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In September 2011 the annual European Conference on Complex Systems took place in Vienna, gathering together a diverse scientific community in order to tackle some of the world's most difficult challenges. Warwick's Dr Markus Kirkilionis, who chaired a panel devoted to ranking global problems, rounds up the key points of the discussion, which touched on themes such as terrorism, climate change and population increase.
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The notion of time is omnipresent yet elusive. What exactly is time? Is time what clocks measure, or is time defined to be what clocks measure? Does time as a physical entity exist at all? Or is it purely a mind-dependent phenomenon? Or perhaps neither, as Kant claimed, but an ideal, a priori notion? What is the topology of time? Is it a continuous straight line? Or could it be circular or helical? What about the arrow of time - why is the past different from the future? If time is illusory, how do we explain entropy and the second law of thermodynamics? But why was the entropy ever low to begin with? How does the universe evolve, and what does this say about time? How do we learn to grasp the concept of time, if time isn't a priori form of sensation? Do native speakers of tenseless languages perceive time differently from others? How exactly do we perceive time, and how can we make sense of a timeless physical world? Relatedly, how do complex patterns emerge in nature and in human societies? What are the implications of advancement in computer science for our understanding of evolution, intelligence, and the reality of time?
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This panel discussion focuses on the impact of measures of policies on global change - which are in most cases only a minor but strategic contribution to the combined effects generating global change itself. How much do we know about the global system, the factors influencing the global ecology and climate, and what do we know about human societies and their economies in order to achieve a given strategic goal? Themes discussed include: Climate Change, Financial Markets and the Economy, Energy Crisis, Biodiversity and Agriculture
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This year's public event at ECCS'09 was on "The Complexity of Global Change" The round table discussion explores the links between the necessary global economic changes triggered by a newly emerging global financial system, general globalisation, the need for technological innovation, improving unemployment, and long and medium time scale global factors like demographical changes, the loss of biodiversity, global food production and climate change.
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Complexity Science focuses on systems of many interdependent components, showing Emergent behaviour at the system level, Self-organisation and/or Evolution. At Warwick we draw on aspects of these in existing fields, including mathematics from dynamical systems and chaos, statistical inference, physics of phase transitions, self-assembly in chemistry, network modelling in biology and neuroscience, interacting agent modelling in economics and computer science. We also look to apply scientific methods in new fields of opportunity, such as transport, health and social science applications where mass quantitative data is newly available in this information age.
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Nick Barker takes a closer look at current chemical research, following processes and scientific methods in action, meeting the scientist themselves and their hypothesis driven research.
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A series of films by undergraduates in chemistry at the University of Warwick introducing a range of core themes and theories.
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Ian Stewart poses a series of mathematical challenges and puzzles.
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A collection of podcasts and videos from the University of Warwick focussing on research stories in the sciences.
