Are we ready for the rise of the robots?

I have recently read in different journals the rise of robots, and how they can actually be our substitutes in our jobs. In a society in which we need to work in order to have money to live, this can come as a scary prospect. Robots will do the things we can do and we no longer will have the minimum income necessary to live. 

It shouldn’t be so. The initial idea behind giving the work to robots was for humans not to have to do it. For us to be freer. But our society is not ready for that. 

I have also read about some proposals for giving basic income to everyone. I completely agree with that. In the case where no work would be necessary, other than creative work, I would even go further. Not only basic income, but equal income. A world where technology could do the basic things for our survival, inequality would only make a few to be the masters and the rest just slaves. Well, it sounds familiar, doesn’t it? In Chomsky’s “Requiem for the American Dream” we can see how inequality is increasing in our modern world, in particular in US. US, a country where the health system is private. Of course, I’m talking about a first world society. The rest of the world are just slaves of the first world’s countries. But even to think that our health is a matter of profit and not of basic rights in a supposedly first world country makes you think how our society works. 

A world with only creative works is a world where each individual is free to choose their path. The structure of the society has to be in such a way that each one can achieve their maximum potential. But also it must be a society that allows laziness. It should be oneself who decides to do a meaningful job or not. But then, those who contribute more to society would feel the need to take more and create inequality. 

Our ethics towards work has to change then. Education is a key factor: how to educate people to be free? Foucault rises the problem of our education being tailored to the goal of maintaining the same structures of power. If the structure of power is based on a work-based society, we won’t be free from this vicious circle. 

My opinion is that the more the knowledge, the freer one is. Education comes in all ways, not only knowledge, but also on values and behavior. We need cultivate but also compassionate people. It is not important to contribute, but at least not to destroy others peoples opportunities. Unfortunately, that’s we always have been doing since we are known to be in this planet. 

A technological advanced society needs an ethics based on science, I think. And it is not about the scientific method, but about the values that make science advance: honesty and curiosity. First of all, being honest with yourself. And that means a great level of self-knowledge and retrospection. Being critical about what other people say or believe, so that we are not slaves of other people’s ideas, and, thus, being vulnerable against power gathering in elites. 

The existentialists, even though their lives were not exemplar, got it right. Be free, try to experience as much as possible, be responsible of your own acts, be an active part of your life, not a passive being. We have to have a more advanced society, far from sin culture, and towards individualism, but, at the same time, towards a social-communist structure. Otherwise, we would be either slaves from the rich people, or be eliminated by robots. 

Yes, being eliminated by robots could be another outcome of the rise of robots. We have to give human-like ethics to our robots, otherwise they will arrive to the right conclusion that we are the vermin of the planet. Either that, or become a better society. 

Our society is not ready for non-work society, much less for a society with robots that are conscious. We can wait but, as always, I think we will first get into it, and then adapt on the whim. There will be chaos, and possibly our own destruction. I hope we don’t go that far.

Ig-Nobel prizes 2015

Yes… it is that time of the year again, when science and humour collide. I secretly dream of winning the Ig-Nobel prize some day. But it is very unlikely. I’m afraid I’m a very boring researcher. Anyways, here you have the winners of the prizes this year: 

CHEMISTRY PRIZE — to the invention of a chemical recipe to partially un-boil an egg. 

Very useful for people who can’t decide between hard-boiled egg or omelette for breakfast. Also for the ones that back off from revolution… Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love, and a Hard-Boiled Egg! 

PHYSICS PRIZE — to the testing of the biological principle that nearly all mammals empty their bladders in about 21 seconds (plus or minus 13 seconds). 

The authors, in the abstract of their paper, wonder why this issue was given not much attention by researchers. I am really surprised too. I always find very long queues for the toilet, while men don’t queue at all… so if the time we spend “ejecting fluids” is the same, I wonder what takes us so much time in the toilet… perhaps because we usually go in pairs, and we just go to have a chat? Of course, that’s what most men think. It is clearly the best place to have a chat… 

LITERATURE PRIZE — to the discovering that the word "huh?" (or its equivalent) seems to exist in every human language — and for not being quite sure why. 

This is too easy to comment… huh? 

MANAGEMENT PRIZE — to the discovering that many business leaders developed in childhood a fondness for risk-taking, when they experienced natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and wildfires) that — for them — had no dire personal consequences. 

I really don’t care about this… I’m immortal… 

ECONOMICS PRIZE — The Bangkok Metropolitan Police [THAILAND], for offering to pay policemen extra cash if the policemen refuse to take bribes. 

I am really not paid to write this blog… if you get my drift… 

MEDICINE PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two groups, for experiments to study the biomedical benefits or biomedical consequences of intense kissing (and other intimate, interpersonal activities). 

This is the kind of study where the researcher can get too involved into. I can imagine a PhD on Kissing and its benefits. There would never be enough data according to the PhD student… 

MATHEMATICS PRIZE — to try to use mathematical techniques to determine whether and how Moulay Ismael the Bloodthirsty, the Sharifian Emperor of Morocco, managed, during the years from 1697 through 1727, to father 888 children. 

This guy really was healthy, according to the MEDICINE PRIZE above… 

BIOLOGY PRIZE — to the observation that when you attach a weighted stick to the rear end of a chicken, the chicken then walks in a manner similar to that in which dinosaurs are thought to have walked. 

This is, in my humble opinion, the best of them all. I can’t help showing the supporting material of this study… 

DIAGNOSTIC MEDICINE PRIZE — to the determination that acute appendicitis can be accurately diagnosed by the amount of pain evident when the patient is driven over speed bumps. 

Don’t ever go to La Cañada in Almería with appendicitis then… 

PHYSIOLOGY and ENTOMOLOGY PRIZE — Awarded jointly to two individuals, for carefully arranging for honey bees to sting him repeatedly on 25 different locations on his body, to learn which locations are the least painful (the skull, middle toe tip, and upper arm). and which are the most painful (the nostril, upper lip, and penis shaft). 

Should we investigate if the word “Ouch!” is universal too????

Plates movements

How the continents moved, and their future. That is the Plate Tectonics :)

More about Ig Nobel prizes

Some funny prizes, by the founder of the Ig Nobels :)

 

Enjoy!

Nock, nock, Uni?

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded. This is Terry Pratchett's version of the Big Bang. Funny enough, but it is more or less our understanding of the origin of the Universe. 

I read recently about this new theory where there is no singularity at the origin of the Universe. Read here, for example, for the shocking news. 

Of course, whenever I come acroos these kind of groud-breaking theories, I read as much as possible from informed places. I really like the comments in Cuentos Cuánticos (in Spanish). Basically, this person explains that yes, the Big Bang theory still holds. The thing that they changed was the singularity at the beggining of the Universe. Also, it is a mathematical artifact they use in order to remove that singularity, as physicists usually do when we find infinities. We don´t like infinities, because it means that our physical laws don´t hold there. 

And that's the conundrum: what this mathematical trick does is to remove the infinity at the beginning of the Universe, and to move the singularity to minus infinity in time. If that theory is true (something that has to be proven) it means that even at the beginning of the Universe the Laws of Physics would hold. It doesn´t mean that there is no beginning, but that at time 0 we still can use our physical theories to see what happened there. 

If no singularity exists, we will be knocking the door of the beginning of the Universe: Nock, nock, Uni? Nock, nock, Uni? Nock, nock, Uni?

The music of a tree ring

It is not a Crhistmas tree, nor a Christmas carol, but this is how a tree ring sounds like when played as a record.

 

Seen here.

 Happy Christmas :)

I'm going to Mars!

My mom will probably kill me :)

Anyways, here you have the link to send your name to Mars. Would you like to go with me?

I’m going to dress up as a flamenco dancer…

So yes, another year and I haven’t been nominated yet. My career is not in the right path. So, with nothing to show to the world from my own, I will comment this year’s Ig Nobel prizes.

PHYSICS PRIZE [JAPAN]: Kiyoshi Mabuchi, Kensei Tanaka, Daichi Uchijima and Rina Sakai, for measuring the amount of friction between a shoe and a banana skin, and between a banana skin and the floor, when a person steps on a banana skin that's on the floor. 

So yes, lots of laughs experimenting. They will probably be shown in You've Been Framed!.

NEUROSCIENCE PRIZE [CHINA, CANADA]: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian, and Kang Lee, for trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see the face of Jesus in a piece of toast.

Perhaps they could write a joint proposal with Ig Nobel laureate Robert Matthews to see if the toast will fall with the face of Jesus down or up. What about adding a cat to the whole study? Will see… 

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [AUSTRALIA, UK, USA]: Peter K. Jonason, Amy Jones, and Minna Lyons, for amassing evidence that people who habitually stay up late are, on average, more self-admiring, more manipulative, and more psychopathic than people who habitually arise early in the morning.

Of course, I go to bed very early… the problem is that I also get up late… does it mean that I’m lazy? I will think about it and perhaps write a paper on that. As long as is short and I don‘t have to work much on it…

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, JAPAN, USA, INDIA]: Jaroslav Flegr, Jan Havlíček and Jitka Hanušova-Lindova, and to David Hanauer, Naren Ramakrishnan, Lisa Seyfried, for investigating whether it is mentally hazardous for a human being to own a cat.

I was bitten by a cat once… and I can tell you that yes, it’s mentally draining. It was a very long day, with very unlikely and (now that I think about it) funny events. In one of them, I was so unlucky that in the hospital they gave me the phone number of the tomb engraver by accident. I was completely shocked. I still have nightmares about it. And no, I didn’t do anything to the cat. I actually saved its life… ok, let’s go for the next one. I don’t like this one…

BIOLOGY PRIZE [CZECH REPUBLIC, GERMANY, ZAMBIA]: Vlastimil Hart, Petra Nováková, Erich Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Vladimír Hanzal, Miloš Ježek, Tomáš Kušta, Veronika Němcová, Jana Adámková, Kateřina Benediktová, Jaroslav Červený and Hynek Burda, for carefully documenting that when dogs defecate and urinate, they prefer to align their body axis with Earth's north-south geomagnetic field lines.

I don’t know… what happens if they have a high voltage electricity line very close? Or if they have a computer nearby? Do they align with the resultant magnetic field? In any case, you can always substitute your compass for a dog when you go to the jungle. They also can help you hunting…

ART PRIZE [ITALY]: Marina de Tommaso, Michele Sardaro, and Paolo Livrea, for measuring the relative pain people suffer while looking at an ugly painting, rather than a pretty painting, while being shot [in the hand] by a powerful laser beam.

I even sometimes experiment pain looking at some paintings… and I don’t need any laser beam…

ECONOMICS PRIZE [ITALY]: ISTAT — the Italian government's National Institute of Statistics, for proudly taking the lead in fulfilling the European Union mandate for each country to increase the official size of its national economy by including revenues from prostitution, illegal drug sales, smuggling, and all other unlawful financial transactions between willing participants.

Because of course all the illegal money should be taxed… and use it for fighting prostitution, drugs, smuggling, and all unlawful behaviour…

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, INDIA]: Ian Humphreys, Sonal Saraiya, Walter Belenky and James Dworkin, for treating "uncontrollable" nosebleeds, using the method of nasal-packing-with-strips-of-cured-pork.

You could use also tampons… I saw it in a movie…

ARCTIC SCIENCE PRIZE [NORWAY, GERMANY]: Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.

I would dress up as a flamenco dancer… I don’t know… perhaps they would like to go to the feria :)

NUTRITION PRIZE [SPAIN]: Raquel Rubio, Anna Jofré, Belén Martín, Teresa Aymerich, and Margarita Garriga, for their study titled "Characterization of Lactic Acid Bacteria Isolated from Infant Faeces as Potential Probiotic Starter Cultures for Fermented Sausages."

You know, we are a food oriented culture. With this one and the study about the science of tapped beer I’m very proud of my country!

Why we should trust scientists

I found this talk very interesting. Why should scientists be trusted? Why should we take their word for what happens in the world? Check it out :) 

You've got mail

Seen here :)

Pint of science

What a better way of engaging everyday people in science other than having pint while you explain it?

That is what they thought when they decided to organize Pint of Science. I didn´t know that venue existed until a very good friend told me about it. So, we went for a pint to listen to scientists talk about epigenetics. This word means that genes act depending on what they wear (naked genes vs and dressed genes).

Personally I found very interesting the experience. However, from the two talks, I think the first one was too detailed for the general public, even for me. And, since half of the audience had no scientific background, I thought perhaps it wasn´t what people expected. The second talk was easier to understand, and the speaker was able to engage the audience in an interactive talk.

In any case, I think the idea is great. I hope next year we could be involved in that event as scientists, and organize it in our university.

And, well, they had T-shirts, but they weren´t on sale. They were only for the speakers. I think they could raise funds by selling T-shirts. I wanted one!

Visit to the Amundsen-Scott polar station

Check out this video to see the Amundsen-Scott station in the South Pole. This guy changed his profession from photographer to cook in order to be able to go there.  I would love to visit this place. What about you?

Via Microsiervos :)

The ethics of teleportation

It is late at night, after a long day, and you still have to go home. Wouldn’t be handy to teleport yourself to your, say, bed? I think that everybody has had that thought at least once. 

In sci-fi films it is very easy, and nobody thinks about what happens to their former self after teleportation. You are in one place at some time, and the next instant you are ‘magically’ in another place. Simple. 

Well, not that simple. You have to be destroyed first to be ‘reborn’ in another place. Some people would say that if you teleport your atoms, you would be the same. That´s what happens in everyday life, isn´t it? You drag your atoms to another location in space, and you never wonder where you were before. The time has passed, and you are a different person. But that´s another philosophical debate. I would agree to be teleported in that case. But if you are only atoms, it means that you are only information. 

 If we are only information, it would be easier to just send the information of all our atoms to the destination point and use the available atoms there to reconstruct your person. But for that you have to destroy yourself in the origin. What would happen if you are not destroyed? You could call yourself in both cases, but from that point on you would be different people. That would be clone yourself in the sense we know nowadays. It would be to exactly clone yourself, with or your past experiences and you could both claim to be the same person. 

On one hand, is it ethic to clone yourself and the claim you are the same person? On the other hand, would it be ethic to kill yourself in the origin to claim your unique identity? 

In the movies I don´t see people wondering what is happening to their old self. Would you agree to be teleported knowing you are going to be killed before it? I actually would be afraid. Would it hurt? 

What would you do?

Our experience of space and time

I found very interesting this reading about the discovery of the amplituhedron. It made me think about what we understand for time and space. 

Since the beginning of human curiosity we thought we knew what space and time is. We measured distances in rudimentary units such as cubits or stadiums, and the kept track of time with clepsydras or the sun's cycle. 

With these concepts Galileo started studying the relationship between space and time to represent movement. Descartes gave us a reference system, and Newton gave us laws for the movement of objects in these systems. Laws that apply both to celestial bodies and everyday objects. Our mind was prepared to accept three numbers for space and one for time. And then came Einstein's geometrical idea of curved space, and time and space were intrinsically connected. 

And then Quantum Mechanics makes us think that time is only an illusion, a derivation of the relationship between objects. 

The recent discovery of the amplituhedron for the calculation of the probabilities of outcomes of particle interactions changes our idea of time too. The change (time) arises from the change in the structure of this geometrical construct, not from the change in the object itself. 

We can see how the different geometrical descriptions of the natural laws change our interpretation of what is reality. Our everyday experience clashes against our mathematical representation of it. It does not mean that our experience is not valid. It only underlines the difficulties of describing Nature from the mathematical point of view. 

As our calculation power improves, we feel detached from reality. But, if we can measure reality in a better way, does not it mean that we understand it better?

New "Cosmos" with Neil deGrasse Tyson

Good news for science fans. Neil deGrasse Tyson is going to present "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", where the famous Cosmos by Carl Sagan is going to be revisited. New results and new stories will be shown. 

Here you have the trailer: 

 I hope it will be so inspiring as Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It starts on Sunday, March 9th at 9 PM. Don't forget it!

A review of "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid"

I think the most interesting way (at least for me) of learning about the Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems is by reading Douglas Hofstadter´s book "Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid". 

Both content and form are carefully chosen, in such a way that you are introduced to very difficult concepts in a, let´s say, artistical way. And of course it is completely intentional. The structure of the book is, as it has been said, a counterpoint between Dialogues and Chapters.

The author makes a explicit analogue of Bach´s music in his book. And, I think, it shows the universality of the concepts he wants to show.

As a fugue, he first shows the main themes, and masterly proceeds to makes variations of it. He presents the concept of recursivity and isomorphism from an artistic point of view. He presents what he calls a "strange loop" in terms of music and painting. As he defines them it is a phenomenon that occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves rightback where we started. You can find this in Bach´s music and in Escher paintings. 

He also explains that implicit in the concept of Strange Loops is the concept of infinity, and the conflict between the finite and the infinite in Bach´s and Escher´s works.

He introduces the main theme as the so-called Epimenides paradox, or liar paradox. Epimenides was a Cretan who made one immortal statement: "All Cretans are liars." What can be said about that statement? It is true or false? 

Godel´s idea was to use mathematical reasoning in exploring mathematical reasoning itself, and came up with the conclusion that "All consistent axiomatic formulations of number theory include undecidable propositions.

Hofstadter masterly shows the importance of strange loops in Gödel´s proof of his theorem. Once a formal system ask about its consistency and completeness, it cannot reach a conclusion. The equivalent of Epimenides paradox in mathematics it´s "This statement of number theory does not have any proof". Whereas the Epimenides statement creates a paradox since it is neither true nor false, the Gödel sentence is unprovable (inside its own formalization) but true. 

As Hofstadter concludes, Gödel’s Theorem shows that there are fundamental limitations to consistent formal systems with self-images. In particular, it cannot proves its own consistency. 

It has been used to prove that we cannot compute the human mind, because we would be incomplete. There is the argument against this of humans not being consistent, so we could be inconsistent Turing machines, and therefore computable. Read more about the computability of the mind and the Gödel´s theorems here.

 

I must say that it is not an easy book to read. You have to pay a lot of attention to it. But it is worth reading. 

As a mathematical representation of one of Bach´s compositions, here you have the "Crab canon", from his Musical Offering, with which Hofstadter starts his book. 

Antarctica

I always wanted to go to Antarctica. I don't even remember when I decided that I wanted to go there. I just wanted to go at least once in my lifetime. I guess I read too many books about explorers lost in the heart of Africa, or Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. These explorers and travellers that went to unknown places. I also wanted to have the feeling of being in an untouched and unchartered place. It is this kind of silly dreams, that you think you would never fulfil. But, because of my work, and a little bit of luck, I could make my dream come true. 

And I actually found more that what I expected. I'm not going to go into details. I only want to point out some facts I wasn't aware of before going there. First of all, you are in a place isolated from the world. You are not even in any country. Your passport says that you are out of the world. Yes, I wanted to have that feeling, but I didn't understand what it would mean before going there. The point is that you depend only on the people that it's there. For anything. If something happens there, you are the people who have to solve it. And nobody is going to go away if things get bad. So you do an effort to be helpful to the community, and not to be grumpy, or impolite. You try to make it easy for the other people, because you are going to share a little space and a few resources for a few months. You feel this detachment from normal life (you don't need money, for example), but you feel a strong sense of community. And, I have to say, I was very lucky because I found really good people there. We were most of the time laughing and sharing our experiences. 

And we shared this "Antarctic spirit" with the people who visited the island. Deception island is a very touristic place, and a lot of boats go there. They would land and would ask for something, like some food, or whatever they needed. And you would give it willingly, because you knew that nobody else could help them. 

It is a place where you give your best, doing something you love (seismological research, in my case) and you see that if the entire world had this sense of community everything would be better. This responsibility of being honest and helpful. 

Before going, I was afraid that I would say "Tu l'as voulu, Georges Dandin", like Conrad's main character. But it wasn't like that. I found much more than I was looking for. So, pursue your dreams. Sometimes they are even better than you thought.

The Ig Nobel prizes

As every year, the Ig Noble prizes have been awarded. For those who don't know what the Ig Nobel prizes are, I will explain a little bit: they are awarded to real research studies that, somehow, end up almost like a joke, and are amusing. As they say, improbable research is research that makes people laugh and then think.

This year, the winners are: 

MEDICINE PRIZE: Masateru Uchiyama et al., for assessing the effect of listening to opera, on heart transplant patients who are mice.

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE: Laurent Bègue et al. for confirming, by experiment, that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. 

JOINT PRIZE IN BIOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY: Marie Dacke et al., for discovering that when dung beetles get lost, they can navigate their way home by looking at the Milky Way. 

SAFETY ENGINEERING PRIZE: The late Gustano Pizzo [USA], for inventing an electro-mechanical system to trap airplane hijackers — the system drops a hijacker through trap doors, seals him into a package, then drops the encapsulated hijacker through the airplane's specially-installed bomb bay doors, whence he parachutes to earth, where police, having been alerted by radio, await his arrival. 

PHYSICS PRIZE: Alberto Minetti et al., for discovering that some people would be physically capable of running across the surface of a pond — if those people and that pond were on the moon. 

CHEMISTRY PRIZE: Shinsuke Imai et al., for discovering that the biochemical process by which onions make people cry is even more complicated than scientists previously realized. 

ARCHAEOLOGY PRIZE: Brian Crandall and Peter Stahl, for parboiling a dead shrew, and then swallowing the shrew without chewing, and then carefully examining everything excreted during subsequent days — all so they could see which bones would dissolve inside the human digestive system, and which bones would not. 

PEACE PRIZE: Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus, for making it illegal to applaud in public, AND to the Belarus State Police, for arresting a one-armed man for applauding. 

 PROBABILITY PRIZE: Bert Tolkamp et al., for making two related discoveries: First, that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up; and Second, that once a cow stands up, you cannot easily predict how soon that cow will lie down again. 

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Kasian Bhanganada, et al., for the medical techniques described in their report "Surgical Management of an Epidemic of Penile Amputations in Siam" — techniques which they recommend, except in cases where the amputated penis had been partially eaten by a duck. [THAILAND] . 

You can see the whole ceremony at: 

I would love to be awarded, but I think I'm not good enough :(

Optimization methods based on nature

Today I will write about optimization methods based on biological concepts. But first I will introduce the concept of optimization, and why it is so important in science.

Science is based upon experiments and theories that explain the data obtained in those experiments. Those data are the observations we have of a particular phenomenon. They are measures of some physical quantity we can extract from the experiment. In general we try to correlate some physical quantities with others in the way of an equation, or physical law. These equations are composed by the observations and some parameters. For example, think about a straight line. The equation (physical law) would be: y=ax+b. That means that we have a series of measures of x and y, and we want to calculate the optimum parameters a and b that define that line.

It is important to note that we assume a physical law for the relationship between x and y. That is, our physical law would say that they are linearly correlated. The a and b parameters will describe other quantities related to the studied phenomenon. If our physical law is a straight line (more generally, if we have a linear problem), we have a procedure that calculates the parameters that define our data: the linear least squares fit. However, in Physics, and particularly in Geophysics, the equations are nonlinear. This poses a problem, because we usually want to find the models (parameters) that minimize the error between data and the equation (that is, linear least squares in linear fitting).

If the number of possible solutions is high (as usual in real problems), we cannot perform a systematic search. We need some algorithm that searches only in a small portion of the parameters' space. There exists a number of algorithms that can do that. Here we will talk about some of the ones that are based on biological concepts. As examples, I will explain Genetic Algorithms, Ant colonies, and Particle Swarm.

Genetic Algorithms are based on the idea that a solution (a set of parameters) is represented by a chromosome (each gene representing each parameter), and that a population evolves to the optimum (the best fit) following Darwinian rules. The operators that make the population evolve are the selection of the parents to be crossed, the crossover of the two solutions, mutation, and replacement of the individuals in the population. Each solution (chromosome) has a value that represents how well fitted the data are to said solution, and the individuals with better solutions have more opportunities to mate and therefore to pass on their information from generation to generation.

Another example of fitting algorithm is the Ant Colony Algorithm. In it, each agent (ant) creates a path that represents the solution. At first each ant will be wandering randomly, like in the natural world. Each trail will be marked with a pheromone trail. This makes the path attractive to other ants. If more ants follow this trail, it will be marked as well fitted. However, the pheromone trial evaporates with time. In that way, we will not end up always in the paths chosen by the first ants. The trail with higher pheromone content will be the solution.

Finally, we will explain the Particle Swarm Algorithm. In it, each solution is wandering through the parameters' space with certain velocity. This algorithm mimics the way a flock or a swarm behaves in the real world. In each iteration, each individual adjusts its movement along the parameters' space in function of the solution that is the leader in that iteration. The leader is, of course, the best fitted of all. The swarm as a whole changes its movement in function of the best solution found previously. Of course, there is a random component (in velocity) that prevents the search to end up in a local minimum.

It is very interesting to see how Biology can help in a purely mathematical problem like the optimization of functions. Of course, there are more Biology-based algorithms out there. I only mentioned the ones I know better. See Swarm Intelligence for other methods.

Kevin Bacon is the center of the Universe

Watching TV in UK I came across a commercial with Kevin Bacon making fun of his many connections. What started as a game (see here for a thorough explanation), made the theory of complex networks known for the general public. The Bacon number is the lower number of links an actor has with Kevin Bacon. For example, if an actor (or actress) played a role in the same film Bacon did, he or she has Bacon number 1. If he or she played a role with somebody who directly played with Kevin Bacon, he/she has Bacon number 2, and so on. Of course, Bacon has 0 as his Bacon number. You can check the Bacon number for all the actors and actresses in the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) in The Oracle of Bacon. It is striking to see that the higher number is only 9. So, it seems that everybody is very closely linked to Kevin Bacon. Thus the joke of he being the center of the Universe.

This concept is similar to the 6 degrees of separation popularized by the experiment of Milgram. This experiment was like this: you pick two people at random in the world (Milgram did it for the USA), and send a parcel to one of them, telling them that he or she has to reach the other person by direct links, sending the parcel to a known person that could be 'closer' (who knew the other person, or somebody who could know them) to the final receiver. He discovered that, in average, there were only 6 links of separation between sender and receiver. He called that the 'Small world' phenomenon. 

This closeness between the individuals in the world can also be seen in the natural world. The trophic chains, cellular biology, evolutionary relationships, internet, scientific citation networks, even seismicity (I have published some papers on this particular field). In complex networks, the most important concept is not the individual, but the nature of its relationship with the other individuals.

Complex networks studies are based on the mathematical graph theory. And graph theory started as a game too, proposed by the eminent mathematician Leonhard Euler: can you find a path that crosses all the Bridges of Königsberg only once? Euler solved it inventing graph theory in the process. 

It is important to analyze the relationships in a network. For example, it tells you who eats who in a trophic chain, or the main hubs in the internet. Why redundancy is important in the networks, so that a specific attack does not destroy the whole system. And many other applications. You can look it up in the internet, another network. Who said that playing games is not productive? 

As a curiosity, in the scientific publication network (who published with whom) the center of the Universe is Erdős. Even some people has Erdős-Bacon number!