The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is an independent, nonprofit theoretical research institute located in Santa Fe (New Mexico, United States) and dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of the fundamental principles of complex adaptive systems, including physical, computational, biological, and social systems. The Institute houses a small number of resident faculty, who collaborate with many affiliated and visiting scholars. Although theoretical scientific research is the Institute's primary focus, it hosts a number of complex systems summer schools, internships, and other educational programs throughout the year. The Institute's annual funding is derived primarily from private donors, grant-making foundations, government science agencies, and companies affiliated with its Business Network. The Santa Fe Institute was founded in 1984 by scientists George Cowan, David Pines, Stirling Colgate, Murray Gell-Mann, Nick Metropolis, Herb Anderson, Peter A. Carruthers, and Richard Slansky.
Exhaustive analysis reveals cell division's inner timing mechanisms
Understanding how and when cells divide is important to figuring out everything from how cancers grow to why some mammals are able to get so big. A new study of E. coli cell data, published November 7 in Science Advances, ...
Nov 07, 2018
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New definition returns meaning to information
A fish on the Great Barrier Reef continually acquires new information from its environment—the location of food, the murkiness of the water, and the sounds of distant ships, to name a few examples. But only some of that ...
Social animals have tipping points, too
In relatively cool temperatures, Anelosimus studiosus spiders lay their eggs and spin their webs and share their prey in cooperative colonies from Massachusetts to Argentina. Temperatures may vary, but the colonies continue ...
E. coli's adaptation to extreme temperatures helps explain resistance to certain drugs
Long before bacteria had to contend with antibiotic drugs, they had to survive extreme temperatures as Earth warmed and cooled over millennia. Could the adaptations they evolved to temperature—especially heat—help explain ...
Not to scale? Maya civilizations show strange correlation
Researchers who study urban areas have long observed a connection between size and proximity—namely, that cities become more dense as they gain in population. The more people live in a place, the closer together they live ...
Out of your league? Study shows most online daters seek more desirable mates
The notion that an attractive person is "out of your league" doesn't often dissuade dating hopefuls—at least online. In fact, the majority of online daters seek out partners who are more desirable than themselves, suggests ...
The growing gap between physical and social technologies
The word "technology," from the Greek techne, usually evokes physical technologies like artificial intelligence, swarm robots, and the like. But there's an older meaning. By Jacob Bigelow's 1829 definition, technology can ...
Concentrated wealth in agricultural populations may account for the decline of polygyny
Across small-scale societies, the practice of some males taking multiple wives is thought to be associated with extreme disparities of wealth. But in fact, polygyny has been more common among relatively egalitarian low-tech ...
New algorithm limits bias in machine learning
Machine learning—a form of artificial intelligence based on the idea that computers can learn from data and make determinations with little help from humans—has the potential to improve our lives in countless ways. From ...
Cooler computing through statistical physics?
In the space inside a computer chip, where electricity becomes information, there's a scientific frontier. The same frontier can be found inside a cell, where information instead takes the form of chemical concentrations. ...
