We construct and analyze a climate network which represents the interdependent structure of the climate in different geographical zones and find that the network responds in a unique way to El Niño events. Analyzing the dynamics of the climate network shows that when El Niño events begin, the El Niño basin partially loses its influence on its surroundings. After typically three months, this influence is restored while the basin loses almost all dependence on its surroundings and becomes autonomous. The formation of an autonomous basin is the missing link to understand the seemingly contradicting phenomena of the afore-noticed weakening of the interdependencies in the climate network during El Niño and the known impact of the anomalies inside the El Niño basin on the global climate system.

"... we have good models for material behaviors at small and large scales ...  hard to relate these ... models to one another. Macroscale models represent the integrated effects of very subtle factors that are practically invisible at the smallest, atomic, scales. ... notoriously difficult to model realistic materials with a simple bottom-up-from-the-atoms strategy.... forced physicists interested in overall macro-behavior of materials toward completely top-down modeling strategies familiar from traditional continuum mechanics. ...  whether we can exploit our rather rich knowledge of intermediate micro- (or meso-) scale behaviors in a manner that would allow us to bridge between these two dominant methodologies. Macroscopic scale behaviors often fall into large common classes of behaviors such as the class of isotropic elastic solids, characterized by two ... elastic coefficients. Can we employ knowledge of lower scale behaviors to ... determine the coefficients ... ?"

"Biochemical networks are often called upon to illustrate emergent properties of living systems. In this contribution, I question such emergentist claims by means of theoretical work on genetic regulatory models and random Boolean networks. If the existence of a critical connectivity Kc of such networks has often been coined “emergent” or “irreducible”, I propose on the contrary that the existence of a critical connectivity Kc is indeed mathematically explainable in network theory. This conclusion also applies to many other types of formal networks and weakens the emergentist claim attached to bio-molecular networks, and by extension to living systems."

"n the first part of this article we will formulate postulates, which must be satisfied by a reasonable concept of emergence. The postulates will articulate conditions of adequacy for an appropriate explication of the concept of emergence. These conditions of adequacy are based primarily upon the philosophical and scientific history of the concept of emergence, in which the intended role of the concept is expressed. In the second part we will discuss and evaluate some candidates for the concept of emergence in light of these conditions of adequacy."

Or: "The fixity of the internal environment is the condition for free life."

Damn you, Clark! (Not really.)

Surprisingly sane; notes at http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2006-05.html

Scarily, the abstract almost makes sense.