Analyzing and Modeling Real-World Phenomena with Complex Networks: A Survey of Applications

The success of new scientific areas can be assessed by their potential for contributing to new theoretical approaches and in applications to real-world problems. Complex networks have fared extremely well in both of these aspects, with their sound theoretical basis developed over the years and with a variety of applications. In this survey, we analyze the applications of complex networks to real-world problems and data, with emphasis in representation, analysis and modeling, after an introduction to the main concepts and models. A diversity of phenomena are surveyed, which may be classified into no less than 22 areas, providing a clear indication of the impact of the field of complex networks.Comment: 103 pages, 3 figures and 7 tables. A working manuscript, suggestions are welcome

Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928

This thesis examines the history of animated cartoons in Britain between 1880 and 1928, identifying a body of work that has been largely ignored by film and animation historians, covering the production, distribution, and exhibition of these films. Throughout this history, graphic arts - especially print cartooning and illustration - and the music-hall lightning cartoon act are found to have played a formative role in British animated cartoons. The artists who made the first British animated cartoons were almost exclusively drawn from one of those two fields and thus this work may be considered to form a parallel history of ‘artists’ film’. They brought with them to film a range of concerns from those prior forms that would shape British animated cartoons. Examining that context provides an understanding of the ways British animated cartoons developed in technologic, economic, and aesthetic terms. This work includes the first in-depth history of the music-hall lightning cartoon act, which finds that it anticipates cinematic animation, featuring qualities such as transformation, the movement of line drawings, and the desire to bring drawings to life. Building on this history, a new critical framework for examining these films aesthetically is provided, emphasising the role of the spectator and their perceptual processes. This framework draws upon the work of E.H. Gombrich and Sergei Eisenstein, and extends it to include recent findings from neuroscientific fields. The result is an original aesthetic reading of this body of work, which finds the films to have a deep engagement with the basic perceptual processes involved in viewing moving line drawings

Task Allocation in Foraging Robot Swarms:The Role of Information Sharing

Autonomous task allocation is a desirable feature of robot swarms that collect and deliver items in scenarios where congestion, caused by accumulated items or robots, can temporarily interfere with swarm behaviour. In such settings, self-regulation of workforce can prevent unnecessary energy consumption. We explore two types of self-regulation: non-social, where robots become idle upon experiencing congestion, and social, where robots broadcast information about congestion to their team mates in order to socially inhibit foraging. We show that while both types of self-regulation can lead to improved energy efficiency and increase the amount of resource collected, the speed with which information about congestion flows through a swarm affects the scalability of these algorithms

Molecules, Cells and Minds: Aspects of Bioscientific Explanation

In this thesis I examine a number of topics that bear on explanation and understanding in molecular and cell biology, in order to shed new light on explanatory practice in those areas and to find novel angles from which to approach relevant philosophical debates. The topics I look at include mechanism, emergence, cellular complexity, and the informational role of the genome. I develop a perspective that stresses the intimacy of the relations between ontology and epistemology. Whether a phenomenon looks mechanistic, or complex, or indeed emergent, is largely an epistemic matter, yet has an objective basis in features of the world. After reviewing several concepts of mechanism I consider the influential recent account of Machamer, Darden and Craver (MDC). That account makes interesting proposals concerning the relationship between mechanistic explanation and intelligibility, which are consistent with the results of the investigation I undertake into the science surrounding protein folding. In relation to a number of other issues pertaining to biological systems I conclude that the MDC account is insufficiently nuanced, however, leading me to outline an alternative approach to mechanism. This emphasizes the importance of structure—function relations and addresses issues raised by reflection on the nature of cellular complexity. These include the distinction between structure and process and the different possible bases on which system organization may be maintained. The account I give of emergence construes the phenomenon in terms of psychological deficit: phenomena are emergent when we lack the capacity to trace through and model their causal structures using our cognitive schemas. I conclude by developing these ideas into a preliminary and partial account of explanation and understanding. This aspires to cover the significant fraction of work in molecular and cell biology that correlates biological structures, processes and functions by visualizing phenomena and making them imaginable