#self organizing

THE SAFIRE SUN - Clean energy endgame? 

Self Organizing to Serve the Collective | Benevolent Ai (Episode 4)

If AI development is under the supervision of these hierarchical structures, that limited use of board action will continue to be the norm for decision making processes. But self organizing principles can be used to remove the bias of a few decision makers, and make sure the processes and guidelines are in place for AI to be inclusive of all stakeholder voices and perspectives.

 Self-organizing smart materials that mimic swarm behavior |

A new study by an international team of researchers, affiliated with Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) has announced that they have succeeded in demonstarting control over the interactions occurring among microscopic spheres, which cause them to self-propel into swarms, chains, and clusters.

The research published in the current online edition of Nature Materials takes lessons from cooperation in nature, including that observed in honey bee swarms and bacterial clusters. In the study, the team has successfully demonstrated the self-organizing pattern formation in active materials at microscale by modifying only one parameter.

This breakthrough comes from a research, conducted by Dr. Steve Granick (School of Natural Science, UNIST) of IBS Center for Soft and Living Matter in collaboration with Dr. Erik Luijten from Northwestern University. Ming Han, a PhD student in Luijten's laboratory, and Jing Yan, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois, served as co-first authors of the paper.

Researchers expect that such active particles could open a new class of technologies with applications in medicine, chemistry, and engineering as well as advance scientists' fundamental understanding of collective, dynamic behavior in systems.

Jing Yan, Ming Han, Jie Zhang, Cong Xu, Erik Luijten and Steve Granick, "Reconfiguring active particles by electrostatic imbalance", Nature Materials, 2016.

"It turns out we’re not the only species that assembles ourselves into networks," says physician and sociologist Nicholas Christakis in his Floating University lecture, "If You're So Free, Why Do You Follow Others?" Consider the slime mold, for instance. When placed in a maze with food at the end of it, individual amoebas will connect to create a sort of "super organism" capable of performing feats that no single organism could do on its own.

One mycologist, Toshi Nagagaki, found that the path taken through the maze by this "super organism" was more efficient than the path proposed by his graduate students.

via bigthink.com

What can Slime Mold teach us about our Social Code? More than we'd care to imagine it appears from this video. Not only can slime mold organize itself socially but the ways in which it self-organizes have fascinating parallels with those of human societies.

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Consider the Slime Mold: How Amoebas Form Social Networks (bigthink.com)

Those Sneaky Slime Molds (neatorama.com)

Slime Molds: Ancient, Alien and Sophisticated (nytimes.com)

Slime Democracy (knowledge-ecology.com)

The Amazing Bubblegum Alley (allissocial.com)

Social Spaces Reclaimed: An Illegal Tour of Abandoned Theme Park (allissocial.com)