November 28, 2007 - 17:23
From: "Douglas S. Blank"
Date: Mon, October 8, 2007 8:24 pm
Colleagues,
The Emergence Group will meet weekly, every Wednesday from 8-9am, in Park Science 230. We meet over breakfast to discuss the idea that small simple things can give rise to complex, fundamentally different things. This semester we plan on discussing a variety of topics across disciplines, starting with the biological, but moving to other areas of (our) interest. Please pass this invitation to any interested party. This Wednesday we will continue our discussion of the medicinal leech, its neural network, and resulting behaviors. Some questions raised in last week's meeting: - what is the role of randomness ("noise") in the neural system? - what is the role of noise in emergent systems in general? - how tolerant to noise is the leech? can it keep swimming? - what is the source of the differing behaviors given the same stimuli? - is a leech nervous system fundamentally different from a human's? - why does the leech have two brains, and which end is the oral sucker on? This will be the last message sent to the general faculty and staff for the semester from the Emergence Group. If you want to participate in on-line discussions, or in person, please check out the website: /oneworld/emergencegroup/ and subscribe to the mailing list. Thanks!
-Doug