The World as Evolving Information

This paper discusses the benefits of describing the world as information, especially in the study of the evolution of life and cognition. Traditional studies encounter problems because it is difficult to describe life and cognition in terms of matter and energy, since their laws are valid only at the physical scale. However, if matter and energy, as well as life and cognition, are described in terms of information, evolution can be described consistently as information becoming more complex. The paper presents five tentative laws of information, valid at multiple scales, which are generalizations of Darwinian, cybernetic, thermodynamic, and complexity principles. These are further used to discuss the notions of life and cognition and their evolution

Transforming Science into Practice

The space for action that might move agricultural systems toward sustainability is narrowing. In so far as increasing dis-order in agroecosystems and food systems is caused by human agency, then remedial action must take account of cognition. This article argues that an understanding of cognitive processes is essential, as the foundation for participatory R, D & E that builds platforms of cooperation, binding actors into communities of learning that are trasnforming both science and practice

Complexity and creative capacity : reformulating the problem of knowledge transfer in environmental management

The Ningaloo Reef is Australia’s largest fringing coral reef and an iconic tourist destination; however tourism development in Ningaloo has been ad hoc and the area is challenged by human pressure on numerous fronts. In response to these challenges a number of research agencies brought together a range of scientists to study the effects of human interaction on the reef. Moving from research to practice has been understood to depend on the adaptive capacity of the institutions responsible for governing human activities, in this case in the Ningaloo area. Knowledge transfer describes the suite of strategies used to try to bridge the gap between research and management. Knowledge transfer efforts, however, seldom have the desired impact of seeing research applied to decision-making. The ubiquity of knowledge transfer difficulties across disciplines suggests a common root to the problem, based in our shared cultural assumptions. This study pairs a multidisciplinary theoretical investigation with action research to shed light on why knowledge transfer efforts so often fall short in terms of seeing research applied to practice. Recent environmental management perspectives on knowledge transfer illustrate the shift towards stakeholder participation as a means of improving knowledge transfer success. As such, the action research study involved the researcher embedding herself in the Ningaloo community for 18 months, adopting the role of a knowledge broker and engaging and collaborating with modelling researchers and local stakeholders on knowledge transfer efforts. However, despite intensive stakeholder engagement, evaluation interviews at the end of the process indicated that although the knowledge transfer process had the effect of catalysing relationships between stakeholder groups in the region, and between regional stakeholders and scientists, it appeared to have relatively little effect on the representational knowledge of local stakeholders or the actual application of research in practice. This led to the question of whether knowledge transfer is itself is part of the research uptake problem, as per the principles of problem formulation, which specify that resolving seemingly intractable problems requires examining the assumptions that underpin our thinking about the problem situation. On this basis, the theoretical component of this study explored the Newtonian assumptions that inform our understanding of knowledge transfer. An alternative complexity-based ontology is proposed, unifying the metaphysics of materialism and idealism, based on a synthesis of process philosophy, mathematical logic, quantum theory, general systems theory and the complexity sciences. The phenomena of cognition, learning, knowledge and organising are compared in relation to how they’ve been understood within the Newtonian paradigm, and how they are now being explained from the perspective of a complexity-based paradigm. By reframing the action research results from a complexity perspective, the Ningaloo knowledge transfer process does not constitute a failure in terms of enhancing the capacity of the Ningaloo system to make more sustainable decisions. Rather, the increased connectivity between stakeholder groups and scientists can be viewed as more importantly enhancing the creative capacity of Ningaloo’s governance system. It is posited that the research uptake problem should be reformulated from the basis of complexity paradigm, and the notions of knowledge transfer and adaptive capacity reconceptualised accordingly. Instead of devising rational objective arguments for someone else to improve the ‘adaptive capacity’ of human systems, scientists should focus instead on improving their own creative capacity in their local interactions

Complexity Explained

This is the final version. Available on open access at OSF via the DOI in this recordBooklet of the Complexity Explained projec

Modelling and simulating in systems biology: an approach based on multi-agent systems

Systems Biology is an innovative way of doing biology recently raised in bio-informatics contexts, characterised by the study of biological systems as complex systems with a strong focus on the system level and on the interaction dimension. In other words, the objective is to understand biological systems as a whole, putting on the foreground not only the study of the individual parts as standalone parts, but also of their interaction and of the global properties that emerge at the system level by means of the interaction among the parts. This thesis focuses on the adoption of multi-agent systems (MAS) as a suitable paradigm for Systems Biology, for developing models and simulation of complex biological systems. Multi-agent system have been recently introduced in informatics context as a suitabe paradigm for modelling and engineering complex systems. Roughly speaking, a MAS can be conceived as a set of autonomous and interacting entities, called agents, situated in some kind of nvironment, where they fruitfully interact and coordinate so as to obtain a coherent global system behaviour. The claim of this work is that the general properties of MAS make them an effective approach for modelling and building simulations of complex biological systems, following the methodological principles identified by Systems Biology. In particular, the thesis focuses on cell populations as biological systems. In order to support the claim, the thesis introduces and describes (i) a MAS-based model conceived for modelling the dynamics of systems of cells interacting inside cell environment called niches. (ii) a computational tool, developed for implementing the models and executing the simulations. The tool is meant to work as a kind of virtual laboratory, on top of which kinds of virtual experiments can be performed, characterised by the definition and execution of specific models implemented as MASs, so as to support the validation, falsification and improvement of the models through the observation and analysis of the simulations. A hematopoietic stem cell system is taken as reference case study for formulating a specific model and executing virtual experiments

Facilitating Emergence: Complex, Adaptive Systems Theory and the Shape of Change

This study used Principal Component Analysis to examine factors that facilitate emergent change in an organization. As organizational life becomes more complex, today’s dominant management paradigms no longer suffice. This is particularly true in a health care setting where multiple sources of disease interacting with each other meet with often-competing organizational priorities and accountabilities in a highly complex world. This study identifies new ways of approaching complexity by embracing the capacity of complex systems to find their own form of order and coherence. Based on a review of the literature, interviews with hospital CEOs, and my organization development practice experience in the health care sector, I identified nine constructs of interest: a strategic framework; organizational culture; work structures; CEO and executive team; leadership culture; quality control systems; accountability framework; learning structures; and feedback processes. One hundred and sixty-two senior leaders, managers, and staff at a hospital in Toronto, Canada, who had completed an eight-week leadership program, completed an Emergence Survey© based on the nine constructs of interest. The survey included Likert items representing the nine constructs, as well as opportunities to provide narrative feedback. In the initial analysis of the survey results, the items taken as a whole would not converge on a clear set of components. It was also clear that the mean for most of the items was very high. I theorized that the size of the sample and possibility that they were a favorably biased convenience sample because they had self-selected as leaders may have contributed to the lack of convergence and high mean. I then theorized three clusters of constructs, based on what appeared to be natural affinities. At that point I facilitated two focus groups with people who were among the survey group. Both focus groups affirmed the importance of each of the factors in improving organizational performance indicators such as patient satisfaction, staff engagement, and quality. I then completed a principal component analysis of each of the three clusters of constructs. From this analysis, seven components emerged. Five of these, executive engagement, safe-fail culture, collaborative decision-processes, a collaborative quality, and intentional learning processes had reliability \u3e.70; culture of experimentation and purposeful orientation had reliability \u3c .70. The electronic version of this Dissertation is at OhioLink ETD Center, www.ohiolink.edu/et

Intelligent evacuation management systems: A review

Crowd and evacuation management have been active areas of research and study in the recent past. Various developments continue to take place in the process of efficient evacuation of crowds in mass gatherings. This article is intended to provide a review of intelligent evacuation management systems covering the aspects of crowd monitoring, crowd disaster prediction, evacuation modelling, and evacuation path guidelines. Soft computing approaches play a vital role in the design and deployment of intelligent evacuation applications pertaining to crowd control management. While the review deals with video and nonvideo based aspects of crowd monitoring and crowd disaster prediction, evacuation techniques are reviewed via the theme of soft computing, along with a brief review on the evacuation navigation path. We believe that this review will assist researchers in developing reliable automated evacuation systems that will help in ensuring the safety of the evacuees especially during emergency evacuation scenarios