Group items tagged

Science standards now feature Systems and System Models as a crosscutting concept. This collection will show you how students at all grade levels can better understand the systems in their environment and how you can use systems literacy tools to work with your students in science and in other domains.

Systems thinking The fact that ecological sustainability is a property of a web of relationships means that in order to understand it properly, in order to become ecologically literate, we need to learn how to think in terms of relationships, in terms of interconnections, patterns, context. In science, this type of thinking is known as systemic thinking or "systems thinking." It is crucial for understanding ecology, because ecology - derived from the Greek word oikos ("household") - is the science of relationships among the various members of the Earth Household.

This site is designed for people interested in complex systems and complex dynamical processes. Complexity Explorables hosts different collections of interactive illustrations of models for complex systems in physics, mathematics, biology, chemistry, social sciences, neuroscience, epidemiology, network science and ecology. Topics include pattern formation, synchronization, critical phenomena, chaotic dynamics, evolutionary dynamics, fractals, collective behavior, reaction-diffusion systems and more.

This eTextbook contains the system-scientific contents taught at the Institute of Systems Sciences, Innovation and Sustainability Research (SIS) at the University of Graz

During the last three decades, a new conception of life has emerged at the forefront of science. It is a unified view that integrates life's biological, cognitive, social and ecological dimensions. At the very core of this new understanding of life we find a profound change of metaphors: from seeing the world as a machine to understanding it as a network. This new science of life is now being developed by outstanding researchers and their teams around the world. I have integrated their concepts and ideas into a single coherent framework - a unique synthesis, which I will teach for the first time in this online course.

"Modeling to Learn is a national quality improvement initiative in the Veterans Health Administration (VA). Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and VA Health Services Research and Development (HSRD), scientific study of Modeling to Learn is underway to determine its effectiveness increasing delivery of evidence-based addiction and mental health care (NIDA R01DA046651 and R21DA042198 ; HSRD I01HX002521; PI: Zimmerman ). Modeling to Learn supports multidisciplinary teams of frontline psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses and certified peer support specialists in VA. This demonstration website supports the research effort by providing a simulation demonstration to implementation science and quality improvement researchers, and to patient, provider and policy-maker stakeholders across VA, or other integrated addiction and mental health care systems."

Like ecosystems, financial markets are complex evolving systems from which unexpected bubbles, crashes, and other surprising behaviors can emerge. Building resilient financial systems may require policymakers to take cues from biology.

Despite its remarkable achievements during the 20th century, the economic system of the past cannot continue into the future without a fundamental transformation. The science is irrefutable. The exponential growth of compound investment returns and, by extension, the exponential growth of the economy's material throughput demanded by the financial system, has positioned our global economy on a collision course with the finite physical boundaries of the biosphere. At the same time, this relentless and narrow pursuit of exponential growth of returns on invested capital, without reference to universally acknowledged moral and ethical values, is contributing to an ever-widening and destabilizing wealth gap, and security crises around the globe.

The Santa Fe Institute is a nonprofit, independent research center that leads global research in complexity science. SFI scientists seek the shared patterns and regularities across physical, biological, social, and technological systems that give rise to complexity-in any system in which its collective, system-wide behaviors cannot be understood merely by studying its parts or individuals in isolation. Insights from complexity science are increasingly useful in understanding questions far beyond the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines-urban sustainability, disease networks, and financial risk, to name a few.

Matt Powers is an author, educator, seed saver, gardener, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the entire K-12 education system through the collegiate system as well as the economy such that it aligns with regenerative science, natural principles, and permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, & Future Care. Matt, a former public high school teacher with a Masters degree in Education, is the author of the first government accredited permaculture curriculum in North America (fully cited, peer-reviewed, & aligned to national standards), and his work continues to spread in schools, colleges, and universities globally with over a dozen books in 6 languages and 9 online courses.

We are committed to facilitating public understanding. We've developed several ways that you can learn systems thinking, mapping, and leadership from the very best research in the field.

The Complexity Explorer site provides online courses and other educational materials related to complex systems science. The Complexity Explorer project is being developed by the Santa Fe Institute and is funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation and by user donations.

The Center for Applied Cultural Evolution was created to help communities guide their own social change efforts using integrated social science tools and frameworks. Our mission is to launch a series of Culture Design Labs around systemic challenges ranging from poverty and inequality to climate change and more.

The Center for Applied Cultural Evolution was created to help communities guide their own social change efforts using integrated social science tools and frameworks. Our mission is to launch a series of Culture Design Labs around systemic challenges ranging from poverty and inequality to climate change and more.

Information technology is revolutionizing the classroom and driving down the costs of producing first-rate educational materials. Many universities are putting their classes online for free, so that anyone in the world can learn physics, math, or economics from world-class faculty. At Stanford University this fall, two computer-science professors put their courses online for students anywhere in the world; now they have an enrollment of 58,000.

The same breakthroughs now possible in education can occur in health care. The US health-care system is notoriously expensive, partly because many of the key costs are controlled by the American Medical Association and private-sector health-insurance companies, which act like monopolists, driving up costs. Such monopoly pricing should be ended.

The Los Angeles Regional Collaborative for Climate Action and Sustainability (LARC) is a network of local and regional decision-makers ensuring a sustainable Los Angeles County prepared for the impacts of climate change. It is one of seven regional collaboratives in California supporting climate change science, policy and planning efforts across sectors. LARC's climate mitigation and adaptation work is driven by cutting edge research on local climate impacts and information management systems. As LA's sole climate collaborative, LARC's network includes climate practitioners from city and county government, regional agencies, non-profits, businesses, and academia. 

Everyone knows about the big global challenges like economic instability, loss of nature, poverty, waste, conflict and climate disruption. Even after decades of efforts these monstrous problems are not being tackled so much as tickled! Many of these problems are getting out of hand yet even now the possibility of rapidly reversing all of them is within our grasp. This goal looks unrealistic to many people, given the struggle for meaningful change so far. Yet this is the key; the scale of our ambitions must match the scale of the problems as a whole. This is society's blindspot - see this and civilisation gets the chance to go on. This article is the introduction to an 'advanced research workshop' paper, Seven Policy Switches for Global Security, for the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme

GANE brings together 1000s of experts, decision-makers, and citizens across the world to synthesize new economics knowledge from science and practice, to drive policy, business, and social action.

A bibliographical genealogy of cybernetics in the United States, France, Soviet Union, and Germany in the 1940s and 1950s, followed by a selected bibliography on its impact across the sciences.

An interactive map of the evolutionary relationships between 2,123,179 species of life on our planet. Each leaf on the tree represents a species and the branches show how they are connected through evolution. Discover your favourites, see which species are under threat, and wonder at 105,223 images on a single page.