Remi Louf 14th May 2014

On Wednesday 14th May, Remi Louf, Institut de Physique Théorique, will give the talk

“How congestion shapes cities: a physicist’s perspective.”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

In a rapidly urbanising world, understanding the behaviour of cities has broad implications. Indeed, while cities are known to foster creativity and economic growth, they also engender higher crime rates and pollution levels. It is therefore crucial to quantify these effects and understand the underlying processes if we want to design effective policies and make the urban transition as smooth as possible.
Although the recent availability of data has brought fresh insights, most of the observed regularities remain unexplained. For instance, we find that quantities such as the total surface area, the total length of roads, the total daily driven distance scale non-linearly with population size. In this presentation, I will show how simple physical arguments and a bottom-up modelling approach allow us to understand these behaviours. I will discuss how, with simple approaches of this kind, we are able to identify some of the driving forces behind the evolution of urban systems. In particular, I will highlight the role of congestion, and its consequences on life in cities.

James Dyke 26th Feb 2014

On Wednesday 26th February, Dr James Dyke, Institute for Complex Systems Simulation, University of Southampton, will give the talk “Is the Earth alive? A planetary odyssey”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:
“It seems somewhat eccentric if not a little absurd to suggest that a planet is a living thing. Earth has life on it, but it’s not a biological organism. Any theory or argument which concludes that the Earth is alive could be safely filed under “not even wrong”. So when James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis first proposed the Gaia Hypothesis in the early 1970s, some seized on the possible implication that the Earth is a form of biological organism. The Earth is alive? Nonsense! In the decades since, the Gaia Hypothesis has significantly developed and been instrumental in the creation of the new discipline of Earth Systems Science which seeks to understand both the living and non-living components of the Earth in a holistic manner.

In this talk I will give an overview of some of the developments of the mathematical and conceptual theories that underpin Gaia Theory and argue why such approaches are important in a global change context. Humans are currently affecting the Earth via a spectrum of effects. While there is no danger of us destroying the Earth’s biosphere, we are at risk of nudging it into states that would be deleterious to us.”

https://theconversation.com/even-if-earth-changes-life-will-continue-with-or-without-us-15221

Ondrej Hovorka 5th Feb 2014

On Wednesday 5th February, Dr Ondrej Hovorka, Computational Modelling Group, University of Southampton, will give the talk “Spin models of critical phenomena in systems with multi-scale dynamics”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

This talk will give a general summary of computational models for studying the emergent non-equilibrium phenomena in interacting spin systems spanning a broad range of length- and time-scales. This will include the Langevin dynamics of a set of coupled stochastic ODEs to model thermal fluctuations in spin systems, the master-equation formalism of long timescale memory effects and hysteresis, and the cellular automaton approach to describe multiscale dynamics of avalanche systems, such as earthquakes for example. The individual approaches will be demonstrated using applications in biomedicine, optimisation of modern hard disk drive technologies, and to analysing the out-of-equilibrium phase transition behaviour in avalanching systems.

Mike Harfoot 29th Jan 2014

On Wednesday 29th January, Dr Mike Harfoot, United Nations Environment Program and Microsoft Research Cambridge will give the talk “Attempting to model all life on earth –  a proof of concept General Ecosystem Model”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

Over the past few years, Microsoft Research and the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), both in Cambridge, UK, have built a global ecosystem model for terrestrial and marine ecosystems. Called the Madingley model, it captures the broad-scale structure and function of ecosystems around the world by simulating processes — including feeding, reproduction and death — that drive the distribution and abundance of organisms. From the relationship between the mass of individual organisms and how long they live, or the effects of  human perturbations such as hunting, to the distribution of biomass across Earth, the model’s outputs are broadly consistent with current understanding of ecosystems. Global ecosystem models such as the Madingley model could radically improve understanding of the biosphere and help inform policy decisions about biodiversity and conservation.

Martyn Amos 15th Jan 2014

On Wednesday 15th January, Prof Martyn Amos, Manchester Metropolitan University, will give the talk “Population-based microbial computing”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 3:15-4:15pm (this is an hour earlier than usual). All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:
Synthetic biology is an emerging research field, in which engineering principles are applied to natural, living systems. A major goal of synthetic biology is to harness the inherent “biological nanotechnology” of living cells for the purposes of computation, production, or diagnosis. As the field evolves, it is gradually moving away from a single-cell approach (akin to using standalone computers) to a distributed, population-based approach (rather like using networks of connected machines). In this talk we present several recent results from our group, describing various aspects of this new form of biological engineering. Specifically, we show, using computational studies aligned with laboratory work, how reconfigurable logic devices may be constructed using bacteria, how these may be used as the basis for a “client-server” model of microbial computing, and how bacterial conjugation may provide a new (and, potentially, very rich) communication scheme.

Helen Czerski 8th Jan 2014

On Wednesday 8th January Dr Helen Czerski, University College London, will give the talk “Bubbles and a planet:  the connection and why it matters”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4-5pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

Gases and particles are constantly being exchanged between the ocean and the atmosphere, affecting the chemistry of both these huge systems.  The main gas of interest is carbon dioxide, since about a third of the extra CO2 that humans are putting up into the atmosphere is being transferred to the oceans and that process does not happen evenly across the world’s oceans.  This exchange is affected by a range of environmental parameters, including wind speed, temperature and biological conditions in the water.   My main interest is the contribution that the bubbles from breaking waves make.  We have just spent six weeks at sea in the North Atlantic, collecting data on air-sea exchanges in high wind conditions, and we now have a very extensive data set for analysis.  I would love to find new ways of making use of this data set, and I’m interested in any ideas out there for how to do it better.

Hywel Williams 20th Nov 2013

On Wednesday 20th November, Dr Hywel Williams, University of Exeter, will give a joint CS4 / Sustainability Science Southampton talk “Games, networks, and climate change”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4-5pm. All welcome. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

The physical science basis of anthropogenic climate change is well established, yet effective political action to prevent its worst impacts has been hard to achieve. Policy depends on popular support, so it is important to understand how opinions are formed and when individuals will cooperate with potentially costly policies to tackle climate change. In this talk, I present results from two ongoing projects that explore different aspects of social action on climate change. The first project uses an experimental economics approach to understand when individuals will cooperate with collective action, framing the climate change issue as a “social dilemma” in which the collective benefits of preventative action conflict with the private costs of participation. In particular, we consider whether the existence of multiple possible solutions (e.g. developing geoengineering alongside mitigation) affects the likelihood of successful collective action. The second project uses data from the Twitter micro-blogging platform to map the social network of individuals who discuss climate change online. This analysis reveals a strongly polarised distribution of attitudes in the online climate debate, which has major implications for opinion formation and how consensus policy support might be achieved. The intellectual linkage between these two approaches lies in the grand challenge of understanding how – or if – large structured populations of self-interested individuals might be persuaded to take action on climate change.

CS4 is returning in November

We will be kicking off the Complex Systems Simulation Seminar Series on the 13th November. Our first talks will be given by Dr Helen Czerski, Dr Attila Lazar, Dr Andy Philippides and Dr Hywel Williams.

More details on these talks and the rest of the schedule coming soon.

CS4 will return after the summer

CS4 will be taking a break for the rest of the (unusually sunny and warm!) summer and will return in October 2013. We are in the process of editing the last of the CS4 talks and hope to have these all online in the not too distant future. There are plans for a new website with additional content, so stay tuned.

I would like to say thank you to the wonderful speakers that made this year’s series such a success. I must also mention Ali Simmance who organised much of the seminar series and somehow managed to keep numerous plates spinning simultaneously. Ali starts an exciting PhD project at the start of the new academic year so we will have to manage without her. Good luck!

James Dyke, Southampton July 2013.

CS4 Future Talk: Paul Palmer

On Wednesday 12th June May, Professor Paul Palmer, University of Edinburgh, will give the CS4 talk “How do we know how much atmospheric CO2 is from natural vs human-driven sources?”

Building 53 Room 4025, Highfield Campus, 4-5pm. Refreshments served after the talk.

Abstract:

“The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has far-reaching implications for Earth’s climate but how much do we really know about its sources? In this presentation I will provide an overview of current understanding and how we know what we know, describe some new work in my group that combines models and data to address some of the key uncertainties, and finally discuss future efforts.”