in handling major
homeland security-related
legal issues, including civil rights, the use of the military on American
soil, and emergency
response.

* Chaos Theory: Managing DHS, Marie Beaudette, 03/07/31, Legal Times


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19. Complex Challenges: Global Terrorist Networks





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19.01. Central Asia: Terrorism, Religious Extremism, and Regional Stability
, Brookings Testimony

Excerpts: (? harsh government repression of dissent is as much, if not more
of, a threat to
Central Asian stability today and in the immediate future as the radical
Islamic movements that
have developed indigenously or moved into the region. This contention is
underscored by the fact
that in spite of faltering political and economic reforms, mounting social
problems, and
constraints on opposition forces in all the Central Asian states, the most
fertile ground for
radical groups has been Uzbekistan where government repression has been
more acute and targeted
than elsewhere.

* Central Asia: Terrorism, Religious Extremism, and Regional Stability,
Fiona Hill, 03/07/23,
Brookings Testimony


_________________________________________________________________

19.02. Did The Government Let Bin Laden's Trail Go Cold? , New Yorker

Excerpts: To the frustration of many of the people involved in the fight
against Al Qaeda, the Bush
Administration is said to have been distracted by competing priorities-most
notably, the war in
Iraq. Rohan Gunaratna, a Sri Lankan terrorism expert who has analyzed
thousands of Al Qaeda
documents recovered by various governments, said, "I feel that if they had
not gone to Iraq they
would have found Osama by now. The best people were moved away from this
operation. The best minds
were moved to Iraq.

* The Search For Osama, Did The Government Let Bin Laden's Trail Go Cold?,
Jane Mayer, 03/07/28,
New Yorker


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19.03. Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies , NYTimes

Excerpts: The classified part of a Congressional report on the terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,
says that two Saudi citizens who had at least indirect links with two
hijackers were probably Saudi
intelligence agents and may have reported to Saudi government officials,
according to people who
have seen the report.

These findings, according to several people who have read the report, help
to explain why the
classified part of the report has become so politically charged, causing
strains between the United
States and Saudi Arabia.

* Report on 9/11 Suggests a Role by Saudi Spies, James Risen, David
Johnston, 03/08/02, NYTimes


_________________________________________________________________

19.04. Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks , NYTimes

Excerpts: The Pentagon, in defending the program, said such futures trading
had proven effective in
predicting other events like oil prices, elections and movie ticket sales.

"Research indicates that markets are extremely efficient, effective and
timely aggregators of
dispersed and even hidden information," the Defense Department said in a
statement. "Futures
markets have proven themselves to be good at predicting such things as
elections results; they are
often better than expert opinions." (?

"The payoff if he's assassinated is $1 per future.(?"

* Pentagon Prepares a Futures Market on Terror Attacks, Carl Hulse, NYTimes


_________________________________________________________________

19.05. Futuremap Program Canceled , DARPA Press Resease

Excerpts: The Director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) announced today
that DARPA's participation in the Futures Markets Applied to Prediction
(FutureMAP) program has
been withdrawn. The related Small Business Innovative Research effort will
be terminated for
convenience, effective immediately. FutureMAP was one of the sponsors of
the Policy Analysis Market
web site that has been the subject of recent news articles. (...) DARPA
believes it is important to
continue funding research that examines how to better use advanced
information technologies and
processes as predictive tools for terrorist acts. The U.S. will need
capabilities to solve the
problems identified in the Congressional report on the 9-11 attacks.

* Futuremap Program Canceled, 03/07/29, DARPA Press Resease


_________________________________________________________________

19.06. All Bets Are Off , NYTimes

Excerpts: (? markets work better when they are deep and liquid - that is,
with many participants
and lots of transactions. This raises reliability and reduces the risk of
manipulation. How deep
and liquid could the market for terrorism futures be?

(? To attract "investors," the Pentagon needed to offer a significant
payoff. But with big
payoffs, the incentive for market manipulation rises. And in the case of
terrorism futures, market
manipulation can show up not as a forged buy order but as a bullet.

Fortunately, existing markets already gauge worldwide risks.

* All Bets Are Off, Todd G. Buchholz, 03/07/31, NYTimes


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20. Links & Snippets





_________________________________________________________________

20.01. Other Papers





_________________________________________________________________

20.02. Webcast Announcements

  IMA International Conference Bifurcation 2003, Univ. Southampton, UK,
27-30 July, 2003  New Santa
Fe Institute President About His Vision for SFI's Future Role, (Video,
Santa Fe, NM, 03/06/04) Edge
Videos  Einstein And Poincaré, Peter Galison, 03/06/ Genome Changes
Everything, Matt Ridley,
03/06/ A United Biology, E.O. Wilson, 03/05/28 In The Matrix, Martin Rees,
03/05/19 Who Cares About
Fireflies? Steven Strogatz, 03/05/12   World Economic Forum Extraordinary
Annual Meeting, Jordan,
03/06/21-23 SPIE's 1st Intl Symp on Fluctuations and Noise, Santa Fe, NM,
2003/06/01-04 NAS Sackler
Colloquium on Mapping Knowledge Domains, Video/Audio Report, 03/05/11
Uncertainty and Surprise:
Questions on Working with the Unexpected and Unknowable, The University of
Texas Austin, Texas USA,
2003/04/10-12 New Trends In Industrial Partnership And Innovation
Management At European Research
Laboratories, CERN, Geneva, 2003/03/19 (with webcast)  CERN Webcast
Service, Streamed videos of
Archived Lectures and Live Events   Dean LeBaron's Archive of Daily Video
Commentary, Ongoing Since
February 1998   




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20.03. Conference & Call for Papers Announcements

  Exystence Thematic Institute - Algorithms And Challenges In Hard
Combinatorial Problems - Trieste,
Italy, 03/07/01-31, Turin, Italy, 03/10/01-30 Leadership for Complex
Changes - Seattle Conference,
Seattle, WA USA, 03/08/04-05 13th Annual International Conference, Soc f
Chaos Theory in Psych
& Life Sciences,Boston, MA, USA, 2003/08/08-10 Thematic Institute
"Networks and Risks",
Budapest, Hungary, 03/08/25 - 09/27 Conference on Growing Networks and
Graphs in Statistical
Physics, Finance, Biology and Social Systems, Rome, 03/09/01-05 Call for
Papers on Dynamical
Hierarchies, Special Issue of Artificial Life, Deadline: 2003/09/05 7th
European Conference on
Artificial Life (ECAL-2003), Dortmund, Germany, 2003/09/14-17 A Dual
International Conference on
Ethics, Complexity & Organisations & Creativity, London, UK,
2003/09/17-18 1st German
Conference on Multiagent System Technologies (MATES'03), Erfurt, Germany,
2003/09/22-25 Dynamics
Days 2003, XXIII Annual Conference, 4 Decades of Chaos 1963-2003, Palma de
Mallorca, Spain,
03/09/24-27 Improving The NHS Through The Lens Of Complexity, U Exeter, UK,
03/09/24-26 Emerging
Technologies Conference at MIT, Cambridge, MA, 2003/09/24-25 Intl School
Mathematical Aspects of
Quantum Chaos II Quantum Chaos on Hyperbolic Manifolds, Schloss Reisensburg
(Günzburg,
Germany), 03/10/04-11 2003 IEEE/WIC Intl Joint Conf. Web Intelligence and
Intelligent Agent
Technology, Halifax, Canada, 2003/10/13-17  Workshop on Collaboration
Agents: Autonomous Agents for
Collaborative Environments, Halifax, Canada, 03/10/13   American Society
for Cybernetics (ASC) 2003
Conference (H.v.Foerster), Vienna, Austria , 2003/11/10-15 Trends And
Perspectives In Extensive And
Non-Extensive Statistical Mechanics, In Honour Of The 60th Birthday Of
Constantino Tsallis, Angra
Dos Reis, Brazil, 2003/11/19-21 ICDM '03: The Third IEEE International
Conference on Data Mining,
Melbourne, Florida, USA, 2003/11/19-22 4th Intl Conf on Systems Science and
Systems Engineering,
Hong Kong, 03/11/25-28 3rd International Workshop on Meta-Synthesis and
Complex System, Guangzhou,
China, 2003/11/29-30 2nd International Workshop on the Mathematics and
Algorithms of Social
Insects, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, Georgia, USA; 2003/12/15-17 2nd Biennial
Seminar on the
Philosophical, Epistemological, and Methodological Implications of
Complexity Theory, Havana, Cuba,
04/01/07-10 1st International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches
to Advanced Information
Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, 04/01/29-30 4th Intl ICSC Symposium
Engineering Of Intelligent
Systems (EIS 2004), Island of Madeira, Portugal, 04/02/29-03/02 Fractal
2004, "Complexity and
Fractals in Nature", 8th Intl Multidisciplinary Conf , Vancouver, Canada,
2004/04/04-07 Urban
Vulnerability and Network Failure: Constructions and Experiences of
Emergencies, Crises and
Collapse, Manchester, UK, 04/04/29-30 Fifth International Conference on
Complex Systems (ICCS2004),
Boston, MA, USA, 2004/05/16-21 13th International Symposium on HIV &
Emerging Infectious
Diseases, Toulon, France, 04/06/03-05




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20.04. ComDig Announcement: New ComDig Archive in Beta Test

We are in the process of upgrading the Complexity Digest archives to a
format with improved search
capabilities. Also, we will finally be able to adequately publish the
valuable feedback and
comments from our knowledgable readers. You are cordially invited to become
a beta tester of our
new ComDig2 archive.





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