Hugh Trenchard

I’ve gone with a new background theme. Seems like a good time to shake it up. And seeing as my bluebird theme is shared with the Twitter site folks – not deliberately of course – I have another reason to make the change. I’ve chosen this theme because there is an element of a chaotic process evident, and chaos theory is closely connected with complexity theory, one of my primary interests.

The Arlington Symposium and Other Activities

Across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, is Arlington, Virginia; located there is the United States National Cemetery and the Pentagon, among other things. Also there, for me, was the 2009 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) fall symposium “Complex Adaptive Systems and the Threshold Effect: Views from the Natural and Social Sciences.”

I was fortunate to have had the following paper accepted for a presentation at this symposium, entitled “Self-Organized Coupling Dynamics and Phase Transitions in Bicycle Pelotons”.

There were actually seven simultaneous symposia occurring, all sponsored by the AAAI, a well-funded organization based in the United States, whose sponsors include Microsoft, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, among others. As a part time student I was fortunate to be one among several to receive a National Science Foundation grant to assist me in my costs to attend.

Distributed among these seven symposia were about 300 people, and about 80 in the complex adaptive systems symposium.

I enjoyed the opportunity to meet people who share some fundamental intellectual pursuits. There were others in attendance whose books and articles I have seen reference to or possess. For example, Peter Erdi, author of the book “Complexity Explained” was in attendance, while Mitchell Waldrop, author of “Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Chaos and Order” and an editor for the journal Nature, gave a keynote talk, and introduced me and my presentation.

I enjoyed taking some time to explore Washington, DC, including a number of Smithsonian institute museums and galleries, some running and cycling on a rented bike as well.

Ah, presently the hour is late, and I really must to bed. Perhaps pressing the “post” button now, when this contribution has not become too long, will inspire me to resume posts here with more regularity again. Well, we shall see.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 at 1:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.