CSSS 2008 Santa Fe-Projects & Working Groups
From Santa Fe Institute Events Wiki
Potential Projects
Antagonistic interspecific interactions
After chatting with several people about host-parasite systems and hearing some of the comments at the icebreaker, I want to see if others are interested in potential projects in this area. As a way of getting some brain storming started, I’ve just typed up some topics (these include ideas I’ve heard from others here at Santa Fe) to see if there is critical mass and an interesting question.
Topics (no particular order)
- Impact of immune system on host-parasite (/pathogen) interaction
- Impact of heterogeneous hosts
- Infectious diseases: epidemic outbreaks vs. endemic steady states
- Direct vs. vector transmission of parasites/pathogens
- Non-genetic transmission of disease resistance
- Effects of pathogen competition on epidemic outbreaks
- Spatial heterogeneity of transmission of parasites
Interested? Please add ideas that you find interesting or would like to explore more (or just your name).
Epidemiology in general. -Ruben
Biological Levels / Phenotypes Discussion
We have a number of folks here either interested in or studying biology at various levels. I am interested in talking about ways in which it makes sense integrate different levels of biological knowledge into a representation of a system. For example, how might microRNA predictions be combined with gene expression networks (or proteomics or SNPs) to lead to a phenotype.
I am also interested in questions of how phenotypes are defined. Within an organ state (e.g., disease or not) for example, a phenotype might be defined as a gene expression pattern, a growth rate, a panel of microsatellite lengths, or functionally by in vivo or ex vivo capabilities to self-renew, etc. If what we are trying to understand is a larger question of disease or functionality, which phenotypes are interesting and useful (and possible!) to use?
I think these questions can be approached from a variety of ways. Off the top of my head, perhaps multi-scaled modeling or examining the system as a multi-level evolutionary system... I'm sure there are many others.
If you are interested, add your name and we can set up a time / place to talk about these and related questions.
Something in Neuroscience
I (Nish) would really like to do some more intensive, deep research in Neuroscience (Computational being my perspective). While I am fascinated by neurological and behavioral diseases, I would be open to any kind of neuroscientific problem. Anyone else?
Asymetric co-evolution in space/time
I would be interested studing dynamic networks that have different rates and/or distributions. You could think of a ecological interaction example of parasites that are distributed by wind and have a lifspan of a few weeks, and plants that are spatially contstraint and have an annual lifespan. Or a social-ecological example of people managing a certain natural resource.
Dirk
Evolving skepticism
I'd like to do anything relating to the introduction of misinformation into a system, but one concrete suggestion is looking at how one might evolve a skeptical response to defend against being "defrauded" (this could be in a social science or biological system).
Abby
if you can't grow Collapse, you haven't explained it
Gared Diamond describes a five point framework for collapse of societies. These points are:
-resilience of the environment to human caused damage
-climate change
-hostile neighbours
-friendly neighbours
-society's response to its problems
My proposal is to test these points in an agent based setup. we could for example use the parameter sweep etc.
If you are interested, add your name and we can set up a time / place to talk about these and related questions.
I am also very interested in this Richard
Could we adapt this and include an urban perspective? Flávia
Everybody needs his physicist. :-) - Ruben
Let's make networks secure
I'm interested in making 'secure' networks with bound resources (like it is normal in reality). This is a very general questions and has many oppurtunities. For example:\\ - I have an epidemic and not enough vaccine - how should be vaccinated, how not?
- Terrorist try to smuggle a bomb into the land of Oz. Which flights between wich airports should be especially watched to minimize this risk?
- How can we try to secure the internet with special anti-virus hubs? Is it possible to stop the epidemic of computer-viruses by special 'antibody' servers?
This just came to my mind and if anybody has other good ideas or wants to comment this - please feel free.
- Ruben
Network Security Concepts Inspired by Biological and Social Systems
Ruben – Was about to post this when I saw your entry. Sounds like we might have some overlap in our ideas…
One area that I am interested in for a project is applying concepts from biological and social systems to the area of computer network security. This is a broad topic and I am hoping to generate some discussion that might lead to a more well-defined research area.
In the biological area, for example, there have been recent developments in Artificial Immune Systems which borrow techniques from the immune system that enable virus detection and elimination in a self-organized and distributed manner. In particular, Stephanie Forest here at SFI has done work in this area. (see http://www.cs.unm.edu/~forrest/ , http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0804/0804.1266.pdf) Other interesting research has been done by John Doyle at Caltech in which he compared the “robust yet fragile” organization structures of computer and biological networks (see pages 96-111 http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~doyle/GENSIPS/GENSIPS.pdf , http://www.cds.caltech.edu/~doyle/CmplxNets/)
In the social science area, I have been thinking about trust relationships and how they could apply to computer network security. Trust relationships are well established in computer networks for public key certificates. However, to my knowledge, there is no way to look at the “trust” of pieces of data in a network. Data is often scanned as it enters a network but is not tracked once it is inside to ensure that it behaves properly. This leaves many networks “hard on the outside, but soft and gooey on the inside.” One idea might be to leverage trust/reference concepts in social networks (e.g., eBay, citation networks, Amazon referrals, social websites, etc.) to construct a framework for “trusting” data throughout its lifetime in a network. For example, the more frequently that a piece of data is used effectively by an application might increase its trust. Also see http://www.mindswap.org/papers/Trust.pdf
Please list your name if you have any interest in this topic. Thanks.
Justin Darkoch
Working Groups
Evolutionary Game Theory
A few of us were thinking that there wouldn't be enough time to discuss enough topics in EGT in a single tutorial, so I decided to post an offer for a working group that could meet fairly regularly to read and discuss papers from the field, suggest new topics, and possible projects. So far we've thought about looking at evolutionary branching models (in, say, a colony of yeast that produces an enzyme that can be shared by all individuals of the colony) and extending them from one population to two.
Please let me know if you'd be interested in joining. Feel free to add your name and topics you'd like to discuss.
—-Josh
I'm interested! Actually, I know nothing about the topic, but I think that it could help me in my research. There is an interesting article about segregation and game theory (Zhang2004). Maybe this could serve as inspiration for a project.
Viral Modelling
I (Jeremie) propose to set up a workshop on viral modelling (biomathematics, epidemiology, virus kinetics, evolution, networks...). The idea would be that anyone could prepare a short and general introduction to its research area. Please let me know if you'd be interested in joining. Feel free to add your name and topics you'd like to discuss.