Please distribute to others who may be interested...
You are hereby invited to the two opening
seminars (both next week) of our sixth
interdisciplinary
<http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108>series on
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition (ECCO):
Tuesday, Sep. 22:
Carlos Gershenson:
Self-organizing urban transportation systems
Thursday, Sep. 24:
Hector Zenil:
Is algorithmic the nature of Nature?
Both from 2-4 pm.
Place:
Room B 0.036 (building B, level 0, close to the
human sciences computer rooms), on the
<http://www.vub.ac.be/english/infoabout/campuses/index.html>VUB
Campus Etterbeek (Brussels, Belgium), in
collaboration with MOSI. Coffee and drinks are
available. Free entrance: everybody welcome!
Abstracts:
Self-organizing urban transportation systems
<http://turing.iimas.unam.mx/~cgg/>Carlos Gershenson
(Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México & Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009, 2pm
Urban transportation is a complex phenomenon.
Since many agents are interacting in parallel, it
is difficult to predict the future state of a
transportation system. Because of this,
optimization techniques tend to give obsolete
solutions, as the problem changes before it can
be optimized. An alternative lies in seeking
adaptive solutions. This adaptation can be
achieved with self-organization. In a
self-organizing transportation system, the
elements of the system follow local rules to
achieve a global solution. Like this, when the
problem changes the system can adapt by itself to
the new configuration.
In this talk, I will review recent, current, and
future work on self-organizing transportation
systems. Self-organizing traffic lights have
proven to improve traffic flow considerably over
traditional methods. In public transportation
systems, simple rules are being explored to
prevent the "equal headway instability"
phenomenon. The methods we have used can be also
applied to other urban transportation systems and
their generality will be discussed.
Is algorithmic the nature of Nature?
<http://www.mathrix.org/zenil/>Hector Zenil
(University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne)
Thursday, Sep. 24, 2 pm
We propose a test based on the theory of
algorithmic complexity and an experimental
evaluation of Levin's universal distribution to
identify evidence in support of or in
contravention of the claim that the world is
algorithmic in nature. To this end statistical
comparisons are undertaken of the frequency
distributions of data from physical
sources--repositories of information such as
images, data stored in a hard drive, computer
programs and DNA sequences--and the output
frequency distributions generated by purely
algorithmic means--by running abstract computing
devices such as Turing machines, cellular
automata and Post Tag systems. Statistical
correlations were found and their significance
measured.
Upcoming Seminars
1 Oct.
Wilfried Elmenreich (University of Klagenfurt):
Robustness of Self-organizing Systems
Christian Bettstetter (University of Klagenfurt):
Synchronization and Dissemination in Self-Organizing Communication Networks
8 Oct.
Jean-Paul Delahaye (Université des Sciences et Technologies de Lille):
Complexité de Kolmogorov et profondeur logique de Bennett
15 Oct.
Francis Heylighen (VUB):
Life is an adventure! An evolutionary-cybernetic
unification of narrative and scientific worldviews
22 Oct.
Clément Vidal (VUB):
Metaphilosophical criteria for worldview comparison
29 Oct.
Jon Echanove (EASE):
Leadership and human experience
5 Nov.
David R. Weinbaum (Tel Aviv Univ.):
title to be announced
12 Nov.
Petter Braathen (Memetix, Oslo):
How do social systems relate to paradox?
More info about the ECCO seminar program: http://ecco.vub.ac.be/?q=node/108
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
