ASSYST Newsletter - Number 18 - May 2011 by ASSYST

Number 18, May 2011 | www.assystcomplexity.eu | www.cssociety.org

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1st of May

n this 1st of May 2011, the ASSYST/CSS Newsletter presents three distinct initiatives, all concerned, each one in its own way, by the role of Science in building a better society for the future.

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The first is the Assyst Meeting "ICT Based Policies for a Green Knowledge Society", that will be held in Florence on the 27th May. The meeting will address processes of creating, sharing, and using knowledge for socio-economic development. In this context, â&#x20AC;&#x153;greenâ&#x20AC;? means an interest for the involvement of environmental concern. The key issue of the meeting will be the exploration of the possibility of achieving a green knowledge society with the utilization of the ICT, as a means of enhancing interaction and a distributed intelligence on the overall society. Another important event is "fet'11 - The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition", to be held in Budapest already on the 4-6 May. fet'11 is a forum dedicated to frontier research in information and communication technologies, a unique conference on visionary, high-risk and long-term research in information science and technology. Featuring an exceptionally broad range of scientific fields, the event will seed new ideas across disciplines that will reshape the future. Finally, the EPSRC and ASSYST workshop "Mathematics in the Science of Complex Systems", to be held at the University of Warwick on the 9th and 10th June, will challenge the status quo and suggest that there is an exciting universe of new mathematical structures waiting to be constructed - new kinds of spaces with new kinds of algebraic, topological, analytic and logical properties requiring new methods of investigation to make them tractable and comprehensible.

The !Ponte Vecchio". ASSYST will organize the ICT Based Policies for a Green Knowledge Society in Florence. [Photo by pasma]

You will find all this, and much more, in this issue of your ASSYST/CSS newsletter. Enjoy ! -- The ASSYST Team

ICT Based Policies for a Green Knowledge Society Assyst Meeting in Florence, May 27th 2011 by Ferdinando Semboloni

ill ICT-based actions be supportive to the knowledge society? Is complexity thinking helpful for policy? These are some of the questions addressed by the meeting organized in Florence by ASSYST on next May 27th. These topics have been previously discussed in three workshops, the first in Lecco, Italy, INPUT conference, March 2009, “Complexity and self-organization for public policies” , the second in Brussels, April 2009, BIG STEP, “Business, industry and government – science and new technologies for enhancing policy”, and the third in Lisbon ECCS10 September 2010, “Policy in complex adaptive systems”. In some sense, this meeting brings theories into practices. The approaches previously discussed are confronted with policy makers, in order to establish a first link between ideas, theories and actions, given that a lot can be learnt from each side. It is

The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence one of the largest masonry dome. Conceived and realized by Filippo Brunelleschi, it can be considered as the result of a theoretic and practical research in reaching an equilibrium among a lot of different forces both during the building of the dome, and when the work has been finished

in fact from the discussion among different points of view that valuable knowledge can increase and develop. The focus of the meeting, organized in collaboration with DUPT, Department the of Urban and Regional Planning of the University of Florence, and IRES, Institute for Economic and Social Research of the Piedmont Region, is the knowledge society. A society which creates, shares, and uses knowledge for socio-economic development, so that knowledge is its primary production resource. Since knowledge is strictly connected with communication, exchange of idea, and innovations, ICTs are integral part of the new arising knowledge society. The further adjective “green” means an interest for the involvement of environmental concern. Therefore, the key issue of the conference is the exploration of the real possibility to achieve a green knowledge society with the utilization of the ICT, as a means of enhancing interaction and a distributed intelligence on the overall society. This issue is rooted in the idea that the application of the complex system thinking will help policies and public bodies in achieving the goal. Society is in fact an outopoietic system continuously self-generating, and selfgoverning. It is composed by a network of actors with different interests, yielding both collaborative and competitive outcomes. The public sector is one of these actors usually in charge of the regulation of the social complex dynamics. But, pay attention not to consider the public sector as a single actor: as it usually happens with a fractal image, when one goes deeply, a network of actors appears: the various public bodies, each with a different mission, and not necessarily collaborating with each other. In other words: a further “society” inside the whole society. Moreover a policy is not neutral at all, and to define the “public interest”, or the “social well being” is a very difficult matter. This is because the governmental organization is deeply involved in the social network: to some extent, the situation is akin to that observed in dynamic systems where the controller is part of the system itself. A selfreferential situation very typical of the systems where undecidability is the rule, with the crucial difference that in real contexts decisions should be taken, as making a

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decision is usually better than no decision at all. These are issues which complex system theory can help addressing, highlighting the types of interactions, and providing insights gained by studying physical, biological, and, in general, non-human systems.

The historic center of Florence: the result of the spontaneous activities and decisions of several political groups, often fighting among themselves, mainly wanting to leave a sign of their power in the urban fabric.

To support the arguments, examples of regional policies in Europe are discussed. Regions in fact have to face the challenges of building a single European society, while accounting for cultural diversity, and the different resources existing in their area. Moreover, regional governmental bodies have an important role in coping with the needs of future generations. Representatives of four European regions: Greater London Authority, Region de l'Ile de France, Piedmont Region, and Tuscany Region, will present their experience that will be commented by experts in decision making and in the utilization of ICT. A general final discussion will investigate how ICT could help strengthening regional policies to pursue the goal of a greener knowledge society. Website: http://fs.urba.arch.unifi.it/assyst/home.html

fet11 The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition 4-6 May 2011 – Budapest, Hungary

he European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition 2011 is the second installment of a new forum 11 dedicated to frontier research in information and communication technologies. fet is a unique conference on visionary, high-risk and long-term research in information science and technology. Featuring an exceptionally broad range of scientific fields the event will seed new ideas across disciplines that will reshape the future.

Special Session on Agent Based Modeling Thursday, 5 May, 16:00 - 17:30 What are the achievements and possibilities for Agent Based Modeling, as applied in the context of social sciences, economics and finance, and what are its weak points? Leading exponents in the field will lead a theoretical discussion while the demands and expectations of practitioners and decision makers will be highlighted by a senior European official. The Session is sponsored by the FP7 Coordination Action Global Systems Dynamics and Policy (GSDP) and organized by I. Kondor (Eötvös University, Budapest)

Speakers Doyne Farmer (Santa Fe Institute, Santa Fe, NM) Agent-based modeling of financial stability: A current example and a vision of the future Nigel Gilbert (Centre for Research in Social Simulation, University of Surrey, UK) Understanding housing markets with agents Domenico Delli Gatti (Catholic University of Milan, Italy) Macroeconomics from the Bottom Up István-Pál Székely (Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs, European Commission): title to be announced

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Mathematics in the Science of Complex Systems =0:F+$L$M::N:,$O%4H"<%?$(#$#<.$'(#<.D(#23"$*6"#2#>#.P$Q62R.4"2#)$%&$O(4823H$$ Thursday 9th – Friday 10th June 2011

ver the past decade the Science of Complex Systems has developed considerably. It is now widely accepted that the emerging science of complex systems is ICT enabled while most of the practical and theoretical problems in information and communications technologies arise because they are complex multilevel socio-technical systems. ICT is revolutionising the concept of data in the sciences. Traditional data collection instruments are giving way to massive real time data flows from telephony, electronic transactions and ubiquitous sensors. It is now commonplace to see systems modelled as discrete agent interactions with emergent micro- and meso-level dynamics aggregating into continuous upper meso- and macro level dynamics, with higher order emergence as top-down dynamics changing micro-level relationships and substructures.

problems been solved? • have any new fields of mathematics or problems been generated ? • how can statistical research contribute to complex systems science? • how does mathematics interface to computation in CS science? • what are the implications for applications in industry and for policy makers? • are new logical frameworks necessary for the science of complex systems? • what are the implications for education and training in CS science? • are there completely new areas of mathematics waiting to be discovered? • what are the !grand challenges" for mathematics and mathematicians?

Our workshop challenges the status quo and suggests that there is an exciting universe of new mathematical structures waiting to be constructed - new kinds of spaces with new kinds of algebraic, topological, analytic and logical properties requiring new methods of investigation to make them tractable and comprehensible. Or is mathematics done – with all possible structures already discovered, making further exploration unnecessary?

The meeting in Warwick is intended to widen the network of mathematicians participating in this initiative. Everyone will be given the opportunity to present their views. Attendance is free. We will provide overnight accommodation on Thursday 9th June (and Wednesday 8th June as needed) and refund travel expenses. If you would like to attend please contact us to book your place as soon as possible.

The meeting follows a workshop at held in February 2011 at the European Centre for Living Technology in Venice as part of the European ASSYST project www.assystcomplexity.eu. Like the Venice meeting, this workshop is organised around the questions:

Please email j.h.johnson@open.ac.uk or call 01908652627 or 077 966 966 21 to book your place. Registration: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/maths/research/events/ 2009_2010/symposium/mitsocs/ The meeting is organised by Robert MacKay (R.S.MacKay@warwick.ac.uk) on behalf of the Warwick Mathematics Institute and Jeff Johnson (j.h.johnson@open.ac.uk) on behalf on ASSYST.

• which areas of mathematics are used in complex systems science? • what is the historical context? Have any outstanding

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Reading snippets

The Middle East is ripe for a scientific revolution

We want to organize the nodes into disjoint clusters so that there is relatively dense (observed) connectivity within clusters, and sparse across clusters.

It is simplistic to say that there is a single cause, such as a In arXiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.4803 (false) dichotomy between faith and reason. Muslims are no different from anyone else; there is no ethnic or Web science meets network science geographic monopoly on intelligence. Muslims in Spain, north Africa and Arabia were at the peak of a sophisticated Ever since World Wide Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee announced the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006, civilisation when Christian Europe was in the Dark Ages. researchers have been trying to map the boundaries of Web science, which spans a dizzying range of disciplines In NewScientist http://assystcomplexity.eu/short/?id=113 including computer science, economics, government, law, and psychology. BOOK: Everything is Obvious*

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In Communications of the ACM

Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO"s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?

http://assystcomplexity.eu/short/?id=115

*when you know the answer In Crown Business http://assystcomplexity.eu/short/?id=114

Polyethism in a colony of artificial ants We explore self-organizing strategies for role assignment in a foraging task carried out by a colony of artificial agents. Our strategies are inspired by various mechanisms of division of labor (polyethism) observed in eusocial insects like ants, termites, or bees. Specifically we instantiate models of caste polyethism and age or temporal polyethism to evaluated the benefits to foraging in a dynamic environment. Our experiment is directly related to the exploration/exploitation trade of in machine learning. In arXiv http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.3152

Clustering Partially Observed Graphs via Convex Optimization

The geometry of chaotic dynamics â&#x20AC;&#x201C; a complex network perspective Recently, several complex network approaches to time series analysis have been developed and applied to study a wide range of model systems as well as real-world data, e.g., geophysical or financial time series. Among these techniques, recurrence-based concepts and prominently #recurrence networks, most faithfully represent the geometrical fine structure of the attractors underlying chaotic (and less interestingly non-chaotic) time series. In this paper we demonstrate that the well known graph theoretical properties local clustering coefficient and global (network) transitivity can meaningfully be exploited to define two new local and two new global measures of dimension in phase space: local upper and lower clustering dimension as well as global upper and lower transitivity dimension. In EPJ B http://assystcomplexity.eu/short/?id=116

Urban road networks â&#x20AC;&#x201C; spatial networks with universal geometric features? Urban road networks have distinct geometric properties that are partially determined by their (quasi-) twodimensional structure. In this work, we study these properties for 20 of the largest German cities. We find that the small-scale geometry of all examined road networks is extremely similar.

This paper considers the problem of clustering a partially observed unweighted graph -- i.e. one where for some node pairs we know there is an edge between them, for some others we know there is no edge, and for the In EPJ B http://assystcomplexity.eu/short/?id=117 remaining we do not know whether or not there is an edge.

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Conferences and workshops http://assystcomplexity.eu/conferences.jsp

PhD 'Research in Progress' Workshop (III) question, approach and results at an early point in their Wednesday 14th September 2011 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; European Conference research career to an interdisciplinary and supportive on Complex Systems 2011, Vienna, Austria group. Organisers: David M.S. Rodrigues, Larisa Mihoreanu, and This year's topic: FROM LAB TO SOCIETY, is meant to Iain Kusel challenge the future young researchers to try elucidating how their own research will affect society as a whole within Web: http://cssociety.org/PhDVienna2011 5-10 years and how their complex systems approach may help structure our society for the better. The premise of the satellite meeting is to give MSc and PhD students studying within the domain of complex Deadline: May 15th systems science a platform to present their research

AAMAS 2011 The Tenth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems Taipei, Taiwan 2 May 2011 to 5 May 2011 ATES2011 2nd International Workshop on Agent Technologies for Energy Systems Taipei, Taiwan 2 May 2011 to 2 May 2011

The European Future Technologies Conference and Exhibition 2011 Budapest, Hungary 4 May 2011 to 6 May 2011 NIDISC2011 14th International Workshop on Nature Inspired Distributed Computing Anchorage (Alaska) USA 16 May 2011 to 20 May 2011

ECMS2011 25th EUROPEAN Conference on AMPLE2011 Modelling and Simulation 1st International Workshop on Agent- Krakow, Poland based Modeling for Policy Engineering 7 Jun 2011 to 10 Jun 2011 Colocated with AAMAS2011, Taipei, Taiwan ISIE2011 2 May 2011 to 6 May 2011 6th International Conference on Industrial Ecology MABS11 Berkeley, California, USA 12th International Workshop on Multi- 7 Jun 2011 to 10 Jun 2011 Agent-Based Simulation Colocated with AAMAS 2011, Taipei, CASOS 2011 Tawian CASOS 2011 Summer Institute 2 May 2011 to 6 May 2011 Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA USA FET11 13 Jun 2011 to 19 Jun 2011

ICANN2011 International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks Espoo, Finland 14 Jun 2011 to 17 Jun 2011 PNCW11 4th Annual Political Networks Conference and Workshops Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA 14 Jun 2011 to 18 Jun 2011 ACM WebSci 11 3rd International Conference on Web Science Koblenz, Germanay 14 Jun 2011 to 17 Jun 2011 COLLA2011 The First International Conference on Advanced Collaborative Networks, Systems and Applications Luxemburg 19 Jun 2011 to 24 Jun 2011 CCSS2011

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International Workshop on Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems - 2011 ETH Zurich, Switzerland 20 Jun 2011 to 25 Jun 2011 ESHIA-WEHIA2011 The 16th Annual Workshop on Economic Heterogeneous Interacting Agents Ancona, Italy 23 Jun 2011 to 25 Jun 2011 SiCoSSys 2011 Simulation of Complex Social Systems (SiCoSSys 2011) Colocated with SCSC11 The Hague, Netherlands 27 Jun 2011 to 30 Jun 2011

Game Theory and Society 2011 Game Theory and Society - Models of Social Interaction in Sociological Research ETH Zurich, Switzerland 27 Jul 2011 to 30 Jul 2011 ATOP2011 Agent Technologies for Business Applications and Enterprise Interoperability Liverpool, UK 2 Aug 2011 to 2 Aug 2011 ICEC 2011 Workshop on Robustness and Reliability of Electronic Marketplaces Liverpool, UK 2 Aug 2011 to 2 Aug 2011

ICMC2011 2nd International Conference on Morphological Computation ECLT, Venice, Italy 12 Sep 2011 to 14 Sep 2011 PHDVienna2011 PhD Research in Progress Workshop III Vienna, Austria 14 Sep 2011 to 14 Sep 2011 ANT2011 2nd International Conference on Ambient Systems, Networks and Technologies Ontario, Canada 19 Sep 2011 to 21 Sep 2011

ICORE2011 2nd International Conference on ECAL11 Reputation European Conference on Artificial Life Montpellier, France - 20th Anniversary Edition - Back to 19 Sep 2011 to 19 Sep 2011 the Origins of Alife Paris, France MAS&S 2011 8 Aug 2011 to 12 Aug 2011 5th International Workshop on MultiAgent Systems and Simulation Computational Social Science: Text WIIAT2011 (MAS&S 2011) and Decisions The 2011 IEEE / WIC / ACM Szczecin, Poland Computational Social Science: Text International Conferences on Web 19 Sep 2011 to 21 Sep 2011 and Decisions Intelligence and Intelligent Agent Catania University, Italy Technology EPIA.2011 16 Jul 2011 to 23 Jul 2011 Campus Scientifique de la Doua, 15th Portuguese Conference on Lyon, France Artificial Intelligence CLIMA XII 22 Aug 2011 to 27 Aug 2011 Lisbon, Portugal 12th International Workshop on 10 Oct 2011 to 13 Oct 2011 Computational Logic in Multi-Agent IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2011 Systems IEEE CONFERENCE ON NICSO 2011 Barcelona, Spain DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING, Nature Inspired Cooperative 17 Jul 2011 to 18 Jul 2011 AND EPIGENETIC ROBOTICS Strategies for Optimization Frankfurt, Germany Cluj Napoca, Romania ASONAM2011 24 Aug 2011 to 27 Aug 2011 20 Oct 2011 to 22 Oct 2011 The International Conference on Advances in Social Network Analysis SPSD2011 EUMAS 2011 and International Community on Spatial European Workshop on Multi-agent Mining Planning and Sustainable Systems Kaohsiung City, Taiwan Development Mastricht, Netherlands 25 Jul 2011 to 27 Jul 2011 Kanazawa, Japan 14 Nov 2011 to 15 Nov 2011 29 Aug 2011 to 31 Aug 2011 WISHWell 2011 ICAART 2012 3rd International Workshop on ECCS11 4th International Conference on Intelligent Environments - Supporting European Conference on Complex Agents and Artificial Intelligence Healthcare and Well-being Systems 2011 Vilamoura, Algarve, Portugal (WISHWell"11) Vienna, Austria 6 Feb 2012 to 8 Feb 2012 Nottingham, UK 12 Sep 2011 to 16 Sep 2011 25 Jul 2011 to 26 Jul 2011 ECoMASS-2011 5th Workshop on Evolutionary Computation and Multi-Agent Systems and Simulation Workshop (ECoMASS2011) Dublin, Ireland 12 Jul 2011 to 13 Jul 2011

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Jobs

Contacts

http://jobs.cssociety.org

PhD Developing a mechanistic model of cambial activity and wood formation under climatic forcing French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) France - 13 of May, 2011 Postdoc/Lecturer Thematically open postdoc on complex systems at centre for theory on science Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities, University of Bergen Norway – May 16, 2011 PhD PhD position in Physics of Collective Animal Behavior Université Paul Sabatier Toulouse France – June 1, 2011 Teaching/Research Assistant Maitre de conférences / Chaire mixte CNRS, Modélisation des risques en société UMR 6266 IDEES (équipe MTG), Université de Rouen, Dept. de Géographie France – June 22, 2011

M::N:,$T$M3#2%6$&%4$#<.$:32.63.$%&$3%D?1.A$ :N"#.D"$(6/$:%32(11)$26#.1129.6#$23,$ Web: http://assystcomplexity.eu RSS: http://assystcomplexity.eu/rss.xml Twitter: http://twitter.com/assystcomplex FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/assystcomplex Email: newsletter@assystcomplexity.eu Feedback: http://assystcomplexity.ideascale.com/

+::$U$+%D?1.A$:)"#.D"$:%32.#)$ Web: http://cssociety.org RSS: http://cssociety.org/tiki-calendars_rss.php Suggestions: http://cssociety.org/suggestions The ASSYST project acknowledges the financial support of the Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) programme within the ICT theme of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research of the European Commission.

Postdoc/Lecturer Postdoctoral position at ENS Lyon, Physics Laboratory: "Dynamics of contact networks" Physics Laboratory, ENS Lyon France – July 1, 2011 Postdoc/Lecturer Postdoc opening in the field of dynamical networks ISI Foundation Italy – July 1, 2011

+%6#42B>#%4"$#%$#<2"$./2#2%6S$ Jane Bromley, Jeff Johnson, Jorge Louçã, David MS Rodrigues, and Ferdinando Semboloni Photo of the !Ponte Vecchio" by pasma under a creative commons license: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pasma/1892250764/

:#%4)$">BD2""2%6$9>2/.126."S$$ If you are a Complex System researcher/practitioner and want to share a success story about your work / research please submit it to newsletter@assystcomplexity.eu. The story should approximately 500 words (if you want to submit an extended story please contact us) and should be sent in TXT, ODT, RTF or DOC file formats.

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