🍁A call for PhD positions in complex systems relevant to ecology

#Ecosystems, #ecology, and #forests as an example are marvelous examples of #complex systems. In collaboration with our colleagues at BOKU, we are also interested in applicants who want to study these topics! Applications due soon! 🧪🦋🌳

Highlighting this Simons postdoc fellowship again. Looking for junior postdocs who might team up with Brian Enquist and me. Keywords include nonlinear dynamics, reaction diffusion, population dynamics, metabolic scaling. 🧪🦋🌳

“the progress of culture consists only in the ever-increasing permeation of all of life by artistic purposes.” - Klimt

Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs - Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75% - Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60% - Social Sciences by 50–70% - History by 60% - Biology by 75% - The German department will lose all PhD seats - Sociology from six PhD students to zero

This is a great Simons foundation #postdoc opportunity for theorists with incipient interest. If you’re interested in working in quantitative laws of life in ecosystems, please message me. Due date Dec. 4. Note the 3 years w/in PhD condition. #ecology #physics #maths 🧪🦋

One of the most fascinating points from the Q&A: Polarization isn't just about what we believe. It's about what we choose to make into a political issue. Some issues divide, others unite. The Senate is voting on more polarizing issues and, predictably, getting more divided outcomes.

The well-deserved #NobelPrize in #Economics this year reminds us how important (and really how little is known) about the dual forces of #innovation and #obsolescence as we discuss in our #arXiv #preprint. arxiv.org/abs/2505.05182 🧪🦋 1/n

von Neumann on #digital and #analog vs. #biological #computers (1964). Some notable quotations: 1/n 🧪

Stapledon's #Star Maker from 1937: a journey through #space, #time, and the Universe's end with an #emergent, #collective, #cosmic consciousness, and acclaimed as "one of the most brilliant, inventive, and daring [SF] books" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Ma...). Certainly imaginative and strange 🧪🦋

"It might interest you to know that the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote in 1905 that 'the amount of noise that anyone can bear undisturbed stands in inverse proportion to his mental capacity and therefore be regarded as a pretty fair measure of it.' journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Politicians talk big. But what if (with a bit of physics) you could let their votes speak for themselves? In this Q&A, I chat with @spintheory.bsky.social about what his mathematical maps of US Senate politics reveal about polarization — with a surprising link to the physics foundations of AI 🧪⚛️

“INFORMATION THEORY AND STATISTICAL MECHANICS” by E.T. Jaynes is a real classic in #complexity and #complex systems 🧪🦋

A lovely quotation from Han Kang… As the snow lands on the wet asphalt, each flake, seems to falter for a moment. Then, like a trailing sentence at the close of a conversation…

Stifter: “genuine freedom, demands the most self-control, the constraint of one’s desires… The foremost, and only enemies of freedom, therefore are all these people who are possessed by powerful desires and urges, which they wish to gratify by any means”

The latest issue of Scientific American is the 180th anniversary, and they have a series of articles about "180 degree turnarounds" in science. Here's mine on RNA.

#1: 🎡 Vienna in the early 1900s was the center of the intellectual world, the fourth largest city in Europe, and home to “dazzling coteries of thinkers.” ...

What a great and fun video on echolocation!

A new paper out on arxiv today: "Collective contributions to #polarization in #political #voting" arxiv.org/abs/2508.02496 #physics #complexity 🧪🦋

Our paper on innovation/exnovation is up! journals.aps.org/prresearch/a...

Another call for scientists looking to move to #Europe: www.researchireland.ie/funding/glob... #academicsky 🧪

"Philip Anderson's 'More is Different'...profound ideas are lost when it is invoked to support a rather overworked sense of emergence...'the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.'" -Krakauer #complexity #emergence 🧪🦋

“Meet the early-career scientists planning to leave the United States” “Funding to start a laboratory is generally lower in those countries than it is in the United States, but the career prospects seem more stable” #academia #postdocs 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, excerpts (1/n)

Anthony Downs, influential #political theorist (i.e. #economist) defines a #democracy in his 1957 article as... www.jstor.org/stable/1827369 "A democracy is a political system that exhibits the following characteristics:

Once upon a time… "For what pertains to warfare, nothing is required but practice in the mathematical sciences, that is, cosmography, geography and topography, in the mechanics of…

Some excerpts from Kuhn’s Essential Tension, “Mathematical and experimental traditions” (1/n) 🧪

I'm excited to say that one of the most exploratory and thought-provoking papers I've worked on in recent years was just accepted at Physical Review Research. Preprint here: arxiv.org/abs/2502.21072 #physics #innovation 🧪🦋 @apsphysics.bsky.social

Are you a #postdoc in the US looking to next steps? The Austrian Academy of Sciences is opening up 25 fellowships: www.oeaw.ac.at/en/news/25-n... A great reason to use our visitor program at #Complexity #Science Hub @csh.ac.at and see how you would fit in: csh.ac.at/engage/resea... 🧪🦋

Oh man, this one looks exciting

Looks a lot like second order phase transition? See How Marine Heat Waves Are Spreading Across the Globe www.nytimes.com/2025/06/09/c...

We’re adapting to the changing scientific climate @csh.ac.at Step 1 is extending our visitor to host people to help them orient in the Vienna/Europe environment. Check it out csh.ac.at/engage/resea...

A horrifying read. "We’re talking about nearly half the tree of life disappearing in one human lifetime. That is absolutely catastrophic." 🌍🧪 www.theguardian.com/environment/... #Biodiversity #Insect #Pollution #ClimateCollapse

In 1945, Vannevar Bush compiled 5 pillars for solid #scientific #research from a number of reports and working committees that analyzed how the US could become a scientific leader. Here they are 🧪

Hey #complexity colleagues 🧪🦋 Can you imagine your next steps at Complexity Science Hub? We'd like to ease a transition to #Europe across levels of seniority with our new extended, exploration visitor program. csh.ac.at/engage/resea... 1/3

I recall some aspect of this debate mentioned in the budget cuts as more scientific investment not leading to breakthroughs. As this article makes clear, we don't know why this is the case. Perhaps its serious underinvestment for what is necessary for returns (i.e. the Bloom et al. argument)...🧪1/2

Complex systems!

This is just incredibly cool. Contact lenses using nanoparticles to render infrared light visible.

Pretty and amazing: calculatingempires.net?pos=13937.00...

Rush Holt’s forward to the highly influential Vannevar Bush report Endless Frontier has not aged well in terms of his broader call to science (published 2021), and it’s tragic reading it, but here are some excerpts. 🧪 #funding #research #development #academic #investment #innovation

Choose Science. Choose Europe. A new Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Postdoctoral Fellowships 2025 call is now open. With a budget of €404.3 million, it will support around 1,650 researchers from Europe and beyond. Apply by 10 September → europa.eu/!fBTMgF

“The first priority is to ensure that science in Europe remains open and free. That is our calling card,” Ms. von der Leyen said. “As threats rise across the world, Europe will not compromise on its principles. Europe must remain the home of free academic and scientific values.” 🧪

Biology is beautiful

Are you #Europe curious and into #complex 🦋systems? Looking for a #postdoc, professorship, #grants? Stay tuned 📡 In the coming weeks, @csh.ac.at is rolling out initiatives to bring scientists to the wonderful city of #Vienna in these trying times. Check who we are csh.ac.at/research/res... 🧪

Ziman's 1998 essay "Why must scientists become more ethically sensitive than they used to be?" has renewed relevance for current times. 🧪 Some excerpts below (skimping on qualifications to his claims) #ethics #academia #research www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Just heard @erc.europa.eu will increase funding for grantees relocating to #Europe. Researchers based in the US or elsewhere in the world, can apply for €1 million beyond the usual max amount to set up a lab or #research team, if scientifically justified. Now to be €2 million. 🧪 #grants #academic

🧠👁️Open Access to 0.5 billion synapses The MICrONS #openaccess dataset maps activity and connections across multiple areas of the mouse visual cortex – linking function, structure, and computation in unprecedented detail. 🔗 www.nature.com/articles/s41... #SciComm 🧪

BREAKING: On Friday, the federal government issued new demands of Harvard University. The university's lawyers just responded: back off.

Reading the transcript of Princeton's president Eisengruber on the Daily and what a cogent, powerful, and brave defense of #academic #freedom. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/p...? A few highlights, but it's worth a read.

Safe Place for Science: www.univ-amu.fr/fr/public/ac... VUB emergence funding for postdocs: www.vub.be/en/news/vub-... 🧪