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In distinction to research on ‘peer work’ within mental health systems, crisis support in grass-roots organisations of people with psychiatric experience has been researched to a far lesser extent....

Quality management (QM) has shown an impressive ability to update and evolve. The purpose of this paper is to highlight themes that have been identified as vital and important for research projects...

Self-organisation in environmental service delivery is increasingly being promoted as an alternative to centralised service delivery. This article argues that self-organised environmental service delivery must be understood in the context of legal rules, especially environmental legislation. The article’s aim is twofold: first, to understand the changing relationship between the government and citizens in self-organised service delivery, and second, to explore how self-organised environmental service delivery complies with environmental quality requirements stipulated in legislation. The empirical study focuses on wastewater management in Oosterwold, the largest Dutch urban development that experimented with self-organisation. The results show that while individual wastewater management was prioritised and implemented at scale, the applicable legal rules were not adequately considered and integrated. Consequently, the experiment led to a deterioration of water quality. The article concludes that the success or failure of self-organisation in delivering environmental services such as wastewater management critically hinges on ensuring compliance with environmental legislation.

The experiment was conducted by the radical collapse of thick-walled cylinders. Optical microscopic examination showed that sample (γ˙ = 7.3 × 104 s−1, eef = 0.45) failed to produce adiabat...

In order to find conditions for biologically plausible, cognitive self-organisation, an adequate representation of the final stage of this process is crucial. The implications of this assumption are analysed for the area of visual-word processing, in particular for position-specific top-down processes from a word – to a letter representation. These processes pose a problem to reviewed models of word reading and computational models in general. A solution in the form of a conceptual network is proposed. In this general model for cognitive brain processes, neural binding of identity and location and of identity and position play a fundamental role: temporary connections emerge during word recognition and are reactivated later, when a letter at given position has to be identified. It is shown how modules active in word recognition are “re-used” in letter identification. In simulations, the role of a critical threshold of cell-assemblies is shown and the selective propagation of activation loops at task-dependent time scales. Requirements for prospective studies on cognitive self-organisation and relations with new empirical work on visual-word processing are discussed.

Self-organization is central to the morphogenesis of multicellular organisms. However, the molecular platform that coordinates the robust emergence of complex morphological patterns from local interactions between cells remains unresolved. Here we demonstrate that neural self- organization is driven by coupled cycling of progenitor cells. In a coupled cycling mode, intercellular contacts relay extrinsic cues to override the intrinsic cycling rhythm of an individual cell and synchronize the population. The stringency of coupling and hence the synchronicity of the population is programmed by recruitment of a key coupler, β-catenin, into junctional complexes. As such, multicellular self-organization is driven by the same basic mathematical principle that governs synchronized behavior of macro-scale biological systems as diverse as the synchronized chirping of crickets, flashing of fireflies and schooling of fish; that is synchronization by coupling. It is proposed that coupled cycling foreshadows a fundamental adaptive change that facilitated evolution and diversification of multicellular life forms.

Complexity theory is the study of complex systems composed of multiple interacting agents that function as a whole. A complexity-informed theory of social self-organisation is introduced and applie...

We study the phase behaviour and morphology of systems involving mixtures of isotropic and anisotropic particles. The investigations are carried out using Molecular Dynamics technique. For this pur...

Frank-Kasper phases are available in both hard and soft complex matter. They have been discovered in metal alloys and subsequently in self-organisations of supramolecular spheres from self-assembling dendrons, dendrimers and dendronized polymers. Recently, they were found in block copolymers, lipids, surfactants, giant surfactants, nanoparticles, DNA particles and even in condensed small molecules such as N2, O2, and CO. Here we report the discovery of an amphiphilic Janus dendrimer, that self-assembles in water into vesicles known as dendrimersomes, self-organised also in bulk state into helical columns and spheres forming columnar hexagonal and a Frank-Kasper A15 phase known as Pm3��n. These self-organisations display a supramolecular orientational memory (SOM) effect that is induced by an epitaxial nucleation at the transition from columns to spheres and during the reverse process. This SOM effect is mediated by the closed contact supramolecular spheres from the A15 phase. In this case a rhombitruncated cuboctahedral hexagonal columnar arrangement, that to the best of our knowledge is not known in biology or synthetic chemistry, was self-organised. We believe that the addition of amphiphilic Janus dendrimers to the classes of molecules displaying Frank-Kasper phases and the SOM effect will broaden our ability to discover additional complex soft condensed matter morphologies.

In this paper we provide an overview of recent theoretical approaches and technologies that respond to the fundamental challenges of modern factory automation. We classify these major methods and t...

Inspired by the chemotaxis interaction of living cells, we have developed an agent-based approach for self-organising shape formation. Since all our simulations begin with a different uniform random configuration and our agents move stochastically, it has been observed that the self-organisation process may form two or more stable final configurations. These differing configurations may be characterised via statistical moments of the agents' locations. In order to direct the agents to robustly form one specific configuration, we generate biased initial conditions whose statistical moments are related to moments of the desired configuration. With this approach, we are able to successfully direct the aggregating swarms to produce a desired macroscopic shape, starting from randomised initial conditions with controlled statistical properties.

This special issue presents perspectives on learning and adaptation as they apply to a number of cognitive phenomena including pupil dilation in humans and attention in robots, natural language acq...

The article addresses post-communist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe through the conceptual apparatus of Luhmann’s social systems theory, which sees increasing functional differentiat...

Work teams experience workload from the group dynamics in addition to the usual sources of individual workload. This study had three objectives: to assess the responsiveness of new rating scales for group workload (GWL), investigate their component structure, and determine if changes in workload occur as the team matures. Participants (360 individuals, 44 groups) engaged in an emergency response (ER) simulation in the form of a board game; team size, game difficulty (one versus two opponents), and time constraints were varied. ER teams rated workload after each of two sessions using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX) and GWL. GWL was most responsive to larger task demands and reflected changes in coordination demand over time. Components reflected mixtures of TLX and GWL scales and suggested that self-organising processes were operating.

2,5- and 2,4-disubstituted 1,3-thiazoles have been incorporated as core units in thermotropic liquid crystalline materials. However, synthetic approaches to these systems have been somewhat limited, and this is reflected in the relatively few reports of these mesogenic systems. This paper highlights both recent and well-established synthetic approaches to these systems using ring closure (Gabriel- and Hantzsch-type approaches) methodology and modifications of an intact 1,3-thiazole ring. The scope and limitations of each of these approaches are discussed.

The Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) is a global commons and fishes in the CAO are common property resources. If humanity does not manage this region well, it will lead to a “tragedy of the commons.” How...

Symmetrical triblock semifluorinated n-alkane, di(perfluorohexyl)hexane of the formula F(CF2)6(CH2)6(CF2)6F (abbreviated F6H6F6), has been synthesised and investigated at the air/water interface. Our results show for the first time that this unusual film-forming material, completely hydrophobic in nature and possessing no polar group, is capable of stable film formation at the free water surface. The surface pressure–area isotherm of the studied compound exhibited two regions: corresponding to monotonous pressure rise, followed by a pseudo-plateau region. Visualisation of film structure with Brewster angle microscope (BAM) proved the formation of domains within the pseudo-plateau region. A closer insight into the structure of these domains with atomic force microscope (AFM) proved their ordered, circular shape. The average area of F6H6F6 domain was found to depend on surface pressure value, as it is 4.98 ± 1.75 μm2 at π = 1.2 mN/m to 16.54 ± 0.31 μm2 at π = 1.7 mN/m. Following performed quantum-ch...

In this paper, I present a unified framework for understanding abiotic, biotic and technological mobilities as achievements of a far-from-equilibrium planet self-organising over geological time, and generating informationally rich forms of matter and motion. I discuss how flows of energy through the Earth support the emergence of different kinds of movement in spatially distinct ‘mobility regions’ and scale-related ‘mobility situations’. I also discuss how technological mobilities exhibit forms of ‘gratuity’, a relative uncoupling of different aspects of motion, which have arisen repeatedly in the Earth’s past, and may presage the emergence of radically new forms of planetary mobility.

This article applies complexity theory to the peacebuilding field and finds that for a peace process to become self-sustainable, resilient social institutions need to emerge from within, i.e. infor...

This study explores the communication and organising of youth volunteers during a crisis, focusing on how they conceived, framed, and executed self-organising efforts during the 2011 Rena oil spill in New Zealand. It offers insights into the intersections of self-organising, youth volunteering and crisis events which have not been researched before. The study addresses two core research questions: 1. how was ‘volunteering’ conceptualised by youth volunteers involved in the Rena crisis; and 2. how did these volunteers communicate and self-organise during this crisis? The findings indicate that self-organising emerged out of a resistance towards structured responses and as a reaction to the inability of the official volunteer response to meet the needs of the community. Self-organised efforts were particularly attractive among youth volunteers because they offered flexibility, required minimal administrative processes, and fostered an environment of innovation and creativity. The volunteers’ youthfu...

This paper argues that subsidiarity is a condicio sine qua non for sustainability. Through the complexity paradigm, the paper provides a historical reconstruction of both concepts to the end of elucidating their interdependence. The main thesis is that subsidiarity to sustainability is what self-organisation is to emergence. The paper ends with a sketch of future global governance structures based on a subsidiarity where cities take the lead on sustainability.

Sweden has been one of the countries at the forefront of policymaking for people with intellectual disabilities worldwide. Culminating in the 1994 Swedish LSS Act (Act Concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments), the aim of Swedish policy has been to ensure good living conditions and self-determination for people with intellectual disabilities. The primary purpose of this article was to explore Swedish research on the implementation of disability policies, and the extent to which the control that people with intellectual disabilities have over their everyday lives has changed as a result of these forward-looking policies. Swedish research that focuses on self-determination and was published within the last two decades was reviewed. Findings of the study have been drawn from 11 dissertations and 5 articles. As far as the author is aware, this is the first time these findings have been made available to a non-Swedish-speaking audience. Research reviewed included o...

This paper proposes a self-organising networked controller for disturbance attenuation in multi-agent systems. A disturbance affecting a single agent has some effect on all neighbouring agents through the communication network. To avoid large disturbance effects, the proposed self-organising controller switches off the communication whenever the effect of the disturbance on the corresponding agent exceeds a given bound. As a consequence, the structure of the networked controller is adjusted to the current disturbance. It is proved that the proposed controller bounds the effect of any disturbance on all undisturbed agents. The results are illustrated by their application to a robot formation problem.

The paper analyses the work of Elinor Ostrom along four major lines: the new concepts (1) of the pluralism of goods overcoming the dichotomy of public vs. private goods, (2) of the plurality of institutions in difference to the dichotomy of state vs. markets, (3) of bounded rational human agency combining self-related and other-related motivations in difference to the assumption of omniscient rational egoists, and (4) the vision of polycentric orders. These are cornerstones in the development of a different social science combining strong theory with broad and in-depth empirical research. Limitations within Ostrom's approach are discussed that could stand in the way of expanding her approach into an encompassing paradigm for a heterodoxical social science that could spur a social and ecological transformation of modern societies.

Colloidal particles trapped at an interface between two fluids can form a wide range of different structures. Replacing one of the fluid with a liquid crystal (LC) increases the complexity of interactions and results in a greater range of possible structures. New behaviour emerges when colloidal particles interact with defects in the LC phases. Here, we discuss the templating of colloids at a cholesteric isotropic interface.

This contribution is focused on collective and individual stories of precarity in Italy. At the present time, when work and the imaginaries socially constructed around it are more and more individualised and fragmented, imaginaries and collective references – whether they be social movements, trade unions or professional groups – have given way to ever more particularistic and singular experiences, which hinder the construction of a coherent identity for workers. In this scenario the question to be asked is then: how is it possible to elaborate a new collective imaginary of precarity and reclaim new rights? After a focus on the phenomenon of precarity in Italy, this contribution move to consider the activities of the network of San Precario, a cultural phenomenon that managed to develop new kinds of social claims based on bottom-up and horizontal practices. It is then discussed that the current return to an almost exclusively individual approach to the question of precarity, which forces subjects to bear ...

Language planning and complexity is the subject of this volume's collection of papers. But is such a linkage desirable or even possible? The Editor of this thematic issue recently held a conversation with the Director of the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences to discuss this and other questions. A record of their exchange is given below.

Connectivity seems to have become an essential quality of modern societies. Following this understanding of being woven together, this article explores and describes complexity as the epistemological vantage point for the rise of emergency and resilience within discourses of security. It describes how seemingly contradictory logics of ‘governance’ and ‘self-organisation’, of ‘retaining’ and ‘developing with change’ converge in the concept of resilience and critically discusses the different forms of power they instantiate. It analyses how the understanding of security as ‘absence of danger‘ is recast by resilience as a continuous ‘process of adaptation’.

As a reaction to the volatile market demands with regards to the number and variants of products offered, ever more complex procedures for manufacturing control are being developed. Most recently, self-organising procedures, which often mimic the behaviour of natural systems, have arisen. The method of ant colony optimisation (ACO), which was inspired by ants, can provide the necessary fundamentals in order to realise self-organising manufacturing control. In this context, the ifab-Institute has developed the AntControl tool for self-organising manufacturing control based on ACO. In order to investigate the potential of ACO, several concepts have been developed and integrated into the existing OSim simulation tool to create the new OSim-Ant tool. An exemplary simulation study within a manufacturing system has been carried out to evaluate the behaviour of AntControl. This paper presents this tool as well as the results of the simulation study.

This article examines the self-organising features of participatory planning. The argument is that the complexity and non-linearity of present-day participatory practices unavoidably transgresses the formal linear idea of public interaction in planning processes. To study this development, the article approaches public participation as boundary interaction (Wenger, 2003). The approach is applied to two cases of participatory planning in Finland. Further, the article analyses the possibilities self-organising initiatives offer for developing cooperative practices in urban planning.

This paper will look at a client diagnosed with schizophrenia functioning at a negative reflective functioning (RF) level. Schaverien depicts a model of successive stages in the life of the picture. For some clients whose inner worlds are very fragmented the stage of ‘familiarisation’, the ‘immanent articulation’ may be the limits of their therapy. I propose that with the help of the group and its reflective functioning process, a client working at a negative reflective functioning level can be assisted in moving past the stage of ‘familiarisation’. I will consider how the art psychotherapy group may work as a way of exploring the mind. Furthermore, I suggest that such a client who has moved past the stage of ‘familiarisation’ can further progress into subsequent stages. I will present clinical vignettes of three art psychotherapy group sessions to illustrate this process. These groups will cover the first session, the fourth session and the thirty-second art psychotherapy session.

The current study undertook a dynamical systems analysis of race bunch cycling, considering the ‘sports contest’ as a dynamical, self organising system (McGarry et al., 2002). Data from one interna...

This study discusses the computational analysis of general emotion understanding from questionnaires methodology. The questionnaires method approaches the subject by investigating the real experience that accompanied the emotions, whereas the other laboratory approaches are generally associated with exaggerated elements. We adopted a connectionist model called support-vector-based emergent self-organising map (SVESOM) to analyse the emotion profiling from the questionnaires method. The SVESOM first identifies the important variables by giving discriminative features with high ranking. The classifier then performs the classification based on the selected features. Experimental results show that the top rank features are in line with the work of Scherer and Wallbott [(1994), 'Evidence for Universality and Cultural Variation of Differential Emotion Response Patterning', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 310-328], which approached the emotions physiologically. While the performance measures show that using the full features for classifications can degrade the performance, the selected features provide superior results in terms of accuracy and generalisation.

The death in June 2009 of the British sociologist Peter Townsend prompted a powerful outpouring of support for him and his public contribution, in both mainstream media obituaries and subsequent co...

This article provides an illustrated review of artificial life as a synthetic approach to the study of behaviours, systems and organisms. The article starts with a discussion about the methodological advantages of using bottom-up, instead of top–down, approaches for the computational synthesis of natural behaviours. As an outcome of bottom-up modelling, the resulting behaviours synthesised are characterised by two fundamental properties: self-organisation and emergence. The presentation focuses on conceptualising and illustrating self-organisation and emergence in the context of artificial life for the synthesis of behaviours. Two well-known ALife projects are used to promote a discussion of some implications and contributions of ALife, namely, the simulation of collective behaviours of bird flocks; and the construction of nests by wasps. The article is concluded with a discussion of the main current trends and open problems in the field.

In the 1950s and 1960s Ross Ashby created a general theory of adaptive systems. His work is well known among cyberneticians and systems scientists, but not in other fields. This is somewhat surprising, because his theories are more general versions of the theories in many fields. The philosophy of science claims that more general theories are preferred because a small number of propositions can explain many phenomena. Why, then, are Ashby's theories not widely known and praised? Do scientists really strive for more general, parsimonious theories? This paper reviews the content of Ashby's theories, discusses what they reveal about how scientists work, and suggests what their role might be in the academic community in the future.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) have proved to be a great success in their applications in every branch of civil engineering. Specifically in hydrology and Remotely Sensed Data Analysis (RSDA) the applications have been numerous and offered far superior results than the traditional statistical models and methods. But, most of the applications so far, be it in hydrology or RSDA, ANNs have been limited to commonly three (or four) layered structure, with log-sigmoid (or hyper-tangent) activation functions and back-propagation learning algorithm. Recently it is being felt that there is a need to go beyond these limited capabilities and find more complex structures, better training algorithms, improved parallel processing, automated learning, self organisation, etc. to truly realise the full potential of neural networks that are still very far from their expectation i.e., the biological counterparts. While ANNs are expected to utilize the power of brain like functioning, fuzzy approaches are expected...

Humans maintain a body image of themselves, which plays a central role in controlling bodily movement, planning action, recognising and naming actions performed by others, and requesting or executing commands. This paper explores through experiments with autonomous humanoid robots how such a body image could form. Robots play a situated embodied language game called the Action Game in which they ask each other to perform bodily actions. They start without any prior inventory of names, without categories for visually recognising body movements of others, and without knowing the relation between visual images of motor behaviours carried out by others and their own motor behaviours. Through diagnostic and repair strategies carried out within the context of action games, they progressively self-organise an effective lexicon as well as bi-directional mappings between the visual and the motor domain. The agents thus establish and continuously adapt networks linking perception, body representation, action and language., This research was carried out at the Sony Computer Science Laboratory in Paris with partial support from the ECAgents project, funded by the EU Future and Emerging Technologies programme (IST-FET) as IST-1940, and theALEAR project, funded by the EU Cognitive Systems programme.

The chemical industry is in the process of reinventing itself to ensure its sustainability. In a global economy, the challenges are huge for balancing environmental, economic and societal aspirations that either maintain or enhance the quality of life in an affordable manner. Although today no single path exists towards sustainable materials, there are a number of emerging technologies that have the potential to contribute to the drivers of twenty-first century society. Exploring the small world of atoms and molecules has provided nanotechnology and biotechnology. Nanobiotechnology has revealed a number of opportunities and insights with the potential of rejuvenating the chemical industry. It provides 'chemistry' with a 'new face' and purpose. The more effective use of biomass and the application of molecular self-organisation principles illustrate the new directions science and technology is moving into, and contributing to a sustainable society.

Several theorists have called for people who work in organisations to become more proficient at discerning the subtle, self-organised patterns that emerge in their organisations. Such theorists argue that the capacity to detect such patterns can enable managers to understand what drives organisational behaviour, and what stands in the way of organisational transformation. This paper presents findings of a study on how some organisational practitioners detect and understand self-organised behavioural patterns that emerge in the workplace. It seeks, therefore, to integrate processes used by successful practitioners with a theoretical foundation grounded in systems and organisational research.

Please, cite this publication as: Janssen, J., Tattersall, T., van den Berg, B., & Koper, R. (2006). Navigational support in lifelong learning: enhancing effectiveness through indirect social navigation. Proceedings of International Workshop in Learning Networks for Lifelong Competence Development, TENCompetence Conference. March 30th-31st, Sofia, Bulgaria: TENCompetence. Retrieved June 30th, 2006, from http://dspace.learningnetworks.org

Apart from the theory of evolution, there is no general theory of life. In addition to its special chemistry involving molecules carrying information, living matter has the property of being built of self-organising systems far from thermodynamic equilibrium. Although this may seem obvious, the implications of this fact for our understanding of life are far from familiar. In this review, I attempt to explain how the concept of self-organisation can change our view of living matter. I discuss more specifically some recent progress made in the understanding of how reaction diffusion and collective molecular behaviours are, in large part, responsible for the generation of cellular and subcellular dynamic patterns characteristic of living matter.

At present GMDH algorithms give us an explicit model description (equations, rules, patterns) of complex ill-defined systems in the case of very short and noisy data samples. Therefore this is a necessary supplement to simulation methodology. Self-organising modelling and in special the GMDH approach is suitable and valuable as a part of the whole simulation process, which is demonstrated in macroeconomic simulation. More than this the paper will give an overview about the sources of traditional GMDH and about further development of self-organising modelling which is implemented in "KnowledgeMiner".

In the article is described the possibility to automate by means of application of self-organisation and other principles more or less the whole data mining process, what we have named self-organising data mining. There are different GMDH-based modelling algorithms implemented - dimensionality reduction, missing value elimination, active neurons, enhanced network synthesis and creation of systems of equations, validation, combining of alternative models - to make knowledge extraction objective, fast and easy-to-use even for large and complex systems.

Current techniques for multi-dimensional pattern recognition are examined with particular emphasis on the use of artificial neural networks (ANN's). A solution in the form of a Self-Organising and Self-Adaptive (SOSA) network algorithm is devised and simulated to offer a new architecture and training methodology. This network greatly reduces training times while preserving the relationships among input elements. Furthermore, the SOSA network offers the advantage of becoming simplified as training progresses. The implications of the unique properties of the SOSA network are presented. To verify the quality of the proposed SOSA network, simulation results are obtained and presented. The SOSA network is applied to a 3–dimensionai surface recognition problem

This paper demonstrates the unsupervised discovery of localised components in real image data, using images of much larger size than the small fragments from which components have previously been extracted. The handwriting images used are also much more homogeneous than the random natural scenes used in earlier demonstrations, containing components of a specific size-scale and structure. Because of this homogeneity, the components found are not wavelets covering a range of size scales: instead, they correspond to line- and curve-segments made by the pen. The objective function that is optimised here encodes and reconstructs the data via a Markov process, and is also related to density modelling techniques. Several earlier theoretical and experimental results can also be attributed to the form of neuron used here, including the extraction of words from continuous speech and the discovery of unknown transformation invariances via the controlled breaking of dynamical symmetry.

It is demonstrated that a componential code emerges when a self-organising neural network is exposed to continuous speech. The code's components correspond to substructures that occur relatively independently of one another: words and phones. A capability for generalisation and discrimination develops without having been optimised explicitly. The componential structure is revealed by optimising a necessarily complicated nonlinear moment of the data's distribution, equal to the mean-squared output response of a multi-layered network of simple threshold neurons. Earlier analytical work had predicted that componential codes, generalisation and discrimination should emerge from the self-organisation of threshold neurons of this form, assuming certain properties of the pattern-space distribution of the data.

A geometrical interpretation of the elementary constituents which make up perceptual patterns is proposed: if a number of different pattern-vectors lie approximately within the same plane in the pattern-vector space, those patterns can be interpreted as sharing a common constituent. Individual constituents are associated with individual planes of patterns: a pattern tying within an intersection of several such planes corresponds to a combination of several constituents. This interpretation can model patterns as hierarchical combinations of constituents that are themselves combinations of yet more elementary constituents.A neuron can develop transformation-invariances in its recognition-response by aligning its synaptic vector with one of the plane-normals: a pattern-vector's projection along the synaptic vector is then an invariant of all the patterns on the plane. In this way, discriminating detectors for individual constituents can self-organise through Hebbian adaptation. Transformation-invariances tha...