RE: Related DARPA research projects on "Biologically Inspired Systems" like 1)
AgentOS (a mobile Agent System for Ubiquitous Compuing), 2) how Ultra-wideband
(UWB) micro-RF/Radar tags are used for studying Bee Hive behavior, and 3) Small
Worlds book review.
1) The Bio-Networking Architecture that the PI proposes is inspired by the
observation that the biological world has already developed the mechanisms
necessary to achieve the key requirements for the Next Generation Internet
(NGI), such as scalability, adaptability to heterogeneous and dynamic
conditions, security, survivability, and simplicity. In the biological world,
each individual entity (e.g., a bee in a bee colony) follows a simple set of
behavior rules (e.g., migration, reproduction, energy exchange, mutation, and
death), yet a group of entities (e.g. a bee colony) exhibits complex, emergent
behavior (e.g., adaptation, evolution, security, survivability). Therefore, if
services and applications adopt biological concepts and mechanisms, they too may
be able to achieve the key requirements of NGI.
In this project, the PI explores an innovative idea of applying key concepts and
mechanisms from the biological world onto network application designs to enable
construction of large scale network applications.
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/darpa-report/Tech/tech.htm
http://bolero.ics.uci.edu/agentos
2) Also, here's a brief overview of the "Bio-Networking Architecture" at the
Gigabit Networks Workshop held in conjunction with Infocom99 in New York on
March 21, 1999, including how Ultra-wideband (UWB) micro-RF/Radar tags are used
for studying Bee Hive behavior, etc.
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/gbn99/index.html
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/current.htm
http://netresearch.ics.uci.edu/bionet/publications/bionet-TR00-03.doc
http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jul1999/n07281999_9907281.html
3) Book Review
Small Worlds: The Dynamics of Networks between Order and Randomness
(Duncan J. Watts)
http://pup.princeton.edu:80/titles/6768.html
Everyone knows the small-world phenomenon: soon after meeting a stranger, we are
surprised to discover that we have a mutual friend, or we are connected through
a short chain of acquaintances. In his book, Duncan Watts uses this intriguing
phenomenon--colloquially called "six degrees of separation"--as a prelude to a
more general exploration: under what conditions can a small world arise in any
kind of network?
The networks of this story are everywhere: the brain is a network of neurons;
organisations are people networks; the global economy is a network of national
economies, which are networks of markets, which are in turn networks of
interacting producers and consumers. Food webs, ecosystems, and the Internet can
all be represented as networks, as can strategies for solving a problem, topics
in a conversation, and even words in a language. Many of these networks, the
author claims, will turn out to be small worlds.
How do such networks matter? Simply put, local actions can have global
consequences, and the relationship between local and global dynamics depends
critically on the network's structure. Watts illustrates the subtleties of this
relationship using a variety of simple models---the spread of infectious disease
through a structured population; the evolution of cooperation in game theory;
the computational capacity of cellular automata; and the sychronisation of
coupled phase-oscillators.
Watts's novel approach is relevant to many problems that deal with network
connectivity and complex systems' behaviour in general: How do diseases (or
rumours) spread through social networks? How does cooperation evolve in large
groups? How do cascading failures propagate through large power grids, or
financial systems? What is the most efficient architecture for an organisation,
or for a communications network? This fascinating exploration will be fruitful
in a remarkable variety of fields, including physics and mathematics, as well as
sociology, economics, and biology.
Duncan J. Watts, who received his Ph.D. in theoretical and applied mechanics
from Cornell University in 1997, is a postdoctoral Fellow at the Santa Fe
Institute.
Jack Park wrote:
> http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_answer.html
> <http://www.edge.org/discourse/jaron_answer.html>
> a quote:
> "The failure modes of practical software are quite different from what is
> seen in chemical/biological systems. When a computer crashes (and I mean a
> real computer, not a thought experiment in a math journal), nothing else
> happens. The is no more processing. When an organism crashes, it turns into
> food for other organisms. Its information is not entirely lost from the
> system. I recognize that this point will probably fall on deaf ears to
> respondents who think of computers as already being autonomous and
> biological in some sense. I think a careful examination of computers as they
> are in the real world will show that all the "biological" properties of
> digital technology are brought to the table by the people who maintain the
> technology. "
>
> This is the second part of two parts following a half a manifesto by Jeron
> Lanier.
>
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