Iain gave a nice talk to Friam back in 2006: http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/2006-December/005026.html
--- -. . ..-. .. ... .... - .-- --- ..-. .. ... .... stephen.gue...@redfish.com 1600 Lena St #D1, Santa Fe, NM 87505 office: (505) 995-0206 tollfree: (888) 414-3855 mobile: (505) 577-5828 fax: (505) 819-5952 tw: @redfishgroup skype: redfishgroup gvoice: (505) 216-6226 redfish.com | simtable.com On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Tom Johnson <t...@jtjohnson.com> wrote: > Apologies if you have seen this, but if not you may find it of interest. > -Tom Johnson > On Feb 15, 2014 5:49 PM, "Michael Lissack" <michael.liss...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Home <http://www.newscientist.com/> |Physics & >> Math<http://www.newscientist.com/section/physics-math> >> |Life <http://www.newscientist.com/section/life> | In-Depth >> Articles<http://www.newscientist.com/section/in-depth> >> Mind meld: The genius of swarm thinking >> >> - 04 February 2014 by *Michael >> Brooks*<http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=Michael+Brooks> >> - Magazine issue 2954 <http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2954>. *Subscribe >> and >> save*<http://subscription.newscientist.com/bundles/bundles.php?promCode=6458&packageCodes=PTA&offerCode=Q> >> >> Video: Group genius: Why fish are smarter in >> swarms<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vIRxUIs7N0> >> >> *When animals swarm they exhibit a complex collective intelligence that >> could help us build robots, heal wounds and understand the brain* >> >> IAIN COUZIN does not have fond memories of field research. Early in his >> career, he travelled to Mauritania in north-west Africa to follow a swarm >> of locusts. Devastation caused by the insects meant no one was selling food >> and the team was forced to live off dried camel entrails. Couzin, a >> vegetarian at the time, was violently ill. "I was hallucinating - I thought >> I was going to die." By the time he recovered, a huge sand storm had blown >> in. The researchers were trapped in their tents for several days and when, >> eventually, they emerged, the locusts had gone, blown away by the storm. "I >> was out there for two months and I got absolutely no usable data," he says. >> "It was the worst experience of my life." >> >> Fieldwork can be difficult at the best of times, and it would appear that >> Couzin, >> who is at Princeton University, <http://icouzin.princeton.edu/> is not >> the only swarm scientist averse to it. One of the tricky things is how to >> study the interactions between animals when their numbers are so huge. So >> researchers have generally stayed indoors with their computer models. >> However, these are only as good as the information you put into them, and >> often they have not proved terribly enlightening. You can recreate >> swarm-like behaviour without really understanding why it exists. Now, >> though, researchers are starting to see swarms as living entities with >> senses, motivations and evolved behaviour. From this new view is coming a >> much better understanding of how animals act collectively. >> >> This does not simply tell us about flocking birds, shoaling fish, >> swarming locusts, and the like. It has implications for how we understand >> all sorts of collective action. There is a limit to what a single organism >> can compute, but the combined information-processing power of a swarm is >> more than the sum of its parts. Applying this concept to other complex >> systems provides insights in all sorts of areas, from fighting disease to >> building robot swarms. It might even provide a way of thinking about the >> human brain. >> >> Perfect swarm *(Image: Viola Ago)* >> >> For a long time, the standard approach to studying synchronised movement >> was to model the animals concerned as "self-propelled particles" following >> a few simple rules, such as "keep a body length away from your nearest >> neighbours" and "match the speed and orientation of the organism in front". >> This physics-led approach, which treats animals as mindless objects, is >> almost certainly too simplistic - a point that was brought home to Couzin a >> few years ago. >> >> In an attempt to understand how locust swarms march together across an >> area of land, he and his colleagues had built a model which represented the >> insects as a collection of particles, rather like the atoms in a gas. To >> coordinate movement and prevent collisions, each "particle" simply had to >> adjust its speed and direction in response to the speed, proximity and >> direction of its neighbours. The team's findings were published in >> *Science* in >> 2006<http://icouzin.princeton.edu/wp-content/uploads/file/PDFs/Buhl%20et%20al,%202006.pdf>. >> Only later did they discover the flaw in their model. Watching real locusts >> in the lab, they were surprised to find fewer at the end of their >> experiments than at the start. Far from avoiding collision, they were >> exterminating one another as they marched. "We discovered by chance that >> the swarm is driven by cannibalism. Everyone is trying to eat everyone else >> while avoiding being eaten," says Couzin. "That was a real wake-up call." >> >> Since then, Couzin and his collaborators have seen swarming in a >> different light. "This isn't just about physics," he says. "These are >> biological organisms: they're responding to sensory information." >> Understanding this makes studying swarms more challenging because you need >> to consider the capabilities and motivations of their members. But with the >> help of new technology, this is exactly what Couzin and others are doing >> and, in the process, overturning some preconceived ideas about swarms. >> Info in flow >> >> Take shoaling fish. Olav Handegard, who works in Couzin's lab and also at >> the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, is using sonar imaging >> to reveal what is going on in the murky waters of Louisiana's estuaries >> when shoals of Gulf menhaden come under attack from spotted sea trout. Like >> many schooling fish, they split up into smaller pods, which according to >> received wisdom is a way of evading predators. Not so. Handegard has >> found that this is what the trout are aiming for: they do their best to >> break up the menhaden >> shoal<http://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822%2812%2900470-8>because >> it is easier to take a fish from a smaller group. For the menhaden, >> the intact shoal is the best place to be because news of a predator's >> presence reaches them more rapidly in a large shoal. Each fish reacts to >> the movements of its nearest neighbours to create a "wave of turning" that >> propagates 15 times as fast as a fish can swim, and faster than the >> predator too. The more eyes there are to spot danger and the more >> neighbours' movements there are to follow, the better the information flow. >> >> To find out more, Christos Ioannou, who splits his time between the >> University of Bristol, UK, and Couzin's lab, created a virtual reality >> for >> sunfish<http://icouzin.princeton.edu/predatory-fish-select-for-coordinated-collective-motion-in-virtual-prey/>. >> He simulated the shoals these predatory fish pursue by projecting white >> dots in various patterns onto a screen inside the sunfish's tank. He found >> that when all the dots stayed together and moved in the same direction, the >> sunfish left them alone. The approach reveals how a predator's behaviour >> influences the social interactions of its prey, and the benefit of thinking >> about coordinated collective motion as an evolved process. >> >> Couzin and colleagues are finding it fruitful to consider swarms as >> groups of sensory beings rather than rule-following data points. Other >> researchers have highlighted another flaw in swarming models. Modellers >> often assume that each member of a swarm has an equal say in determining >> the motion of the group - that you can model them as identical particles >> working together. Research on homing pigeons reveals this is not >> necessarily the case. A team led by Tamas Vicsek at Eötvös University in >> Budapest, Hungary, used GPS to track the interactions between birds in a >> flock. "To our amazement, it turned out that there is a set of delicate >> leader-follower relationships," he says. What's more, these were not the >> same hierarchies as existed back in the loft (*PNAS*, vol 110, p >> 13049<http://www.pnas.org/content/110/32/13049>). >> And pigeons are not the only animals that have complex relationships >> between group members: herring take up different positions in a school >> depending on their reproductive >> state<http://www.gulfofmaine-census.org/wp-content/docs/Makris_et_al_Science_2009.pdf>; >> female zebras with young play a disproportionate role in decisions about >> herd movements; and cattle have a pecking order of >> influence<http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2010.01.019> >> . >> >> The presence of leaders and followers may be a strength when it comes to >> making a collective decision (see "We all vote >> together<http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129540.800-mind-meld-the-genius-of-swarm-thinking.html?full=true#bx295408B1>") >> but it also makes research more difficult. Vicsek and others use high-tech >> devices including miniature GPS trackers and real-time video taken from >> unmanned aerial vehicles. "To find out what animals perceive and how they >> react, one needs detailed information about their trajectories, orientation >> and so on," he says. >> >> This is also exactly the sort of information Couzin and his colleagues >> are collecting. They developed computer models that map the posture of >> individual fish 200 times per second, with each frame reconstructing the >> precise field of view of each fish in the shoal. Then they projected >> different types of habitat onto the bottom of a fish tank to create a >> virtual dappled stream where a real shoal of freshwater golden shiner fish >> could swim through areas of light and dark. "For the first time, we have >> been able to see the world from the organism's perspective," he says. What >> they observed was intriguing. >> >> Fish shoals tend to stick to darker waters where they are less visible to >> predators, and golden shiners are no exception. This suggests that >> individual fish see where the water becomes darker and follow that >> "gradient" to safety. "It turns out the animals are doing something much >> simpler and much more elegant," says Couzin. Rather than an ability to >> detect darkness and move towards it, the researchers found a link between >> light intensity and speed of movement: the brighter the light hitting a >> fish's retina, the faster it moved. This simple response is all that is >> needed to guide the shoal to safety and encourage it to stay there. What's >> more, the bigger the shoal, the more efficient the fish are at finding and >> staying in darker waters. >> >> As well as revealing the true nature of fish perception, this shows they >> have a collective intelligence, Couzin says (*Current Biology*, vol 23, >> R709 <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24028946>). Each fish is a >> rather dumb sensor, but when networked together they can generate >> intelligent responses to changing environments that outstrip their >> individual capabilities. The findings that a mass of basic sensors can >> exhibit complex "emergent" behaviours has implications in other areas. For >> example, in robotics it could radically simplify the task of programming a >> network of roaming sensors because each would need only relatively simple >> sensing abilities but working together they could achieve complex tasks. >> Now Couzin is working with roboticists at the Georgia Institute of >> Technology in Atlanta to exploit the benefits of collective cognition to >> create robotic swarms designed to monitor such things as atmospheric carbon >> dioxide levels, algal blooms and ocean temperatures. With minimal >> electronics and programming, the swarms of simple sensors could trace out >> and highlight areas of maximum concentration, helping researchers identify >> the sources of pollution and other environmental problems. >> >> There are numerous potential applications in medicine too, where systems >> that look complex might in fact be exhibiting simple swarm-like behaviour, >> making them easier to understand and manipulate. Take the cells involved in >> wound healing. If you put a bunch of them in a Petri dish they will start >> moving around following certain programmed rules. However, as far as we >> know, individual cells are unable to sense the chemical and electric field >> gradients necessary to coordinate the repair processes in a body, says >> Couzin. He suspects that cells involved in wound healing may have similar >> evolutionary programming to shoaling fish - simple rules that allow the >> group to get a complex job done. If so, we may be able to harness that >> emergent property and provide optimal healing conditions. >> >> Then there is embryo formation. "The process of segregation of cells into >> structures - an essential part of embryogenesis - is very much influenced >> and enhanced by flocking behaviours," says Vicsek. Tumours also contain >> flocking cells, as do the self-organising cellular troops of the immune >> system. >> Complexity simplified >> >> "These are collective decision-making systems," says Couzin. They have >> always looked fearsomely complex but maybe they follow rules that are much >> simpler than we have suspected. By observing the individual behaviour of >> these swarming cells we may be able to discover those rules, giving us new >> ways to intervene. >> >> Taking the idea even further, Couzin contends that neurons act like >> swarming animals. The brain is the very definition of complexity: it >> contains about 86 billion neurons, all interconnected by physical, chemical >> and electrical channels. Couzin and his colleagues wonder whether each >> might act as a simple sensor which, when networked, generates complex >> emergent behaviour. "We're interested in how they integrate local >> information from those around them, and how that gets encoded," he says. >> This might, he suggests, be a key to understanding how consciousness >> emerges. Perhaps it is collective information processing, analogous to the >> way groups of fish detect light gradients that a single fish cannot >> perceive. >> >> Swarm dynamics might also inform our understanding of specific mental >> processes, such as memory and recognition. Collections of neurons seem to >> fire in sync to create a memory or carry out a pattern-recognition task, >> notes Couzin. This is analogous to what happens when a swarm of ants >> performs a sudden synchronised activity. He sees each ant as a simple, >> mobile neural network and the swarm as a parallel information-processing >> system producing complex behaviour, just as happens in the brain. "There >> are many important analogues," he says. >> >> Understanding swarms better should also benefit the animals within them. >> For example, offshore construction projects such as wind farms affect >> shoaling fish and dolphin schools. "The disturbance changes the way schools >> split and recombine, and these group sizes have an effect on feeding and >> reproductive success," says David Lusseau of the University of Aberdeen, >> UK, who is advising the Scottish government on the issue. Fish shoal sizes >> are also predicted to become smaller as global temperatures rise. That's >> because warmer seas contain less dissolved oxygen, so fish at the front of >> a shoal are more likely to deplete the water of oxygen for those behind. >> "Our activities affect their survival," says Lusseau. >> >> We still have much to learn. But there is huge potential in thinking of >> swarms as groups of living entities whose collective intelligence outstrips >> their individual capabilities. That's why Couzin is keen to get away from >> the simple models and get everyone thinking about the individuals within >> swarms as sensory beings rather than mere pixels. "The real world always >> has surprises, and is much more fascinating than any of the models," he >> says. If that means doing more fieldwork, then so be it. Next time, though, >> he'll be taking packed lunches. >> >> *This article appeared in print under the headline "Perfect swarm"* >> We all vote together >> >> We tend to think of swarms as mindless moving masses, not the kind of >> thoughtful groups that humans form. But humans often behave like a swarm, >> particularly when it comes to collective decision-making. >> >> During election campaigns, people often believe that sufficiently >> outspoken minority groups have the power to sway the results. That's >> unlikely, say Iain Couzin and his team at Princeton University. Their >> models of voter swarms show that the minority influence, however strong, >> gets diluted to the point where the group goes with the majority decision - >> provided the electorate contains enough uninformed and undecided voters who >> simply copy their neighbours (*Science*, vol 334, p >> 1578<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6062/1578.abstract>). >> For better or worse, ignorance plays a significant role in the way >> democracies operate. >> >> *Michael Brooks is a consultant for New Scientist* >> >> >> On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 7:41 PM, Alicia Juarrero < >> aliciajuarr...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Perfect Swarm by Michael Brooks. Re emergent properties of the collective >>> New Scientist website doesn't let me read(ergo can't send you) full >>> article online even though I'm a subscriber and I"ve linked my online >>> account with my subscription. >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> Alicia Juarrero >>> Visiting Scholar, >>> Philosophy Department University of Miami (FL) >>> Professor of Philosophy emerita >>> Prince George's Community College (MD) >>> www.aliciajuarrero.com >>> >> >> >> >> -- >> >> >> Michael Lissack >> >> >> >> >> 2338 Immokalee Rd #292, Naples FL 34110 239-254-9648 >> http://isce.edu >> http://lissack.com >> >> Please try http://epi-search.com <http://epi-search.com> >> >> Michael is the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of >> Coherence and Emergence and ISCE Professor of Meaning in Organizations >> >> If this is real estate related please note Michael conducts his real >> estate activities through Michael R. Lissack PLLC (disclosure required by >> law) see http://search4naples.com >> >> >> "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. .. >> Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it >> takes to sit down and listen. " >> (Winston Churchill) >> > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >
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