Complexes

I wonder why Google Scholar has not implemented some metrics of scientific productivity equivalent to the popular ISI impact factor , which is used by most institutions and funding agencies to measure the qualifications of researchers. There are many problems with the impact factor, one of them being that it covers about 10% of published work. Google Scholar has a much broader database (although some of it needs polishing, since data was harvested automatically), and it would be great if they could implement at least some of these 39 measures . Well, scHolar index already does some...

Yesterday was the final day of the World Swimming Championships in Rome . In the 40 swimming events, there were 43 new world records (Records were not set in every event, but in some events they were set several times between prelims, semifinals and finals). This is amazing and unprecedented. Many give credit to the new technology of swimsuits, which give swimmers a greater buoyancy. For this reason FINA is banning these swimsuits from next year, arguing that the swimsuits are helping swimmers as swimming enhancing technology. Some even say that the swimsuits are making a mockery of the sport , being it so easy to break a world record. In one of the finals, a swimmer made a time under the old world record, but was fifth place... Well, let us note that some swimmers, e.g. Phelps, Lochte, Peirsol, were not using the latest technology in swimsuits, and nevertheless they broke world records. It is not only the swimsuits. Also, should the swimsuits be really banned? It is a complicated qu...

Gershenson, C. (2009). Book Review: "Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion". Stuart A. Kauffman. Artificial Life 15 ( 4 ):485-487 Excerpts : One of the main goals of this book is to demonstrate the inadequacy of reductionism in contemporary science. It does not negate its explanatory and predictive powers. It notes its limits, exploring several phenomena that are not predictable due to their complex nature. Thus, Kauffman argues, a shift in science is required if we want to understand these complex phenomena. (...) People might disagree with the answers that Kauffman puts forward. However, in my opinion the greatest contribution of this book, as with Platoʼs works, lies in the questions asked. It points out clearly which problems are currently relevant for science and society, even those that people are not aware of. Different tentative or partial solutions can be debated. However, the most difficult part is to start the discussion, and that i...

Carlos Gershenson and David A. Rosenblueth, "Modeling self-organizing traffic lights with elementary cellular automata", C3 Report No. 2009.06. Abstract : There have been several highway traffic models proposed based on cellular automata. The simplest one is elementary cellular automaton rule 184. We extend this model to city traffic with cellular automata coupled at intersections using only rules 184, 252, and 136. The simplicity of the model offers a clear understanding of the main properties of city traffic and its phase transitions. We use the proposed model to compare two methods for coordinating traffic lights: a green-wave method that tries to optimize phases according to expected flows and a self-organizing method that adapts to the current traffic conditions. The self-organizing method delivers considerable improvements over the green-wave method. For low densities, the self-organizing method promotes the formation and coordination of platoons that flow freel...

I just uploaded to the arXiv a first draft of a short essay " What Does Artificial Life Tell Us About Death ?", you can download it at: http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.2824

After several years living abroad (St. Petersburg, Sussex, Brussels, Granada, Boston), it takes a bit of time to get used to life back in Mexico City. Having some frame of comparison, I realized one way to describe the problem with developing countries such as Mexico: there is a high degree of incompetence . Now, it is difficult to measure incompetence (In TeraBushes?), but to understand better what I mean, let us say that an agent (person, business, organization) is more incompetent if there are more tasks that the agent should perform successfully and it does not. I mean, I am quite incompetent in bureaucratic monotonous tedious labours, but these are not my duty (which some people refer to as "professional handwaving", others as "academia"). All countries and all agents have a certain degree of incompetence: nobody is perfect, there will always be errors, especially with novel tasks. Also, all countries and agents have a large degree of functionality, things tha...

I made a list of potential research projects I would like to explore with colleagues and/or students. You can find it here .