the journal version

"Many biological and physical systems exhibit population-density dependent transitions to synchronized oscillations in a process often termed "dynamical quorum sensing". Synchronization frequently arises through chemical communication via signaling molecules distributed through an external media. We study a simple theoretical model for dynamical quorum sensing: a heterogenous population of limit-cycle oscillators diffusively coupled through a common media. We show that this model exhibits a rich phase diagram with four qualitatively distinct mechanisms fueling population-dependent transitions to global oscillations, including a new type of transition we term "dynamic death". We derive a single pair of analytic equations that allows us to calculate all phase boundaries as a function of population density and show that the model reproduces many of the qualitative features of recent experiments of BZ catalytic particles as well as synthetically engineered bacteria."

"Information in biological systems. How do living organisms acquire, store, and make use of information? How and why does communication evolve? How does information flow through biological or social networks?"

Panda's Thumb says: "The reason why I am excited about these findings is that they tie together: scale free networks, Shannon information, criticality and evolution in a theoretic foundation." As an information theorist, I'm skeptical about this: to us, mutual information is just a number, unless you attach to it an operational meaning and have a coding theorem to go with it. But I will take a look.

Review of Re-engineering Philosophy for Limited Beings: Piecewise Approximations to Reality by William Wimsatt (Harvard Press, 2007)

Steven Pinker on the theocons in the President's Council on Bioethics

UA researchers find that the brain processes memories six to seven times faster than real time.