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" <[email protected]> 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 <[email protected] > > 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) >
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