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Dario - perhaps worth giving a look to be up-to-date... There's even an article "Improving Classical and Decentralized Differential Evolution with New Mutation Operator and Population Topologies". They quote our CEC paper, but not the ParCo.

Isn't it a bit a paper-killing quote?

:) It's in the context of a review of the work that's been done about DE with island model in general, they don't evaluate. Pity they didn't refer to the ParCo article on topologies, as it was a bit more extensive and more focused on the method (as they do in the article) rather than on the problem (as was our CEC paper, if I recall well).

like the profiles ... "The clearest evidence for the pulsar's existence was provided by computers operated by two volunteers: Vitaly Shiryaev, a Russian researcher who has a Ph.D. in radio physics; and Stacey Eastham, who does vehicle testing for the British government in Darwen. In his profile, Eastham says he's studying astronomy and physics on the side. He got involved in the Einstein @ Home project because he's interested in "anything space-like, and being able to be part of something like this is right up my street."

true?

I think what these studies show (assuming that data and analysis are correct) is the fact that there is something fundamentally wrong about all this dark matter, dark energy dark whatever stuff. From this point of view I would say: nice result, go ahead!!

here's something we didn't consider yesterday in the meeting on extra-solar planets!

this is because you did not read the nature paper I have posted (see post a few lines below ...)

May be an interesting reading for those who add auxiliary on-line materials to their publications. This reminds me... results of my topology study aren't on-line yet :-)

A critical view on Prof. Markram's Blue Brain project (in German).

As far as I know it's sort of like "Let's construct an enormous dynamical system and see what happens"... i.e. a waste of taxpayer's money... Able to heal Alzheimer... Yeah... Actually I was on the conference the author is mentioning (FET 2011) and I have seen the presentations of all 6 flagship proposals. Following that I had a discussion with one of my colleagues about the existence of limits of the amount of bullshit politicians are willing to buy from scientists. Will there be a point at which politicians, despite their total ignorance, will realise that scientists simply don't deliver anything they promise? How long will we (scientists) be stuck in the viscous circle of have-to-promise-more-than-predecessors in order to get money? Will we face a situation when we'll be forced to revert to promises which are realistic? To be honest none of the 6 presentations convinced me of their scientific merit (apart from the one on graphene where I have absolutely no expertise to tell). Apparently a huge amount of money is about to be wasted.

It's not just "Let's construct an enormous dynamical system and see what happens", it's worse! Also the simulation of the cosmological evolution is/was a little bit of this type, still the results are very interesting and useful. Why? Neither the whole cosmos nor the human brain at the level of single neurons can be modelled on a computer, that would last aeons on a "yet-to-be-invented-extra-super-computer". Thus one has to make assumptions and simplifications. In cosmology we have working theories of gravitation, thermodynamics, electrodynamics etc. at hand; starting from these theories we can make reasonable assumptions and (more or less) justified simplifications. The result is valuable since it provides insight into a complex system under given, explicit and understood assumptions. Nothing similar seems to exist in neuroscience. There is no theory of the human brain and apparently nobody has the slightest idea which simplifications can be made without harm. Of course, Mr. Markram remains completely unaffected of ''details'' like this. Finally, Marek, money is not wasted, we ''build networks of excellence'' and ''select the brightest of the brightest'' to make them study and work at our ''elite institutions'' :-). I lively remember the stage of one of these "bestofthebest" from Ivy League at the ACT...

Another great presentation at this conference!! Plus I always wanted to enter the numerical computations of orbit around black holes.... with Luzi we had a project on formation flying around black holes .... revolutionary idea (of course we did not do it!!!)

nice movie, and song :) we should definitely implement GR orbits in pagmo !

I agree Marek, yet was it practical for Apollonio to study conic sections more than 1500 years before Kepler found his three laws? And here is a good paper to start with: http://prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v77/i10/e103005, making an analogy between the periodic table and the taxomony of all orbits around a black hole.

"Computer simulations of tiny robots with rudimentary nervous systems show that, over hundreds of generations, these virtual machines evolve altruistic behaviors"

I have lost track of all the artificial life/evolutionary computing studies showing the evolution of cooperation/altruism. I don't understand why all the big fuss about this latest one.

Sounds too super to be true, no?

> Sounds too super to be true, no? Yeah, how else may it sound, being a combination of hi-quality (I assume) research targeted at attracting funding, raised to the power of Science Daily's pop-pseudo-scientific journalists' bu****it? Original article starts with a cool sentence too: > The ultimate proof of our understanding of natural or technological systems is reflected in our ability to control them. ...a good starting point for a never-ending philosophers' debate... Now seriously, because of a big name behind the study, I'm very curious to read the original article. Although I expect the conclusion to be that in practical cases (i.e. the cases of "networks" you *would like to* "control"), you need to control all nodes or something equally impractical...

then I am looking forward to reading your conclusions here after you will have actually read the paper

One more nice citizen scientist example as I try to find for space since some time. Any good ideas this mit inspire you to?

why don't you programme one and get rich?

Would love to but this requires *TIME* :-( Automatic image-based mushroom recognition... perhaps could do as a FP7 study... it may save lives actually!

Microsoft "Gets the facts".

wow ... nice project ... and very simple indeed!

sweet! That's a convincing biomimetic study :) Especially when it falls and survives...

nice and good work, as usual from this lab. however, biomimetic is only the name, as usual from this lab.

I especially like " The program will also create a "developer's kit" of open hardware and software specifications to make it easier for new components to integrate into such fractionated systems." Joris: wanna take the lead on having a closer look on this, I definitely would like to be part of it and happy to contribute, possibly also Juxi? - first assessment by Christmas realistic?

I think it a very interesting approach. If you google "darpa F6", you should see that a lot seems to be on-going. So, should we do something about it before having the conclusions of the Darpa study ?

wait and see is never a good approach in these cases .... first step has to be anyway to understand what they are up to and then to think about our own ideas on it, own approaches, alternatives and then to see what we can do specifically in the team on it.

policy statement regarding research on geoengineerin in the US (in force from July 2009-July 2012)

looking forward to your recommendations how we can get into it quickly :-)

What if heuristic algorithms (PSO, DE, ...) do not actually simulate flocking birds or school gish beahviour ?!

looking a bit back to small world nets bibliography I bumped into that. quote: The probability that a Brazilian soccer player has worked at $N$ clubs or played $M$ games shows an exponential decay while the probability that he has scored $G$ goals is power law. (!)