Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
4.9
2.1
Journals
Entropy
Special Issues
Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization
entropy-logo
Submit to Entropy Review for Entropy Propose a Special Issue

Journal Menu

► Journal Menu

Journal Browser

► Journal Browser
share announcement

Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization

A special issue of Entropy (ISSN 1099-4300). This special issue belongs to the section "Statistical Physics".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 June 2023) | Viewed by 11907

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Michael Harré

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Complex Systems, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Interests: machine intelligence; artificial psychology; information theory, social networks; game theory; criticality
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Prof. Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for Complex Systems, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Interests: self-organisation; information theory; complex systems; artificial life; computational epidemiology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Examples of self-organising systems can be found practically everywhere: a heated fluid forms regular convection patterns of Bénard cells, neuronal ensembles self-organise into complex spike patterns, a swarm changes its shape in response to an approaching predator, ecosystems develop spatial structures in order to deal with diminishing resources, and so on.

Typically, self-organisation (SO) is defined as the evolution of a system into an organised form in the absence of external pressures. SO within a system brings about several attractive properties, in particular robustness, adaptability, and scalability. Consequently, a natural question to ask would be: Is it possible to guide the process of self-organisation towards some desirable patterns and outcomes? Over the last decades, it has become apparent that this question can be rigorously formalised across multiple domains, leading to the emergence of a new research field: Guided Self-Organisation (GSO). This has led to theoretical developments in information theory, network theory, dynamical systems, game theory, systems biology, and sociophysics, as well as practical applications in artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, unconventional computation, distributed robotics, and active matter.

The main challenge faced by designers of self-organising systems is how to achieve and control the desired dynamics. Erring on one side may result in over-engineering the system, completely eliminating emergent patterns and suppressing an increase in internal organisation with outside influence. Strongly favouring the other side may leave too much non-determinism in the system’s behaviour, making its verification and validation almost impossible.

The 10th International Conference on Guided Self-Organisation (12-13 December 2022, Auckland, New Zealand), GSO-2022, will bring together invited experts and researchers in artificial life, self-organising systems, and complex adaptive systems, with particular emphasis on critical phenomena and emergent behaviour. Special topics of interest include the origin of life, systems biology, physics of life, unconventional computation, swarm intelligence, measures of complexity, criticality, complex networks, and information-driven self-organization (IDSO).

We invite papers to this Special Issue in Entropy from both attendees of GSO-2022 and others who are interested in this field but may not have had the opportunity to attend the conference.

Dr. Michael Harré
Prof. Dr. Mikhail Prokopenko
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Entropy is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • self-organisation
  • information theory
  • complex systems
  • emergence
  • criticality
  • artificial life
  • unconventional computing
  • swarm intelligence
  • self-assembly
  • active matter

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (5 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

12 pages, 709 KiB  
Article
A Simple Model of the Rise and Fall of Civilizations
by Rickard Nyman, Paul Ormerod and R. Alexander Bentley
Entropy 2023, 25(9), 1298; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25091298 - 5 Sep 2023
Viewed by 2107
Abstract
The literature on the fall of civilizations spans from the archaeology of early state societies to the history of the 20th century. Explanations for the fall of civilizations abound, from general extrinsic causes (drought, warfare) to general intrinsic causes (intergroup competition, socioeconomic inequality, [...] Read more.
The literature on the fall of civilizations spans from the archaeology of early state societies to the history of the 20th century. Explanations for the fall of civilizations abound, from general extrinsic causes (drought, warfare) to general intrinsic causes (intergroup competition, socioeconomic inequality, collapse of trade networks) and combinations of these, to case-specific explanations for the specific demise of early state societies. Here, we focus on ancient civilizations, which archaeologists typically define by a set of characteristics including hierarchical organization, standardization of specialized knowledge, occupation and technologies, and hierarchical exchange networks and settlements. We take a general approach, with a model suggesting that state societies arise and dissolve through the same processes of innovation. Drawing on the field of cumulative cultural evolution, we demonstrate a model that replicates the essence of a civilization’s rise and fall, in which agents at various scales—individuals, households, specialist communities, polities—copy each other in an unbiased manner but with varying degrees of institutional memory, invention rate, and propensity to copy locally versus globally. The results, which produce an increasingly extreme hierarchy of success among agents, suggest that civilizations become increasingly vulnerable to even small increases in propensity to copy locally. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

22 pages, 1468 KiB  
Article
Origins of Genetic Coding: Self-Guided Molecular Self-Organisation
by Peter R. Wills
Entropy 2023, 25(9), 1281; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25091281 - 31 Aug 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2313
Abstract
The origin of genetic coding is characterised as an event of cosmic significance in which quantum mechanical causation was transcended by constructive computation. Computational causation entered the physico-chemical processes of the pre-biotic world by the incidental satisfaction of a condition of reflexivity between [...] Read more.
The origin of genetic coding is characterised as an event of cosmic significance in which quantum mechanical causation was transcended by constructive computation. Computational causation entered the physico-chemical processes of the pre-biotic world by the incidental satisfaction of a condition of reflexivity between polymer sequence information and system elements able to facilitate their own production through translation of that information. This event, which has previously been modelled in the dynamics of Gene–Replication–Translation systems, is properly described as a process of self-guided self-organisation. The spontaneous emergence of a primordial genetic code between two-letter alphabets of nucleotide triplets and amino acids is easily possible, starting with random peptide synthesis that is RNA-sequence-dependent. The evident self-organising mechanism is the simultaneous quasi-species bifurcation of the populations of information-carrying genes and enzymes with aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase-like activities. This mechanism allowed the code to evolve very rapidly to the ~20 amino acid limit apparent for the reflexive differentiation of amino acid properties using protein catalysts. The self-organisation of semantics in this domain of physical chemistry conferred on emergent molecular biology exquisite computational control over the nanoscopic events needed for its self-construction. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization)
►▼ Show Figures

Graphical abstract

22 pages, 885 KiB  
Article
Controlling the Mean Time to Extinction in Populations of Bacteria
by Bhumika Thakur and Hildegard Meyer-Ortmanns
Entropy 2023, 25(5), 755; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25050755 - 5 May 2023
Viewed by 1327
Abstract
Populations of ecological systems generally have demographic fluctuations due to birth and death processes. At the same time, they are exposed to changing environments. We studied populations composed of two phenotypes of bacteria and analyzed the impact that both types of fluctuations have [...] Read more.
Populations of ecological systems generally have demographic fluctuations due to birth and death processes. At the same time, they are exposed to changing environments. We studied populations composed of two phenotypes of bacteria and analyzed the impact that both types of fluctuations have on the mean time to extinction of the entire population if extinction is the final fate. Our results are based on Gillespie simulations and on the WKB approach applied to classical stochastic systems, here in certain limiting cases. As a function of the frequency of environmental changes, we observe a non-monotonic dependence of the mean time to extinction. Its dependencies on other system parameters are also explored. This allows the control of the mean time to extinction to be as large or as small as possible, depending on whether extinction should be avoided or is desired from the perspective of bacteria or the perspective of hosts to which the bacteria are deleterious. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

14 pages, 2703 KiB  
Article
A Complexity Science Account of Humor
by Wolfgang Tschacher and Hermann Haken
Entropy 2023, 25(2), 341; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25020341 - 13 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2700
Abstract
A common assumption of psychological theories of humor is that experienced funniness results from an incongruity between stimuli provided by a verbal joke or visual pun, followed by a sudden, surprising resolution of incongruity. In the perspective of complexity science, this characteristic incongruity-resolution [...] Read more.
A common assumption of psychological theories of humor is that experienced funniness results from an incongruity between stimuli provided by a verbal joke or visual pun, followed by a sudden, surprising resolution of incongruity. In the perspective of complexity science, this characteristic incongruity-resolution sequence is modeled by a phase transition, where an initial attractor-like script, suggested by the initial joke information, is suddenly destructed, and in the course of resolution replaced by a less probable novel script. The transition from the initial to the enforced final script was modeled as a succession of two attractors with different minimum potentials, during which free energy becomes available to the joke recipient. Hypotheses derived from the model were tested in an empirical study where participants rated the funniness of visual puns. It was found, consistent with the model, that the extent of incongruity and the abruptness of resolution were associated with reported funniness, and with social factors, such as disparagement (Schadenfreude) added to humor responses. The model suggests explanations as to why bistable puns and phase transitions in conventional problem solving, albeit also based on phase transitions, are generally less funny. We proposed that findings from the model can be transferred to decision processes and mental change dynamics in psychotherapy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

13 pages, 10690 KiB  
Article
Can One Series of Self-Organized Nanoripples Guide Another Series of Self-Organized Nanoripples during Ion Bombardment: From the Perspective of Power Spectral Density Entropy?
by Hengbo Li, Jinyu Li, Gaoyuan Yang, Ying Liu, Frank Frost and Yilin Hong
Entropy 2023, 25(1), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/e25010170 - 14 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1733
Abstract
Ion bombardment (IB) is a promising nanofabrication tool for self-organized nanostructures. When ions bombard a nominally flat solid surface, self-organized nanoripples can be induced on the irradiated target surface, which are called intrinsic nanoripples of the target material. The degree of ordering of [...] Read more.
Ion bombardment (IB) is a promising nanofabrication tool for self-organized nanostructures. When ions bombard a nominally flat solid surface, self-organized nanoripples can be induced on the irradiated target surface, which are called intrinsic nanoripples of the target material. The degree of ordering of nanoripples is an outstanding issue to be overcome, similar to other self-organization methods. In this study, the IB-induced nanoripples on bilayer systems with enhanced quality are revisited from the perspective of guided self-organization. First, power spectral density (PSD) entropy is introduced to evaluate the degree of ordering of the irradiated nanoripples, which is calculated based on the PSD curve of an atomic force microscopy image (i.e., the Fourier transform of the surface height. The PSD entropy can characterize the degree of ordering of nanoripples). The lower the PSD entropy of the nanoripples is, the higher the degree of ordering of the nanoripples. Second, to deepen the understanding of the enhanced quality of nanoripples on bilayer systems, the temporal evolution of the nanoripples on the photoresist (PR)/antireflection coating (ARC) and Au/ARC bilayer systems are compared with those of single PR and ARC layers. Finally, we demonstrate that a series of intrinsic IB-induced nanoripples on the top layer may act as a kind of self-organized template to guide the development of another series of latent IB-induced nanoripples on the underlying layer, aiming at improving the ripple ordering. The template with a self-organized nanostructure may alleviate the critical requirement for periodic templates with a small period of ~100 nm. The work may also provide inspiration for guided self-organization in other fields. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Guided Self-Organization)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-5
Back to TopTop