tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-78629724070580322092024-03-19T14:30:57.385+11:00Redundant InformationQuasi-random thoughts on being an Scientist/Engineer and all that entailsJoehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-79800952894779167782014-04-22T11:25:00.001+10:002014-04-22T11:28:31.673+10:00Directed Information Measures in NeuroscienceI'm really please to announce the publication of our new edited book: <br />
<br />
"<b>Directed Information Measures in Neuroscience</b>"<br />
edited by <a href="http://www.michael-wibral.de/">Michael Wibral</a>, <a href="https://www.etis.ee/portaal/isikuCV.aspx?PersonVID=74926&lang=&lang=en">Raul Vicente</a>, <a href="http://lizier.me/joseph/">Joseph T. Lizier</a><br />
in series "Understanding Complex Systems",<br />
Springer, Berlin, 2014.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.springer.com/physics/complexity/book/978-3-642-54473-6">About</a> -- <a href="http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-642-54474-3">Downloads</a> (via Springer) -- <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3642544738/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=3642544738&tag=joselizi-20&linkCode=as2">Purchase</a> (via amazon)<br />
<br />
The book grew out of a workshop I co-organised with Michael and Raul in Frankfurt in April 2014 -- <a href="http://www.neff-ffm.de/de/veranstaltungen/seminars/workshop.php">NeFF-Workshop on Non-linear and model-free Interdependence Measures in Neuroscience</a>. Our workshop focussed on the use of transfer entropy in computational neuroscience. We managed to attract several good speakers from this field, including <a href="http://users.ugent.be/~dmarinaz/">Daniele Marinazzo</a>, <a href="http://www.iit.it/en/people/daniel-chicharro.html">Daniel Chicaharro</a>, <a href="http://www.science.unitn.it/~nollo/staff/faes/faes.html">Luca Faes</a> and <a href="http://research.baycrest.org/vvakorin">Vasily Vakorin</a>, as well as a good crowd of participants, many of whom were quite knowledgeable in this field, such as <a href="http://www.nld.ds.mpg.de/~demian/Demian_Battaglias_homepage/Research.html">Demian Battaglia</a>. In our humble opinion, the meeting was quite a success, culminating in lively discussion sessions at the end of each day. We were delighted to host <a href="http://www.springer.com/engineering?SGWID=0-175-19-1165522-0">Leontina Di Cecco</a> from Springer at the workshop, and the book project grew from our discussions there.<br />
<br />
The contributions were mainly decided at the workshop, and with chapters contributed from the aforementioned authors, we managed to span most of the research taking place on information transfer in neuroscience. The book serves as a thorough introduction to measuring directed information transfer in computational neuroscience, how this is being applied and what it can reveal, and what directions this research may take in the future. We're really happy with the end result, and even more pleased that we can share it with you now.<br />
<br />
For a little more information, here's the teaser from the back of the book:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Analysis of information transfer has found rapid adoption in neuroscience, where a highly dynamic transfer of information continuously runs on top of the brain's slowly-changing anatomical connectivity. Measuring such transfer is crucial to understanding how flexible information routing and processing give rise to higher cognitive function. Directed Information Measures in Neuroscience reviews recent developments of concepts and tools for measuring information transfer, their application to neurophysiological recordings and analysis of interactions. Written by the most active researchers in the field the book discusses the state of the art, future prospects and challenges on the way to an efficient assessment of neuronal information transfer. Highlights include the theoretical quantification and practical estimation of information transfer, description of transfer locally in space and time, multivariate directed measures, information decomposition among a set of stimulus/responses variables and the relation between interventional and observational causality. Applications to neural data sets and pointers to open source software highlight the usefulness of these measures in experimental neuroscience. With state-of-the-art mathematical developments, computational techniques and applications to real data sets, this book will be of benefit to all graduate students and researchers interested in detecting and understanding the information transfer between components of complex systems.</i></blockquote>
<br />Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-278813784738598672012-12-12T01:16:00.002+11:002012-12-13T14:00:36.246+11:00Information theory: questions and answers<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory">Information theory</a> is fundamentally about <b>questions</b> and <b>answers</b>.<br />
<br />
We understand information itself in terms of questions and answers: 1 bit of information is the uncertainty in the answer to a question with a 50-50 outcome, e.g. "will this coin flip give tails?".<br />
<br />
Just as importantly though, the measures of information theory themselves are all about questions and answers too.<br />
<br />
For the basic measures, the questions they ask seem fairly obvious. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy_%28information_theory%29">Shannon Entropy</a> asks:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>How much uncertainty is there in the state of this variable X?</i>". </blockquote>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_information">Mutual information</a> asks "<i>how much information does the state of variable X tell me about the state of Y?</i>", while <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditional_mutual_information">conditional mutual information</a> asks "<i>how much information does the state of variable X tell me about the state of Y, given that I already know the state of Z?</i>"<br />
<br />
But I want to make a few more subtle points about these questions and answers.<br />
<br />
In my opinion (which is of course the only correct one), the answers that the measures give are <i>always</i> correct. If you think they're wrong, then you're asking the wrong question, or have malformed the question in some way. There are plenty of ways to do this, or at least to inadvertently change the question that you're asking.<br />
<br />
I see the sample data itself as part of the question that a measure is answering. When you estimate the probability distribution functions (PDFs) empirically from a given sample data set, your original question about entropy really becomes:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<i>How much uncertainty is there in the state of this variable X, given what we're assuming to be a representative sample of realisations x of X here?</i>"</blockquote>
Of course, your representative sample could simply be too short, and thereby completely misrepresent the PDF. Or you could get into trouble with stationarity (1) of the process - you might implicitly have appended "given what we're assuming to be a representative stationary sample here" to the question, but that assumption may not be true.<br />
In both cases, the measure will give the correct answer to your question, but it might not be the question you really intended to ask. <br />
<br />
As another way of inadvertently changing the question, one must realise that for the same information-theoretic measure, different estimators (or indeed different parameter settings for the same estimator) answer different questions. Take the mutual information, for example, which one could measure on continuous-valued data via (box) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_density_estimation">kernel estimation</a>. Using this estimator, the measure asks: "<i>how much information does knowing the state of variable X within radius r tell me about the state of variable Y within radius r?</i>" Clearly, using different parameter values for r amount to asking different questions - potentially the questions are very different if one uses radically different scales for r. Going further, one could measure the mutual information using the enhanced <a href="http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066138">Kraskov-Grassberger kernel estimation</a> technique. With this estimator, the mutual information measure asks "<i>how much information does knowing the state of variable X tell me about the state of variable Y</i><i><i>, to the precision defined in their k closest neighbours of the sample data set in the joint X-Y space</i>?</i>" Apart from that being something of a mouthful, it's obviously a different question to what the box kernel estimation is asking. And again, changing the parameter k changes the question being asked as well.<br />
<br />
So to reiterate, information theory is fundamentally about questions and answers - the better you can keep that in mind, the better you will understand information theory and its tools.<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>UPDATE- 13/12/12</i> - My colleague <a href="http://www.oliverobst.eu/">Oliver Obst</a> provided a perfect quote about this: "Better a rough answer to the right question than an exact answer to the wrong question" - attributed to Lord Kelvin.<br />
<br />
-------------------<br />
Footnotes:<br />
(1) Here's a controversial statement: I suggest that it can be valid to make information-theoretic measurements on non-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stationary_process">stationary processes</a>. This simply changes the question that is being asked to something like: "<i>how much uncertainty is there in the state of this non-stationary variable X, if we don't know how the joint probability distribution of the </i><i><i>non-stationary </i>process is operating at this specific time, given what we're assuming to be a representative sample of the </i><i><i>joint probability distribution</i> weighted over all possible ways it may operate?</i>". Now, obviously that's quite a mouthful, but I'm trying to capture that intuition that one could validly consider how much information it takes to predict X if we don't know the specifics of the non-stationarity at this particular point in time, but do know the overall distribution of X (covering all possible behaviours). So long as one bears in mind that a different question is being asked (indeed a question that is quite different to the intended use of the measure), then certainly the answer can be validly interpreted. Of course, the bigger issue is in properly sampling the PDF of X over all possible behaviours, but that's another story.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-66289199271640147492012-03-17T03:45:00.000+11:002012-03-17T03:45:28.766+11:00Workshop on Non-linear Interdependence Measures in NeuroscienceI'm pleased to announce the <a href="http://www.neff-ffm.de/de/veranstaltungen/seminars/workshop.php">NeFF-Workshop on Non-linear and model-free Interdependence Measures in Neuroscience and TRENTOOL course</a> which will be held at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany on April 26-27, 2012 (hosted by the MEG Unit of the <a href="http://www.bic.uni-frankfurt.de/">Brain Imaging Centre, Frankfurt</a>).<br />
<br />
The synopsis from the workshop announcement is as follows:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">Understanding complex systems composed of many interacting units, such as neural networks, means understanding their directed and causal interactions. If the units in question interact in a nonlinear way, as it can be assumed in neural networks, we are faced with the problem that the analysis of interactions must be blind to the type of interaction if we want to cover all possible interactions in the network, as we may not know the type of nonlinear interaction a priori. Prematurely limiting our search to specific models, nonlinearities or, even worse, linear interactions may block the road to discovery. Novel model-free techniques for the quantification of directed interactions from information theory offer a promising alternative to more traditional methods in the field of interaction analyses, but also come with their own specific challenges. This symposium brings together the most active researchers in the field to discuss the state of the art, future prospects and challenges on the way to an model-free, information theoretic assessment of neuronal directed interactions.</blockquote>I'm happy to be co-organising this workshop with <a href="http://www.michael-wibral.de/">Michael Wibral</a> (head of the MEG Unit, Brain Imaging Center, Goethe University Frankfurt) and Raul Vicente (<a href="http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/">Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies</a>).<br />
<br />
We've got several speakers lined up to talk about their work in this field, particularly using information-theoretic tools including the transfer entropy. The speakers include some collaborators of mine (e.g. Mikhail Prokopenko, Paul Williams), many others I'm looking forward to meeting (e.g. Stefano Panzeri, Luca Faes), and the organisers of course :).<br />
<br />
Plus there will also be a workshop on Michael and Raul's Transfer Entropy toolbox (<a href="http://www.trentool.de/">TRENTOOL</a>), which is designed to provide effective network analysis on neuro data sets in Matlab. I'm looking forward to playing around with this more myself, I've already got a project and some data in mind.<br />
<br />
We're hoping to get lots of participants (though space is limited) - full details on how to register are available at the workshop website - <a href="http://bit.ly/xwyh2R">http://www.neff-ffm.de/de/veranstaltungen/seminars/workshop.php</a><br />
<br />
I hope to see you there!Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-87921237437186894262012-03-04T04:57:00.006+11:002012-12-03T14:16:13.556+11:00Identifying influential spreaders and efficiently estimating infection numbers in epidemic models: a walk counting approach<span style="color: red;">Updated 26 October</span> - our paper has been published in <i>Europhysics Letters</i> <b>99</b> 68007 (2012) <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/99/68007">doi:10.1209/0295-5075/99/68007</a> - we've also updated the preprint on arXiv with the revised material.<br />
<span style="color: red;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: red;">Update 3 December</span> - MPI made a <a href="http://www.mpg.de/6606963/epidemics-walk-counting-approach">press release</a> about the paper, and New Scientist (German edition) published an <a href="http://www.new-scientist.de/inhalt/netzwerkanalyse-seuchenprognose-in-nur-einer-stunde-a-864905.html">article</a> about it (in German).<br />
<br />
-------------------------------------------------------------------<br />
<br />
The news at this end is that <a href="http://www.mis.mpg.de/jjost/members/frank-bauer.html">Frank Bauer</a> and I just submitted a new preprint on arXiv:<br />
<br />
F. Bauer and J.T. Lizier, "Identifying influential spreaders and efficiently estimating infection numbers in epidemic models: a walk counting approach", MPI MIS Preprint 1/2012, <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1203.0502">arXiv:1203.0502</a>, 2012.<br />
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<blockquote>
We introduce a new method to efficiently approximate the number of infections resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible individuals. Our approach is based on counting the number of possible infection walks of various lengths to each other node in the network. We analytically study the properties of our method, in particular demonstrating different forms for SIS and SIR disease spreading (e.g. under the SIR model our method counts self-avoiding walks). In comparison to existing methods to infer the spreading efficiency of different nodes in the network (based on degree, k-shell decomposition analysis and different centrality measures), our method directly considers the spreading process and, as such, is unique in providing estimation of actual numbers of infections. Crucially, in simulating infections on various real-world networks with the SIR model, we show that our walks-based method improves the inference of effectiveness of nodes over a wide range of infection rates compared to existing methods. We also analyse the trade-off between estimate accuracy and computational cost, showing that the better accuracy here can still be obtained at a comparable computational cost to other methods.</blockquote>
<br />
<b>Epidemic spreading</b> in biological, social, and technological <b>networks</b> has recently attracted much attention. The structure of such networks is generally complex and heterogeneous, so a key question in this domain is: "Given a first infected individual of the network (<i>patient zero</i>) - how likely is it that a substantial part of the network will become infected?" It is, of course, of particular interest to identify the most influential spreaders. This knowledge could, for instance, be used to prioritise vaccinations.<br />
<br />
The most obvious and direct way to address this question is to estimate the number of infections by running <b>simulations</b> of the infection model. There are several well-known <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compartmental_models_in_epidemiology">infection models</a> which can be used to simulate diseases with different properties. These include the SIR (susceptible-infected-removed) model for diseases where a subject may only be infected once (due to either recovery with full immunity or death), and the SIS (susceptible-infected-susceptible) model for diseases where infected subjects recover and become susceptible to reinfection. To run a simulation, one must consider the network structure connecting susceptible individuals, and the infection rate or probability β that an infected individual will infect a given neighbour.<br />
<br />
One problem with running simulations however, is that it takes <b>a lot of computational time</b> to obtain appropriate accuracy. For example, for an SIR model we run on a network of 27519 nodes and 116181 undirected edges, 10000 simulated initial infections per node for around 20 values of infection rate β took <i>2000 hours</i> to simulate. Of course, this runtime does not scale well with the size of the network, while for real-world problems it is generally the large networks that we are genuinely interested in.<br />
<br />
As such, it would be useful to find a more efficient way than full simulation to estimate infection numbers, and/or to be able to use local network properties of nodes to understand their spreading efficiencies.<br />
So the problem that we are addressing here is two-fold:<br />
<ol>
<li>How to <b>efficiently estimate</b> the number of infections resulting from a given initially-infected node in a network of susceptible individuals?</li>
<li>What <b>network structural properties</b><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>which are <b>local to the initially-infected node</b> are most useful for predicting how well disease will spread from it?</li>
</ol>
In fact, there has been a lot of work recently trying to find local network properties of nodes that are useful in predicting the relative spreading influence of different initially-infected nodes in a network. This attempts to address problem 1, but additionally gives very useful insight into how local network structure can promote or inhibit disease spreading (i.e. problem 2). The properties other authors have investigated range from simply examining out-degree, to <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nphys1746">k-shell analysis</a>, to various measures of node centrality in the network (e.g. <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.4042v2">eigenvector centrality</a>). And the good news is that you get a surprisingly accurate insight into the relative spreading efficiency of the various nodes with these very simple measures. Such work has attracted a lot of attention, for example being published in <span style="font-style: italic;">Nature Physics</span>.<br />
<br />
However, we observed two issues with these approaches:<br />
<ol>
<li>They only infer the <span style="font-style: italic;">relative</span> spreading efficiency of initially infected nodes; i.e. they do not provide an estimate of the <span style="font-style: italic;">actual</span> numbers of infections resulting from each node. These actual infection numbers could be very important in many applications.</li>
<li>While the existing inference measures do a good job, they do not actually directly consider the mechanics of disease spreading. As such, there is still room for improvement. As an example of potential improvement areas: none of the above-mentioned measures change their relative inference with the rate of infection β.</li>
</ol>
So, we sat down and thought hard about the local network properties that best relate to the mechanics of disease spreading. We focussed on the fact that disease spreads on a network in the manner of a <b>walk</b>. The disease can only reach node B from node A on a walk from A to B, where every node on that walk is also infected. Our basic premise is that the count of the number of walks from the initially infected node to other susceptible nodes (an approach known as <b>walk counting</b>) should be a local network structural property that gives good insight into disease spreading. The idea had been previously raised in the literature, but not properly examined.<br />
<br />
We developed the idea further, working out the mathematics to turn these walk counts into <i>estimates</i> of infection numbers, as a function of infection rate β. Interestingly, different types of walks are involved for different disease spreading models; e.g. for SIR spreading one is only interested in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-avoiding_walk">self-avoiding walks</a> (since no node can be infected twice), whereas for SIS spreading one is interested in any type of walk. Our estimates are not perfect, and we identify where and how known errors will occur. However, the estimates have several very important and useful properties compared to other approaches:<br />
<ol>
<li>Our technique provides <b>estimates of actual numbers of infections</b> from a given initially-infected node, which is more useful than inferred <span style="font-style: italic;">relative</span> spreading efficiency alone. It's useful to know who the most influential spreaders are, but you also want to know the extent to which they will spread the disease.</li>
<li>Importantly, testing with simulations on various social network structures reveals that our technique infers <b>more accurate relative spreading efficiencies</b> than those of the aforementioned previously published techniques <b>over a wide range of infection rates β</b> (up to the lower super-critical spreading regime). This is because our technique directly considers the mechanics of disease spreading.</li>
<li>And our technique has <b>excellent computational efficiency</b>. Note that there is a trade-off in our technique between computational efficiency and higher accuracy: by considering only <i>short</i> infection walks, our algorithm runs faster, but better accuracy is generally obtained by considering <i>longer</i> walks. Our short-walk estimates can be made in approximately the same run-time as the aforementioned techniques, but with greater accuracy in inferring relative spreading efficiency. Our longer-walk estimates produce better accuracy again, and do so with orders of magnitude less runtime than simulations of the disease spreading process which obtain the same accuracy.</li>
</ol>
As such, we show that our <i>walk counting</i> approach provides the following <span style="font-style: italic;">unique</span> combination of features: they are the most relevant local network structural feature to infer relative disease spreading efficiency, provide estimates of actual infection numbers, and are computationally efficient.<br />
<br />
Comments/suggestions welcome, of course ...Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-33359496580556071342011-12-05T05:25:00.005+11:002011-12-05T05:43:30.316+11:0010th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry (ACRI 2011)The first call for papers is out for the 10th International Conference on Cellular Automata for Research and Industry (ACRI 2012), to be held on Santorini Island, Greece, September 24-27, 2012.<br /><br />The main website is at <a href="http://acri2012.duth.gr/">http://acri2012.duth.gr/</a><br />Important dates at <a href="http://acri2012.duth.gr/dates.html">http://acri2012.duth.gr/dates.html</a> - submissions are due March 19, 2012.<br />Other important information includes that the proceedings will be published in Springer LNCS.<br /><br />This year I am part of the program committee, which should be quite interesting. I've come across many papers from this conference series, including "<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-30479-1_13">Local Information in One-Dimensional Cellular Automata</a>" which influenced my own work on filtering CAs. I'm looking forward to going, and hope to see you there.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-68149249642750018542011-10-07T20:14:00.002+11:002011-10-07T23:51:24.264+11:00Topical Issue on Guided Self-OrganizationFollowing the success of the <a href="http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso3">third</a> and <a href="http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso4">fourth</a> Guided Self-Organization workshops (this year and last), there is a call for papers out for a topical issue on Guided Self-Organization in <a href="http://www.worldscinet.com/acs/">Advances in Complex Systems</a> next year.<br /><br />Important dates are:<br /><ul><li>expression of interest (tentative title and list of authors) to guest editors : 4. November 2011</li><li>submission to ACS: 31 January 2012</li><li> notification: 30 April 2012</li><li>camera-ready papers: 31 May 2012</li></ul><br />Full details of the CFP are at <a href="http://bit.ly/pmulSr">http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso4/cfp/index.html</a> and an excerpt is below:<br /><p> </p><blockquote><p>The goal of Guided Self-Organization (GSO) research is to leverage the strengths of self-organization while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing process. The ACS Topical Issue on Guided Self-Organization aims to condense the current state-of-art in guided self-organizing systems, including, but not limited to information- and graph-theoretic foundations of GSO and the information dynamics of cognitive systems. </p><p> A number of attempts have been made to formalize aspects of GSO within information theory and dynamical systems: empowerment, information-driven evolution, robust overdesign, reinforcement-driven homeokinesis, predictive information-based homeokinesis, interactive learning, etc. However, the lack of a broadly applicable mathematical framework across multiple scales and contexts leaves GSO methodology incomplete. Devising such a framework and identifying common principles of guidance are the main themes of GSO. </p></blockquote><p></p>Papers need not be regarding work presented at the workshops, new work is also solicited. Good luck with your submissions!Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-64093014683400102332011-07-18T18:38:00.003+10:002011-07-18T18:49:06.470+10:00GSO 4A quick note to promote the <a href="http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/gso4/">Fourth International Workshop on Guided Self-Organization</a> (GSO 4):<br /><br /><blockquote>The goal of Guided Self-Organization (GSO) is to leverage the strengths of self-organization while still being able to direct the outcome of the self-organizing process. The GSO-2011 workshop will bring together invited experts and researchers in self-organizing systems, with particular emphasis on the information- and graph-theoretic foundations of GSO and the information dynamics of cognitive systems.<br />...<br />The following topics are of special interest: information-theoretic measures of complexity, graph-theoretic metrics of networks, information-driven self-organization (<a href="http://www.prokopenko.net/IDSO.html">IDSO</a>), applications of GSO to systems biology, computational neuroscience, cooperative and modular robotics, sensor networks, and cognitive modeling.<br /></blockquote><br />Some good friends of mine have been behind this series (this year, <a href="http://homepages.feis.herts.ac.uk/%7Ecomqdp1/">Daniel Polani</a>, <a href="http://informatics.indiana.edu/larryy/">Larry Yaeger</a>, and my old supervisor <a href="http://www.prokopenko.net/">Mikhail Prokopenko</a>). The series started at our lab in Sydney 3 years ago, and it's pleasing to see that it has really got some momentum behind it now.<br /><br />Unfortunately I have to miss it this year, but if this sounds like your field then I recommend that you go, as this will be an excellent meeting.<br /><br />Abstracts are due by July 31, the workshop itself is on Sept 8-10 2011 in Hertfordshire, UK.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-7915037334166955382011-07-13T18:49:00.003+10:002011-07-13T21:18:29.343+10:00Carbon tax shenanigansIt's been a little strange watching all the debate at home about the incoming carbon tax. The commentators on the right are getting so frothy-mouthed and vicious about the whole thing. Hardly a surprise I suppose.<br /><br />The weirdest thing is the loss of perspective. I think it's best summarised in this blog post (tip to Elliot):<a href="http://www.heathenscripture.com/you-shut-your-goddamn-carbon-taxin-mouth/"><br />http://www.heathenscripture.com/you-shut-your-goddamn-carbon-taxin-mouth/</a><br />It's a great shot of perspective there. And I have to agree - if you can't afford $10 a week out of your $100k+ income for something for your kids' futures like this, my heart bleeds. Really.<br /><br />I also wanted to share something I saw on the BBC news this morning. After a story on the impending (real) Italian financial crisis, they reported that consumer confidence in Australia had reached a low point, noting with unhidden incredulity that this was despite (and I paraphrase) "near zero unemployment, strong growth and record standard of living" but seemed "related to fears about a carbon tax". It's difficult not to feel embarrassed about that.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-11658850991244268722011-04-21T05:38:00.004+10:002011-04-21T05:42:09.194+10:00I must start writing again ...Well it's been a while, and a lot has happened since I last wrote.<br /><br />In the last 18 months or so, I've submitted my PhD thesis, worked some more hours in my software engineering job, wrote up a few papers, graduated, moved to Leipzig, Germany and started as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences.<br /><br />Life hasn't exactly settled down, but I am planning on writing about all of the above in the near future ...Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-71076696810123242362009-11-17T23:23:00.002+11:002009-11-17T23:38:07.628+11:00TweetingSo I've been seduced by micro-blogging lately instead of doing much writing over here. It makes me think of the trend away from test match cricket towards the twenty-20 variety ...<br /><br />Anyway. I have to say that I've been enjoying getting into it. Follow me over at twitter: <a href="http://twitter.com/jlizier">@jlizier</a>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-32006063680394106882009-11-17T23:08:00.003+11:002009-11-17T23:22:33.140+11:00Writing upWell, that came around much more quickly than I was expecting. The last three and a half years doing my PhD have been really enjoyable, so on one hand writing up my thesis makes me a little sad to be finishing up. On the other hand, it's quite exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing the bound, finished product.<br /><br />Anyway, I'm well on the way at the moment, with about 4.5 chapters out of the 6 technical chapters done. And I'm only just hitting the writer's block stage; well that's an overstatement, I'm just having a little trouble getting the right tone on this chapter. Nothing serious. I'm still on track for a pre-Christmas submission. As I said to my supervisors, the only risk is that they won't provide the feedback fast enough :).<br /><br />I'm looking forward to a nice holiday over Christmas and January, then who knows where I'll end up next year. I put my first post-doc application in last week, I'm working on another one, and planning to put in a local application early next year. Watch this space.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-66045367270703328212009-11-16T16:25:00.003+11:002009-11-17T23:23:18.670+11:00Neural Computation discussion groupToday I'm just going to run a quick advertisement for a new series we're starting in our discussion group on"Neural Computation". It's on Fridays @ 2 pm at CSIRO Marsfield (north-west Sydney), but is open to anyone from outside who is interested.<br /><br />More details, including the schedule of talks, is available at <a href="http://www.prokopenko.net/entropy.html">http://www.prokopenko.net/entropy.html <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span></a><br /><br />As it happens, stumbling upon a link for these talks and subsequently coming along to them is how I met Mikhail which led to me starting my PhD. So if you're interested in the area, do come along as you never know where it might lead you!Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-46906562200903007202009-10-01T09:52:00.002+10:002009-10-01T09:53:02.319+10:00Funny stuntHere I was thinking that I was procrastinating about writing up my PhD. Not as much as these guys:<br /><a href="http://dataphiles.blogspot.com/2009/09/machine-learning-protest-at-g20.html">http://dataphiles.blogspot.com/2009/09/machine-learning-protest-at-g20.html</a><br />One of the funniest things I've seen for a while ...Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-29934015046087360362009-09-16T18:43:00.002+10:002009-09-16T18:48:03.941+10:00Apology to TuringNot mine, the <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/british-pm-says-sorry-for-computer-pioneers-castration-20090914-fn9g.html">British government's</a>.<br /><br />Better late than never.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-64868217558139314192009-08-22T00:55:00.004+10:002009-09-03T03:17:22.124+10:00Information, computation and complex systems workshopA quick post to advertise the <a href="http://www.maths.bristol.ac.uk/%7Eenxkw/ICCS09.html">Information, Computation and Complex Systems</a> satellite meeting, which is part of <a href="http://eccs09.info/">ECCS 09</a>.<br /><br />From the workshop page:<br /><blockquote>This workshop will bring together mathematicians and scientists to discuss methods and applications of information theory to complex systems. This includes the perspective of complex systems as computers.<br />The question of good measures of complexity alone is vital for complex systems research. Many proposals have been made, quite a few based on information theory. The workshop addresses the following topics:<br /><ol><li>Mathematics of information theoretic tools for complex systems</li><li>Information theory applied to complex systems</li><li>Complex systems as information processors</li></ol><p class="Body">The workshop will provide a forum for discussing the various existing information-theoretic and computation-theoretic tools, and their use in complex systems.<br />The focus will be on the mathematics of information and computation theory applied to complex systems. We encourage both theorists and experimentalists to attend, with either an information theoretic approach or a need for an information theoretic approach.</p></blockquote>I think this will be a really interesting workshop, as it directly relates to the focus of my PhD. The invited presentations should be quite good. I'm hoping to get the opportunity to present my own approach of the local information dynamics of distributed computation in complex systems, and hope to meet some people there with the need for this kind of approach.<br /><br />Submissions are apparently open until Mon 24/8/09, hope to see you there.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Update 1/9/09</span> - my submission "Coherent local information dynamics in complex computation" was accepted, so I'm now looking forward to presenting at ICCS. The <a href="http://www.maths.bristol.ac.uk/%7Eenxkw/ICCS09_Programme.html">schedule</a> has been posted.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-10492104483067471182009-07-08T12:10:00.003+10:002009-07-08T20:31:30.538+10:00The Ashes 2009Tonight (Australian time) marks the start of the 2009 Ashes series in the UK. For the uninitiated, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ashes">The Ashes</a> is the "trophy" for Australia vs England cricket series. These series occur roughly every two years, with a series hosted by each country each four years. For an Australian player or fan, an Ashes series in England is as good as it gets.<br /><br />To say I am looking forward to the coverage is an understatement. I would really love to get to England for the series one day. I'll be nearby in Germany during the last game of the series this year, but unfortunately all of the tickets are sold out.<br /><br />As I'm sitting here watching the first few overs, I've been thinking about how I can almost mark progress in my life by what I was doing while watching the Ashes from England every four years. In 1989 I was just finishing primary school. I hadn't been interested in or playing cricket for long, but it sure took up a lot of my thinking. In 1993 I was mid-way through high school, and by this point was taking my studies fairly seriously as I had realised what I could achieve academically. I remember watching the games up late after coming home some of the first times I was allowed to go out with my friends at night. By 1997 I was a couple of years into uni, really enjoying engineering. I was also going out with my wife (then girlfriend) by then and my enduring memory of that series is watching it at her place after everyone else was asleep. 2001 was a big year for growing up: first full-time job, moving out with my girlfriend and thinking about getting married. It was nice watching that series late at night in a place I could call my own. Much better was 2005, when I could watch it in an apartment I owned rather than rented. By this time, we were married, and I had established myself at work though I was thinking a lot about how to go about doing a PhD as I was watching the games. This time, I'm sitting in our own house, am writing up my thesis, and my wife has begun her PhD studies. This time around I'll be occupied by what I/we are going to do next year once I'm finished. I wonder where I will be in four years time?Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-24574815856987190822009-06-29T23:57:00.003+10:002009-08-03T14:17:25.371+10:00The information dynamics of cascading failures in energy networks<span style="font-size:78%;">Disclaimer: shameless self-promotion follows.</span><br /><br />So our submission:<br /><blockquote>Joseph T. Lizier, Mikhail Prokopenko, David J. Cornforth, "<a href="http://www.it.usyd.edu.au/%7Ejlizier/publications/Lizier-infoDInEnergyCascades.pdf">The information dynamics of cascading failures in energy networks</a>"</blockquote>to <a href="http://eccs09.info/">ECCS 2009</a> was accepted, and I'll be presenting it in the <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/comcom/events/eccs09/outlineschedule/program/">Policy, Planning and Infrastructure track</a> currently on the Friday morning of the conference.<br /><br />The abstract is as follows:<br /><blockquote>Small failures in electrical energy networks can lead to cascading failures that cause large and sustained power blackouts. These can disrupt important services and cost millions of dollars. It is important to understand these events so that they may be avoided. We use an existing model for cascading failures to study the information dynamics in these events, where the network is collectively computing a new stable distribution of flows. In particular, information transfer and storage across the network are shown to exhibit sensitivity to reduced network capacity earlier than network efficiency does, and so could be a useful indicator of critical loading. We also show that the local information dynamics at each node reveals interesting relationships between local topological features and computational traits. Finally, we demonstrate a peak in local information transfer in time coinciding with the height of the cascade's spread.</blockquote>In a nutshell, this paper describes an application of our framework for the information dynamics of distributed computation to the phenomena of cascading failures on networks. The focus is on energy networks, though the results are applicable to other types of networks, e.g. transport.<br /><br />Information dynamics may at first not seem applicably to cascading failures, but there are a few good reasons for the application here. First, cascading failures are akin to damage spreading phenomena, and both are often cited as mechanisms of information transfer in networks: it is useful to explore this quantitatively. Further, when a cascading failure occurs, the network is actually computing a new stable state (or attractor), so quantifying the information dynamics is a direct study of this computation. To underline all that, I really like this quote from Melanie Mitchell's new <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/LifeSciences/?view=usa&ci=9780195124415">book</a>:<br /><blockquote>The phenomena of cascading failures emphasizes the need to understand information spreading and how it is affected by network structure.</blockquote>Primarily, the results show that we get maximisations of information transfer and storage in the network near the critical phase, aligning with our findings in Random Boolean Networks (RBNs) in a <a href="http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/%7Ejlizier/publications/2008-Lizier-InfoDynamicsInRbns.pdf">paper </a>at <a href="http://www.alifexi.org/">ALifeXI </a>last year. We also find some interesting relationships between topological properties of the individual nodes and their own local information dynamics.<br /><br />From here, I'll be combining this work with that on RBNs in my PhD thesis, and probably seeking to make a journal submission from their combination.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-48166266324810035092009-06-18T00:15:00.002+10:002009-06-18T00:21:45.044+10:00Second International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (GSO-2009)Just a quick post to advertise The Second International Workshop on Guided Self-Organisation (<a href="http://www.mis.mpg.de/calendar/conferences/2009/gs09.html">GSO-2009</a>) which I'm planning on attending in August.<br /><br />A few pertinent clips from the workshop's website:<br /><br />"... by its very nature, self-organization more often than not has its own way. To be useful in practice, methods of guiding self-organization towards prespecified goals have to be developed. Adding and controlling constraints provides one possibility to this end.<br />Many properties of self-organisation can be characterised formally (e.g., information-theoretically). However, the lack of agreement of what is meant by complexity, constraints, etc, as well as a common methodology across multiple scales leaves any definition of self-organisation somehow vague, indicating a clear gap. Filling this gap and identifying common principles of guidance are the main themes of GSO-2009. The workshop will put particular emphasis on principles based on information flows through the perception-action loop of embodied systems."<br /><br />GSO-2008 was a really interesting week, so am hoping for the same level of inspiration this time round.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mis.mpg.de/calendar/conferences/2009/gs09/registration.html">Registration </a>is open, hope to see you there.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-21664741189957357222009-04-20T11:05:00.005+10:002009-06-18T00:36:01.883+10:00Directed information structureThe good news is that we recently received a notice of acceptance of an <a href="http://www.cs.usyd.edu.au/%7Ejlizier/publications/2009-Lizier-InfoStructureInInteractions.pdf">abstract </a>we submitted to <a href="http://www.cnsorg.org/2009/index.shtml">CNS*2009</a> (July 18-23) in collaboration with John-Dylan Haynes and Jakob Heinzle from the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience (<a href="http://www.bccn-berlin.de/">BCCN</a>) in Berlin.<br /><br />Titled "<span style="font-style: italic;">Directed information structure in inter-regional cortical interactions in a visuomotor tracking task</span>", it deals with a method for identifying directed information structure between distinct regions (of variables) in a large multi-variate set. The method identifies an interesting hierarchical structure for the given visuomotor task.<br /><br />My supervisor will be at CNS to present the poster, and the abstract will be included in a supplement to BMC Neuroscience soon. We're currently working on a more complete journal paper reporting on this experiment.<br /><br />CNS*2009 should be a good meeting, particularly the Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience <a href="http://www.cnsorg.org/2009/workshops/CNS-2009%20Workshop%20MITCN.pdf">workshop</a>. Wish I was going!Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-72292042510677529222009-04-02T23:31:00.004+11:002009-04-15T00:07:20.587+10:00ECAL and ECCS calls for papersJust thought I'd share two calls for papers for conferences that I will be / have submitted to this year.<br /><br />The European Conference on Complex Systems (<a href="http://eccs09.info/">ECCS09</a>) will be held from 21-25 September 2009, at the University of Warwick, UK. I've never been to ECCS before, but I've heard good things from several people about it. I like the way it appears to be a real melting pot of all areas of complex systems science, so I'm looking forward to seeing some interesting perspectives there. On that note, I think there will be some interesting applications related papers there, e.g. in the Policy, Planning and Infrastructure track. I also like the tiered submission structure, where you can submit 2, 6 or 15 page papers, and (if accepted) get a poster, 20 min or 40 min presentation: it gives you choice, and appropriate relative reward for work. We've submitted a paper on cascading failures in energy networks (more details if we're accepted). The first submission deadline has passed, though they have two more deadlines coming up (19/4 and 3/5): apparently slots will be filled on a "first arrival - frist serve policy".<br /><br />The 10th European Conference on Artificial Life (<a href="http://www.ecal2009.org/">ECAL2009</a>) will be held from September 13-16 2009 in Budapest, Hungary. I was at the last ECAL in Lisbon in 2007 and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a good crowd, with a nice mix of biologists and computer scientists. We're currently working on a paper combining some of my work on information dynamics with my PhD colleague Mahendra Piraveenan's work on network topological measures: this is something I had wanted to do for a while, but isn't in the form I thought it would be (nothing wrong with that though). More details if we're accepted. Anyway, ECAL are now following the lead of <a href="http://www.alifexi.org/">ALifeXI</a> in allowing abstract only submissions (which I think is fine in principle), and allowing both to have presentation slots (this I'm not sure about - I had the impression that some, not all, of what came through the abstract only channel was under-prepared; I prefer the ECCS approach). Paper submission is by April 30.<br /><br />Hope to see you there! (assuming we get accepted...)Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-578530014303520752009-03-26T13:49:00.002+11:002009-03-26T14:11:19.428+11:00Save the .au internetThe Australian Government is proposing an internet filter for all content coming down Australian people's lines. I don't disagree with the aim of stamping out things like child pornography but anyone with half a brain knows that:<br /><ol><li>Anyone wanting access to the sort of stuff this is intended to block will find a way around it. (This reminds me of when I was chatting to my wife's 14 yr old cousin who told me every kid in school knew how to use proxies to get around the school's content filter). More targeted strategies would have better success than a blanket approach like this that only harms the general populous (see point 3).<br /></li><li>Inevitably this sort of BS goes <a href="http://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell/dp/0451516265">1984 </a>with the government allowed to block anything they want without public scrutiny (the list of blocked sites won't be made public). Think the great internet wall of China.<br /></li><li>The costs (a big slow-down in speeds, mistaken blockings etc) would be for nothing.<br /></li></ol>For more details, see:<br /><ol><li>a recent <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/03/19/1237054961100.html?page=fullpage">article </a>...</li><li>some great <a href="http://www.overclockers.com.au/wiki/Australian_Internet_Filtering">commentary </a>...</li><li>and for how to sign a petition on this, see <a href="http://www.getup.org.au/">GetUp</a>'s campaign below:<br /></li></ol><br /><div><object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,28,0" width="300" height="250"><param name="movie" value="http://www.getup.org.au/flash/widget.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><embed src="http://www.getup.org.au/flash/widget.swf" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/download/download.cgi?P1_Prod_Version=ShockwaveFlash" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" height="250"></embed></object></div>Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-81970064731936935202009-03-12T14:23:00.009+11:002009-08-03T16:28:21.869+10:00Redundant!No, I'm not talking about redundancy in the information sense, but in terms of employment. On Monday I was made redundant from my part-time job, along with a number of other staff members there.<br /><br />This kind of thing happens from time to time: I think almost everyone in the company had been made redundant from some previous job. Indeed, it's the second time for me after <a href="http://telstra.com.au/">Telstra</a> closed their research laboratories (see <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstra_Research_Laboratories">1</a> and <a href="http://www.coxhill.com/trlhistory/">2</a>) three years ago.<br /><br />A few things I just want to mention.<br />Firstly, the law around redundancy entitlements has changed, thanks to our our previous prime minister <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Howard">John Howard</a>, friend of the worker. No severance payments are necessary anymore, just your 1 month's notice and good luck. In this market, you're going to be lucky to get a new job within 1 month - that's what a redundancy payment was designed for.<br />Also, I was asked to keep working through my notice period with the prospect of continuing on contract once the period ended. Obviously this is good, but without anything in writing I'm a bit concerned that we'll get to the end of the month and there won't be a contract. I'm sure a lot of others have had this dilemma over the years.<br /><br />All that being said, I know that in the long run I am a very lucky guy, and things here could definitely be worse ...<br /><br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">Update</span>: the contract did come through before the notice period ended, and I'm still happily working there. Hopefully things pick up, as we're working on some really promising services.)Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-28575948725651606052009-01-14T22:46:00.007+11:002009-07-08T20:47:04.263+10:00Happy New Year2008 is no more.<br />It was very much a mixed year, with some great highs and some rather upsetting lows. But that's life.<br />A few people have told me that felt the same way about 2008; which is interesting. Perhaps there was something in the stars :).<br /><br />Highlights included some great holidays: a trip to <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=EN&f=q&q=port+douglas&ie=UTF8&ll=-17.308688,141.503906&spn=16.854697,28.300781&z=5&iwloc=addr">Port Douglas</a> for my 30th, a weekend in the Hunter Valley with friends, what is becoming an almost annual trip to Europe (this year mainly around France, plus a little of Italy, Germany and the UK), and a couple of days at Terrigal across new year's.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7kzY639K7-RFRM3YjzdTXstZCAmjqECnUDFXRfdzdyDP9rgHfGGEY6sPjLfKA3jlNjbDgLjhk5XrEO4uC1fdqM9GfbXnBfKe29iQwWyO5cX12XnCmTqEGl3DFWyaQKLaZllKNbpULcQ/s1600-h/DSC00467.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI7kzY639K7-RFRM3YjzdTXstZCAmjqECnUDFXRfdzdyDP9rgHfGGEY6sPjLfKA3jlNjbDgLjhk5XrEO4uC1fdqM9GfbXnBfKe29iQwWyO5cX12XnCmTqEGl3DFWyaQKLaZllKNbpULcQ/s320/DSC00467.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5291139482156381826" border="0" /></a><br />On the PhD front, I had the <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.77.026110">first journal article</a> from my PhD published, and I was really pleased that it was in a good physics journal (PRE). I also had 2 conference papers at <a href="http://www.alifexi.org/">ALifeXI </a>in Winchester, another conference paper that I was a minor author on, and the year ends with 2 other journal articles submitted. ALifeXI was a great experience itself, as was <a href="http://www.prokopenko.net/gso.html">GSO-2008</a> (see previous <a href="http://redundantinformation.blogspot.com/2008/12/gso-goooone.html">post</a>), and I enjoyed lab visits at The University of Hertfordshire (UK) and The Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (in Berlin). Unfortunately though, a significant amount of my experimental work went nowhere this year, particularly in the second half, which has been quite frustrating. That's the nature of research though: if everything turned out the way you thought/hoped, it would be engineering rather than science.<br /><br />I enjoyed my part-time engineering job this year, feeling like I made a solid contribution to the team. It was nice to have a large role in our latest client implementation. For most of the year I was doing 2 days/week, but just before Christmas they've accomodated my request to drop down to one day/week. This will allow me to focus properly on my studies and get a decent night's sleep!<br /><br />On the home front, our renovation work has mostly ground to a halt, although we did undertake one major project: the front garden. There are a couple of items still to complete, but I'm really happy with the results. I also finally built a <a href="http://www.mythtv.org/">myth-tv</a> box (a home-brewed hard drive recorder), which was quite satisying from a geek perspective.<br />Turning 30 wasn't as challenging as I thought it would be, helped by two great parties my wife organised for me.<br />Speaking of whom, late in the year she was accepted to start her doctorate this year (in Education at <a href="http://www.uts.edu.au/">The University of Technology, Sydney</a>), which was really exciting. I know she's going to love the experience, and make an excellent contribution to her field.<br /><br />The downsides were mainly health related.<br />I broke my ankle the night I arrived home from ALifeXI in August. It was the first time I've broken anything, and to be honest I didn't cope very well (mentally) for the first few weeks on crutches. But I had an awesome physio (<a href="http://www.yellowpages.com.au/bi/reeve-rick--theodosi-theo-west-ryde-nsw-4038005.html">Rick Reeve</a> at West Ryde) who was really on the ball, and made a big difference to my mental health as well as physical. It was as simple as a break can be, but a break is a break and some 5 months later it's still not quite back to normal.<br />There were a couple of other health issues for us, which I don't want to go into here right now, and these really threw us on a number of occasions. For the moment, things seem to be back on track, but only time will tell.<br />There were some serious health issues for friends and family as well, including cancer, and the outcome there remains uncertain.<br />If all of this has taught me anything, it's the importance of staying positive.<br /><br />Finally, it's been a tough year for our families. My in-laws bought a country pub, and it's been a lot of hard work for them settling into it. My parents started the year facing a few challenges, but things seem to be stable now, and importantly they seem happy.<br /><br />What does 2009 hold? There's only one way to find out ... bring it on.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-15974009835269203552008-12-07T22:35:00.007+11:002009-01-14T22:46:14.854+11:00GSO - gooooneSo, the Guided Self-Organisation (<a href="http://www.prokopenko.net/gso.html">GSO-2008</a>) workshop has come and gone.<br />It was a really interesting week, with a key focus on information-theoretical aspects of self-organisation, plus particular theme days on computational neuroscience and adaptive hardware and robotics.<br /><br />We also did some nice socialising, with a couple of BBQs (at my supervisor's place and mine), and a trip to the <a href="http://www.bluemts.com.au/">Blue Mountains</a> (west of Sydney) where we did the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=EN&geocode=&q=evans+lookout+near+blue+mountains,+nsw&sll=-33.646921,150.321808&sspn=0.030724,0.055275&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.62777,150.320091&spn=0.058031,0.11055&z=13&g=evans+lookout+near+blue+mountains,+nsw&iwloc=addr&iwstate1=saveplace">Evans Lookout</a> walk (at least I think that's the one we did). I found the bushwalk quite challenging, as I was still recovering from a broken ankle some 3 months earlier (I did it while putting the rubbish bins out, the night I came home from <a href="http://www.alifexi.org/">ALifeXI</a>!). I never thought one could get such a sense of accomplishment from walking. It was a really interesting day though: obviously we saw some wonderful scenery and the company was great, but we also had the strange experience of (the briefest amount of) <a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/msleaves/AustralianOdyssey2008?feat=email#5279901769067395778">snow</a> in Australia, barely two weeks before summer ...<br /><br />Anyway, for a few weeks before and after the conference, we had several of the participants as guests at our lab. This was a very stimulating time, and I had the good fortune to spend many productive hours with them discussing information dynamics, causal effect, measures of complexity, etc etc. There are several interesting threads of investigation underway ...<br /><br />Bring on GSO-2009!Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7862972407058032209.post-9665747904673675842008-11-13T11:40:00.002+11:002008-11-13T11:55:10.611+11:00Real scienceI'm having a frustrating science day here. I'm trying to run a pile of simulations examining the coherence of distributed computation in networks, looking into transient bugs and struggling to work out why the simulations are taking much longer than they should.<br /><br />I was just chatting to a colleague who's having a similarly frustrating time of it, and this reminded my of one of my favourite passages.<br />This is from the preface to <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Six-Degrees-Science-Connected-Age/dp/0393041425">"Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age"</a>, by <a href="http://smallworld.columbia.edu/watts.html">Duncan J. Watts</a> (of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2F30918">small-world networks</a> fame: <a href="http://smallworld.columbia.edu/watts.html">1</a>,<a href="http://research.yahoo.com/bouncer_user/106">2</a>), W. W. Norton & Company, New York, 2003:<br /><blockquote>"But real science doesn’t work that way. As I eventually learned, real science occurs in the same messy ambiguous world that scientists struggle to clarify, and is done by real people who suffer the same kind of limitations and confusions as anybody else. The characters in this story are, one and all, talented people who have worked hard throughout their lives to succeed as scientists. But they are also entirely human. I know that because I know them, and I know that we have struggled and often failed together, only to pick ourselves up to try again. Our papers get rejected, our ideas don’t work out, we misunderstand things that later seem obvious, and most of the time we feel frustrated or just plain stupid. But we struggle on, the journey being every bit as much the point as the destination. Doing science is really a lot like doing anything else, but by the time it gets out into the larger world and everyone reads about it in books, it has been so reworked and redefined that it takes on an aura of inevitability in never had in the making. This story is about science in the making."</blockquote>I just love that passage. While it captures how frustrating this work can sometimes be, it also really sums up for me how rewarding it can be as well. I read this while I was thinking about going back to do my PhD and it definitely helped to solidify that decision.<br /><br />Oh, and the rest of the book is a very good read as well.Joehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13090849216238210174noreply@blogger.com0