Happy to share my new paper w/ @cgershen.bsky.social, just published at @royalsocietypublishing.org Interface! Open Access🔓: royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article... Instead of proposing a new theory, we offer a synthesis in theoretical biology. Want to know more? Read the full thread./1 👇🧵

New paper led by @amahury.bsky.social published in JRS Interface: "Closing the loop: how semantic closure enables open-ended evolution?" royalsocietypublishing.org/rsif/article...

A long-overdue interactive version finally done (Huge thanks to Google Gemini) Complex Systems Topic Network: Interactive Visualization bingdev.binghamton.edu/sayama/compl...

Join us today at 4:00 p.m. GMT on our Journal Club (Discord channel) to discuss the paper “Self-organizing neural networks in novel moving bodies: anatomical, behavioral, and transcriptional characterization of a living structure with a nervous system.” 🧠 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

New paper in PRL on the relationship between thermodynamic driving and eigenvalues in Markovian master equations. We prove a weaker version of a beautiful conjecture proposed by Uhl and Seifert. Led by Guo-Hua Xu, with Jean-Charles Delvenne and Sosuke Ito journals.aps.org/prl/abstract...

Cooperation is a universal feature of complex systems, from the origins of life and microbiomes to societies. What universal patterns can be found in these systems? Here's our new @pnas.org paper. @jordipinero.bsky.social @artemyte.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/epdf/10....

The simulation hypothesis has long captured our imagination, yet most arguments rely on intuition over clear definitions. A new paper by SFI Professor David Wolpert introduces the first precise mathematical framework for defining simulation — and shows many common assumptions don’t hold up.

Did you miss the deadline for #NetSci2026? Submit your work to #NERCCS2026! Join us March 11–13 at the University of Rochester to celebrate the Ninth Northeast Regional Conference on Complex Systems. Click on the link (or scan the QR) and submit now! ⬇️ shorturl.at/52o0q

A few days ago, a very cool preprint went up on how the brain processes prosody — the melody of speech. This is one of those studies that I feel like helped me understand my brain better. So it's the topic of this week's post, which ends with a little future-studies wish list for science Santa 🎅🧪

Professor John Cottingham draws on Wittgenstein’s philosophy of language to argue that any understanding and evaluation of religious discourse must be sensitive to the form of life in which it is embedded. | https://bit.ly/4iHc32e #philsky #philsci 🧪

It's been quite a year for Quanta biology! In this year-end post I highlighted some favorite stories by @yaseminsaplakoglu.bsky.social @theuniverse.bsky.social @peterbrannen.bsky.social @mollyherring.bsky.social and Ariel Bleicher - and I want to share more of our great work from the year below!

Are you new to the world of #ComplexSystems? Looking for a simple explanation of technical terms like #feedback, #entropy, #autopoiesis, and #criticality? At #complexitycat, we offer you solutions./1 😼 www.complexitycat.org/posts/comple...

This year, many of Quanta’s biological stories deeply explored memory. Here are some of the stories worth remembering from 2025:

Centuries of ontological dualisms (even recently permeating the literature) have muddied goal-directedness as something mystical. 🔮 It’s time to naturalize this concept and unpack its relationship to agency!/1 #complexitycat 😼 www.complexitycat.org/posts/goal-d...

Last week #complexitycat started a discussion about goal-directedness by analyzing Heylighen's naturalization of it. Yordan Yordanov and I are having a very nice exchange of ideas in the comment section of the post, so I invite you to read it/join us!😼 www.complexitycat.org/posts/goal-d...

Seems to be a losing battle to make people understand that Wheeler's "It from Bit" does not mean "reality is made of information" (it was about defending an epistemic view of quantum mechanics, where the wave function isn't real, only measurement outcomes are), and likewise...

Asia-Pacific Summer School and Conference on Networks and Complex Systems apcncs2026.github.io

Made a site comparing the sizes of living things :) The great Julius Csotonyi spent 5 months painting over 60 illustrations for the site, no ai used > neal.fun/size-of-life/

Can design principles be defined for #biocomputation beyond living circuits or standard engineering approaches? Yes. We identified an alternative route based on a class of distributed computation enabling combinatorial design for #synbio link.springer.com/article/10.1...

How are the limits of knowledge understood in Peirce’s philosophy? In a recent 📃, Kristine Grigoryan & Felipe Morales Carbonell examine Peirce’s stance toward the knowability thesis—viz. that every truth is, in principle, knowable—and Fitch’s paradox 👇 www.pdcnet.org/resphilosoph... #philsky #HPS

We’re excited to announce that the Outonomy book —resulting from one of IAS Research’s major projects— is now out! 🎉 It features contributions from many of our members and is Open Access, available in full or by chapters: 🔗 link.springer.com/book/10.1007... Congrats to everyone involved! 👏

Diamondback Squids (Thysanoteuthis rhombus) lay their eggs in giant pink slinkies. These egg masses are made up of two threads of eggs wrapped around a cylinder of mucus. These egg masses contain 35,000 to 75,000 eggs and have a length of 60 cm to 180 cm long with a diameter of 11 to 30 cm.

Just found this, very very cool Very interesting to see our Swarm Chemistry's "swinger" was evolved into a snake! www.youtube.com/watch?v=KStC...

𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘃𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 Looks quite interesting. "Collective coordination" as state where unspecialized cells coordinate behavior through distributed signaling before specialized tissues like the brain can emerge. link.springer.com/article/10.1... #neuroskyence

#ComplexNetworks2025 concluding session Thank you very much organizers, student volunteers, sponsors and all participants!!

Great to attend a talk on the Friendship Paradox given by Scott Feld, the original proposer of the paradox! #ComplexNetworks2025

And this is how it ends! Thank you so much for attending #ComplexNetworks2025! We hope you enjoy your stay in Binghamton and we look forward to seeing you next year in Portugal. On behalf of the organizers and volunteers, we wish you a nice and safe journey back home.

From the Network Analysis parallel session Ivan Gallo-Mendez uses point processes to model the network of wild fires in Chile #ComplexNetworks2025

Early bird reg approaching, NetSciX in New Zealand, Feb 2026. And you can travel down the north island for the Capital City Complex Systems Symposium the week after. netscix2026.github.io www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/conferences/... @cna25.bsky.social @cssociety.bsky.social @netsciconf.bsky.social

Final parallel session on Network Analysis Steven Skienka analyzes the nation-wide Dutch social network data #ComplexNetworks2025

From the Network Analysis parallel session Ethan Dolin studies building network models (Not building "network models", but "building network" models) #ComplexNetworks2025

At Rooms C we are finishing #ComplexNetworks2025 by discussing network analysis!

Now @hirokisayama.bsky.social share with us the update on his famous #ComplexSystems keyword diagram using collective feedback and latest literature data. His approach can be systematically applied to other scientific fields, both transdisciplinary and specialized! #ComplexNetworks2025

[Ad] Finally, in the last parallel session, I will be giving a talk about this complex systems diagram work (at 2:30pm in Room C): github.com/hsayama/comp... If you are still around please come and say hi #ComplexNetworks2025

What structures make organizations ready for the unforeseeable? David Stark asks how organizations can prepare not just for crises but for surprise itself. Very nice way of closing #ComplexNetworks2025!

Final #ComplexNetworks2025 keynote speaker David Stark discusses tests of systems and their resilience/transformation

Some pictures from our last lightning talk session at #ComplexNetworks2025

#ComplexNetworks2025 Day 3 lightning talks

#ComplexNetworks2025 Day 3 From the Biological Networks session

It was a great experience having a talk and attending Complex Net 2025. Great thanks to the organizers.

25-year-old checkpoint. 📍

🚨 Come join @ceu-dnds.bsky.social as an 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗳𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗿! 🚨 We are looking for a young and coming researcher in 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 and 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘂𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗼𝗰𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. If that sounds like you (or someone you know), check out the call & apply (or share the link): careers.ceu.edu/job/Vienna-A...

Happening now at the Network Medicine Session (Room A). #ComplexNetworks2025

The Girvan-Newman method #ComplexNetworks2025

From the Social Networks parallel session #ComplexNetworks2025

Room B is closing the second day of #ComplexNetworks2025 by discussing social networks: from LLMs agent based models to political echo-chambers!

Keynote speaker Luis Bettencourt discusses cities and their structures/functions #ComplexNetworks2025

Cities are complex systems where networks meet physics and social life. At #ComplexNetworks2025, Luis Bettencourt shows how social and infrastructure networks scale with city size, enabling predictions of past & future cities, revealing development as measurable network growth.