Research Items

biological pattern formation

The genetics of an organism define only specific proteins and a control flow on them. Yet this suffices to determine the form and function of an entire organism, owing to the richness of reaction-diffusion dynamics in the developing embryo.

• Survey of selected topics in, pending cleanup. References available in the meantime.
• Related computational tools:
  • Shape metrics, e.g. modified Hausdorff distance.
  • Swarm optimization, i.e. agent-based shortest-path finding.

emergence in population ecology

We see also surprisingly rich dynamics in biological populations, which persist only under certain constraints (which, of course, most extant communities satisfy).

• Draft of a paper in which oscillations in a predator-prey system are stabilized by diffusion.
  • WIP: Compare agent-based model to a discrete-population, stochastic-rate model.
• WIP: Quantification of stochastic (environmental) effects on species isoclines & steady states.

emergence in cliodynamics

That which applies to populations of other species applies also to humans, with the added complication of a very rapid and flexible process of memetic evolution.

• Simulation of models from cliodynamics / quantitative history, e.g. of cultural speciation.

cognition & 'learning'

Just as the unit of biologically transmissible information is the gene (existing in a context of promoters, inhibitors, etc.), so the unit of socially transmissible information is termed the meme (existing in a context of norms, technology, etc.).

• Spatial effects in a network of agents possessing argumentation logic and arguing with each other.
• Narratives as the unit of experience; parsing, generation of.
  • Given content-words, procedurally generate sentences via SLR parser.

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