Why do cultural skills (reading, maths) consistently activate the same brain regions across people? @standehaene.bsky.social and L. Cohen argue that culture doesn’t create new brain circuits: it invades evolutionarily ancient maps of the cortex. check this great paper www.cell.com/action/showP...

Back to @sfiscience.bsky.social joining the night shift (with some extra coffee) at the Cormac McCarthy's Library. Working on criticality + cancer, statistical physics of ant colonies, the Physarum Lagrangian, universal genetic codes, synthetic agriculture & hybrid agencies. @jordiplam.bsky.social

Why do some cancers respond to immunotherapy while others don’t? A new paper by @guimaguade.bsky.social shows, using maths, that as tumors mutate, they face a trade-off: growing faster can also make them easier for the immune system to spot. @sandyanderson.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What can we learn about living computation from non-living machines? In this @royalsocietypublishing.org A. Adamatzky shows that a computer doesn’t need to be solid. From droplets 2 chemical waves, liquid computers blur the line between chemistry & thought. royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

How can we design complex computational systems using synthetic biology? Check our paper, where we use space as a computational element, dramatically reducing communication requirements while allowing modularity, reusability, scalability & minimal cell engineering. journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

A microscopic organism can survive the vacuum of space: yet our infrastructures collapse under a summer storm. Why? 👉 Because structure isn’t enough. Resilience depends on functionality. And we need a lot of network science to grasp it. 📖 manlius.substack.com/p/making-sen... #ComplexityThoughts

What if we could chart all cell types across the tree of life? In @nature.com, @arnausebe.bsky.social and colls launch the Biodiversity Cell Atlas, a global effort to map eukaryotic cell diversity using single-cell & genomic data. drive.google.com/file/d/1G4zZ... @crg.eu @ibe-barcelona.bsky.social

In a sense, yes: at the molecular–cellular level, death is the failure of energy-driven mechanisms that maintain vital gradients. Yet other forms of death—like that of the mind—need not involve this physical breakdown.

What is the physical basis of death? Can we manipulate cellular rules to avoid it? What does death mean for a machine? Is immortality possible? What does it mean for language, thought, or information to die? My new book @princetonupress.bsky.social is coming soon. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

When change moves faster than systems can adapt, they tip Our culture of “now-ism” risks pushing climate, economies and societies past their limits The latest #ComplexityThoughts: 👉 manlius.substack.com/p/how-modern... 🎧 on Spotify and Apple #ComplexSystems #Resilience @ricardsole.bsky.social

Can consciousness arise purely from computation, or does it require the biological mechanisms that allow computing? The tension between computational roles and biological realizers may hold the key. Check this paper by @neddo.bsky.social @mkhochb.bsky.social www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Can general artificial intelligence emerge by not following the evolution of complex brains? In this 2022 paper with @brigan.bsky.social we argued that embodiment, mind reading (mirror systems), mental time traveling... are necessary conditions www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/24... @anilseth.bsky.social

Is 3I/Atlas anything other than a comet? It’s remarkable how much bullshit has spread in recent months thanks to Avi Loeb’s sensational claims & how many journalists & influencers have taken the bait. Thanks @setiinstitute.bsky.social for fighting misinformation eartharxiv.org/repository/v...

Honored to receive the 2024 Outstanding Publication Award from the Intl Soc for Artificial Life @alife2025.bsky.social for our @royalsocietypublishing.org ublishing.org paper “Fundamental Constraints to the Logic of Living Systems” @sfiscience.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

How does life construct itself from within, and how might we learn to emulate its generative logic? Glad to be soon talking and discussing with @philipcball.bsky.social @bertaverd.bsky.social and other great colleagues at this @royalsociety.org event royalsociety.org/science-even...

Si trobem vida en un altre planeta, serà diferent de la que coneixem? Crear vida al laboratori seguirà les mateixes regles? Pot existir vida sense aigua o ADN? I les IAs del futur, poden aparèixer sense assemblar-se al cervell humà? Vine al @iec.cat i t’ho explico! @melisupf.bsky.social @prbb.org

What if the chaotic-looking patterns in dryland vegetation were actually hiding a deep order? Check our new @pnas.org paper on "disordered hyperuniformity": a hidden structure with big implications for sustainability in Earth’s most fragile ecosystems.https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2504496122

How dit life originate in our planet? How can we create it in the lab?Our @royalsocietypublishing.org Theme Issue "Origins of Life: the possible and the actual", coedited with @sfiscience.bsky.social C Kempes and Susan Stepney is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202... @manlius.bsky.social

Jane Goodall was my first childhood hero, as I loved animals as a kid and was inspired by her story. I still remember the National Geographic specials about her. RIP.

Looking forward to speak at this @embo.org Workshop event meetings.embo.org/event/25-mul... to explore the origins of multicellular complexity along with great colleagues @multicellgenome.bsky.social @wcratcliff.bsky.social @viktri08.bsky.social I will be discussing synthetic multicellularity.

What is agency? How did it emerge through evolution? Why is it key to understanding complexity? Check out this brilliant Open Access book by my dear colleagues Alvaro Moreno & @julipereto.bsky.social. A deep exploration of a crucial concept. Highly recommended! link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

If you could travel through time — any era, any place — when would you go? Come imagine it with us, aboard our 1:1 Victorian time machine, at the upcoming exhibition “The Invention of Time” at Centre Martorell. Opening next Xmas! museuciencies.cat/en/the-nat/venues/centre-martorell-dexposicions/

Can synthetic biology help save endangered ecosystems? Our new paper with @vmaull.bsky.social explores how engineered genes can spread through soil microbes. We model how synthetic gene transfer can support biodiversity. @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Benedict Cumberbatch recites Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish’s “On this land there are reasons to live” poem at Together for Palestine. #GazaGenocide #GazaHolocaust

Can a Netflix series teach us something important not about the ancient past, but about how we create and evaluate knowledge today? Göbekli Tepe, underground cities, ancient deluges and Bayes theorem. An unusual #ComplexityThoughts essay this week. Curious? 👉 open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

Can science ever escape its demons? Enjoying these three brilliant books by historian of science Jimena Canales. They remind us that science isn’t a straight line. History, time, imagination, they're all up for grabs. @gemmadlc.bsky.social @jordipinero.bsky.social @seanmcarroll.bsky.social

Will humans and AI coevolve in the future? As interdependencies grow, the two could come to function not merely as interacting agents, but as an integrated evolutionary individual. Check this paper in @pnas.org by @mkhochb.bsky.social & P Rainey @sfiscience.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

BREAKING NEWS: NASA has found a potential sign of past life on Mars. www.nasa.gov/news-release...

Can a single cell learn? Even without a brain, some microbes show simple forms of cognition. Can this basal cognition be engineered? Check our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social on the minimal synthetic circuits & their cognitive limits. @drmichaellevin.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Thank you so much @ricardsole.bsky.social I’ll always treasure those first steps with you! Chaos control remains my goal!!

Delighted that my friend @lmprida.bsky.social, a great scientist, has been named director of the new Cajal Neuroscience Center at @csic.es. Thirty years ago, as a graduate student in my Lab she published her first paper on chaos control in neural networks. I can't be more proud and happy.

How safe is your mind in a world flooded with junk information? Yuval Noah Harari warns that unlike past media, AI-driven networks never rest, blurring the boundaries between us and digital reality. He calls to preserve your autonomy as AI becomes more unpredictable  www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Ov...

How did differentiation evolve to allow for complex multicellular systems? In this @cp-trendsecolevo.bsky.social‬ paper, Boolean networks are used to answer long-standing questions in the evolution of cell type diversity. @wcratcliff.bsky.social d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/115269531/j....

Can selfish agents create intelligent group behaviour without planning or cooperation? Yes, if they adapt who they interact with. This simple rule leads to neural-network-like learning and global efficiency. Read the paper: watermark02.silverchair.com/artl_a_00029...

Have I told you today that I love Jupiter? (Image from the incredible JunoCam) 🧪

Can cellular life be created in the lab? We are not yet there, but clearly getting closer! Check this paper where a new scenario for protocell replication is presented by Job Boekhoven and co-workers @manlius.bsky.social www.cell.com/chem/pdf/S24...

Can a virus help uncover Turing patterns in nature? In this @commsbio.nature.com paper, researchers show how the tulip breaking virus triggers the expression of a pigment that can display a broad range of (observable) stripe patterns @philipcball.bsky.social biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Why is universality such a central concept in complex systems? How does it connect Turing Machines and Spin Systems? In this new paper, Tomáš Gonda and @gemmadlc.bsky.social present an accessible account on how to identify and compare different universalities arxiv.org/pdf/2406.16607

Did you know that chemosensitive motile E. coli can efficiently explore nontrivial mazes in times much shorter than a no-memory (Markovian) walk would predict, and can collectively escape from a fractal topology? Now you do. Amazing! #ComplexSystems 🦠🧪🌐💡 journals.aps.org/prx/abstract...

Platforms, financial interests, human behavior at individual and collective levels, interconnectedness: the perfect mix of ingredients for a complex system that requires systemic solutions well beyond linear thinking. New piece out in #ComplexityThoughts: manlius.substack.com/p/competing-...

What kinds of life are possible? How can we know about that regarding life origins? Here's our new paper to appear in @royalsocietypublishing.org with C Kempes & S Stepney. Check our space of the possible for replicators. @sfiscience.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.preprints.org/manuscript/2...

My latest @newscientist.com cartoon

What is emergence? This is one of the most central ingredients of complexity, and a challenging one to formalize. Here's a paper by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social & Achyth Parola that attempts to classify different forms of emergence. @manlius.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468

If a foreign adversary snuck into our Federal budget and cut science research and education the way we’re cutting it ourselves — strategically undermining America’s long-term health, wealth, and security — we would likely consider it an act of war.

Meet Syn57, a living cell that only needs 57 codons, not the standard 64. Here's my story on how synthetic biology is tackling the mystery of our bloated genetic code. Gift link: nyti.ms/3Hf4f9v

14 years after Alan Turing's death, an unpublished manuscript emerged where he suggested the idea of a "disordered" computer that anticipated the rise of connectionism cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Alan...

Do ant colonies work like liquid brains? Check this great paper in @pnas.org led by @ceabcsic.bsky.social Pol Fernandez and F.Bartumeus that shows how to explain collective foraging by modelling ants as neural agents @jordipinero.bsky.social @frazambelli.bsky.social www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

What does physics bring to neuroscience? As discussed by @wbialek.bsky.social, the 2024 Physics #NobelPrize was awarded to John Hopfield & Geoffrey Hinton for the discovery of new classes of emergent phenomena where collective dynamics give rise to neural information processing. @brigan.bsky.social

How can scientists compete with pseudoscience in algorithmic ecosystems? This comes after several discussions with colleagues and friends, such as @ricardsole.bsky.social I have just dropped this post on Linkedin (see the attached image, in case): www.linkedin.com/feed/update/... Ideas? Answers?

Just 30 years ago, we didn’t know of a single planet beyond our Solar System. Now we’ve found thousands, and we know that almost every star has worlds of its own. The next great leap is proving that some of them harbour life. I wish Carl Sagan were here to see this cosmic golden age.