News Items for
Agent-Based Computational Economics (ACE)
September 2001
- Prepared by:
-
Leigh Tesfatsion
- Department of Economics
- Iowa State University
- Ames, Iowa 50011-1070
- http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/
-
tesfatsi@iastate.edu
- ACE Web Site Home Page:
-
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm
Appended below are news items that might be of interest to
researchers interested in agent-based computational economics (ACE),
the computational study of economies modelled as evolving systems of
autonomous interacting agents.
ACE news items are posted at the ACE Web site in batched html-document form
about once every two months during the regular academic year
(September--May). Whenever a new posting is made, a brief announcement
giving a pointer to this posting is emailed to all participants in a
moderated announcements-only Majordomo ACE news list. If you would like to
subscribe to (unsubscribe from) this announcements-only ACE news list, please
send an email message to
majordomo@iastate.edu
with the following message in the email body:
- subscribe (unsubscribe) acenewslist youremailaddress
- end
with your actual email address in place of youremailaddress. For more
information, please visit the
ACE News List Site
Thank you.
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.
- Quantitative Finance:
- Quantitative Finance (QF) is a new journal published
by the Institute of Physics (London), launched in January 2001.
Michael Dempster (Judge Institute of Management, University of
Cambridge) and J. Doyne Farmer (McKinsey Research Professor at the
Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico) are the joint editors-in-chief. QF
will publish articles that reflect the increasing use of
quantitative methods in finance and the growth in practical
applications of financial engineering. Examples of relevant topics
include asset creation, pricing, and risk management. QF will also
cover new developments such as agent-based modelling and
evolutionary game theory. For more information, visit the QF Web
site at
http://www.iop.org/Journals/qf
- Artificial Societies and Social Simulation:
- The third issue of volume four of the electronic Journal
of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS) was
published on June 30th. In addition to refereed articles and book
reviews, it contains a special section on Applied Simulation
Analysis guest-edited by Andeas Pyka (Institute of Economics,
University of Augsburg). It can be freely accessed at
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/3/contents.html
- Conservation and Ecology:
- From the journal home page: "Conservation and
Ecology is an electronic, peer-reviewed, scientific journal
devoted to the rapid dissemination of current research. ... Topics
covered include the ecological bases for: the conservation of
ecosystems, landscapes, species, populations, and genetic diversity;
the restoration of ecosystems and habitats; and the management of
resources. The journal seeks papers that are novel, integrative and
written in a way that is accessible to a wide audience that includes
an array of disciplines (biology, ecology, economics, and the social
sciences) concerned with an array of issues (conservation,
sustainability, development, and ecological policy). We encourage
papers that make use of the unique opportunities of an e-journal:
color illustrations, animated model output, down-loadable models and
data sets, use of the `response' facility for interactive
discussion, and other novel inventions to encourage reader
interaction." This e-journal is a publication of the Resilience
Alliance. For more information, visit the journal home page at
http://www.consecol.org/Journal/
- Social Science Computer Review:
- From the journal home page: "The Social Science Computer
Review (SSCORE) is an interdisciplinary peer-reviewed scholarly
publication of Sage Publications, issued quarterly since 1982. It
covers social science research and instructional applications in
computing and telecommunications, and also covers societal impacts
of information technology." For more information, visit the journal
home page at
http://hcl.chass.ncsu.edu/sscore/sscore.htm
- Special Issue on Computational Memetics:
- The Journal of Memetics has just published a special
issue on computational memetics. Memetics is the process of
observing animal social activities and attempting to infer rules
from these observations. The special issue is guest edited by
Michael Best (Media Laboratory, MIT, Cambridge, MA) and Bruce
Edmonds (Centre for Policy Modelling, Manchester Metropolitan
University, UK). For more information, visit
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/2001/vol4/index.html#issue2
- Journal of Social Structure:
- The Journal of Social Structure (JoSS) is an
electronic journal of the International Network for Social Network
Analysis (INSNA). JoSS publishes empirical interdisciplinary
research focusing on social structure, i.e., on the pattern of
social linkages among actors. The actors can comprise different
types or levels of analysis, such as animals, humans, artificial
agents, groups, or organizations. For more information, visit
http://www.heinz.cmu.edu/project/INSNA/joss/header.html
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 publisher information page
linked to the ACE Web site home page.
-
David F. Batten, Discovering Artificial Economics: How Agents Learn
and Economies Evolve, Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2000, ISBN:
0-8133-9770-7.
- This book provides a non-technical introduction to basic aspects of
complex adaptive systems (adaptive learning, self-organization, interaction
networks, coevolution,...) and how these concepts appy to economics. The
author discusses the potential of agent-based computer simulations for the
study of economic processes. He uses a wide range of examples to illustrate
his points, including Robert Axelrod's work on the evolution of cooperation,
W. Brian Arthur's El Farol Bar social coordination problem, the Santa Fe
Artificial Stock Market, and the Epstein/Axtell Sugarscape exchange model.
- Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa, Blake LeBaron, Andrew W. Lo, and Andreas
S. Weigend, eds., Computational Finance, The MIT Press,
2000, 650 pp., ISBN: 0-262-51107-X.
- From the publisher: "Computational finance, an exciting new
cross-disciplinary research area, draws extensively on the tools and
techniques of computer science, statistics, information systems, and
financial economics. This book covers the techniques of data
mining, knowledge discovery, genetic algorithms, neural networks,
bootstrapping, machine learning, and Monte Carlo simulation. These
methods are applied to a wide range of problems in finance,
including risk management, asset allocation, style analysis, dynamic
trading and hedging, forecasting, and option pricing. The book is
based on the sixth annual international conference Computational
Finance 1999, held at New York University's Stern School of
Business."
- Eli M. Noam, Interconnecting the Network of Networks, The
MIT Press, May 2001, 375 pp., ISBN: 0-262-14072-1.
- From the publisher: "This book describes the transformation
of telecommunications from national network monopolies to a new
system, the network of networks, and the glue that holds it
together, interconnection. By their very nature, monopoly-owned
networks provided a small number of standardized, nation-wide
services. Over the past two decades, however, new forces in the
world economy began to unravel this traditional system. The driving
force behind the change was the shift toward an information-based
economy. Especially for large organizations, the price, control,
security, and reliability of telecommunications became variables
requiring organized attention. Thus, monopoly began to give way to
the `network of networks,' the foundation of today's
telecommunications and Internet infrastructure. Taking a broad,
multidisciplinary perspective, Eli Noam discusses the importance and
history of interconnection policy, as well as recent policy reforms
both within the United States and around the globe."
- Eli Noam is Professor of Finance and Economics at the
Columbia Business School and Director of the Columbia University
Institute for Tele-Information.
- Stanley J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, Winners,
Losers, and Microsoft: Competition and Antitrust in High
Technology, The Independent Institute, Revised Edition (March
2001), 308 pp., ISBN 0-945-99984-4.
- From the book jacket: "Few issues in high technology are as
divisive as the raging debate over competition, innovation, and
antitrust. Why do certain products and technologies become dominant
while others fail? Is there something about high technology that
makes markets less dependable at choosing goods and services? Will
the robust competition and technological advances of the past two
decades continue? Or, will they be suffocated by larger firms
employing monopolistic practices? Is antitrust primarily employed
against monopolies to increase competition for the benefit of
consumers, or is it actually a vehicle that firms use against their
rivals to restrict competitive process? ... Can markets `lock in'
inferior technologies to the exclusion of better ones? Do `network
effects' create monopolies? How do antitrust laws affect
entrepreneurship and innovation? What about the Internet browser
wars and Microsoft's battle with the U.S. Department of Justice?
(This book) is the authoritative book on these and other pressing
questions confronting high-technology markets."
- Stanley Leibowitz is Professor of Economics in the
Management School of the University of Texas at Dallas. Stephen
Margolis is Professor of Economics at North Carolina State
University.
- Janet Abbate, Inventing the Internet, MIT Press, September 2000,
272 pages, ISBN 0-262-51115-0.
- From the publisher: "Janet Abbate recounts the key players and
technologies that allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is
always on the social and cultural factors that influenced the Internet's
design and use. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of
collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including
government and military agencies, computer scientists in academia and
industry, graduate students, telecommunications companies, standards
organizations, and network users."
- Janet Abbate is a Lecturer in the Department of History at the
University of Maryland, College Park.
- Andy Clark, Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World
Together Again, MIT Press, January 1998, 308 pp., ISBN
0-262-53156-9.
- From the book jacket: "Brain, body, and world are united in
a complex dance of circular causation and extended computational
activity. In Being There, Andy Clark weaves these several
threads into a pleasing whole and goes on to address foundational
questions concerning the new tools and techniques needed to make
sense of the emerging sciences of the embodied mind. Clark brings
together ideas and techniques from robotics, neuroscience, infant
psychology, and artificial intelligence. He addresses a broad range
of adaptive behaviors, from cockroach locomotion to the role of
linguistic artifacts in higher-level thought."
- Andy Clark is Professor of Philosophy and the Director of
the Philosophy/Neuroscience/Psychology Program at Washington
University, Seattle.
- Gerd Gigerenzer and Reinhard Selten, eds., Bounded
Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, The MIT Press, April 2001,
377 pp., ISBN:0-262-07214-9.
- The Eighty-Fourth Dahlem Workshop, focusing on Bounded
Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox, was held in Berlin during
March 14-19, 1999. The basic theme of the workshop was that humans
are boundedly rational beings who employ an "adaptive toolbox"
consisting of fast and frugal heuristics.
- This edited volume consists of nineteen revised background
papers and group reports reflecting the ideas, opinions, and
contentious issues discussed by the Dahlem Workshop participants.
According to the introductory chapter by the editors ("Rethinking
Rationality"), the goal of the edited volume is to "(a) provide a
framework of bounded rationality in terms of the metaphor of the
adaptive toolbox, (b) to provide an understanding about why
and when the simple heuristics in the adaptive toolbox work, (c) to
extend the notion of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to
emotions, and (d) to extend the notion of bounded rationality to
include social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools."
Contributors to the volume include well-known researchers from
cognitive science, economics, evolutionary biology, and
anthropology.
- Gerd Gigerenzer is a Director at the Max Planck Institute
for Human Development, Berlin. Reinhard Selten is Professor at the
University of Bonn and co-winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in
Economics.
- Jean-Pierre Dupuy and Malcolm DeBevoise (translator), The
Mechanization of the Mind, Princeton University Press, December
2000, ISBN:0-691-02574-6.
- From the publisher: "Jean-Pierre Dupuy, one of the
principal architects of cognitive science in France, reconstructs
the early days of the field here in a provocative and engaging
combination of philosophy, science, and historical detective work."
- Jean-Pierre Dupuy is Professor of Social and Political
Philosophy at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, where he directs the
Applied Epistemology Research Center. He also holds a professorship
at Stanford University and is a researcher at Stanford's Center for
the Study of Language and Information.
- Cristiano Castelfranchi and Yao-Hua Tan, eds., Trust and
Deception in Virtual Societies, Kluwer Academic Publishers, May
2001, ISBN: 079236919X.
- From the publisher: "One of the major problems in the
development of virtual societies, in particular in electronic
commerce and computer-mediated interactions in organizations, is
trust and deception. This book provides analyses by various
researchers of the different types of trust that are needed for
various tasks, such as facilitating on-line collaboration, building
virtual communities and network organizations, and even the design
of effective and user-friendly human-computer interfaces. The book
has a multi-disciplinary character providing theoretical models of
trust and deception, empirical studies, and practical solutions for
creating trust in electronic commerce and multi-agent systems."
- James Kennedy, Russell C. Eberhart, with Yuhui Shi, Swarm
Intelligence: Collective Adaptation, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, March
2001, 544 pp., ISBN 1-558-60595-9
- From an Amazon.com Editorial Review: "Traditional methods for
creating intelligent computational systems have privileged private `internal'
cognitive and computational processes. In contrast, (this book)
argues that human intelligence derives from the interactions of individuals
in a social world and further, that this model of intelligence can be
effectively applied to artificially intelligent systems."
- Edward O. Wilson, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge,
Random House, April 1999, 367 pp., ISBN: 0-679-76867-X.
- From an editorial review by Amazon.Com: "The biologist Edward
O. Wilson is a rare scientist: having over a long career made
signal contributions to population genetics, evolutionary biology,
entomology, and ethology, he has also steeped himself in philosophy,
the humanities, and the social sciences. The result of his
lifelong, wide-ranging investigations is Consilience (the
word means `a jumping together,' in this case of the many branches
of human knowledge), a wonderfully broad study that encourages
scholars to bridge the many gaps that yawn between and within the
cultures of science and the arts. ... Wilson examines the ways
(rightly and wrongly) in which science is done, puzzles over the
postmodernist debates now sweeping academia, and proposes
thought-provoking ideas about religion and human nature."
- Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Francesco Cavalli-Sforza, Sarah
Thorne, and Heather Mimnaugh, eds., The Great Human Diasporas:
The History of Diversity and Evolution, Perseus, October 1996,
300 pp., ISBN: 0-201-44231-0.
- From Booknews, Inc.: "Population geneticist Cavalli-Sforza
summarizes his 40 years of research on the connections between
current genetic data and the evolutionary past for general readers.
He outlines the fundamentals of evolutionary theory, shows how
archaeological and genetic data were used to track human migrations
during the spread of agriculture, and probes issues of eugenics,
genetic engineering, and the existence of a single ancestral
language."
- Vojislav Kecman, Learning and Soft Computing: Support Vector
Machines, Neural Networks, and Fuzzy Logic Models, The MIT
Press, March 2001, 608 pp., ISBN: 0-262-11255-8.
- From the publisher: "This textbook provides a thorough
introduction to the field of learning from experimental data and
soft computing. Support vector machines (SVM) and neural networks
(NN) are the mathematical structures, or models, that underlie
learning, while fuzzy logic systems (FLS) enable us to embed
structured human knowledge into workable algorithms. This book
assumes that it is not only useful, but necessary, to treat SVM, NN,
and FLS as parts of a connected whole. Throughout, the theory and
algorithms are illustrated by practical examples, as well as by
problem sets and simulated experiments. The book also presents
three case studies: on NN-based control, financial time series
analysis, and computer graphics. A solutions manual and all of the
MATLAB programs needed for the simulated experiments are available."
- Vojislav Kecman is with the Department of Mechanical
Engineering, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
- Manfred Opper and David Saad, Advanced Mean Field Methods, MIT
Press, March 2001, 300 pp., ISBN 0-262-15054-9.
- From the publisher: "A major problem in modern
probabilistic modeling is the huge computational complexity involved
in typical calculations with multivariate probability distributions
when the number of random variables is large. Because exact
computations are infeasible in such cases and Monte Carlo sampling
techniques may reach their limits, there is a need for methods that
allow for efficient approximate computations. One of the simplest
approximations is based on the mean field method, which has a long
history in statistical physics. ... Bringing together ideas and
techniques from ... diverse disciplines, this book covers the
theoretical foundations of advanced mean field methods, explores the
relation between the different approaches, examines the quality of
the approximation obtained, and demonstrates their application to
various areas of probabilistic modeling."
- Manfred Opper is a Reader and David Saad is Professor, the
Neural Computing Research Group, School of Engineering and Applied
Science, Aston University, UK.
- Christodoulos A. Floudas and Panos M. Pardalos (eds.),
Encyclopedia of Optimization, Volumes 1 through 6, Kluwer
Academic Publishers, May 2001, 3200 pp., ISBN 0-792-36932-7.
- From the publisher: "The Encyclopedia of Optimization
aims at serving as an important reference for all parts of
optimization. It is directed to a diverse audience of students,
scientists, engineers and in general to any decision maker and
problem solver in academia, business, industry, and government who
is concerned with aspects of optimization theory, algorithms, and
applications."
- Christodoulos A. Floudas is with Princeton University and
Panos M. Pardalos is with the Department of Industrial and Systems
Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Software
Note: Pointers to the following materials have been
incorporated into the
software page
linked to the ACE Web site home page.
- Ps-i:
- Description paraphrased from the Ps-i Web Site: Ps-i is an
environment for running agent-based simulations. It is
cross-platform, with binaries available for Win32. Features
include: declarative language for model specification; industry
standard Tcl/Tk scripting; built-in routine optimization,
speculative evaluation, and xf86 JIT compiler that permit the
creation of complex models without sacrificing performance;
user-friendly interface; ability to save and restore program runs;
ability to change model parameters on the fly; and data
visualization. For more information, visit
http://ps-i.sourceforge.net/
- Spatial Modeling Environment:
- Thomas Maxwell, Ferdinando Villa, and Robert Costanza, all
with the International Institute for Ecological Economics (Center
for Environmental Science, University of Maryland System), have
developed an integrated environment for high-performance spatial
modeling called the Spatial Modeling Environment (SME).
- From the SME home page: "This environment, which
transparently links icon-based modeling environments with advanced
computing resources, allows modellers to develop simulations in a
user-friendly, graphical environment, requiring no knowledge of
computer programming. Automatic code generators construct (spatial)
simulations and enable distributed processing over a network of
parallel and serial computers, allowing transparent access to
state-of-the-art computing facilities. The environment imposes the
constraints of modularity and hierarchy in model design, and
supports archiving of reusable model components defined in our
Modular Modeling Language (MML)." For more information, visit the
SME home page at
http://kabir.cbl.umces.edu/SME3/index.html
- System Dynamics Modeling:
- Ventana Systems, Inc., of Harvard, Massachusetts, was formed
in 1985 for the purpose of developing large-scale simulation models
that integrate both business and technical elements to solve
difficult management problems. Ventana Systems now supports its own
simulation language, called Vensim.
- From the Vensim home page: "Vensim is used for developing,
analyzing, and packaging high quality dynamic feedback models.
Models are constructed graphically or in a text editor. Features
include dynamic functions, subscripting (arrays), Monte Carlo
sensitivity analysis, optimization, data handling, application
interfaces, and much more. ... Vensim PLE (Personal Learning
Edition) is software that gets you started in system dynamics
modeling and is free for educational use and inexpensive for
commercial use. Vensim PLE is ideal for classroom use and personal
learning of system dynamics." For more information about Vensim,
including the latest release (Vensim 4), visit the Vensim home page
at
http://www.vensim.com/software.html
- Petri Nets:
- Petri Nets is a graphical language appropriate for
modeling systems with concurrency. It has been under development
since the nineteen sixties, when Carl Adam Petri first formally
defined the Petri Nets language. It is a generalization of automata
theory in which the concept of concurrently occurring events can be
expressed. The Petri Net World Web site accessible at
http://www.daimi.au.dk/PetriNets/
provides a variety of online services and source materials for the
international Petri Nets community. These include introductory
materials, tools and software packages which support Petri Nets,
applications of Petri Nets, mailing lists, publications,
newsletters, and conference information.
- Simulation Software Links:
- An annotated list of pointers to free discrete-event
simulation software suitable for Linux and other Unix operating
systems can be found at
http://www.topology.org/soft/sim.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.
- AI in Finance and Investment:
- Franco Buscetti (geocities.com) maintains a Web site
focusing on heuristics and artificial intelligence in finance and
investment. The site provides annotated pointers to articles,
databases, and other materials in five main areas: General
optimization and AI resources; neural networks; genetic algorithms;
tabu search, and simulated annealing. The site can be accessed at
http://www.geocities.com/francorbusetti/
- Econophysics:
- Gianaurelio Cuniberti (Max-Planck Institute for the Physics
of Complex Systems, Dresden) and Marco Raberto (Department of
Biophysics and Electronics Engineering, University of Genoa, Italy)
maintain a Web site that provides pointers to resources related to
"econophysics." From the site: "Recently the emerging field of
econophysics is appearing as a new subdiscipline in physics.
Although still in its infancy, the idea is to blend methods of
statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics and agent based simulations
to problems in the economics realm. In the past, economics has fed
from successful physical theories, but now the reverse is happening
and a direct interest of the physical community in those subjects
has grown. ... The field has strongly developed in the areas of
financial markets models and social (or economic) collective
behaviour, among others." The home page for the site can be
accessed at
http://www.econophysics.org/
- Path Dependence, Lock-In, and Microsoft:
- Stanley Leibowitz (Management, University of Texas at
Dallas) maintains a Web site devoted to network effects, path
dependence, and lock-in. Following earlier work by W. Brian Arthur,
these topics have been prominently featured in recent economic
writings and policy debates. In particular, some of the arguments
advanced by government in the Microsoft antitrust case have been
based on these concepts, as articulated by Arthur. Leibowitz's site
provides pointers to resources that stress the meaning and
application of these concepts, with particular attention paid to the
Microsoft antitrust case. Leibowitz is by no means a disinterested
commentator -- he comes down strongly on the side of Microsoft.
Leibowitz's site can be accessed at
http://wwwpub.utdallas.edu/~liebowit/netpage.html
Additional materials on this topic area (including pointers to
articles by W. Brian Arthur) can be found at
http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/apathdep.htm
- The Digital Economy:
- Peter Fingar (Executive Partner, Greystone Group, Tampa,
Florida) maintains the Essential Library for the Digital
Economy. This site provides reviews of business and technology
books related to e-commerce, e-business, the "New Economy," and Web
technology. It also provides links to articles, reports, and other
Web sites that focus on these topics. The site can be accessed at
http://home1.gte.net/pfingar/
- Electronic Commercial Agents:
- The Electronic Commercial Agents (ElComAg) project at the
Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim, Norway)
involves the design of facilities for the trading of knowledge
through electronic commerce. Topics include: (1) conceptual
modeling of knowledge and trading process; (2) the design of
sale-sites (electronic marketplaces); (3) the design of agents for
serving the trade process; and (4) information system architecture
for knowledge trade. For more information, visit
http://www.elcomag.com/
- Agentland:
- Cybion Corporation (Boulogne, France) maintains a virtual
community called Agentland at its Web site
http://www.agentland.com/
Agentland is populated by artificially intelligent software agents
and is essentially a shopping mall where interested viewers can
browse for personal assistants of all types in situ. Agentland
showcases a selection of agents from both established software
companies and independent developers.
- Articles on Evolution:
- The MIT-sponsored political and literary forum Boston
Review (BR) maintains an annotated list of pointers to articles
on evolution that have appeared in BR since 1996; see
http://bostonreview.mit.edu/evolution.html
Past contributors include H. Allen Orr, Daniel Dennett, and Steven
Pinker, among others. The most recent contribution (April/May
2000) is by John Alcock, titled "Misbehavior: How Stephen Jay Gould
is Wrong About Evolution."
- Environmental Modelling and Monitoring:
- The interdisciplinary Environmental Modelling and Monitoring
group (Department of Geography, Edinburgh University) focuses on
applications that use developments in core technologies such as
Geographical Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, cartography,
and Internet technologies. From the group's home page: "(For
example, the group's research in environmental monitoring) involves
two main themes: neotropical biogeography, and the remote sensing of
aquatic systems and vegetation. Biogeography research is
concentrated in the Yucatáan (Central America) and the
forests and savannas of Brazil, Guyana and South America.
Collaborative work is investigating how variations in soil
properties can explain the spatial distribution of vegetation and
form a basis for land development planning and conservation. ... The
use of remote sensing in measuring biological activities is
principally focused on high-spectral resolution and radar remote
sensing techniques with particular attention to understanding
reflectance/backscatter signals."
For more information, visit
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/research/EMMGIS.html
- Cognitive Science:
- The Cognitive Science Home Page, maintained by Irina
Seppänen and Leena Thurlin of the University of Helsinki,
provides pointers to resources for students in cognitive science and
related disciplines and, more generally, for anyone interested in
research on the human mind. These resources include introductory
articles, a comprehensive reader's guide, book reviews, cognitive
science activities in Finland, discussion lists and newsgroups,
articles, bibliographical indices, and electronic journals. The site
can be accessed at
http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/kognitiotiede/information.html
- Machine Learning in Games:
- Jay Scott (The Math Forum, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania)
maintains a Web site for artificial intelligence researchers and
game programmers. The main focus is on how computers can learn to
get better at playing games. The site provides descriptions for a
variety of game-playing programs that rely on heuristic search
algorithms, neural networks, genetic algorithms, temporal
differences, and other methods, including programs for robotic
soccer, backgammon, pursuit-evasion games, and chess. In addition,
the site provides pointers to tutorials, individual researchers, and
related Web sites. The site can be accessed at
http://satirist.org/learn-game/
- Stochastic Nets:
- The Stochastic Networks Web, maintained by Richard
Gibbens (Statistical Laboratory, University of Cambridge), is a
collection of pages relating to the study of stochastic networks and
their applications. Resources provided include pointers to news
items, papers, individual researchers, projects, Web links,
conferences, and job opportunities. The site can be accessed at
http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~richard/stoch_nets/
- Biosemiotics:
- Alexei Sharov (Research Scientist, Department of Entomoloy,
Virginia Tech) maintains a Web site on biosemiotics at
http://www.ento.vt.edu/~sharov/biosem/
Biosemiotics is an interdisciplinary science that studies communication and
signification in living systems. It considers communication as the essence
of life. Resources provided at this site include pointers to introductory
materials, on-line papers, researchers, organizations, and meetings.
- Entropy:
- Roland Gunesch (Mathematics, Penn State University)
maintains a Web site on entropy at
http://www.math.psu.edu/gunesch/entropy.html
The goal of this Web site, as conceived by its original developer
Chris Hillman (Ph.D. in Mathematics, University of Washington), is
to promote appreciation, understanding, and applications of entropy.
Resources include a brief overview of entropy as well as pointers to
journals, conferences, research groups, software, expository
articles, textbooks, and suggested readings in a variety of specific
disciplines.
- Illusion Works:
- From the Illusion Works home page: "Welcome to the
most comprehensive collection of optical and sensory illusions on
the world-wide web. This award-winning collection consists of
innumerable interactive demonstrations, up-to-date and reliable
scientific explanations, school projects, illusion artwork,
interactive puzzles, 3-D graphics, suggested reading lists,
bibliographies, perception links, and much more. There is
literally hours and hours of fun and cool material..." Illusion
Works is sponsored by the Shimojo Laboratory at the California
Institute of Technology (Pasadena, California) and IllusionWorks,
L.L.C. For more information, visit
http://www.illusionworks.com/
Course Announcements
Note: The following announcements have been incorporated into
the
teaching resources page
linked to the ACE Web site home page.
- Undergraduate Course on Agent-Based Computational Economics:
- A syllabus and accompanying materials for an
undergraduate course on ACE
are now available on-line. The course has been organized by Leigh Tesfatsion
(Economics, Iowa State University) for Spring 2001. The primary objective of
the course is to introduce, motivate, and explore through concrete
applications the potential usefulness of the ACE methodology for the study of
economics. Course topics include: learning and the embodied mind; growing
economies from the bottom up; modeling dynamic market processes (financial,
agricultural and natural resource, labor, electricity, Internet
auctions,...); economic network formation; using ACE laboratories to test
alternative market designs for efficiency, equity, and reliability; using
ACE laboratories to test the design of artificial agents (shopbots, webbots,
chatterbots,...) for e-commerce; and parallel experiments with real and
computational agents. Pointers to readings, individual researchers, and
on-line resources are provided for each topic area.
Workshops and Meetings
Note: The following announcements have been incorporated into
the
workshops and meetings page
linked to the ACE Web site home page.
- National Academy of Sciences Colloquium (October 2001):
- The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquium of the National Academy of
Sciences on "Adaptive Agents, Intelligence and Emergent Human
Organization: Capturing Complexity through Agent- Based Modeling"
will begin on the evening of Thursday, October 4 and will continue
through Friday and Saturday, October 5-6, 2001 at the Arnold & Mabel
Beckman Center in Irvine, CA. Attendance at the colloquium is
limited to 250 registered participants. The registration fee of
$175 for general participants covers the meeting, breakfast, lunch,
dinner and breaks, and transportation to and from the Hyatt Regency
Irvine.
- For additional information (final program, registration
form, and hotel/travel information), visit the colloquium Web site
at
http://national-academies.org/nas/colloquia
- UCLA Conference on Computational Agent-Based Social Science Modeling
(May 2002):
- The First Lake Arrowhead Conference on Computational
Modeling in the Social Sciences will be held at the UCLA Conference
Centre on Thursday, May 9th to Sunday, May 12th, 2002. The
conference will serve as a forum for sharing the most recent
theoretical applications and methodological advances on agent
modeling throughout the social sciences (e.g., Anthropology,
Communication Studies, Economics, Geography, History, Political
Science, Sociology, Urban Planning) and among social scientists in
professional schools (e.g., Business, Education, International
Relations, Public Health, Public Policy, Social Welfare) and in the
public and private sectors.
- Abstracts for paper submissions and session proposals must
be received no later than October 15, 2001. Participants will be
notified of acceptance no later than November 1, 2001. Registration
payments must be received within one month of proposal acceptance
and no later than December 1, 2001. For more information, send
email to ccss@ucla.edu or visit
the conference Web site at
http://ccss.ucla.edu/lake-arrowhead-2002/
Miscellaneous News Items
Note: The following announcements have been incorporated into
the
Miscellaneous site
linked to the ACE Web site home page.
- Dynamic Network Mailing List:
- From an announcement by Frederic Amblard (France): "I am pleased to
announce to you the creation of a new mailing list that may be close to your
topics. The list is called "dynnet" and its aim is to discuss and exchange
information about modelling the evolution and the dynamics of networks
(social networks but also the Web and so on). It may refer to different domains
such as sociology (Evolution of social networks), physics (small worlds,
diameter of the Web) or computer science and multi-agent systems (how to
control multi-agent social structures...). As a growing number of papers and
scientists emerge on this specific topic, it may be interesting to exchange
ideas from different fields." For subscription information, visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dynnet
- Economic Science Association Web Site:
- The Economic Science Association (ESA) consists of a
collection of researchers interested in conducting economic
laboratory experiments using human subjects. A new permanent Web
site has just been launched for the ESA, accessible at
http://www.economicscience.org/.
This site will be the central online source of news and information
about the ESA. Anyone wishing to receive free ESA email
announcements should register at the ESA Web site.
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 © 2001 Leigh Tesfatsion. All Rights Reserved.