Related papers: A Field Biology Guide for the Curious Physicist
Scientific workflows are powerful tools for management of scalable experiments, often composed of complex tasks running on distributed resources. Existing cyberinfrastructure provides components that can be utilized within repeatable…
The emerging field at the intersection of quantitative biology, network modeling, and control theory has enjoyed significant progress in recent years. This Special Issue brings together a selection of papers on complementary approaches to…
The organism is a fundamental concept in biology. However there is no universally accepted, formal, and yet broadly applicable definition of what an organism is. Here we introduce a candidate definition. We adopt the view that the…
Heliophysics is the system science of the physical connections between the Sun and the solar system. As the physics of the local cosmos, it embraces space weather and planetary habitability. The wider view of comparative heliophysics forms…
We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of interactions…
Ours could realistically be the generation to discover evidence of life beyond Earth. With this privileged potential comes responsibility. The magnitude of the question, "are we alone?", and the public interest therein, opens the…
Causality plays a central role in understanding interactions between variables in complex systems. These systems often exhibit state-dependent causal relationships, where both the strength and direction of causality vary with the value of…
Exploration is a prerequisite for learning useful behaviors in sparse-reward, long-horizon tasks, particularly within 3D environments. Curiosity-driven reinforcement learning addresses this via intrinsic rewards derived from the mismatch…
This paper describes a network of teachers and students who form a living system of education at all levels and achieve high standards. The key process of the network is the process of effective learning by inquiry. Physics is distinguished…
We discuss three different aspects of the quantum dynamics of bio-molecular systems and more generally complex networks in the presence of strongly coupled environments. Firstly, we make a case for the systematic study of fundamental…
Trained human pilots or operators still stand out through their efficient, robust, and versatile skills in guidance tasks such as driving agile vehicles in spatial environments or performing complex surgeries. This research studies how…
Sociotechnical research increasingly includes the social sub-networks that emerge from large-scale sociotechnical infrastructure, including the infrastructure for building open source software. This paper addresses these numerous…
Curiosity is the strong desire to learn or know more about something or someone. Since learning is often a social endeavor, social dynamics in collaborative learning may inevitably influence curiosity. There is a scarcity of research,…
As the increasing complexity of large-scale research requires the combined efforts of scientists with expertise in different fields, the advantages and costs of interdisciplinary scholarship have taken center stage in current debates on…
Computer vision can accelerate ecology research by automating the analysis of raw imagery from sensors like camera traps, drones, and satellites. However, computer vision is an emerging discipline that is rarely taught to ecologists. This…
Context: Software practitioners are a primary provider of information for field studies in software engineering. Research typically recruits practitioners through some kind of sampling. But sampling may not in itself recruit credible…
At the frontier of most areas in science, computer simulations play a central role. The traditional division of natural science into experimental and theoretical investigations is now completely outdated. Instead, theory, simulation, and…
Self-organization has been an important concept within a number of disciplines, which Artificial Life (ALife) also has heavily utilized since its inception. The term and its implications, however, are often confusing or misinterpreted. In…
The brain is immensely complex, with diverse components and dynamic interactions building upon one another to orchestrate a wide range of functions and behaviors. Understanding patterns of these complex interactions and how they are…
Physics is a field of science that has traditionally used the scientific method to answer questions about why natural phenomena occur and to make testable models that explain the phenomena. Discovering equations, laws and principles that…