Thank you.
Journal Announcements
Note: Pointers to the journals listed below can be found on
the journal and publisher information page linked to the ACE web
site home page.
- Special ACE Issue: IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation
- Agent-based computational economics (ACE) is the computational study
of economies modelled as evolving systems of autonomous interacting agents.
Papers on ACE-related topics are solicited for possible inclusion in a
special issue of the IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation on
the Agent-Based Modelling of Evolutionary Economic Systems, guest edited by
Leigh Tesfatsion. Each submitted paper should address a clearly defined
issue of economic interest from an evolutionary agent-based perspective. The
deadline for receipt of paper submissions is August 31, 2000.
- Detailed information about this special issue can be obtained at
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ieeespec.htm.
- Special Issue: Netnomics
- Articles for a special issue of Netnomics will be selected
from among the best discussion papers presented at a two-hour workshop titled
"Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems for E-Commerce (IMASE 2000)," to be held as
part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2000), Las
Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 8-12, 2000. IMASE 2000 will concentrate on the
use of adaptive learning agents, particularly for Internet trading and
economic simulations. The deadline for receipt of 3-page abstracts for this
workshop is March 23, 2000. For more information, visit
http://www.cwi.nl/~bill/imase.
- Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
- The first issue of the third volume of the electronic Journal of
Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) was published on
Monday, January 31st, 2000. This new issue can be accessed online at
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/JASSS.html.
The new issue includes: two peer-reviewed papers titled "Agent-Based
Modelling of Collective Identity: Testing Constructivist Theory" and
"Asynchronous Time Evolution in an Artificial Society Model;" a Forum section
paper titled "Liberal Order for Software Agents?;" a detailed discussion
regarding the use of Matlab for teaching social simulation; and four book
reviews.
- The next issue of JASSS is due at the end of March.
Submissions for the March issue are welcome. Because JASSS is
distributed over the World Web Wide and all editorial operations use the
Internet, a much faster turn-round from first submission to acceptance can be
achieved in comparison to most conventional paper journals.
Book Announcements
Note: The following book announcements have been incorporated
into the annotated syllabus of ACE-related readings linked to the
ACE web site home page. Links to publishers (for ordering purposes)
can be found on the journal and book announcements and information
page linked to the ACE web site home page.
- Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide
to the Networked Economy, Harvard Business School Press, November 1998,
352 pp., ISBN 0-8758-5863-X.
- The authors consider how to market and distribute goods in the
networked economy, with examples drawn from a wide array of industries
(airlines, software, entertainment, communications,...). Issues covered
include pricing, intellectual property , versioning, lock-in, compatibility,
and standards. From the Economist, December 12, 1998: "If you want to
understand how the networked economy really functions and why some companies
succeed spectacularly ... (while others fail) despite having mould-breaking
technology, look no further."
- Carl Shapiro is Professor of Business Strategy at the Haas School of
Business and Hal Varian is the Dean of the School of Information Management
and Systems, both at the University of California at Berkeley.
- Zbigniew Michalewicz and David B. Fogel, How to Solve It,
Springer-Verlag, N.Y., 1999, 480 pp., ISBN 3-540-66061-5.
- From the publisher: "This book is the only source that provides
comprehensive, current, and detailed information on problem solving using
modern heuristics. It covers classic methods of optimization, including
dynamic programming, the simplex method, and gradient techniques, as well as
recent innovations such as simulatated annealing, tabu search, and
evolutionary computation. Integrated into the discourse is a series of
problems and puzzles to challenge the reader."
- Zbigniew Michalewicz is with the Department of Computer Science,
University of North Carolina, Charlotte, and David Fogel is with
Natural Selection, Inc., La Jolla, California.
- Francesco Luna and Benedikt Stefansson (eds.), Economic Simulations in
Swarm: Agent-Based Modelling and Object Oriented Programming, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, Volume 14, Advances in Computational Economics, January
2000, 328 pp., ISBN 0-7923-8665-5
- From the authors: "Computer simulations of economic systems are
slowly gaining ground within the economics profession. However, such a
process is hindered by a lack of communication among researchers who do not
share a common language. For its object-oriented structure and its
verstility, Swarm has the necessary characteristics to become a credible
universal language of agent-based simulations. (This book) collects a series
of original articles in such domains as macro and micro economics, industrial
organization, monetary theory, and finance, all linked by a common
denominator: the use of the Swarm simulation platform."
- Francesco Luna is with the Universitá Ca' Foscari, Venice,
Italy, and Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.A. Benedikt Stefansson
is with the University of California, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
- W. B. Langdon, Genetic Programming and Data Structures: Genetic
Programming + Data Structure = Automatic Programming!, Kluwer Academic
Publishers, 1998, 292 pp., ISBN 0-7923-8135-1.
- From the publisher: "Computers that `program themselves' has long
been an aim of computer scientists. ... While (functions automatically
created by genetic programming) can be of great use, they contain no memory
and relatively little work has addressed automatic creation of program code
including stored data. (This book) shows how abstract data types (stacks,
queues and lists) can be evolved using genetic programming, and demonstrates
how genetic programming can evolve general programs which solve the nested
brackets problem, recognize a Dyck context free language, and implement a
simple four function calculator. In these cases, an appropriate data
structure is beneficial compared to simple indexed memory. This book also
includes a survey of genetic programming, with a critical review of
experiments with evolving memory..."
Software
Note: Pointers to the following materials have been
incorporated into the software page linked to the ACE web site home
page.
- Agent-Based Modelling with Mathematica
- Richard Gaylord (Department of Material Sciences and Engineering,
University of Illinois at Urana-Champaign) has written extensively on the
development and implementation of agent-based models of socioeconomic
behavior using Mathematica, a general-purpose scientific and mathematical
software. For example, in a forthcoming article in Mathematica Education
and Research titled "Rebels, Independents, and Conformists: The RIC Model
of Social Behavior," he uses Mathematica to construct a conceptually and
computationally straightforward model of social behavior in which humans make
decisions on how to think or act either independently or with the influence
of others. For additional information about this work, visit
http://www.mse.uiuc.edu/faculty/Gaylord.html.
Research Groups and Sites
Note: Pointers to the following research groups and sites
have been incorporated into the ACE-related research groups and
sites page linked to the ACE web site home page.
- Agent-Based Computational Finance
- A web site on agent-based computational finance has been constructed
by Blake LeBaron (Economics, Brandeis University). Agent-based computational
finance is an application of agent-based computational methods to finance and
financial markets. This area borrows heavily on methods developed in other
agent-based economic environments. The web site is designed to give
researchers interested in this area a starting point in terms of finding
relevant online materials. Resources incorporated to date include pointers
and paper lists. The site can be accessed at
http://www.brandeis.edu/~blebaron/acf.
Anyone interested in having their information listed should contact Blake
LeBaron (blebaron@brandeis.edu).
- Cognitive Cultural Studies
- Francis F. Steen (Department of English, University of California at
Santa Barbara, California) maintains the CogWeb site at
http://cogweb.english.ucsb.edu/.
This site is devoted to exploring the relevance of the study of human
cognition to literary and cultural studies. Resources available at the site
include pointers to related sites and articles as well as to bibliographic
materials on linguistics, cognitive science, evolution and cognition, and
cognitive cultural studies (both early and modern).
- The World of Richard Dawkins
- John Catalano (New York, U.S.A.) maintains a web site titled The
World of Richard Dawkins at
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/.
Site resources include news items, books, writings, quotes, videos, software,
biographical information, and links, all related to the work of Richard
Dawkins. The site is "unofficial" in the sense that Richard Dawkins is not
associated with it.
Teaching Resources
Note: Pointers to the following materials have been
incorporated into the teaching resources page linked to the ACE web
site home page.
- Agent-Based Computational Economics Course:
- Professor Banerjee (School of Economics, Georgia Institute
of Technology) is offering a course on ACE for Spring 2000: Econ 4801A.
Topics to be covered include: markets as double auctions; the evolution of a
competitive industry if firms can enter, exit, and merge; learning in games;
the emergence of social norms; the choice of a global currency when there are
dollars and euros; the replacement of barter by the exclusive use of one
commodity as "money"; the growth of cities and business districts;
segregation of neighborhoods; and the adoption of new technology in the
presence of an older one. Received economic theory will be covered first
followed by projects to model the phenomenon under study in terms of
agent-based computational models using StarLogo, a programmable modeling
environment in the public domain for exploring decentralized systems. For
more information, visit the Econ 4801A web site at
http://www.econ.gatech.edu/current/spring00.html.
- Online Introductions to Game Theory:
- Roger McCain (Economics, Drexel University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania) has developed a game theory web site at
http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/eco/game/preface.html
in which he presents an accessible account of elementary game theory
principles for non-specialists. See, also, the behavioral game theory course
web site at
http://weber.ucsd.edu/~vcrawfor/201ASyllabus.html
developed by Vince Crawford (Economics, UCSD, La Jolla, CA).
- The Road to Agent-Based Models
- Brookings Institution (Washington, D.C.) supports a site titled
"The Road to Agent-Based Models" at
http://www.brook.edu/ES/dynamics/models/history.htm
which covers topics such as von Neumann machines, Conway's Game of Life,
and other milestones of agent-based modelling with pointers to related sites.
- Teaching Social Simulation with MatLab
- Warren Thorngate has an article titled "Teaching Social Simulation
with MatLab" available at
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/3/1/forum/1.html
that appeared in the online Journal of Artificial Societies and Social
Simulation, Volume 3, No. 1, 2000. He explains why Matlab is his
programming language of choice for teaching simulation programming techniques
to students new to simulation.
- Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences
- In preparation for a course to be taught in Spring 2000, Johann Peter
Murmann (Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois) prepared an online
resource site titled "Evolutionary Theories in the Social Sciences"
accessible at
http://www7.kellogg.nwu.edu/evolution/frames/center.htm.
Resources provided include a bibliography, working papers, books and reviews,
journals, and pointers to researchers and research centers.
- Social Ecology and Evolutionism Course
- In 1994 James Hughes (Changesurfer Consulting, Chicago) taught a
course titled Social Ecology and Evolutionism
at the University of Chicago. The course is an introduction to the
ecological and evolutionary concepts that have influenced the social
sciences. Topics covered include: Introduction to Social Ecology; Hardware
and Software; Organizational Ecology and Evolution; Social Organicism and
Early Sociological Evolutionism; and Modern Social Ecology. For access to
these course materials, visit
http://www.changesurfer.com/Acad/SocEco.html.
- Master's Course on Computational Intelligence
- The School of Computing at the University of Plymouth in the United
Kingdom is offering a Master's course on
Computational Intelligence.
From the course description: "A unique Master's course, recognising the
growing importance and synergistic power of neural and evolutionary
computation, and designed to place graduates at the cutting edge of one of
the most advanced fields in Information Technology."
For more information about this course, visit
http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/soc/research/neural/courses/comp_int/MSCWeb.htm
Workshops and Meetings
Note: The following announcements have been incorporated into the
workshops and meetings page linked to the ACE web site home page.
- Communicative Agents in Intelligent Virtual Environments, June 2000
- The Fourth International Conference on Autonomous Agents
(Autonomous Agents 2000) will be held June 3-7, 2000, in Barcelona,
Spain. As part of this conference, a workshop is planned on "Communicative
Agents in Intelligent Virtual Environments." The target audience for this
workshop includes researchers and practitioners working on autonomous agents
that display natural language capabilities, design and implementation of
intelligent virtual environments, and virtual societies of (communicating)
agents. Up-to-date information on this workshop can be found at
http://coli.lili.uni-bielefeld.de/allgemein/agents2000/.
- Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, July 2000
- The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference 2000
(GECCO-2000) will be held July 8-12, 2000, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
GECCO-2000 is a joint meeting of the Fifth Annual Genetic Programming
Conference (GP-2000) and the International Conference on Genetic Algorithms
(ICGA-2000). Topics include, but are not limited to: genetic algorithms;
genetic programming; evolution strategies; evolutionary programming;
real-world applications of genetic and evolutionary computation; classifier
systems; evolvable hardware; DNA and molecular computing; artificial life,
adaptive behavior, and agents; evolutionary robotics; ant colony
optimization; methodology, pedagogy, and philosophy; genetic scheduling; and
other areas to be announced. For more information, visit
http://www.genetic-algorithm.org/GECCO2000/gecco2000mainpage.htm.
- Congress on Evolutionary Computation, July 2000
- The 2000 Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC2000)
will be held July 16-19, 2000, in the La Jolla Marriott, La Jolla, CA.
CEC2000 will highlight recent research covering all forms of evolutionary
computations while fostering intertechnique discussions and cooperative
progress in the evolutionary computation field. Submissions covering
advances in the theory, practice, and application of all evolutionary
techniques, either individually or collectively, are enthusiastically
encouraged. For more information about CEC2000, visit
http://www.natural-selection.com/eps/cec2000.
- CEC2000 Competitions, July 2000
- The Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC2000) will
feature four competitions on the following topics: the iterated prisoner's
dilemma; forecasting an artificial times series; forecasting the real Dow
Jones Index; and visualizing the evolutionary process. Detailed descriptions
of these competitions, including a brief introduction, a what-to-submit
section, and scoring procedures can be found on the competitions web page
at
http://www.math.iastate.edu/danwell/CEC2000/comp.html.
If you any have additional question about the competitions, you can contact
either of the competition chairs: Dan Ashlock (danwell@iastate.edu) or Ralf
Salomon (salomon@ifi.unizh.ch). For general information on CEC2000, visit
the CEC2000 web site at
http://pcgipseca.cee.hw.ac.uk/cec2000/.
- Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence, July 2000
- The Twelfth Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of
Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-2000) wil be held July 31-August 2, 2000,
in the Austin Convention Center, Austin, Texas. IAAI-2000 will highlight
successful applications of AI technology, explore issues, methods, and
lessons learned in the development and deployment of AI applications, and
promote an interchange of ideas between basic and applied AI. For more
information, visit
http://www.aaai.org.
- Artificial Life VII, August 2000
- The Seventh International Conference on the Simulation and
Synthesis of Living Systems (AlifeVII) will be held August 1-6, 2000, at
Reed College, Portland, Oregon. Authors are encouraged to address the
conference theme, "Looking Backward, Looking Forward," by explaining how
their contribution builds on important previous work in artificial life and
helps crystallize and make progress on important open questions. Special
consideration will be given to papers that compare theory and data and to
papers that compare data across different systems, especially natural and
artificial systems.
- For more information, visit
http://alife7.alife.org/.
- New Institutional Economics Conference, September 2000
- The Annual Conference of the International Society for New
Institutional Economics will be held September 22-24, 2000, in Tuebingen,
Germany. Presentations and papers in all areas of New Institutional
Economics (NIE) are welcome. In addition to economics, the conference
program will include sessions on the application of NIE to political science,
anthropology, law, and sociology. Proposals for the conference are due no
later than March 1, 2000. Proposals must be no longer than 2 pages, double
spaced. Authors must also send a short (one paragraph) biosketch or a CV
including phone, fax, email, postal address, and current employment. Please
send your proposal to: isnie2000@wueconc.wustl.edu. This email address
should only be used for submitting paper proposals. Proposals will only be
accepted from individuals who are current dues-paid members of the Society.
Membership runs on a calendar year (01 Jan to 31 Dec) basis. If you have not
paid your 2000 dues, your proposal will not be considered. To confirm your
membership status or to inquire about the Society, please contact the society
at isnie@wueconc.wustl.edu
- Intelligent Systems and Applications, December 2000
- The International Congress on Intelligent Systems and Applications
(ISA'2000) will be held December 12-15, 2000, at the University of
Wollongong (near Sydney), Australia. The aim of the ISA'2000 Congress is to
provide researchers and practitioners from academia and industry with a forum
to report on the latest developments in intelligent systems and their
applications within four major areas: computational intelligence; interactive
and collaborative computing; industrial systems; and biologically inspired
systems. The ISA'2000 Congress will also provide a unique opportunity for
dialogue and synergy between scientists and engineers from different
backgrounds with a common interest in intelligent systems. The deadline for
submissions is March 31, 2000.
- For more information, visit
http://www.icsc.ab.ca/isa2000.htm.
Program, Course, and Position Announcements
- Research Opening at Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition,
Berlin
- From a November 11, 1999 announcement by Peter M. Todd and Gerd
Gigerenzer: "We would like to inform you about a new opening for a research
scientist at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition in Berlin. This
position is a long-term opportunity to study decision-making mechanisms in a
well-funded and supportive setting at one of the world's leading scientific
institutes, without teaching or administrative requirements. We are looking
for someone who will complement our existing strengths in experimental,
evolutionary, and modeling-based cognitive science. We also have our usual
yearly openings for postdoctoral and predoctoral researchers."
- "For a detailed description of our research projects and current
researchers (and announcements of our additional open pre/postdoc positions),
please visit our homepage at
http://www.mpib-berlin.mpg.de/abc
or write to Dr. Peter Todd at ptodd@mpib-berlin.mpg.de. The working language
of the center is English. We strongly encourage applications from women and
members of minority groups."
Miscellaneous News Items
- Graduate Student Prize in Computational Economics
- The Society of Computational Economics (SCE) announces its
sponsorship of its fourth annual contest for outstanding research manuscripts
in computational economics prepared by graduate students. The contest is
open to graduate students worldwide working on any area of computational
economics. Up to two $1000 prizes will be awarded. Manuscript submissions
must be received by March 1, 2000. For more information, visit the SCE web
site at
http://wuecon.wustl.edu/sce/.
- Trading Agent Competition
- The ICMAS-00 Trading Agent Competition will be held July 8,
2000, in Boston, Massachusetts, in conjunction with a special purpose
workshop at the Fourth International Conference on Multiagent Systems
(ICMAS-00). This event is designed to spur research on common problems,
promote definitions of benchmarks and standard problem descriptions, and
showcase current technologies. Software agents developed by research groups,
students, and others from all over the world will be pitted against each
other in a challenging market game. The software agents will represent
travel coordinators whose goal is to arrange travel packages for clients.
These travel packages consist of flights, hotel rooms, and tickets to
entertainment events, all of which the agents buy (and, in the case of event
tickets, sell) in electronic auctions. The market game has been specially
designed to present agents with difficult decision problems and admit a wide
variety of potential bidding strategies. For more information, visit
http://tac.eecs.umich.edu/.
- Simulation of Societies Distribution List
- The email distribution list simsoc distributes news about
conferences, workshops, and other information related to research on
artificial societies and social simulation. To join this list, send an email
message to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk containing only the message:
join simsoc First_Name Surname
(substituting your own name, of course). Joining the list is free,
there are no commercial advertisements, and it is relatively free of
spam.
- International Society for Genetic and Evolutionary Computation
- In Fall 1999 the boards of the International Society for Genetic
Algorithms (ISGA) and the Genetic Programming Conference Organization voted
to permanently merge and form the International Society for Genetic and
Evolutionary Computation (ISGEC). The new society will embrace a wide
variety of fields, including genetic algorithms, genetic programming,
evolution strategies, evolutionary programming, classifier systems, and
evolvable hardware, as well as emerging areas such as immune system learning,
DNA and molecular computing, ant optimization, evolutionary robotics, ECHO,
Tierra, and genetic scheduling. Members of the ISGEC society will receive
subscriptions to Evolutionary Computation and Genetic Programming
and Evolvable Machines. For more information about joining the ISGEC
membership society, visit
http://www.genetic-algorithm.org/.
Reminder: Items Requested for ACE News Notes and Complexity
Just a reminder that if you have any ACE-related news items, or
any information about ACE-related teaching materials, software,
books, journals, or conferences that you would like to have
considered for inclusion in the ACE news notes, and/or the
Complexity-at-Large section of the John Wiley journal
Complexity, please email them to me (along with web site
information if available) at the following address:
tesfatsi@iastate.edu.
Copyright © 2000 Leigh Tesfatsion. All Rights Reserved.