2011 Complexity and Modeling Program Project Page

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David Black / Dan Damlin Leaf Morphology and Evolution Data

Leaf Morphology

Ben's Final Project: My NetLogo model is intended to demonstrate the effects of factory emissions on the health of the neighboring population. If a certain factory increases their emissions of harmful gases by a specific percentage, what is the effect on the expected lifespan of nearby inhabitants? If a large number of trees in the area are harvested, what will the decrease in carbon absorption do to the atmosphere in the vicinity? I hope to answer this question, along with potential climate-changing effects of the emissions, with my model.

Nico's Final Project: My final project will be based on the squirrel ecology lab. Squirrels will search for food but tend to remain in a certain perimeter around their tree. This is because: 1. The chance of predation increases as you get out into the open. 2. Food closer to the tree comes with a competition factor. 3. It takes energy to cross the distance to food. As a Netlogo model, this experiment will include these three factors. Depending on the hunger of the squirrel what food source will pose less of an overall cost? I will answer this question by using code from the ant experiment. When the squirrel gets the food, it needs to take it back to the tree to eat it, and when it does it will gain energy. If the squirrel doesn’t get food before its energy drops to zero, it will die. I will also include a predator that will kill the squirrel if it gets too far away from the tree.

Ken's Final Project: I would like to model my final project on a popular sci-fi theme, “Humans Vs Aliens”. In the model, I’ll have humans and aliens fight it out to answer the very basic question of “who will win?” I’ll set up different variables, such as attack power, initial population, reproduction rate, etc, to see different situations. Hopefully, through different combination of variables, I’ll see some interesting results in who wins and who loses under certain circumstances.

Tohanh's Final Project:

Since we're living in a melting pot where people are from all over the world, I think it would be beneficial to go deeper into people's behavior. Thus, my project will concentrate on people of different races and their "home-location" preference. This project is mainly inspired by the model "Ethnocentrism," whose idea is to have agents treat agents within their group more beneficially than those outside their group. The model will involve the Prisoner Dilemma's interaction, which means agents will gain or lose energy depends on their cooperation with others. There will be a death-rate to control the population.

The model has four types of agents:

1/ one that only settle next to agents of their trait

2/ one that only settle next to agents that doesn't belong to their trait

3/ one that settle next to any agent

4/ one that do not settle next to anyone.

From these distinct behaviors, the model will ideally generate interesting behavior within agents. Which type of behavior will get agents to expand their trait? Which behavior would make it difficult for agents to settle down? Is there any relation between the model's observation and real life behavior? My goal is to have the (partial) answers for those questions by this Friday through this project.