Systems Science Seminar Series
SUMMARY: The Systems Science Seminar Series covers a wide-range of topics, providing an opportunity for presenters to share and attendees to become exposed to latest and often cutting-edge research from different fields and disciplines. Agent-based simulation, artificial intelligence, artificial life, genetic algorithms, machine learning, neural networks, signal processing, social networks, system dynamics, and science itself are just a few of the many diverse topics that have been presented, all in an informal environment where questions and discussion are encouraged.
QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS: If you have questions or comments, would like to present a seminar, or if you have suggestions for topics or speakers, please email Garry Sotnik at gsotnik@pdx.edu.
SySc507_SeminarSyllabus_2011.pdf
ANNOUNCEMENTS
(past and future, reverse chronological order)
Past Seminar Schedules and Announcements (with links to presentation recordings and slides)
SPRING 2012 SCHEDULE
- 04/13/12 - Scott Mist, Assistant Professor, Oregon health & Science University, ...
- __________ - Mehmet Vurkac,
- __________ - Jeff Fletcher, Professor of Systems Science, PSU,
- 06/10/12 - Classes end
WINTER 2012 SCHEDULE
- 02/03/12 - Richard B. Norgaard, Professor of Energy and Resources, University of California-Berkeley, "Ecosystem Services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder" [Announcement]
- 01/27/12 - Martin Zwick, Professor of Systems Science, PSU, "Complexity Thory and Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street." [Announcement] [Abstract] [pdf]
- 01/20/12 - Brian Kasper, Senior Remote Sensing Scientist, WSI, "Using Airborne LiDAR for Environmental Analysis and Modeling" [Announcement]
- 01/13/12 - Rich Jolly, Recent PhD Graduate, PSU, "The Role of Feedback in the Assimilation of Information in Prediction Markets" [Announcement]
- 02/10/12 - Dario Nardi, Professor of Anthropology and founder of the Human Complex Systems Degree Program at UCLA, "Neuroscience of Personality: A Systems Approach"
- 02/17/12 - Rajesh Venkatachalapathy, Systems Science Phd student, PSU, ...
- 02/24/12 - Robert Scheller, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science, PSU, ...
- 03/02/12 - Melanie Mitchell, Professor of Computer Science, PSU, ...
- 03/09/12 - Jeffrey Fletcher, Professor of Systems Science, PSU, ...
- 03/16/12 - Angela Strecker, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Management, PSU, ...
- 03/18/12 - Classes end
DATE: Friday, February 3rd, 2012, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Richard B. Norgaard
TITLE: Ecosystem Services: From eye-opening metaphor to complexity blinder
SUMMARY: What started as a humble metaphor to help us think about our relation to nature has become integral to how we are addressing the future of humanity and the course of biological evolution. The metaphor of nature as a stock that provides a flow of services is insufficient for the difficulties we are in or the task ahead. Indeed, combined with the mistaken presumption that we can analyze a global problem within a partial equilibrium economic framework and reach a new economy project-by-project without major institutional change, the simplicity of the stock-flow framework blinds us to the complexity of the human predicament. The ecosystem services approach can be a part of a larger solution, but its dominance in our characterization of our situation and the solution is blinding us to the ecological, economic, and political complexities of the challenges we actually face.
BIO: Richard B. Norgaard is Professor of Energy and Resources. He received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, M.S. in agricultural economics from Oregon State University, and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1971. Among the founders of the field of ecological economics, his recent research addresses how environmental problems challenge scientific understanding and the policy process, how ecologists and economists understand systems differently, and how globalization affects environmental governance. He has field experience in the Alaska, Brazil, California, and Vietnam with minor forays in other parts of the globe.
Dr. Norgaard is the author of one book, co-author or editor of three additional books, and has over 100 other publications spanning the fields of environment and development, tropical forestry and agriculture, environmental epistemology, energy economics, and ecological economics. Though an eclectic scholar, he is also among the 1000 economists in the world most cited by other economists (Millennium Editions of Who's Who in Economics, 2000) and was one of ten American economists interviewed in The Changing Face of Economics: Conversations with Cutting Edge Economists(Colander, Holt, and Rosser, University of Michigan Press, 2004). He is currently writing on how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment facilitate collective understandings of complex systems.
Dr. Norgaard currently chairs the Delta Independent Science Board of the State of California, is a lead author in the 5th assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and serves on the Board of EcoEquity. He has served on numerous committees of the National Academy of Sciences and the former office of Technology Assessment and was a member of the U.S. Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment. He served as President of the International Society for Ecological Economics (1998-2001). He has been a visiting scholar at the World Bank and served on the Science Advisory Board of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Independent Science Board of the California Bay – Delta Authority. He served on the Board of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (2000-2009).
Here is the link for people who want to attend our seminar remotely:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2009262&password=M.CF3827E1A7D8500A6420C2CA3E9829
DATE: Friday, January 27th, 2012, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Martin Zwick
TITLE: Complexity Theory and Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street
SUMMARY: Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs in the relations between polity, economy, community, and culture. The Occupy movement has called attention to the need for such fundamental change.
BIO: Martin Zwick has been a core Systems Science faculty member since 1976. His main interests are information theoretic modeling, theoretical biology, and systems theory and philosophy. Scientifically, his focus is on applying systems theory and methodology to the natural and social sciences, especially to biomedical data analysis, the evolution of cooperation, and sustainability. Philosophically, his focus is on how systems ideas relate to classical and contemporary philosophy, how they offer a bridge between science and religion, and how they can help us understand and address societal problems.
Here is the link for people who want to attend our seminar remotely:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2009262&password=M.AFBC3665C864C79D76ED89DA73BD03
DATE: Friday, January 20th, 2012, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Brian Kasper
TITLE: Using Airborne LiDAR for Environmental Analysis and Modeling
SUMMARY: Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) is an optical remote sensing technology that is used to create high resolution 3D maps within a geographic information system (GIS). The LiDAR system is mounted within an aircraft and uses lasers to rapidly scan the earth’s surface. The data is processed to create a 3-dimensional point cloud consisting of billions of points which accurately represent the ground, vegetation, buildings, etc. LiDAR has a broad range of applications including ecosystem analysis, urban planning, forest inventories, power line assessments, volcano monitoring, fault detection, building mapping, flood prediction, stream modeling, wind farm optimization, archeology and more.
BIO: Brian Kasper is a senior remote sensing scientist at WSI in Portland, Oregon. He has a Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Master’s degree in Environmental Science and Engineering. Brian spent 8 years at the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, where he modeled stream networks and developed water quality restoration plans. He has been with WSI for the past 6 years, where he processes and analyzes LiDAR data and uses it to simulate a variety of natural and human-made landscape features. Brian also participates in research and development to improve existing LiDAR applications and create new analysis methodologies.
Here is the link for people who want to attend our seminar remotely:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2009262&password=M.620F425C9B921DCFEBBF843B215443
DATE: Friday, January 13th, 2012, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Rich Jolly
TITLE: The Role of Feedback in the Assimilation of Information in Prediction Markets
ABSTRACT: Leveraging the knowledge of an organization is an ongoing challenge that has given rise to the field of knowledge management. Yet, despite spending enormous sums of organizational resources on Information Technology (IT) systems, executives recognize there is much more knowledge to harvest. Prediction markets are emerging as one tool to help extract this tacit knowledge and make it operational. Yet, prediction markets, like other markets, are subject to pathologies (e.g., bubbles and crashes) which compromise their accuracy and may discourage organizational use. The techniques of experimental economics were used to study the characteristics of prediction markets. Empirical data was gathered from an on-line asynchronous prediction market. Participants allocated tickets based on private information and, depending on the market type, public information indicative of how prior participants had allocated their tickets. The experimental design featured three levels of feedback (no-feedback, percentages of total allocated tickets and frequency of total allocated tickets) presented to the participants. The research showed that the presence and type of feedback can be used to modulate market performance. Adding feedback, or more informative feedback, increased the market's precision at the expense of accuracy. The research supported the hypotheses that these changes were due to the inductive aggregation process which creates agreement (increasing precision), but also occasionally generates information mirages (which reduces accuracy).
BIO: Rich Jolly has just completed a PhD from Portland State University in Systems Science: Business Administration. Prior Rich worked in various marketing and design roles in the high technology arena (most recently with Intel). Rich is in the process of starting a new business in the area of alternative investments.
DATE: Friday, January 27th, 2012, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER:Martin Zwick
TITLE: Complexity Theory and Political Change: Talcott Parsons Occupies Wall Street
ABSTRACT: Complexity theory can assist our understanding of social systems and social phenomena. This paper illustrates this assertion by linking Talcott Parsons' model of societal structure to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Parsons' model is used to organize ideas about the underlying causes of the recession that currently afflicts the US. While being too abstract to depict the immediate factors that precipitated this crisis, the model is employed to articulate the argument that vulnerability to this type of event results from flaws in societal structure. This implies that such crises can be avoided only if, in Parsons' terms, structural change occurs in the relations between polity, economy, community, and culture. The Occupy movement has called attention to the need for such fundamental change.
BIO: Martin Zwick was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics at MIT in 1968, and joined the Biophysics Department faculty of the University of Chicago in 1969. Initially working in crystallography and macromolecular structure, his interests shifted to systems theory and methodology, the field now known as the study of chaos, complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Since 1976 he has been teaching and doing research in the Systems Science PhD Program at Portland State University; during the years 1984-1989 he was director of the program.
His main research areas are information-theoretic modeling, machine learning, theoretical biology, game theory, and systems theory and philosophy. Scientifically, his focus is on applying systems theory and methodology to the natural and social sciences, most recently to biomedical data analysis, the evolution of cooperation, and sustainability. Philosophically, his focus is on how systems ideas relate to classical and contemporary philosophy, how they offer a bridge between science and religion, and how they can help us understand and address societal problems.
FALL 2011 SCHEDULE
Teaching Systems Concepts.pdf sysc_sem_2011-10-28.pdf
2011-11-04_SystemSciences_econ of info.pptDATE: Friday, December 2nd, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
The scheduled presenter, Professor Richard Norgaard, asked to postpone his presentation until next (Winter) term. Instead, we will watch and discuss the following three TED talks.
Eric Berlow: How complexity leads to simplicity (4 min)
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/eric_berlow_how_complexity_leads_to_simplicity.html
Nicholas Christakis: The hidden influence of social networks (18 min)
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/nicholas_christakis_the_hidden_influence_of_social_networks.html
Kevin Slavin: How algorithms shape our world (15 min)
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world.html
Here is the link for people who want to attend our seminar remotely:
https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=2009262&password=M.AA72DEA16E81F60D05A2C46274D740
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DATE: Friday, November 18th, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Alison Loercher, L.Ac.
TITLE: Organ and Elemental Systems in Chinese Medicine
SUMMARY: Alison will review the basics of physiological functioning from a holistic traditional Chinese Medicine perspecitive, offering insight and food for thought about this 2,000 year old system of looking at our health as a microcosm of our environment.
BIO: Currently practicing in Portland, Oregon, Alison has both studied and practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine here and abroad.
DATE: Friday, November 4th, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Ida Kubiszewski
TITLE: New ways to manage information as a good that improves with use
ABSTRACT: Information has some unique characteristics. Unlike most other goods and services, it is neither rival (use by one prevents use by others) nor non-rival (use by one does not affect use by others), but is enhanced with increased use, or ‘additive’. Therefore a unique allocation system for both the production and consumption of information is needed. Under the current market-based allocation system, production of information is often limited through the exclusive rights produced by patents and copyrights. This limits scientists' ability to share and build on each other's knowledge. We break the problem down into three separate questions: (1) do markets generate the type of information most important for modern society? (2) are markets the most appropriate institution for producing that information? and (3) once information is produced, are markets the most effective way of maximizing the social value of that information? We conclude that systematic market failures make it unlikely that markets will generate the most important types of information, while the unique characteristics of information reduce the cost-effectiveness of markets in generating information and in maximizing its social value. We then discuss alternative methods that do not have these shortcomings, and that would lead to greater overall economic efficiency, social justice and ecological sustainability. These methods include monetary prizes, publicly funded research from which the produced information is released into the public domain, and status driven incentive structures like those in academia and the “open-source” community.
BIO: Dr. Ida Kubiszewski is a Research Assistant Professor in the Institute for Sustainable Solutions, at Portland State University. She is also the Managing Editor for a new magazine/journal hybrid called Solutions and one called Reviews of Ecological Economics. Ida is a co-founder and former-Managing Editor of the Encyclopedia of Earth. Dr. Kubiszewski is the author or co-author of dozen's of scientific papers. She is a Junior Fellow at the National Council for Science and the Environment and sits on the steering committees or advisory boards of various organizations including the Ecosystem Service Partnership, Environmental Information Coalition, and the U.S. Society for Ecological Economics. Ida received her B.A. in Astronomy and Physics from Boston University and her M.A. in Energy and Environmental Analysis through the Center for Energy and Environmental Studies also at Boston University. She received her Ph.D. through the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics in the School of Natural Resources at the University of Vermont. Her dissertation topic was 'Searching for the Sweet Spot: Managing Information as a Good that improves with Use.'
DATE: Friday, October 28th, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Dora Raymaker
TITLE: Participatory Action Research: Science and Social Change
ABSTRACT: Participatory Action Research (PAR) is a general collaborative approach to inquiry that includes research "subjects" as members of the research team. Useful in any setting involving groups of people, PAR has revolutionized research with minority communities. Some "flavors" of PAR, such as Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) have been developed to address issues of power and privilege, to change dynamics between science, society, and minorities, and to enable and encourage systems change. This talk discusses the theory and practice of PAR as a research approach, drawing from real world examples in health sciences research with minority communities defined by disability or race.
BIO: Dora Raymaker, MS, co-directs the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE,http://aaspire.org), a community-campus partnership based at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU). Her research interests include complex systems, social dynamics, and the impact of community-campus partnerships on science and public policy.
DATE: Friday, October 21st, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Scott Heckbert
TITLE: Complex systems models for growing and collapsing societies
ABSTRACT: Simulation models can be used to represent processes in both the biophysical and social-economic domains. Combining these can create a system where human-environmental feedbacks can be quantified, and the system can be tested under different scenarios. An example of this is the MayaSim model, which represents the geography and economy of the ancient Maya civilization. The model measures environmental and economic sustainability by building the system from the bottom up and testing it under combinations of factors that may have led to the dramatic reorganization of the Maya society at approximately 800AD. Models such as this allow for quantifying the way that societies undermine their natural capital to generate wealth and complex social organizations, but in the end are subject to slow environmental processes such as forest ecology and soil regeneration, as well more frequent events such as droughts.
BIO: Scott Heckbert is a research assistant professor at Portland State University's Institute for Sustainable Solutions and previously worked as an environmental economist with CSIRO, Australia. Scott's research applies environmental economics using simulation modelling of integrated social-ecological systems. Research topics include economics of greenhouse gas mitigation, modelling the rise and fall of ancient societies, market-based instruments for environmental management, water quality improvement for tropical reefs, modelling patterns of urban sprawl, rangelands management, and supporting Indigenous land management for environmental and cultural benefits. Scott is currently developing complex systems models using combined agent-based, cellular automata and network models for the project Integrated History of People on Earth (IHOPE), simulating the rise and reorganization of ancient societies such as the Classic Maya and Great Zimbabwe. Scott develops spatially-explicit simulation models which represent biophysical and human processes in response to climate variability, with the goal of building quantitative metrics for resilience theory which can be used to enhance resilient support systems or warn of vulnerabilities. Scott has used agent-based modelling and experimental economics to embed human decision makers within models in order to test theories on human economic behaviour. An overall research goal has been the calibration and validation of complex systems models.
DATE: Friday, October 14th, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Arthur Brock
TITLE: A Living Systems Model of Wealth
ABSTRACT: An introduction to the Metacurrency Project and the use of currencies as social DNA which organizes our corporations, institutions and economies.
BIO: Arthur Brock builds targeted currencies that are at the core of the emerging post-industrial economy. He has created more than a hundred designs for multi-currency systems and his software company has built and deployed dozens of those systems. Initially, Arthur put his degree in Artificial Intelligence to use at GM, Chrysler & Hughes, but he soon realized he was committed to bringing intelligence to social architectures rather than to computers. He started student-run schools and award-winning, employee-run businesses and discovered that the self-managing feedback loops needed to operate these types of organizations were built on particular patterns of incentives and measurement. He began to unlock the social DNA by which groups operate and uncover the critical role of currencies as carriers of that social DNA. Arthur’s designs include currency systems for: collaborative scientific research, sustainable fishery management, corporate compensation plans, employee stock options, community-based economic development, business barter and exchange, triple-bottom-line trade credits, open source software development, customer loyalty programs, water rights, recirculating gift certificates, community service, employee performance management, arts & culture development, efficient resource sharing & management, and community & environmental impact assessment. Based in Denver, Colorado, Arthur Brock consults worldwide with organizations which are actively restructuring themselves for the new economy.
DATE: Friday, October 7th, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Dario Nardi, PhD
TITLE: Instructional Practices for Teaching Systems Concepts
15-minute presentations on the following three topics:
I. Live Group Simulations Promote Learning of Systems Concepts
Systems concepts such as attractors, bifurcation, chaotic behavior, and emergence may be hard for learners to grasp. Even when they follow a lecture or demonstration, they may wonder about practical use. How might we more effectively convey systems concepts? For fourteen years, I have used group activities to stimulate learning of systems concepts and multi-agent behavior in general. The activity might involve as few as ten participants or 150-plus. Whether you have 10 minutes, 90 minutes, or 4 weeks, there is an effective simulation. I will discuss principles of effective simulation and briefly describe three such simulations. The first example, a 10-minute simulation, relies on a simple algorithm where students sit and stand in class based on certain conditions. The second takes students outside to follow one of ten simple rules, with fascinating results that show definite, repeatable patterns even as each simulation generates a unique historical path. Finally, I will showcase the Tavistock method, a 4-week small group activity that highlights numerous concepts, including the value of viewing groups as living systems and how a unique culture emerges from easily stated, though paradoxical, challenges. Finally, I will highlight the value of physical props and use of physical space, with a conjecture: emergence occurs most in multi-agent systems located in a space.
II. Trait-Based Meme Diffusion Through Multi-Agent Friendship Networks
How might we accurately and simply model the diffusion of information through a social system? Classic diffusion assumes a homogeneous population and relies on a single equation of growth with a coefficient. In contrast, multi-agent simulation affords a heterogeneous population where some agents are more or less likely to notice, accept or share a meme. The multi-agent approach reproduces real-world oddities in diffusion. But what about the meme itself? As observers or even policymakers, we are unlikely to notably alter people’s preferences. Thus, we might wish to know how to tailor a meme to increase its acceptance within a population. Doing so requires we “look inside” the meme, at its elements, rather than treating it as an atomic unit. But how can we simply characterize a meme in a way that’s relevant to agents? I will show a working simulation that addresses this challenge. Specifically, the simulation generates a large population of heterogeneous agents with traits based on demographic trends; then, it links those agents into a friendship network based on trait compatibility; and finally, it introduces a set of example memes that are characterized in terms of the agents‘ own traits, with acceptance and transference handled in a fuzzy way.
III. Nonlinear Training Scenarios Assess Decision-Making in Context
Engaging learners in a design process often asks them to consider questions they might miss in a traditional learning environment. Design also helps students internalize material and help them “reality test” their ideas. Although engineering students--and fine arts students--are used to design, many other students from the physical and social sciences and humanities are not. How can we engage them to internalize design concepts. Design often invokes many questions. What tangible goals are we striving to meet? What resources do we need, and how to qualify or budget resource use? Who is using the resulting design? How well will the result work for them? How might we solicit and integrate feedback? What is our creative process to ensure a best possible result? Are there best-practices and reliable principles? And many more questions. I focus on interactive fiction training scenarios because this blends topics that students from across the academic disciplines are familiar with, from virtual cultural explorations to medical problem solving. I also focus on decision-making in context because students in many disciplines will go on to decision making positions in their careers and will lack preparation to understand how their decisions will play out in unexpected, nonlinear ways that may vary with context and/or defy expectations.
BIO: Dario is a founder of UCLA’s Human Complex Systems degree program, winner of UCLA’s annual Distinguished Teaching award, and author/coauthor of numerous books including “Neuroscience of Personality”. He received his degree from SUNY Binghamton in Systems Science. His undergraduate degree is Aerospace Engineering from USC. Dario is also the founder and CEO of Radiance House media and books.
SPRING 2011 SCHEDULE
- 04/01/11 - Barry Anderson, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, PSU: "Building a decision aid right-side out" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 04/08/11 - George Lendaris, Professor of Systems Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, PSU: "Higher-level application of adaptive dynamic programming / reinforcement learning – a next phase for controls and system identification?" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 04/15/11 - Joshua Hughes, Ph.D. student, PSU Systems Science Graduate Program: "Systems views of the economics of sustainable development" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 04/22/11 - Bala Krishnamoorthy, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, WSU: "Integer optimization and computational algebraic topology" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 04/29/11 - Rossitza Wooster, Assistant Professor of Economics, PSU: "Regional trade agreements and the pattern of trade: A networks approach" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 05/06/11 - Linda George, Professor of Environmental Sciences, PSU: "Novel approaches in addressing modeling and measurement challenges in improving urban air quality" [Announcement]
- 05/13/11 - Dan Hammerstrom, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Associate Dean, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, PSU: "Hardware acceleration of inference computing – The Numenta HTM Algorithm" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 05/20/11 - Olena Kostyshyna, Assistant Professor of Economics, PSU: "Social and individual learning in a New Keynesian model" [Announcement] [Link for Remote Participation]
- 05/27/11 - Chris Mooers, Research Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, PSU: "Systems ideas for the scientific and societal imperatives of the Coastal Ocean" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 06/03/11 - David Burke, Research and Engineering, Galois, Inc.: "Evolving machine morality strategies through multiagent simulations" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
DATE: June 3, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: David Burke
TITLE: "Evolving machine morality strategies through multiagent simulations"
ABSTRACT: There is a general consensus among robotics researchers that the world of the future will be filled with autonomous and semi-autonomous machines. There is less of a consensus, though, on the best approach to instilling a sense of 'machine morality' in these systems so that they will be able to have effective interactions with humans in an increasingly complex world. In my talk, we take a brief look at some existing approaches to computational ethics, and then describe work we've undertaken creating multiagent simulations involving moral decision-making during strategic interactions. In these simulations, agents make choices about whether to cooperate with each other based on each agent's weighting of five moral attributes (reciprocity, harm avoidance, loyalty, authority, purity). Our hope is that watching how these populations evolve over time can provide insights into how large numbers of distributed, autonomous systems might be programmed with respect to moral decision-making and behavior.
BIO: David Burke leads the Active Defense Program Area at Galois, Inc. The goal of this program is to translate computer science research into effective real-world solutions to the challenges of host and network-based cybersecurity. The threat landscape is constantly evolving, and Galois solutions developed under this program are designed to adapt, mitigate, and defeat these evolving threats. Mr. Burke received a M.S. in Computer Science from the Oregon Graduate Institute in 1998, and a B.S.M.E. from Lehigh University in 1983. He has over 15 years of experience in the application of mathematical modeling, machine learning, and data visualization to problems in the social sciences, with a specialization in Bayesian techniques for reasoning under uncertainty. His M.S. thesis was on the subject of the automatic generation of compilers from high-level specifications. At Galois, he conducts research into logics for reasoning about trust in the design of secure systems, and techniques for ensuring robust decision-making in multi-agent systems.
DATE: May 27, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Chris Mooers
TITLE: "Systems ideas for the scientific and societal imperatives of the Coastal Ocean"
SUBTITLE: "Case of the BP Oil Gusher in the Gulf of Mexico, Spring & Summer 2010"
ABSTRACT: In recent decades, great progress has been made in advancing the scientific understanding of the coastal ocean (i.e., the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ)) across a broad set of disciplines. Simultaneously, the societal use of the coastal ocean has skyrocketed through, for example, increased shipping & boating, sports & commercial fishing, and exploitation of non-living resources, such as, oil & gas extraction and sand & gravel mining. International law and national policy assign coastal nations the responsibility for stewardship (i.e., wise management) of their respective EEZs. The scope of the stewardship and applications can be summarized as (1) routine maritime operations (e.g., optimum ship routing, non-deleterious offshore waste disposal, and safe mineral extraction), (2) marine emergency management (e.g., toxic spill response, search-and-rescue events, and homeland security incidents), and (3) marine environmental and ecological management (e.g., monitoring eutrophication events, hypoxic/anoxic zones, and harmful algal blooms; ecosystem-based regulation of fisheries; re-construction of environmental and ecological events through modeling studies, and simulation of the response of the EEZ to various climate change scenarios). However, there is a shortage of good examples of such management/stewardship, perhaps because of an unmet need for new interfaces between the natural scientists on one hand and the engineers, social scientists, and the society-at-large on the other hand. It is argued that one significant component of the needed interfaces is a coastal ocean prediction system comprised of observing subsystems (sensor networks), advanced dynamical (numerical) modeling subsystems, and their “coupling” through skill assessment, data assimilation, and system design. There is clearly a need for a Systems Engineering approach where a user-and-sponsor-based stakeholder group establishes user-requirements and corresponding performance metrics, governance mechanisms are developed, a first-generation system is designed and built, information products are disseminated, and the major parts of the overall system are evaluated as the basis for designing a second-generation system. Because a national program is needed, yet many issues of the coastal ocean have a “regional” character, a Systems Science approach may also be needed to address the respective granularity, connectivity, and resiliency requirements for the broad sets of applications and users involved. The example of the Gulf of Mexico’s highly variable circulation and its BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill (gusher) in 2010 serves to illustrate some of these points.
BIO: Chris Mooers joined the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department as an Affiliated Research Professor in 2008, following his retirement from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS) of the University of Miami. His variegated career includes receiving a Ph.D. in (Physical) Oceanography from what is now the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Science (COAS), Oregon State University in 1969. His research interests include mesoscale (fronts, eddies, and meandering jets) physical oceanography, transient wind-driven coastal ocean circulation, and coastal ocean prediction via observations and numerical models.
DATE: May 20, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Olena Kostyshyna
TITLE: "Social and individual learning in a New Keynesian model"
ABSTRACT: In this paper I study the learnability of a rational expectations equilibrium solution under individual evolutionary learning in a New Keynesian model (Woodford (2003)). Woodford (2003) and Bullard and Mitra (2002) show that this model is determinate and expectationally stable (E-stable) when the Taylor principle is satisfied. Arifovic et al. (2008) show that the rational expectations equilibrium minimum state variable (REE MSV) solution is learnable in the case of social learning whether or not the Taylor principle is satisfied. In this paper, I apply individual evolutionary learning (IEL) in the same environment. Both social and individual learning allow for heterogeneity of expectations in contrast to recursive homogeneous learning in Bullard and Mitra (2002).
I find that agents using IEL are not able to learn the REE MSV solution whether or not the Taylor principle holds. The intuitive explanation is that the social aspect of learning is essential to agents' coordination on the REE MSV solution. Social interaction and ability to learn from the actual decisions of others allows agents to imitate the best ideas of the population. I perform a sensitivity analysis by varying the implementation of IEL.
BIO: Olena Kostyshyna has been working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics since September 2008, after graduating with a PhD in economics from Simon Fraser University, Canada. Olena's research interests include macroeconomics and monetary economics with a focus on adaptive expectations and learning, and also agent-based computational economics.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Dan Hammerstrom
TITLE: "Hardware acceleration of inference computing – The Numenta HTM Algorithm"
ABSTRACT: In this presentation I will describe the latest version of the Numenta HTM Cortical Learning Algorithm and why it is interesting for doing research into radical new computer architectures. Then I will discuss the hardware acceleration research we are doing, and briefly look at some preliminary applications development.
BIO: Dan Hammerstrom received the BS degree from Montana State University, the MS degree from Stanford University, and the PhD degree from the University of Illinois. He was an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Cornell University from 1977 to 1980. In 1980 he joined Intel in Oregon, where he participated in the development and implementation of the iAPX-432, the i960, and iWarp. In 1988 he founded Adaptive Solutions, Inc., which specialized in high performance silicon technology (the CNAPS chip set) for image processing and pattern recognition. He is now a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Associate Dean for Research in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University. Prof. Hammerstrom has joint appointments in the IDE (Information, Computation, and Electronics) Department at Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden and in the Biomedical Engineering Department of the Oregon Health & Science University.
DATE: May 6, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Linda George
TITLE: "Novel approaches in addressing modeling and measurement challenges in improving urban air quality"
ABSTRACT: In the last decade we have learned that air pollutants are far more detrimental to human health than previously known. The regulatory framework has yet to catch up with this new reality. In part, this is due to modeling and measurements constraints in seeking improved air quality in urban environments. This talk will focus on our work in addressing these challenges.
BIO: Linda A. George is Professor and Chair of the Environmental Sciences and Management Department at Portland State University. She received her Ph.D. in Environmental Science and Resources/Chemistry at PSU investigating free radical chemistry in the troposphere using laser-induced fluorescence measurement techniques for reactive gases. She was a founding partner of a successful environmental consulting firm and analytical lab in Portland, Oregon before returning to academia. Her current research interests includes monitoring and modeling of urban air pollutants, assessing human exposure of air pollutants using statistical models and GIS, development of measurement techniques for quantifying atmospheric species, sensing and analysis of urban climate modification and developing curriculum for atmospheric science education. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Environmental Protection Agency, USAID and several private foundations.
DATE: April 29, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Rossitza Wooster
TITLE: "Regional trade agreements and the pattern of trade: A networks approach"
ABSTRACT: This paper uses a complex network approach for the analysis of bilateral trade data between countries over the period 1970-2000. We compute the network community structure for every year between 1970 and 2000 and compare it to null community structures that emerge from various models based on regional and geographic classifications, the implementation of RTA's and/or on gravity models of trade. Our results show that RTA formation appears to have a cyclical pattern on the world trade network community structure. We document periods where bilateral trade flows and the structure of the world trade network are consistent with those predicted by formation of RTAs. These cycles occur in 1980-86 and 1990-96. Conversely, we also find periods in which the pattern in the world trade network is not explained by RTA formation. Two periods, 1986-1990 and 1997-2000, show a pattern of bilateral trade flows that moves away from the prediction that results from assuming RTA-formation as the driving force in the determination of the world trade network structure. Factors contributing to the latter parts of the cycle we document may be due to the growing role of foreign investment and decreased trade costs over the sample period.
BIO: Rossitza B. Wooster (Ph.D., University of Oregon) is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Portland State University. She specializes in International Economics with a research focus on global trade issues and foreign direct investment activities by multinational firms in emerging and transition economies.
DATE: April 22, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Bala Krishamoorthy
TITLE: "Integer optimization and computational algebraic topology"
ABSTRACT: We present recently discovered connections between integer optimization, or integer programming (IP), and homology. Under reasonable assumptions, these results lead to efficient solutions of several otherwise hard-to-solve problems from computational topology and geometric analysis. The main result equates the total unimodularity of the boundary matrix of a simplicial complex to an algebraic topological condition on the complex (absence of relative torsion), which is often satisfied in real-life applications . When the boundary matrix is totally unimodular, the problem of finding the shortest chain homologous under Z (ring of integers) to a given chain, which is inherently an integer program, can be solved in polynomial time as a linear program. This result is surprising in the backdrop of a previous result, which showed the problem to be NP-hard when the homology is defined over the popularly used field of Z2, consisting of integers 0 and 1. This problem finds applications in several domains including coverage verification in sensor networks and characterizing tunnels in biomolecules. We also present new results on computing the flat norm of currents in the setting of simplicial complexes. Flat norm decomposition is a classical technique from geometric measure theory, and has been applied for several image analysis tasks. Our approach allows one to use flat norm computations in arbitrarily large dimensions - for instance, to denoise high dimensional datasets.
BIO: Bala Krishnamoorthy is an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at Washington State University. After earning his Bachelors degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, he obtained a PhD in Operations Research from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His areas of research interest are diverse. Bala tackles theoretical and computational problems from the areas of algebraic topology and discrete optimization (integer programming and combinatorial optimization). He also works on several application areas, including computational approaches to protein structure and function, and models for human neck anatomy and physiology. He collaborates with mathematicians, computer scientists, biochemists, and bioengineers. More information is available from his web page at www.wsu.edu/~kbala.
DATE: April 15, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Joshua Hughes
TITLE: "Systems views of the economics of sustainable development"
ABSTRACT: The mainstream economics of the 20th century (and now 21st century) has often failed to predict what will happen--or explain what has happened--in the real world, even with (or because of?) an ever-increasing reliance on quantitative and computational methods. Since the mid-20th century a number of people part of, or closely associated with, the systems community--economists among them--have provided insights about what is wrong with "traditional" economics. Systems science offers a number of alternative methods for understanding economic systems that take heed of these criticisms, especially in the context of sustainable development. Yet, while promising, few of these alternatives have been rigorously validated with real-world data.
This talk will include a brief overview of what is typically meant by "traditional" or "mainstream" economics followed by a discussion of the many systems ideas relevant to economics in the context of sustainable development: Prospect Theory, repeated games, the tragedy of the commons, agent-based modeling, system dynamics, the "spaceman" economy, Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, catastrophe theory, the panarchy adaptive cycle, and Parson's societal system. The main focus of this talk will be on what high-level insights we can gain from these different methodologies right now and what is necessary if these insights and the ideas and methods from which they are derived are to be incorporated into mainstream thought. Discussion and criticism of these ideas are encouraged.
BIO: Joshua Hughes is a third-year, core-option Ph.D. student and graduate, research, and teaching assistant in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He received his B.S. in civil engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1993 and his M.S. in civil engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1995. He has more than a dozen years experience working as a geotechnical and environmental engineer in the Portland-Vancouver and San Francisco Bay areas providing investigations, recommendations, and oversight for a variety of residential, commercial, and public works projects. He is currently working with George Lendaris on research of higher-level applications of adaptive-critic-type methods of adaptive dynamic programming, and he has recently collaborated with Martin Zwick on a paper (in the revision process) showing how the panarchy adaptive cycle might be formalized using the cusp catastrophe. He is interested in information theory, cybernetics, reconstructability analysis, neural networks, fuzzy logic, catastrophe theory, game theory, as well as how systems ideas can be applied to large-scale problems such as sustainability. He is not an economist.
DATE: April 8, 2011, 12:00 - 12:50 PM
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: George G. Lendaris
TITLE: "Higher-level application of adaptive dynamic programming / reinforcement learning – a next phase for controls and system identification?"
ABSTRACT: Humans have the ability to make use of experience while performing system identification and selecting control actions for changing situations. In contrast to current technological implementations that slow down as more knowledge is stored, as more experience is gained, human processing speeds up and has enhanced effectiveness. An emerging experience-based (“higher level”) approach promises to endow our technology with enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.
The notions of context and context discernment are important to understanding this human ability. These are defined as appropriate to controls and system-identification. Some general background on controls, Dynamic Programming, and Adaptive Critic leading toAdaptive Dynamic Programming (ADP) will be provided.
The higher-level application of Adaptive Dynamic Programming (ADP) is described, wherein ADP is employed to develop on-line algorithms that respond to changes in context by efficiently and effectively selecting designs from a repository of existing controller solutions– in contrast to the usual application of ADP that focuses on designing controllers directly. In this way, the ADP is said to be applied up a level from typical application.
Key components of the approach include the notions of context, context discernment, and experience. These apply to applications in control and also to system identification.
Details of the approach and its rationale will be described, including examples and recent developments of the underlying ideas.
BIO: George G. Lendaris is Professor of Systems Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Portland State University.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Barry F. Anderson
TITLE: "Building a decision aid right-side-out"
ABSTRACT: Tools have long been available for improving decision making, yet people who have knowledge of these tools seem reluctant to use them. I consider multiple reasons why this might be so and consider multiple solutions, then present what I believe to be the world's most user-friendly decision aid, which is now nearly ready for beta testing and available at no cost at http://wisedecider.net.
Wise Decider is believed to be unique in having the following features:
- A creative thinking guide and a critical thinking guide that provide context-sensitive advice for problem structuring, evaluation, and implementation.
- A decision table with cells in which objective descriptions of outcomes can be represented as text and subject evaluations of these outcomes can be represented as shades of gray.
- Rows in the decision table that can be re-ordered to explore different orders of preference for alternatives and columns that can be re-ordered to explore different ways of thinking about values.
When additional funding becomes available, Wise Decider is planned to have the following unique features, as well:
- Automatic quantitative checks on problem structuring.
- Table-coloring, where white and black represent the best and worst outcomes in the table, rather than the best and worst outcomes on each value.
- Automatic sensitivity analysis.
- Automatic identification of value asymmetry for identifying win-win trades in conflict resolution.
One currently unsolved problem, which I look forward to discussing, is how best to deal with risky decisions without losing user friendliness.
BIO: Barry F. Anderson is Professor Emeritus, Decision Psychology, Portland State University (andersonb@pdx.edu). He earned his B.A. at Stanford University in 1957 and his Ph.D. at The Johns Hopkins University in 1963. Barry worked at the U of O from 1963-68 and at PSU from 1968-99. Courses taught include Personal Decision Making, Decision Psychology I, Decision Psychology II, Decision Psychology Laboratory, Conflict Resolution, Cognition, Bioethics, and Psychological Methods.
WINTER 2011 SCHEDULE
- 01/07/11 - Maxwell Grad, Ph.D. student, Systems Science, PSU: "Prospect Theory: Decision Making Under Risk (Tversky and Hanneman 1981)" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 01/14/11 - DISCUSSION: "Can we increase people's knowledge of the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program?" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 01/21/11 - Mark Stephan, Associate Professor, Political Science, WSU Vancouver: "Information disclosure and environmental performance" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 01/28/11 - Alireza Goudarzi, M.S. student, Computer Science and Systems Science, PSU: "On the effect of criticality and topology on learning in random Boolean networks" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 02/04/11 - Niles Lehman, Professor and Chair, Chemistry, PSU: "A convivial origin of life on the Earth: A cooperative network of RNA replicators" [Announcement]
- 02/11/11 - Jeff Fletcher, Assistant Professor, Systems Science, PSU, and John Balwit, Ph.D. student, Systems Science, PSU: "The inclusive fitness wars: An update" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 02/18/11 - Adrienne Fairhall, Associate Professor, Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington: "Optimality in neural adaptation" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 02/25/11 - Mehmet Vurkaç, Assistant Professor, OIT; Ph.D. candidate, Electrical and Computer Engineering, PSU: "Some problems and solutions in the experimental science of technology: How to and how not to use and report Statistics in Computational Intelligence, with an experimental design from Computational Ethnomusicology" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 03/04/11 - Marek Perkowski, Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, PSU: "Modal Logic and its applications, explained using puzzles and examples" [Announcement] [Link for Remote Participation] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 03/11/11 - David Kinsella, Professor and Chair, Political Science, and Director, Public Affairs and Policy Ph.D. Program, PSU: "The illicit arms trade: A social network analysis" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: David Kinsella
TITLE: "The illicit arms trade: A social network analysis"
ABSTRACT: In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned their attention to the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. Small arms are difficult to track and are not the stuff of military parades, but they are immensely destructive. In addition to what is already circulating, a substantial percentage of what is newly produced enters the black market and is destined for conflict zones across the globe. I argue that the illicit trade in small arms shares some important properties with networked forms of organization studied by sociologists. I then employ quantitative methods developed for the study of social networks in an effort to show the basic structure of illegal small arms transfers worldwide. The analysis draws from my Illicit Arms Transfers Database (IATD) still in development, so the results make use of the most rudimentary information being collected. They are suggestive, however, and the analytical approach promises to shed considerable light on a corner of the international arms trade that is of great interest to the research and activist communities, and of great consequence to those in war-torn regions of the world.
BIO: David Kinsella (Ph.D. 1993, Yale University) is Professor and Chair of Political Science, and Director of the Public Affairs and Policy Ph.D. program. He teaches courses on world politics, international law and organization, and national security policy. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of International Studies Perspectives and is a former president of the International Studies Association's Midwest Region. Professor Kinsella has held faculty positions at American University and the University of Missouri, was a visiting professor at Yale and a Ralph D. Mershon postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University. His books include World Politics: The Menu for Choice (with Bruce Russett and Harvey Starr), a leading textbook in the field, and The Morality of War: A Reader (edited with Craig L. Carr). Professor Kinsella's primary areas of research are the global arms trade, regional conflict, democratic peace, and just war theory, and his articles have appeared in a number of scholarly journals and edited volumes. His most recent research focuses on illicit arms trade networks and the implications for violent conflict and arms control.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Marek Perkowski
TITLE: "Modal Logic and its applications, explained using puzzles and examples"
ABSTRACT: The talk introduces Modal Logic as an extension of classical propositional and First Order Logics. We discuss motivations of Lewis to create modal logic system, axioms and rules of proof. Several examples illustrate deriving theorems from axioms. "Muddy Children" puzzle is used to explain the principles of dealing with uncertainty problems where a temporal lack of response is used as additional information. Other examples include "Narrow Bridge" problem/game which relates to the problem of necessary evil in the world, robot planning and law and robot morality problems, especially related to military robots and use of force by police. Kripke semantics and Model Checking are explained on examples. The goal of the lecture is to present informally the main ideas of modal logic and related logics, such as Temporal or Deontic Logics, and some of their applications.
BIO: Marek Perkowski obtained his M.S. degree in Electronics and Ph.D. degree in automatic control from Institute of Automatic Control, Department of Electronics, Technical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland. He studied also pure mathematics at University of Warsaw. In years 1981-1983 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and since 1983 he works for Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University where he is a full professor and director of Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. He worked for Cypress Semiconductor (co-author of WARP, the first FPGA compiler of VHDL), Intel Supercomputer, Sharp Microelectronics, GTE and other companies in areas of computer architecture, CAD tools for logic synthesis and image processing. Dr. Perkowski invented Kronecker Decision Diagrams and lattices and contributed to logic synthesis software that is used in US industry. In 1994 he worked for Machine Learning group in Wright Laboratories of U.S. Air Force applying logic decomposition as a machine learning approach to pattern recognition and continued this work on several grants. He is an author of more than 300 papers in CAD, logic synthesis, multiple-valued logic, machine learning, robotics and quantum computing. He had visiting professor and visiting scientist positions in the Netherlands, France, Japan and Korea. In years 2002-2004 he was professor in KAIST – Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology where he participated in research on humanoid robotics and quantum computing. He chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Multiple-Valued Logic in years 2003-2005 and is currently chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Task Force on Quantum Computing. His main current interests are in quantum circuits and algorithms, humanoid bipeds, emotional quantum robots, robotics for teenagers and Grover algorithm. He collaborates with many groups worldwide.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Mehmet Vurkaç
TITLE: "Some problems and solutions in the experimental science of technology: How to and how not to use and report Statistics in Computational Intelligence, with an experimental design from Computational Ethnomusicology"
ABSTRACT: Statistics is the meta-science that lends validity and credibility to The Scientific Method. However, as a complex and advanced Science in itself, Statistics is often misunderstood and misused by scientists, engineers, medical and legal professionals and others. In the area of Computational Intelligence (CI), there have been numerous misuses of statistical techniques leading to the publishing of insupportable results, which, in addition to being a problem in itself, has also contributed to a degree of rift between the Statistics/Statistical Learning community and the Machine Learning/Computational Intelligence community. This talk surveys a number of misuses of statistical inference in CI settings, including well-known and more rarely discussed examples. These are followed by an overview of concepts and techniques that are central to model evaluation. Finally, an experimental design is presented for a statistically valid comparison of multiple hypotheses for a particular real-world problem combining Information Theory, Neural Networks, Statistics, and Computational Ethnomusicology.
BIO: Mehmet Vurkaç is a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He completed his B.A. in Math-Physics at Whitman College in 1993, and his M.S. in ECE (DSP emphasis) at Portland State University in 1999. He started his doctoral studies in April 2002 after working in the music industry (Roland Corp.) for four years as a hardware engineer. His dissertation research is in Computational Intelligence (Neural Networks), with an Information Theory component and applications to the rapidly growing Computational Ethnomusicology subfield of Music Information Research (MIR). He served as an adjunct instructor at PSU’s ECE department 2003–2009, and at Whitman College in the Music Department (Sound Synthesis) in 1994. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Renewable Energy at the Oregon Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. candidate in Electrical & Computer Engineering at PSU. His research and teaching interests are Neural Networks, Fuzzy Logic, Evolutionary Computation, Computational Ethnomusicology, Information Theory; Statistical Learning, Music Information Research, Psychoacoustics, Music Perception, the history and theory of Afro-Latin musics, Signals & Systems, DSP, Cognitive Science, and general education for critical thinking and social responsibility.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Adrienne Fairhall
TITLE: "Optimality in neural adaptation"
ABSTRACT: Nervous systems tune themselves to the statistical structure of the stimuli they encounter. This sensitivity to statistics appears in phenomena ranging over many timescales, from the adaptation of vision to a rapid change in light level to the loss of ability to distinguish the sounds of non-native languages. While multiple neural mechanisms contribute to this on-line learning of stimulus distributions, we show that the intrinsic nonlinearities of single neurons provide them with the ability to represent time-varying stimuli optimally. While such sensitivity to stimulus statistics does not require learning, slower timescales of adaptation are consistent with optimal inference of statistical parameters of the changing stimulus ensemble.
BIO: Adrienne Fairhall has a training in statistical physics from the Australian National University and the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. In her postdoctoral work, she moved into the area of computational neuroscience, working first in the fly visual system with Bill Bialek at NEC and then in the retina, with Michael Berry at Princeton. She has been a faculty member of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington in Seattle since 2004.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Jeff Fletcher and John Balwit
TITLE: "The inclusive fitness wars: An update"
ABSTRACT: The evolution of altruistic behavior is a long-standing puzzle in evolutionary biology. How could natural selection favor traits that involve individual self-sacrifice over traits for selfish behavior? Inclusive Fitness Theory (at nearly 50 years old) is considered by some evolutionary biologists to be the only explanation for the evolution of altruism; for others it is unnecessary, misleading, and of little use. This controversy has grown in recent years and positions on all sides have hardened. For example, a recent Nature publication compared modern inclusive fitness models to the epicycles of early astronomers, who performed complicated calculations in an effort to preserve the theory of an earth-centered solar system. On the other side, recent work by inclusive fitness advocates has claimed inclusive fitness theory is synonymous with natural selection itself, and that all detractors are misguided. Here we briefly review some of the background to this controversy and report on the development of a model that demonstrates that the evolution of suicidal aid (altruism) is possible even in the absence of inclusive fitness.
BIOS: Jeff Fletcher's research focuses on understanding the relationship among different theories on the evolution of altruism. He is also interested in better understanding and making more explicit the role that models play in scientific inquiry. In addition, Jeff enjoys creating more cooperative learning environments in the classroom and introducing both graduate and undergraduate students to Systems Science ideas. He completed an NSF International Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia where he did research in the Department of Zoology and taught in the Integrated Science Program. Jeff currently teaches in both the University Studies Program and the Systems Science Graduate Program at PSU. He has a B.S. in Biology, an M.S. in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Systems Science.
John Balwit is a Ph.D. candidate in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He is exploring the use of models to understand natural selection and cooperation. His interests include the use of models in educational and research contexts. Other research interests include: the visualization of information; the nature of emergence and self-organizing behavior in complex systems; and computation with cellular automata.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Niles Lehman
TITLE: "A convivial origin of life on the Earth: A cooperative network of RNA replicators"
ABSTRACT: The origins of life on the Earth required the establishment of self-replicating systems capable of maintaining and evolving biological information. The hypercycle was developed by Eigen and Shuster to explain how sets of molecules could cooperate during primordial evolution and thus overcome many theoretical barriers to the advent of self-replication. A hypercycle is a functional organization of molecules in which separate genotypes cooperatively interact in a cyclical network to produce an evolutionary stable coalition that has a large information capacity. They are believed to be a realistic manner in which naked molecules could have self-organized and evolved prior to encapsulation in cell-like structures that could successfully compete as selfish replicators, but they have not been yet empirically observed in a molecular system composed solely of nucleic acids. In this talk, I will examine the ability of pools of RNA molecules to establish hypercyclic networks without the aid of outside agents. This work involves the fragments of the Azoarcus group I intron ribozyme that we have shown can cooperate to create a self-replicating entity. We have constructed a hypercyclic arrangements of three sets that can create hypercyclic networks of the third order (n = 3; p = 3), and I will discuss the mechanics of this system and its evolutionary potential.
BIO:
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Alireza Goudarzi
TITLE: "On the effect of criticality and topology on learning in random Boolean networks"
ABSTRACT: Random Boolean networks (RBN) are discrete dynamical systems composed of N automata with a binary state, each of which interacts with other automata in the network. RBNs were originally introduced as simplified models of gene regulation. In this presentation, I will present recent work done conjointly with Natali Gulbahce (UCSF), Thimo Rohlf (MPI, CNRS), and Christof Teuscher (PSU). We extend the study of learning in feedforward Boolean networks to random Boolean networks (RBNs) and systematically explore the relationship between the learning capability, the network topology, the system size N, the training sample T, and the complexity of the computational task. We find experimentally that for large system sizes N, there exists a critical connectivity Kc=2 that improves the learning in networks. We show that in finite size networks, the critical Kc scales as a power law of the system size N and the training sample T. During the learning process, the in-degree distribution evolves from a Poissonian to an exponential distribution. The improved learning capability is explained by a maximal topological diversity near Kc. Our findings have important implications for determining the optimal topology of complex dynamical networks that solve specific computational tasks.
BIO: Alireza Goudarzi is a second-year Master's student of both Computer Science and System Science programs at Portland State University. He is currently working on his Master's thesis in Computer Science under Christof Teuscher and in Systems Science under George Lendaris. His research interests include neural information processing, contextual learning, and alternative computer architectures. His project "Information Processing in Random Boolean Networks" was awarded the third prize in 2010 Columbia-Willamette Chapter of Sigma Xi. His conjoint works with Christof Teusher (PSU), Natali Gulbahce (UCSF), and Thimo Rohlf (MPI) appeared in the book Theoretical and Technological Advancements in Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation: Interdisciplinary Gains by B. MacLennan. Last December he presented his paper coauthored with Christof Teuscher and Natali Gulbahce titled "Learning and Generalization in Random Automata Networks," at the 5th International ICST Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2010) in Boston.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Mark Stephan
TITLE: "Information disclosure and environmental performance"
ABSTRACT: Scholars and policymakers increasingly argue that information disclosure programs such as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) should be used to supplement conventional environmental regulation. Yet we lack a clear understanding of how such programs work as well as the empirical data to confirm their success in achieving environmental quality objectives. To better understand the impacts of environmental information disclosure on corporate decision making, this paper develops an analytic framework drawn from theories of risk perception and communication, individual and corporate decision making, and social capital. I examine the importance of the TRI for facility level behavior through an analysis of mediating factors such as corporate capacity to reduce toxic releases and state governmental programs focused on reducing toxic waste. Most of the emphasis of this presentation is on the heuristics used to think about the influence of information on behavior, though a brief examination of some empirical analyses are also included. The empirical analyses come from an examination of variations across states in their proportion of facilities reducing pollution divided by the total number of facilities in a given state.
BIO: Mark Stephan received a Ph.D. in political science from Princeton University in the year 2000. After serving for two years as a visiting assistant professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, he joined the faculty at Washington State University Vancouver in the fall of 2001. He teaches courses in American politics, including classes in public policy, environmental policy administration, and democratic theory. Dr. Stephan received a dissertation grant from Resources for the Future, a Washington-based environmental think tank, in 1997-1998. During his five years in Washington, D.C., Dr. Stephan also worked for the Environmental Protection Agency twice, first in the Office of Emergency and Remedial Response (OERR) and second in the Office of Policy, Economics, and Innovation (OPEI). His research is in the areas of environmental information disclosure policy and citizen involvement in environmental decision-making. He has been published in the journals Social Science Quarterly and State and Local Government Review, among others. Working with Michael Kraft and Troy Abel, he has recently completed a book entitled Coming Clean: Information Disclosure and Environmental Performance.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
FACILITATOR: Garry Sotnik
TOPIC: "Can we increase people's knowledge of the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program?"
ABSTRACT: The PSU Systems Science Graduate Program is a unique academic program, one of just a handful of systems science programs in the country. Not only does the program cross traditional disciplinary boundaries with a wide range of theories and general methods of problem solving applicable in mathematics, engineering, business administration, and the natural and social sciences, but it also draws students and faculty from many different disciplines with wide-ranging academic and professional experience. The complex problems of the present and the future demand this type of collaborative, transdisciplinary knowledge and research.
Yet for all its uniqueness and relevance, the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program does not have an especially high profile. One readily available tool that could be used to remedy this state of affairs is the program website. Is our current website effective in informing its viewers about all the cool stuff happening in our program? Can the website be more user-friendly to visitors interested in complexity theory, artificial intelligence, simulation, sustainability, or the social sciences? Can visitors easily find out about the things we are working on and access our working papers? Do Google searches for terms related to systems science and complexity direct people to our program, one of the last remaining autonomous systems science programs in the U.S.?
The goal of this seminar is to generate some ideas around how we can increase people's awareness of the Systems Science Graduate Program with a particular focus on how our program website can be improved. The discussion will be based on three general questions: (1) What type of content is most relevant to the program's goals and should be included on the website? (2) What type of services can or should the website offer? and (3) How should we go about making the changes in the short and long term? Seminar attendees, whether part of the program or not, are encouraged to discuss what drew them to the program and what aspects of it are likely to draw others to it.
BIO: Garry Sotnik is a Ph.D. student in the Systems Science GraduateProgram at PSU. He obtained a Master's in Economics from Boston University and has worked as an economist and researcher both domestically and abroad. Garry's field of study focuses on social and ecological complex adaptive systems.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Maxwell Grad
TITLE: "Prospect Theory: Decision Making Under Risk (Tversky and Hanneman 1981)"
ABSTRACT: Tversky and Hanneman published the beginnings of Prospect Theory in an 1981 article titled "The Framing of Decisions and The Psychology of Choice." Using students at Columbia University, they tested the effect of people's perceptions of risk or gain based upon their calculations of utility. I'll be presenting their work, beginning with an overview of expected utility theory, incentives to cooperate or defect, and the mutual defection scenario, the Prisoner's Dilemma. Tversky and Hanneman's work demonstrates that the utility function is affected by framing the event as a loss or gain as well as the probability of the event. The dominant preference among respondents can be reversed from risk-taking to risk-averse depending upon presentation. Low probability events are given excessive weight, and middle and high probability events are downgraded. When given choices involving contingencies (a second choice dependent upon the first), human subjects react differently than if an equivalent single-stage problem is presented. In problems involving a non-payoff first choice, humans use only the second decision as a reference, called pseudocertainty. Finally, outcomes that do or do not connect to previous expenditures (sunk cost vs. minimal account) modify respondent preference for and against risk-taking/risk-averse strategies.
BIO: Maxwell Grad (Benjamin Grad) is a Ph.D. student in the Systems Science Graduate Program at PSU. He obtained a Master's in Teaching from Seattle University in 2000 and taught high school mathematics in Vermont, Seattle, and Portland before joining the program. His field of study focuses on communicative networks, theories of learning and problem solving, and computer modeling.
FALL 2010 SCHEDULE
- 10/01/10 - Welcome back!, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: meet-and-greet for new and old students and faculty
- 10/08/10 - Wayne Wakeland, Professor of Systems Science, PSU: "A systems model of prescription opioid abuse, addiction, and overdose" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 10/15/10 - Herman Migliore, Director of Systems Engineering, PSU: "How a systems engineer starts..." [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 10/22/10 - Robert Costanza, University Professor of Sustainability and Director, Institute for Sustainable Solutions, PSU: "Understanding, modeling and valuing ecosystem services" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 10/29/10 - Alex Dimitrov, Assistant Professor of Mathematics, WSU Vancouver: "Neural systems analysis through quantization with an information-based distortion function" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/05/10 - DISCUSSION: "The limits of control, or how I learned to stop worrying and love regulation" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/12/10 - Kjersten Bunker Whittington, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Reed College: "The influence of network structure on sex disparities in scientific collaboration: commercial innovation in the life sciences" [Announcement] [PowerPoint Slides] [recording available upon request via tds@pdx.edu]
- 11/19/10 - M. Jahi Chappell, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Justice, WSU Vancouver: "The 'Goldilocks Hypothesis' — a political ecology of the land-sparing/wildlife-friendly farming debate" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/26/10 - No seminar (Thanksgiving holiday)
- 12/03/10 - Christor Teuscher, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, PSU: "Random automata networks: why playing dice is not a vice" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Christof Teuscher
TITLE: "Random automata networks: why playing dice is not a vice"
ABSTRACT: Random automata networks consist of a set of simple compute nodes interacting with each other. In this generic model, one or multiple model parameters, such as the the node interactions and/or the compute functions, are chosen at random. Random Boolean Networks (RBNs) are a particular case of discrete dynamical automata networks where both time and states are discrete. While traditional RBNs are generally credited to Stuart Kauffman (1969), who introduced them as simplified models of gene regulation, Alan Turing proposed unorganized machines as early as 1948. In this talk I will start with Alan Turing's early work on unorganized machines, which form a subset of RBNs. I will show how Turing's original ideas tie into our current research, which is mainly driven by the need to (1) understand and engineer information processing in unstructured machines and (2) by the need for alternative computing and manufacturing paradigms in computer engineering. I will then give an overview of our recent research findings in the area of learning, adaptation, generalization, and damage spreading in RBNs.
BIO: Christof Teuscher currently holds an assistant professor position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) with joint appointments in the Department of Computer Science and the Systems Science Graduate Program. He also holds an Adjunct Assistant Professor appointment in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Dr. Teuscher obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in 2000 and 2004 respectively. His main research interests include emerging computing architectures and paradigms, biologically-inspired computing, complex & adaptive systems, and cognitive science. Teuscher has received several prestigious awards and fellowships. For more information visit: http://www.teuscher-lab.com/christof
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: M. Jahi Chappell
TITLE: "The 'Goldilocks Hypothesis' — a political ecology of the land-sparing/wildlife-friendly farming debate"
ABSTRACT: Proposals for biodiversity conservation as related to the dominant form of human land use, agriculture, have broadly coalesced around two paradigms: "Land sparing" and "Wildlife-friendly farming." Neither paradigm is sufficiently grounded in the more complex socioeconomic realities of the food system with regards to another paramount problem of our time: widespread malnutrition. However, the "land sparing" paradigm's simplistic approach to food, policy, and ecosystem dynamics is arguably more egregiously out of sync with current knowledge. The talk will present a conceptual view of food systems, hunger, and biodiversity conservation, with the goal of generating discussion on how to systematically integrate the different and sometimes clashing perspectives different academic areas bring to this debate. Without more sophisticated, integrative, and value-explicit assessments and models, and the recognition of the need for discontinuous change, we risk intensifying a system known to have severe consequences for biodiversity alongside notable failures to reduce hunger, or alternatively, modifying it in ways that ameliorate neither problem.
BIO: Jahi Chappell is assistant professor of Environmental Science and Justice in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences and faculty affiliate of the Center for Social and Environmental Justice at Washington State University Vancouver. His research on the political ecology of sustainable development focuses on the issues of food security, agroecology, conservation biology, and social and environmental justice. Practically speaking, this involves study of the design, development and implementation of food and conservation policies at various scales, with a specific focus on how one may influence (and hopefully support) the other. To do this, he applies tools from diverse areas, from political science, sociology, anthropology, science and technology studies and economics to metapopulation theory, theoretical biology, agroecology, and conservation and community ecology. Rather than attempting to specialize in all of these areas simultaneously, he specializes in synthesizing their approaches and research and on making their perspectives mutually intelligible. His work thus vitally depends on the cultivation and maintenance of collaboration with a diverse group of scholars and practitioners.
His research to date has focused on the ecological implications of the unprecedented successes of the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil in addressing food security. He plans to continue and expand his research of Brazilian food policy systems, as well as to begin study on the effects and implications of urban agriculture on food security and biodiversity in the Portland-Vancouver area.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Kjersten Bunker Whittington
TITLE: "The influence of network structure on sex disparities in scientific collaboration: commercial innovation in the life sciences"
ABSTRACT: Previous research demonstrates that individuals’ network positions in their surrounding social structure of relations influence the extent of their output and performance. The unique situation of minority groups complicates the relationship, however, as issues of status, legitimacy, and marginality influence the flow and interpretation of information and resources. While several scholars have addressed differences in male and female networks in the workplace, the association between macro-level work arrangements and the micro-level interaction mechanisms of minority groups is unclear. Greater insight into stratification processes can be gained by studying how organizational forms affect the way men’s and women’s networks are structured in the workplace. In this research I explore how the contrasting contexts of work in hierarchical versus horizontal settings operate at the network level to produce differences in productivity between male and female workers. I examine twenty years of collaborative inventor relations, built from a national sample of life science organizations which include pharmaceutical companies, public research organizations, research one universities, and science-based firms. The results show that men and women scientists demonstrate different network characteristics, but the magnitude and predictive power of these differences vary across work settings. The results have implications for structural influences on sex differences in network relationships, and provide evidence that flatter, more horizontally-distributed organizational forms may provide more advantaging “opportunity structures” for women life scientists as compared with those in the academic science hierarchy and elsewhere.
BIO: Kjersten Bunker Whittington is an assistant professor of sociology at Reed College. Her current research investigates whether and how the durable gender inequality in science careers is affected by the recent changing boundaries between universities and firms, and the increasing trend to commercialize basic research in academia. Whittington also studies formal organizations and the science economy. With collaborators, she is engaged in research that examines the contingent role of inter-organizational network structure and regional clustering in influencing innovative output among science-based firms.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
FACILITATOR: Joshua Hughes
TOPIC: "The limits of control, or how I learned to stop worrying and love regulation"
ABSTRACT: When we want to solve a problem, we talk about how we might manage or regulate—control it. Control is a a central concept in systems science, along with system, environment, utility, and information. With his information-theoretic Law of Requisite Variety, Ashby proved that to control a system we need as much variability in our regulator as we have in our system (“only variety can destroy variety”), something like a method of control for everything we want to control. For engineered systems, this appears to be the case (at least sometimes). But what about for social systems? Does a group of humans behave with the same level of variability as a machine? Not usually. And when control is applied to a human system, in the form of a new law or regulation, individuals within it may deliberately change their behavior. A machine's behavior may also change when a control is applied to it—think of how emissions equipment affects the performance of an automobile (less pollution, but less power too)—but the machine doesn't (typically) adapt. People do. Does this pose a difficulty if we want to employ Ashby's law to solve a control problem in a human system? Or could our ability to adapt provide an advantage?
Ashby acknowledged that for very large systems regulation is more difficult, and many social systems are very large. With limited resources we may not be able to control for all the variety and possible disturbances in a very large system, and therefore we must make choices. We can leave a system unregulated; we can reduce the amount of the system we want to control; we can increase control over certain forms of variety and disturbances; or we could find constraint or structure in the system's variety and disturbances—in other words, create better, more accurate models of our system and its environment.
Creating better models has always been a driving force in the development of systems science. Conant and Ashby proved that “every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system” in a paper of the same name. Intuitively this makes sense: if we have a better understanding of the system—a better model—we should be better able to control the system. But how well are we able to able to model human systems? For example, how well do we model intersections? Think about your experience in a car or on a bike at a downtown intersection during rush hour. Now think about that same intersection from the perspective of a pedestrian late in the evening. Did the traffic signals control the intersection in an efficient manner under both conditions? What if we consider all the downtown intersections, or the entire Portland-area traffic system? What about even larger systems? How well can we model the U.S. health care system? What is the chance that in a few thousand pages of new controls a few of them will cause some unforeseen consequence? How well do we understand the economy? Enough to create a law limiting CEO compensation? Might just one seemingly straightforward control lead to something unforeseen?!
So what level of understanding must we have of a system, i.e., how well must we be able to model it, before we regulate it? We must still react to and manage, as best we can, a man-made or natural disaster, even when we may know very little about it at the start. Our ability to adapt is critical in these situations. But at the same time, with our ability to adapt we can also (with the proper resources) circumvent the intent of regulations or use regulations to protect or increase our influence: consider “loopholes” in the tax code or legislation with which large corporations can easily comply but causes great difficulties for smaller businesses.
No matter what problem we have, it's important to understand what limits our ability to control and how controls may cause new and different problems; this will be the general focus of this seminar. A brief overview of Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety, along with a conceptual example, will be presented.
BIO: Joshua Hughes is a third-year, core-option Ph.D. student and graduate assistant in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He is working on research with George Lendaris on contextual reinforcement learning and experience-based identification and control, and he has recently collaborated with Martin Zwick on a paper showing how the panarchy adaptive cycle can be formalized using the cusp catastrophe. He is interested in information theory, cybernetics, reconstructability analysis, neural networks, fuzzy logic, catastrophe theory, game theory, and many other things.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Alexander Dimitrov
TITLE: "Neural systems analysis through quantization with an information-based distortion function"
ABSTRACT: Methods based on Rate Distortion theory have been successfully used to cluster stimuli and neural responses in order to study neural codes at a level of detail supported by the amount of available data. They approximate the joint stimulus-response distribution by quantizing paired stimulus-response observations into smaller reproductions of the stimulus and response spaces. An optimal quantization is found by maximizing an information-theoretic cost function subject to both equality and inequality constraints, in hundreds to thousands of dimensions. This analytical approach has several advantages over other current approaches:
- it yields the most informative approximation of the encoding scheme given the available data (i.e., it gives the lowest distortion, by preserving the most mutual information between stimulus and response classes),
- the cost function, which is intrinsic to the problem, does not introduce implicit assumptions about the nature or linearity of the encoding scheme,
- the maximum entropy quantizer does not introduce additional implicit constraints to the problem,
- it incorporates an objective, quantitative scheme for refining the codebook as more stimulus/response data becomes available,
- it does not need repetitions of the stimulus under mild continuity assumptions, so the stimulus space may be investigated more thoroughly.
Here the method is applied to the study of neural sensory representation. The application of this approach to the analysis of biological sensory coding involved a further restriction of the space of allowed quantizers to a smaller family of parametric distributions. We show that, for some cells in this system, a significant amount of information is encoded in patterns of spikes that would not be discovered through analyses based on linear stimulus-response measures.
BIO: Alex Dimitrov's main research interests involve the study of neural information processing, neural coding and information representation in biological systems using branches of applied probability (information theory, signal processing theory, multivariate statistics, stochastic differential equations), dynamical systems theory. group theory, optimization, operations research, and differential geometry. His current research concentrates on three basic aspects related to these issues: developing analytical tools and quantitative approaches to characterizing the neural representation of sensory stimuli; studying the statistical properties of natural sensory signals and their relations to biological sensory systems; and studying structure/function relations in biophysical models of neural systems. These research directions are flexible and are easily adaptable to new collaborations and research environments.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Robert Costanza
TITLE: "Understanding, modeling and valuing ecosystem services"
ABSTRACT: Ecosystem services (ES) are the direct and indirect contributions of ecosystems (in combination with other inputs) to human well-being. An ES-based approach can assess the trade-offs inherent in managing humans embedded in ecological systems. Evaluating trade-offs requires both an understanding of the biophysical magnitudes of ES changes that result from human actions, as well as an understanding of their impact on human well-being, broadly conceived. This talk discusses the state of the art of ES assessment, valuation, and modeling, including the potential of integrated ecological economic modeling. Valuation is about assessing trade-offs – not necessarily about trades (exchanges) in markets for money. Since ecosystem services are largely public goods, market exchanges are not (and should not be) present. This does not mean that trade-offs are not present. Conversely, expressing trade-offs in money does not imply that market exchanges are possible or desirable. Finally, the appropriate uses of economic incentives in managing ecosystem services are discussed. Because many ecosystem services are public goods (non-rival and non-excludable) they cannot (or should not) be privatized – a prerequisite for trading in conventional markets. The solution is to recognize the value of these public goods and modify market and other incentives to communicate that value to private decision-makers. Systems such as ecological taxes and subsidies, government mediated systems of payment for ecosystem services (PES - like the system in Costa Rica), and common asset trusts are some of the tools that are useful for incorporating the value of ecosystem services into private decision-making.
BIO: Dr. Costanza's research has focused on the interface between ecological and economic systems, particularly at larger temporal and spatial scales. This includes landscape-level spatial simulation modeling; analysis of energy and material flows through economic and ecological systems; valuation of ecosystem services, biodiversity, and natural capital; and the analysis and correction of dysfunctional incentive systems.
He is the author or co-author of over 400 scientific papers and 22 books; and his work has been cited in more than 6,000 scientific articles. Reports on his work have appeared in several outlets including Newsweek, Time, The Economist, The New York Times, Science, Nature, National Geographic, and National Public Radio.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Herman Migliore
TITLE: "How a system engineer starts..."
ABSTRACT: Dr. Migliore will review systems engineering as a process for developing products, processes, and services and suggest views that encourage systems thinking. As an example, he will focus on the beginning of the development process, the fuzzy front end, and discuss a method, ConOps, for getting started using examples from PSU's masters program.
BIO: Herman Migliore has nearly forty years experience in engineering design, application of computational mechanics in design, development of design methodologies, and design education. Since 1997, he has been director of systems engineering at Portland State University, an online masters program intended for experienced, practicing engineers. As director, he has participated in many projects that apply systems engineering to a wide variety of areas for small, medium, and large industry and government sponsors.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Wayne Wakeland
TITLE: A systems model of prescription opioid abuse, addiction, and overdose
ABSTRACT: A dramatic rise in the use pharmaceutical opioids to treat pain, and the associated opioid abuse and addiction, has created a substantial public health problem in the United States. Effective tools and interventions are needed to identify policies to reduce opioid abuse, addiction, and overdose deaths. A system dynamics model is used to identify policy interventions that will reduce the prevalence of adverse outcomes attributed to pharmaceutical opioids. Results suggest that it will be difficult to minimize negative outcomes without adversely affecting the degree to which chronic pain patients can access pharmaceutical treatment, and also indicate the importance of the metric(s) chosen for evaluating effectiveness.
BIO: Wayne Wakeland earned a B.S. in Engineering and a Master of Engineering from Harvey Mudd College in 1973, and a Ph.D. in Systems Science from PSU in 1977. Wayne began a career in industry, and taught computer modeling and simulation courses at PSU in the evening. Eventually, Wayne became an Associate Professor of Systems Science at PSU with a continued focus on computer simulation methods. His research emphasizes sustainable systems and management, health system dynamics, fishery dynamics, criminal justice system simulation, and biomedical dynamics. Since 2007, Wayne has also taught systems thinking at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute.
SPRING 2010 SCHEDULE
- 04/02/10 - James McNames, Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, PSU: "Data-driven modeling for clinical trial outcomes" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 04/09/10 - Diana Fisher, Teacher, Wilson High School; Ph.D. student, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Teaching high school mathematics using system dynamics models" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 04/16/10 - Martin Zwick, Professor, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Holism and human history" [Announcement] [PowerPoint Slides] [Download Presentation Recording Part I] [Download Presentation Recording Part II]
- 04/23/10 - NO SEMINAR - Seminar participants are encouraged to attend the keynote lecture (1:30pm, University Place, Willamette Room, 310 SW Lincoln St) at the PSU Symposium on Smart Grid Development by Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Director, Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Missouri University of Science and Technology: “Smart Grid: the need for advanced computational methods and intelligence” [Announcement]
- 04/30/10 - Todd Duncan, Director, Science Integration Institute; and James Butler, Professor, Physics, Pacific University: "What makes a meaningful universe?" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 05/07/10 - Anthony Rufolo, Professor, Urban Studies and Planning, PSU: costs of and behavior responses to congestion-pricing systems [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 05/14/10 - Vivek Shandas, Assistant Professor, Urban Studies and Planning, PSU; Research Associate, Center for Urban Studies, PSU: "The hydro-ecology of everyday life: assessing the social and environmental determinants of water use in the Portland region" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 05/21/10 - Cliff Joslyn, Chief Scientist for Knowledge Sciences, Computational and Statistical Analytics Division, National Security Directorate, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (Candidate for PSU Systems Science Graduate Program Director): "Hierarchical Systems Theory" [Announcement]
- 05/28/10 - Yiannis Laouris, Cyprus Neuroscience & Technology Institute (Candidate for PSU Systems Science Graduate Program Director): "Accelerating Social Change" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 06/04/10 - Discussion: "Why did the systems scientist cross the road?" (systems science jokes and end-of-year wrap-up) [Presentation Recording]
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Yiannis Laouris
TITLE: "Systems science strikes back; absolutely essential in our struggle to respond to 21st century's complex societal and technological challenges"
ABSTRACT: In this seminar, I will try to share my views concerning the role and responsibility of systems and complexity science(s) in a world that is becoming increasingly complex and unstable.
My team pioneers in the application of a systems science branch known as Structured Dialogic Design process (SDDSM). It has been tested in the Cyprus peace movement and in many pan-European networks. Together with Dr. Aleco Christakis’s group, we are currently exploring how to scale up the SDDSM process to accelerate social change. The most recent experiments involve: (1) an island-wide project in Cyprus with 10 almost parallel SDDSM dialogues (with the participation of about 300 elected representatives) aiming to reform local governance. (2) Three pan-European dialogues, with participation of a wide range of stakeholders, aim to identify the most influential research and industrial domains under Budget Line Challenge 7: ICT for Independent Living (Inclusion and Governance; Accessible and Assistive ICT; Embedded Accessibility of Future ICT). In the first case, the results will be used to design nation-wide training programs to materialize whatever was discovered as “need” in the dialogues. In the second case, the European Commission will use the results to define the priority areas for the next Framework Program calls.
Future challenges include: (1) Further development of the science; (2) Refinement of the complexity index; (3) Scaling-up to enable synchronous participation of 100 – 1000 people; (3) Modeling multiple minds collaborate to solve complex problems while achieving a shared understanding concerning a complex problem and being mobilized to work collaboratively towards its resolution.
Depending on time constrains, my research interests at the interface of systems science and brain sciences, networking sciences and socio-techno systems will be discussed.
In the last part of the seminar, I would like to open a dialogue and share ideas how PSU’s Systems Science program can evolve, mobilize resources, increase its impact and become an international leader.
BIO: Yiannis Laouris is Senior Scientist and Chair of the Cyprus Neuroscience-Technology Institute (CNTI), which employs about 20 full-time scientists and currently implements more than 15 Europe-wide projects (as Coordinator). CNTI focuses at the interface of science and society. He is Director of CyberEthics (Safer Internet Awareness Node and Hotline), National Representative for various COST Actions (276: Information & Knowledge Management for Integrated Media Communication; 219ter: Accessibility for All to Services and Terminals for Next Generation Networks; 2102: Cross-Modal Analysis of Verbal and Non-verbal Communication).
Laouris was born in Cyprus in 1958. He is medical graduate of the Leipzig University, Germany (“very good”), completed a PhD in Neurophysiology at the Karl-Ludwig Institute (summa cum laude) and an MS in Systems and Industrial Engineering (GPA 4.0) at the University of Arizona. Together with cyberneticians/systems physiologists Schwartze, Henatsch, Windhorst and Stuart, for over fifteen years, he applied linear/non-linear digital processing to biological signals from experimental animals to study brain signals. Almost twenty years ago, he has taken a life’s decision to partly interrupt his academic career and engage in socially responsible projects that contribute towards positive social change. In the 90’s, he founded CYBERKIDS (international chain of computer learning centrers), which used a systemic approach to “transcend” a country’s educational and political life and move the new generation a decade ahead. Its curriculum (new learning theory based on an educationally relevant and socially responsible approach) received seven international awards for innovation and social responsibility.
Laouris has about fifty papers in peered reviewed journals, half of which in neuroscience, a quarter in applied systems science and peace, and the rest in IT-children and neuroscience of learning. He contributed chapters in about twenty books and made over 120 conference papers and presentations. He mainly publishes in Brain Research, Experimental Brain Research, Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, World Futures, Int. J. Applied Systemic Studies and Systemic Practice and Action Research.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Cliff Joslyn
TITLE:"Hierarchical Systems Theory"
ABSTRACT: Systems Science builds on a number of foundational concepts (for example, "order", "organization", "complexity", "emergence", and "control") to elucidate an interdisciplinary view of systems of different types. "Hierarchy" is an example of a particularly important such concept, as it underlies virtually all schemes for understanding the management or evolution of complexity, through hierarchical relationships between phenomena at different temporal or spatial scales, or at different levels of aggregation.
Systems scientists commonly invoke levels of gradation, hierarchy, and related ideas in their models. And certainly hierarchical trees, and sometimes lattices, are common structures in formal modeling in general. But hierarchy itself is rarely the focus of explicit mathematical representation, nor are adequate means to represent and measure hierarchical phenomena in the abstract regularly used.
There is, in fact, a mathematical theory of hierarchy, a branch of combinatorics called "order theory" or "lattice theory". It provides concrete representations of levels of hierarchical structure, tools to measure and manipulate them, and a complete sense of general hierarchy beyond simple trees.
Ordered structures (especially lattices) have been long studied in combinatorics and general algebra, and some restricted aspects have been applied in a few particular areas of physics and computer science. But as I set out a number of years ago to try to use hierarchical systems theory to mine large semantic taxonomies which underly formal ontologies (as used in the modern Semantic Web movement), some very simple surprises revealed themselves.
In this talk we will review these concepts in the context of my work in the development of a metric space of hierarchical relations, and of their application in the computational semiotics of ontology alignment and clustering on the one hand, and information-theoretical view discovery in multidimensional databases on the other.
BIO: Cliff Joslyn is the Chief Scientist for Knowledge Sciences in the National Security Directorate of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He has previously been Team Leader for Knowledge and Information Systems Sciences in the Computer Science Division at the Los Alamos National Laboratory from 1996-2007, and an NRC Research Associate at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center from 1994-1996. Dr. Joslyn holds a BA with High Honors in Cognitive Science and Mathematics from Oberlin College, and an MS and PhD in Systems Science from SUNY Binghamton. As an interdisciplinary information scientist and mathematical systems theorist, Dr. Joslyn's research interests include applied order theory, knowledge discovery in databases, theoretical cybernetics, ontology management and knowledge systems, computational semiotics, qualitative modeling and simulation, and generalized information theory. He has been active as a leader and researcher in many government computer science research efforts in such areas as lattice theoretical approaches to the integration of large semantic hierarchies for homeland defense, scenario modeling for threat anticipation, knowledge representation for bioinformatics, multidimensional database analysis for law enforcement, qualitative modeling for spacecraft diagnosis, knowledge systems development for integrated modeling for nuclear non-proliferation, and generalized information theory for engineering decision support and risk analysis.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Vivek Shandas
TITLE: "The hydro-ecology of everyday life: assessing the social and environmental determinants of water use in the Portland region"
ABSTRACT: Driven in part by the imminent threats of population growth and climate destabilization, recent studies suggest that urban areas face severe water scarcity, with some areas in Australia and the United States already instituting moratoria on water use. While water managers traditionally avoid such crises by developing demand forecasts based on population estimates, technological developments, and weather predictions, their analysis are often at a regional scale with aggregate measures of water consumption. To date, there exists limited empirical evidence about how urban spatial structure and concomitant socio-demographic and temperature characteristics mutually interact to affect water demand at the scale of individual land uses. In this presentation, we use geographic information systems and statistical techniques to assess the role of social and biophysical factors as they impact water use. At the regional scale, our results suggest that specific thresholds of density can improve water conservation efforts, and at the parcel scale, several sociodemographics and structural attributes, including lot and building size, help explain over 75% of water use behavior. In addition, our results suggest a strong and significant relationship between urban heat and water consumption. Based on our results, we develop future water use scenarios and provide recommendations to water managers and land use planning bureaus to improve urban water management during alternative climate scenarios.
BIO: Vivek Shandas is an assistant professor in the Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning, and a Research Associate in the Center for Urban Studies at Portland State University. His research interests focus on three areas: (1) the impact of urban development patterns on water quality; (2) drivers of human behavior and decision making; and (3) effectiveness of interdisciplinary approaches in higher education. He teaches graduate courses in geographic information systems, environmental planning, and research methods in urban studies. Vivek has an undergraduate degree in biology (BS), graduate degrees in economics (MS) and environmental policy (MS), and completed his doctoral work in Urban Design and Planning at the University of Washington (Seattle). He publishes widely in social and natural science journals, and serves as a technical advisor on several local and State organizations.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Anthony Rufolo
TOPIC: costs of and behavior responses to congestion-pricing systems
ABSTRACT: Fuel taxes are an important source of funds for roads. However, increasing fuel efficiency and the potential for alternative fueled vehicles have raised questions about the long-term viability of this revenue source. Oregon conducted an experiment to evaluate the potential to replace fuel taxes with mileage fees. The findings from that experiment will be presented along with some discussion of current research on the cost associated with implementing different types of mileage fees.
BIO: Dr. Rufolo is a Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State University, where he specializes in State and Local Finance, Transportation, Urban Economics, and Regional Economic Development. He has a B.S. in Economics from M.I.T. and a Ph.D. in Economics from UCLA. Prior to joining the faculty at Portland State in 1980, he spent six years as an Economist and Senior Economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Dr. Rufolo’s research has appeared in such journals as the National Tax Journal, Transportation Research, Transportation Research Record, The Journal of Urban Economics, Land Economics and The Journal of Public Economics, and he is co-author of a textbook on public finance. Dr. Rufolo has practical experience with local economic development and finance issues in addition to his research and teaching. His experience with government forecasting and budgeting includes: Advisory Council (chair) to the (Oregon) Legislative Task Force On Comprehensive Revenue Restructuring, 2008-2009; Blue Ribbon Commission on Cost Allocation, Oregon Department of Transportation, 1996; (Oregon) Governor's Council of Economic Advisors 1983-1994; City of Beaverton Budget Committee 1989-1995 (chair 1992-1994); Advisory Committee on the Budget for Tri-Met (the Portland transit system) 1991-1995 (chair 1994-95); and the Investment Advisory Committee for the city of Portland since 1992.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTERS: Todd Duncan and James Butler
TITLE: "What makes a meaningful universe?"
ABSTRACT: A common line of thinking says that although we feel subjectively that our thoughts and actions matter in some way, this perception is an illusion. According to this view, an honest look around at the universe shatters this myth and reveals that our lives are ultimately meaningless. If we are to be hard-nosed realists, limiting ourselves to scientific, evidence-based reasoning, then we must accept that human existence is an inconsequential accident of no ultimate significance in the grand scheme of things. Is this attitude really justified by the evidence? We'll explore this question by taking a step back and asking what properties a hypothetical "meaningful universe" might have if we had complete freedom to set it up from scratch.
BIOS:
Todd Duncan is a cosmologist whose work is guided by the theme of better understanding how our immediate human experiences connect to a cosmic perspective that gives them meaning. He combines a research background in physics with experience teaching science concepts to a wide range of audiences. He’s the author of An Ordinary World: The Role of Science in Your Search for Personal Meaning, and coauthor of Your Cosmic Context: An Introduction to Modern Cosmology. Todd received his undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Illinois, an M. Phil. from Cambridge University as a Churchill Scholar, and a doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Chicago where he was an NSF and McCormick Fellow. He joined the faculty of the Center for Science Education at Portland State University in 1997 to pursue his interest in interdisciplinary "big questions" research and its application to science education. In 1998 he founded the Science Integration Institute as a forum for exploring what it means to be human in the universe as understood by modern science. He is currently director of the Science Integration Institute and adjunct faculty in the Center for Science Education at PSU and the Physics Dept. at Pacific University.
James Butler is an experimental physicist whose career has focused on teaching at the undergraduate level and involving students in nonlinear optics research. He is co-author of twenty-four publications and professional conference presentations (many with undergraduate students) and he has been principal investigator for over $650,000 in grants from agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Research Corporation, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, and Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). James received a B.S. in physics from Eastern Oregon University and both an M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Lehigh University. He joined the faculty at the United States Naval Academy in 1999 as an Assistant Professor of Physics to pursue his passions of teaching and experimental optics research. Shortly thereafter James began collaborating with colleagues at NRL in order to investigate the nonlinear optical properties of materials used for protection from high intensity laser damage. In 2004, James joined the faculty at Pacific University as an Associate Professor of Physics where he has played an active role in the development and implementation of innovative teaching methods and has continued his nonlinear optics research with undergraduate students and NRL scientists. James is currently Director of Undergraduate Research and Chair of the Physics Department at Pacific University.
LOCATION: Symposium on Smart Grid Development, Keynote Lecture
University Place, Willamette Room, 310 SW Lincoln Street
PRESENTER: Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy
TITLE: "Smart Grid: the need for advanced computational methods and intelligence"
ABSTRACT: The modern electric power grid with renewable energy resources is a complex adaptive system under semi-autonomous distributed control. It is spatially and temporally complex, non-convex, nonlinear and non-stationary with a lot of uncertainties. The integration of plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles increases the complexity and challenges to the various controllers at all levels of the power grid. Charging large number of electric vehicles randomly or simultaneously without an intelligent infrastructure will increase the load on the electric grid causing adverse effects and increase in cost of electric vehicle usage. Intelligent scheduling of vehicles for charging and dynamic load forecasting will become of vital importance. On the other hand, electric vehicles with the use of vehicle-to-grid technology (V2G), information technology and advanced computational methods can provide short-term real and reactive power support to overcome the drawback of the intermittent nature of wind and solar power resources. Besides, V2G technology can make the electric grid efficient, reliable, distributed, clean and interoperable. This talk will present the potentials and promises of advanced computational methods and intelligence for the smart grid.
BIO: Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa, in Feb. 2002. Currently, he is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Founder and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems (RTPIS) Laboratory at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T). He was a Visiting Researcher with ABB Corporate Research, Sweden, in 2007. His research interests are in the development of advanced computational algorithms for real-world applications, including power systems stability and control, smart grid applications, sensor networks and signal processing. He has published two edited books, five book chapters, and over eighty refereed journal papers and 270 refereed conference proceeding papers. He has been involved in approximately US $7 million of competitive research funding. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a recipient of several awards, including a 2007 US Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, a 2004 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the 2010 Innovation Award from the Academy of Science of St. Louis, the 2008 IEEE St. Louis Section Outstanding Educator Award, the 2006 IEEE Power Engineering Society Walter Fee Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the 2005 IEEE Industry Applications Society (IAS) Outstanding Young Member Award, and the 2003 International Neural Network Society (INNS) Young Investigator Award. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), UK and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers, a Senior Member of the IEEE and INNS, and a Member of the American Society for Engineering Education and the INNS Board of Governors. He is on the editorial board of the new IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Martin Zwick
TITLE: "Holism and human history"
ABSTRACT: This paper uses a systems-theoretic model to structure an account of human history. According to the model, a process, after its beginning and early development, often reaches a critical stage where it encounters some limitation. If the limitation is overcome, development does not face a comparable challenge until a second critical juncture is reached, where obstacles to further advance are more severe. At the first juncture, continued development requires some complexity-managing innovation; at the second, it needs some event of systemic integration in which the old organizing principle of the process is replaced by a new principle. Overcoming the first blockage sometimes occurs via a secondary process that augments and blends with the primary process and is subject in turn to its own difficulties.
Applied to history the model joins together the materialism of Marx and the cultural emphasis of Toynbee and Jaspers. It describes human history as a triad of developmental processes which encounter points of difficulty. The 'primary' process began with the emergence of the human species, continued with the development of agriculture, and reached its first critical juncture after the rise of the great urban civilizations. Crises of disorder and complexity faced by these civilizations were eased by the religions and philosophies that emerged in the Axial period. These Axial traditions became the cultural cores of major world civilizations, their development constituting a 'secondary' process that merged with and enriched the first. This secondary process also eventually stalled, but in the West the impasse was overcome by a 'tertiary' process: the emergence of humanism and secularism and--quintessentially--the development of science and technology. This third process blended with the first two in societal and religious change that ushered in what we call 'modernity.' Today, this third current of development falters, and inter-civilizational tension also afflicts the secondary stream. Much more seriously, the primary process has reached its second and critically hazardous juncture--the current global environmental-ecological crisis. System integration via a new organizing principle is needed on a planetary scale.
This paper was prepared for "Cosmos, Nature, and Culture: A Transdisciplinary Conference," July 18-21, 2009, in Phoeniz, AZ, a program of the Metanexus Institute.
BIO: Martin Zwick was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics at MIT in 1968, and joined the Biophysics Department faculty of the University of Chicago in 1969. Initially working in crystallography and macromolecular structure, his interests shifted to systems theory and methodology, the field now known as the study of chaos, complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Since 1976 he has been teaching and doing research in the Systems Science PhD Program at Portland State University; during the years 1984-1989 he was director of the program.
His main research areas are information-theoretic modeling, machine learning, theoretical biology, game theory, and systems theory and philosophy. Scientifically, his focus is on applying systems theory and methodology to the natural and social sciences, most recently to biomedical data analysis, the evolution of cooperation, and sustainability. Philosophically, his focus is on how systems ideas relate to classical and contemporary philosophy, how they offer a bridge between science and religion, and how they can help us understand and address societal problems.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Diana Fisher
TITLE: "Teaching high school mathematics using system dynamics models"
ABSTRACT: There is a serious push from the national level to get all high school students through second year algebra. This has proven to be extremely difficult using current methods. Algebra, pre-calculus, and calculus have as an overarching goal a deeper understanding of how functions behave. The use of System Dynamics models to supplement traditional representations has been useful, both in providing a visual representation of traditional functions studied and in allowing more realistic applications for student assignments. Additionally, a year-long System Dynamics modeling course has shown that high school students can research, build, and explain the complex behavior found in many different types of systems. The student work is impressive and offers a window into an extremely promising approach to the study of more realistic, more interesting, and more powerful learning methodology (and is hands-on and student-centered). This approach appeals to a broad audience of students, those for whom equations are too much of an abstraction to allow them to retain needed function characteristics, and those for whom the current approach does not offer the ability to extend their strong analytical skills (as can be accomplished studying complex interactions between functions). System Dynamics modeling provides a cutting edge approach to help teachers address the national educational standards in math, science, health, economics, social science, technology, sustainability, and 21st Century Skills. This talk will give a brief overview of the types of lessons used in high school advanced algebra and modeling classes, and present a videotaped student presentation of his System Dynamics modeling project.
BIO: Diana Fisher received both a bachelors and masters degree in mathematics, the first from University of Texas El Paso (1969), the second from University of Montana (1976). She has taken classes in computer science at Oregon State University (1983). She will receive a Graduate Certificate in System Dynamics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in May. She has been accepted into the Ph.D. System Science program at PSU and will start her coursework in the fall of 2010. She has been a teacher of mathematics for about 40 years, and a teacher of computer science, and system dynamics modeling for the past 20 years. She wrote and directed two National Science Foundation grants: CC-STADUS (Cross-Curricular Systems Thinking and Dynamics using STELLA) (1993-1997) and CC-SUSTAIN (Cross-Curricular Systems Using STELLA, Training and Inservice) (1997-2001). She was awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics Teaching representing the state of Oregon in 1995, and was first place co-winner of Intel's Innovation in Teaching award in 1996. She has published five books, the first three in computer programming, published in the 1980's by Computer Science Press, and the last two within the last 10 years on the teaching of System Dynamics Modeling in mathematics, published by isee systems, inc. She has put together a website to highlight some of her students' work to try to help convince people that the SD approach to problem solving is a powerful learning methodology for students. The website can be accessed at: http://www.ccmodelingsystems.com/
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: James McNames
TITLE: "Reconstructability analysis of elementary cellular automata"
ABSTRACT: Clinical trials in Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders currently depend on rating scales that require subjective visual assessment of movement impairment. Dr. McNames has been collaborating closely with the Parkinson's Center of Oregon to develop objective measures of movement impairment. These have the potential to provide more precise measures that make it easier to distinguish the effects of new therapies from the placebo response in blinded randomized-control clinical trials. However, this is a challenging modeling application because there is no gold standard and data is extremely expensive to collect. This talk will give a summary of this on-going work and a summary of some of the key lessons learned over the last 2 years.
BIO: James McNames received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, in 1992. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1995 and 1999, respectively.
He has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Portland State University, Portland, OR since 1999, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His primary research interest is statistical signal processing with applications to biomedical engineering with a long-term goal of deploying technologies that use closed-loop control to improve health care.
He founded the Biomedical Signal Processing (BSP) Laboratory (bsp.pdx.edu) in fall 2000. The mission of the BSP Laboratory is to advance the art and science of extracting clinically significant information from physiologic signals. Members of the BSP Laboratory primarily focus on clinical projects in which the extracted information can help physicians or medical devices make better critical decisions and improve patient outcome.
WINTER 2010 SCHEDULE
- 01/08/10 - Joshua Hughes, Ph.D. Student, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Criticisms of systems science" (DISCUSSION) [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 01/15/10 - Tamara Hayes, Assistant Professor and Associate Department Head, Biomedical Engineering, OHSU: "Aging-in-place research at ORCATECH: Making sense of the data" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 01/22/10 - Grant Kirby, IT Program Director, Oregon Institute of Technology; Ph.D. student, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Reviewing the role of systems analysis in data networks and the possible role for system theories going forward" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 01/29/10 - Barry Oken, Professor, Neurology and Behavioral Neuroscience, OHSU; Medical Director, Clinical Neurophysiology, OHSU: "Human central system electrophysiology: introduction and signal processing" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 02/05/10 - Will Landecker, Ph.D. student, Computer Science, PSU; graduate research assistant, Los Alamos National Laboratory: "Understanding classification decisions for object detection" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 02/12/10 - Lars Holstrom, Ph.D. candidate, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Efficient encoding of vocalizations in the auditory midbrain" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 02/19/10 - Miguel Andres Figliozzi, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering: "Vehicle routing problems in congested urban areas" [Announcement] [Link for Remote Participation] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 02/26/10 - Dan Hammerstrom, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Associate Dean, Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science, PSU: "The DARPA SyNAPSE Program" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 03/05/10 - Patrick Roberts, Computational Neuroscientist, In Silico Biosciences, Inc.; Adjunct Professor, Systems Science, PSU; Adjunct Professor, Biomedical Engineering, OHSU: "Computational Psychopharmacology" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 03/12/10 - Martin Zwick, Professor, Systems Science Graduate Program, PSU: "Reconstructability analysis of elementary cellular automata" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Martin Zwick
TITLE: "Reconstructability analysis of elementary cellular automata"*
ABSTRACT: Reconstructability analysis is a method to determine whether a multivariate relation, defined set- or information-theoretically, is decomposable with or without loss (reduction in constraint) into lower ordinality relations. Set-theoretic reconstructability analysis (SRA) is used to characterize the mappings of elementary cellular automata. The degree of lossless decomposition possible for each mapping is more effective than the λ parameter (Walker & Ashby, Langton) as a predictor of chaotic dynamics.
Complete SRA yields not only the simplest lossless structure but also a vector of losses of all decomposed structures, indexed by parameter, τ. This vector subsumes λ, Wuensche’s Z parameter, and Walker & Ashby’s “fluency” and “memory” parameters within a single framework, and is a strong but still imperfect predictor of the dynamics: less decomposable mappings more commonly produce chaos. The set-theoretic constraint losses are analogous to information distances in information-theoretic reconstructability analysis (IRA). IRA captures the same information as SRA, but allows λ, fluency, and memory to be explicitly defined.
*This talk is being given to fill in an unexpected vacant slot in our seminar series. It is a repeat of a talk that was given in the past, but not everyone has heard it, and these results are still unpublished. ( But apologies to anyone taking the seminar course who has already heard it!) -MZ
BIO: Martin Zwick was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics at MIT in 1968, and joined the Biophysics Department faculty of the University of Chicago in 1969. Initially working in crystallography and macromolecular structure, his interests shifted to systems theory and methodology, the field now known as the study of chaos, complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Since 1976 he has been teaching and doing research in the Systems Science PhD Program at Portland State University; during the years 1984-1989 he was director of the program.
His main research areas are information theoretic modeling, machine learning, theoretical biology, game theory, and systems theory and philosophy. Scientifically, his focus is on applying systems theory and methodology to the natural and social sciences, most recently to biomedical data analysis, the evolution of cooperation, and sustainability. Philosophically, his focus is on how systems ideas relate to classical and contemporary philosophy, how they offer a bridge between science and religion, and how they can help us understand and address societal problems.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Patrick Roberts
TITLE: "Computational pharmacology: simulating circuits of the brain for drug development"
ABSTRACT: The pharmaceutical industry is approaching unsustainable research costs to develop new drug therapies for mental disease because of the high failure rate in clinical trials. These failures are due to limitations of pre-clinical studies in animal models that fail to predict the efficacy of new drugs in human subjects. The gap between pre-clinical trials and clinical trials is particularly difficult in complex mental diseases such as schizophrenia because of the complex dynamics of the brain and the multiple chemical pathways that drugs can affect.
BIO: Dr. Roberts received his BA in physics at Reed College ('83) and his PhD in elementary particle physics and Gothenburg University in Sweden. Since completing his PhD in 1993, he has focussed on neuroscience research in both academia and industry on projects ranging from electrosensory processing in electric fish to pharmaceutical research for mental illness. He is presently employed at In Silico Biosciences and holds adjunct positions in Biomedical Engineering at Oregon Health & Sciences University and in the Systems Science Program at Portland State University.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Dan Hammerstrom
TITLE: "An update on biologically inspired computing: The DARPA SyNAPSE program and Hierarchical Temporal Memories"
ABSTRACT: This presentation provides an update on biologically inspired computation. In particular, it focuses on two important developments in this area, the DARPA SyNAPSE program (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) and the HTM (Hierarchical Temporal Memory) being developed by Numenta.
The SyNAPSE Program’s ultimate goal is to build a low-power, compact electronic chip combining novel analog circuit design and a neuroscience-inspired architecture that can address a wide range of cognitive abilities: perception, planning, decision making and motor control. According to DARPA program manager Todd Hylton, “Our research progress in this area is unprecedented, No suitable electronic synaptic device that can perform critical functions of a biological brain like spike-timing-dependent plasticity has ever before been demonstrated or even articulated.”
The HTM algorithm is the work of Jeff Hawkins and Dileep George. Jeff (Palm Pilot inventor) founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute, from which has emerged a synthesis of a number of existing and new ideas of cortical operation. The models have worked so well that he has now spun out a company, Numenta, Inc.
HTMs use a unique combination of the following ideas:
- A hierarchy in space and time to share and transfer learning;
- Slowness of time, which, combined with the hierarchy, enables efficient learning of intermediate levels of the hierarchy;
- Learning of causes by using time continuity and actions;
- Models of attention and specific memories;
- A probabilistic model specified in terms of relations between a hierarchy of causes; and
- Belief Propagation in the hierarchy to use temporal and spatial context for inference.
BIO: Dan Hammerstrom received the BS degree from Montana State University, the MS degree from Stanford University, and the PhD degree from the University of Illinois. He was and an Assistant Professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at Cornell University from 1977 to 1980.
In 1980 he joined Intel in Oregon, where he participated in the development and implementation of the iAPX-432, the i960, and iWarp. In 1988 he founded Adaptive Solutions, Inc., which specialized in high performance silicon technology (the CNAPS chip set) for image processing and pattern recognition. He is now a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Associate Dean for Research in the Maseeh College of Engineering and Computer Science at Portland State University.
Prof. Hammerstrom has joint appointments in the IDE (Information, Computation, and Electronics) Department at Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden and in the BioMedical Engineering Department of the Oregon Health & Science University.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Miguel Figliozzi
TITLE: "Vehicle routing problems in congested urban areas"
ABSTRACT: This talk will discuss vehicle routing problems in congested urban areas. Modeling approaches, data collection issues, and solution algorithms to solve real-world problems will be described and analyzed.
BIO: Dr. Miguel Andres Figliozzi's main research areas are transportation and logistics systems modeling and optimization. He joined Portland State University in August 2007. His previous academic appointment was at the University of Sydney School of Business. Dr. Figliozzi works in partnership with local, regional, state, and federal transportation agencies, and he is a member of the Transportation Research Board Network Modeling Committee and Transportation Research Board Network Intermodal Terminal Design Committee.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Lars Holmstrom
TITLE: "Efficient encoding of vocalizations in the auditory midbrain"
ABSTRACT: An important question in sensory neuroscience is what coding strategies and mechanisms are used by the brain to detect and discriminate among behaviorally relevant stimuli. To address the noisy response properties of individual neurons, sensory systems often utilize broadly tuned neurons with overlapping receptive fields at the system's periphery, resulting in homogeneous responses among neighboring populations of neurons. It has been hypothesized that progressive response heterogeneity in ascending sensory pathways is evidence of an efficient encoding strategy that minimizes the redundancy of the peripheral neural code and maximizes information throughput for higher level processing. This hypothesis has been partly supported by the documentation of neural heterogeneity in various cortical structures.
This dissertation will examine whether selective and sensitive responses to behaviorally relevant stimuli contribute to a heterogeneous and efficient encoding in the auditory midbrain. Prior to this study, no compelling experimental framework existed to address this question. Stimulus design methodologies for neuroethological experiments were largely based on token vocalizations or simple approximations of vocalization components. This dissertation describes a novel state-space signal modeling methodology which makes possible the independent manipulation of the frequency, amplitude, duration, and harmonic structure of vocalization stimuli. This methodology was used to analyze four mouse vocalizations and create a suite of perturbed variants of each of these vocalizations. Responses of neurons in the mouse inferior colliculus (IC) to the natural vocalizations and their perturbations were characterized using measures of both spike rate and spike timing. In order to compare these responses to those of peripheral auditory neurons, a data-driven model was developed and fit to each IC neuron based on the neuron's pure tone responses. These models were then used to approximate how peripheral auditory neurons would respond to our suite of vocalization stimuli. Using information theoretic measures, this dissertation argues that selectivity and sensitivity by individual neurons results in heterogeneous population responses in the IC and contributes to the efficient encoding of behaviorally relevant vocalizations.
BIO: Lars Holmstrom is a Ph.D. candidate in the Systems Science Graduate Program at Portland State University. His research has primarily been focused on reinforcement learning in artificial neural networks and sensory processing in real neural networks. He is currently working as a software architect for a local biomedical device company and as an environmental consultant responsible for model based estimates of avian mortality risk resulting from wind farm installations.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Will Landecker
TOPIC: "Understanding classification decisions for object detection"
ABSTRACT: Computer vision systems are traditionally tested in the object detection paradigm. In these experiments, a vision system is asked whether or not a specific object--for example an animal--occurs in a given image. A system that often answers correctly is said to be very accurate. In this talk, we will discuss some ambiguity that exists in this measure of accuracy. We will also propose a new measure of object-detection accuracy that addresses some of this ambiguity, and apply this measure to the hierarchical "standard model" of visual cortex.
BIO: Will Landecker obtained his B.A. in mathematics from Reed College, and is currently a PhD student in the PSU Computer Science program and a graduate research assistant at Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is conducting his research as a member of Melanie Mitchell's machine vision group. His research focuses on understanding the decisions of machine learning classifiers, particularly as they apply to computer vision systems. This work combines computer vision, theoretical machine learning, and data visualization. Other research interests include music informatics and computational neuroscience.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Barry Oken
TITLE: "Human central system electrophysiology: introduction and signal processing"
ABSTRACT: This seminar will be an overview of analysis methods for brain electrophysiology. It will be a broad overview of electroencephalography (EEG) and evoked potentials. Specific examples both from the research and clinical arenas will be used. The overview of EEG will include what it is measuring, frequency analysis, and independent component analysis; the overview of evoked potentials will introduce what they are and the different types of stimuli including conventional sensory as well as cognitive, intraoperative monitoring, and transcranial stimulation.
BIO: Barry Oken received a BA degree in math from the University of Rochester in 1974 and an M.D. degree from the Medical College of Wisconsin in 1978. He was a resident in Neurology from 1980-1983 at Boston University Medical Center and a Fellow in Electroencephalography and Evoked Potentials at Massachusetts General Hospital from 1983-1985. Since 1985, he has been a member of the faculty at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) and is currently Professor in the Departments of Neurology and of Behavioral Neuroscience. Also, he is medical director of the Clinical Neurophysiology Department. His primary research interests are in cognitive neuroscience with a focus on age-related changes using brain physiology as one of the assessment tools and on interventions that may modify those changes. He has published 150 papers, abstracts and chapters in a range of fields related to his interests and he has had continuous NIH funding for his research for the past 20 years.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
PRESENTER: Grant Kirby
TITLE: "Reviewing the role of systems analysis in data networks and the possible role for system theories going forward"
ABSTRACT: Data networks have been a very important catalyst in the growth of business in the US. As data networks became more complex in the 1970s and 1980s it was necessary to implement system analysis methodologies for the more complex networks. Over the last three decades data networks have become increasingly more complex and organizations and governments are increasingly more dependent on their services. The new applications and services being ushered in this next decade may well render current methodologies ineffective. The goal of this talk is to begin the dialogue about how system theories might make significant contributions to the designs of the next generation information systems.
BIO: Grant Kirby is a PhD candidate in the Systems Science program at PSU. He received his MBA from University of Oregon and a computer science undergraduate from OIT. Grant is currently a Program Director at Oregon Institute of Technology over the Information Technology and Operations Management programs. Before he came to OIT in 2003, he spent twelve years at Intel Corp. as a technical Marketing and Product Marketing engineer.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
FACILITATOR: Joshua Hughes
TOPIC: "Criticisms of systems science"
A new year often begins with a sense of optimism, but we (ever the contrarians) will begin it with a healthy dose of pessimism. This week's seminar will be a discussion about criticisms of systems science. As Winston Churchill said, "Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things." Is the systems project in an unhealthy state? Since its emergence in the 1940s and 1950s, a number of people have believed that to be the case, and a few have issued strong--and long--critiques of the systems view. A few of the most notable have come from R. C. Buck (1956), Ida Hoos (1972), and Robert Lilienfeld (1978). As George Klir notes--his 2001 book Facets of System Science will provide a good deal of the material for our discussion--some of this criticism was ill-conceived and easily refuted; but some was indeed justified, and addressing the "unhealthy" aspects of systems science changed it for the better. No doubt it behooves the systems thinker to be familiar with these criticisms both justified and unjustified: knowing the "justified" criticisms will (hopefully) prevent us from repeating the mistakes of the past and provide us with a deeper understanding of the systems project's development; knowing the "unjustified" criticisms can provide us with an understanding of how the systems field is perceived by those outside it and (perhaps) motivate us to improve the way we communicate our ideas.
To give everyone a head start, here are some of the criticisms from Buck, Hoos, and Lilienfeld (Buck's criticisms are paraphrased by me, and those of Hoos and Lilienfeld by Lars Skyttner (2005)):
R. C. Buck
- If every system has subsystems and every system has its environment, one can't think of anything or any combination of things that isn't a system; if the concept of "system" can apply to everything, it is logically empty.
- The fact that the spread of neural impulses, the spread of rumours, and the spread of epidemics can all be described by similar mathematical models is sheer coincidence. "So what?" if these different systems are seen as analogous.
- If Joan's heart is the system, and Joan is the environment, isn't Joan's heart--being a part of her--also the environment? So which is it?
Ida Hoos
- The so-called isomorphisms are nothing but tired truisms about the universality of mathematics, i.e. 2 + 2 = 4 prevails whether we consider soap, chickens, or missiles.
- Superficial analogies may camouflage crucial differences and lead to erroneous conclusions.
Robert Lilienfeld
- Systems theory is the latest attempt to create a universal myth based on the prestige of science.
- Systems thinkers have a special weakness for definitions, conceptualizations, and programmatic statements, all of a vaguely benevolent moralizing nature, without concrete or even scientific substance.
- In the eyes of the "universality" of systems theory all things are systems by virtue of ignoring the specific, the concrete, and the substantive.
- Systems theory is a theory with applications which have never been really tested.
- As a theory, systems philosophy is a mixture of speculation and empirical data, neither of them satisfactory. It is an attempt to stretch a set of concepts into metaphysics that extends beyond and above all substantive areas.
- Systems theory is not a genuine philosophy and is not a science; it is an ideology and must be considered as such.
In addition to these criticisms, I will also present a number of other criticisms of the systems field (here assumed to encompass the "complexity" sciences as well), including some more recent ones from people within the systems field itself (and perhaps a Nobel-prize-winning economist or two).
BIO: Joshua Hughes is a second year, core-option PhD student and graduate assistant in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He is working on research with George Lendaris on contextual reinforcement learning and experience-based identification and control; he is also collaborating with Martin Zwick on a few papers that show how systems theories might provide insights into some contemporary problems. He is interested in information theory, cybernetics, reconstructability analysis, neural networks, fuzzy logic, catastrophe theory, game theory, and many other things.
FALL 2009 SCHEDULE
- 10/09/09 - Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanties, Reed College: "Beyond Biobricks: synthesizing synergistic biochemical systems from the bottom-up" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 10/16/09 - Tad Shannon, Assistant Professor of Theatre-Dance, Western Oregon University: "Linguistic adaptive critics and human in the loop dynamic programming" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording]
- 10/23/09 - Richard Beyler, Associate Professor, PSU Dept. of History: "Doing the history of science and the suspension of belief" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 10/30/09 - Heejun Chang, Associate Professor, PSU Dept. of Geography: "Water as a complex system: understanding the dynamics in a changing environment" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/06/09 - Discussion: "Generalists, specialists, and the best experts: Where do systems thinkers fit in?"
[Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides] - 11/13/09 - Radu Popa, Associate Professor, PSU Dept. of Biology: "The complexity-independence of the origin of life" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/20/09 - Marek Perkowski, Professor, PSU Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering: "Towards robot theatre" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
- 11/27/09 - THANKSGIVING VACATION
- 12/04/09 - William "Ike" Eisenhauer, Adjunct Assistant Professor, PSU Systems Engineering / Engineering and Technology Management: "Creating insanity in learning systems: addressing ambiguity effects of predicting non-linear continuous valued functions with reconstructabilty analysis from large categorically valued input data sets" [Announcement] [Presentation Recording] [PowerPoint Slides]
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: William "Ike" Eisenhauer
TITLE: "Creating insanity in learning systems: addressing ambiguity effects of predicting non-linear continuous valued functions with reconstructabilty analysis from large categorically valued input data sets"
ABSTRACT: Being told to give two different, and potentially counter, responses to the same stimulus can set up a double bind in humans, leading to a type of insanity. So what how do you deal with it when it comes up quite frequently in modeling through simplification and removal of predictive variables?
BIO: William "Ike" Eisenhauer is an adjunct assistant professor in both the Systems Engineering and Engineering and Technology Management departments at Portland State University. His research interests include: Adaptive Belief Management, State Based Reconstructability Analysis, Shared Resource Constrained Data Envelope Analysis, Conflict Under Deceptive Irrationality, and Sustainable Quality Management Program Development. In addition to teaching, Ike is Chief of Systems Engineering for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Portland VA Medical Center. His work there is focused on the systemic improvement of health care delivery. Prior to joining the DVA, Ike held positions at Wells Fargo in Risk and Loss Management and Equity Operations. He is an industry consultant in the areas of probability/uncertainty management, executive decision making, and benchmarking. His past clients have included US Bank, Hollywood Entertainment, and Multnomah County.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Marek Perkowski
TITLE: "Towards robot theatre"
ABSTRACT: The talk will present the idea of futuristic robot theatre and work done towards it at the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at PSU. After a short history of robot theatre from antiquity until 2008 we will present recent work on robot theatre in the world and at PSU, including two plays: ancient Korean folk tale "Hahoe Pylyshin" and "What's that? A Schroedinger Cat" or a debate between Einstein and Schroedinger Cat about quantum mechanics - an educational theatre. Several models of robot theatre will be discussed: animatronic theatre, interactive theatre and improvisational theatre. We will present the concept of generalized motions and universal event editor to edit robot motions, behaviors, lightings and automated events, as well as partial theories used to design such software tools, including regular expressions and spectral filtering theories. Next the concept of future interactive robot theatre will be presented, together with its underlying theories of pattern recognition and emotional robotics. Human-robot interaction based on recognition of human emotions and generating emotional robot behaviors as well as the method of constructive induction will be briefly discussed. Some ideas for future robot theatres will conclude the presentation. Our goals are to both create a model innovative robot theatre and a theory of robot theatre that would be similar to the theory of film or theory of interactive computer games. We believe that robot theatre will become a new art form and we are interested what are the basic questions related to the art of performing robots. We hope to have an interesting feedback to our ideas from the System Science oriented researchers.
BIO: Marek Perkowski obtained his M.S. degree in Electronics and Ph.D. Degree in automatic control from Institute of Automatic Control, Department of Electronics, Technical University of Warsaw, Warsaw, Poland. He studied also pure mathematics at University of Warsaw. In years 1981-1983 he was a Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and since 1983 he works for Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University where he is a full professor and director of Intelligent Robotics Laboratory. He worked for Cypress Semiconductor (co-author of WARP, the first FPGA compiler of VHDL), Intel Supercomputer, Sharp Microelectronics, GTE and other companies in areas of computer architecture, CAD tools for logic synthesis and image processing. Dr. Perkowski invented Kronecker Decision Diagrams and lattices and contributed to logic synthesis software that is used in US industry. In 1994 he worked for Machine Learning group in Wright Laboratories of U.S. Air Force applying logic decomposition as a machine learning approach to pattern recognition and continued this work on several grants. He is an author of more than 300 papers in CAD, logic synthesis, multiple-valued logic, machine learning, robotics and quantum computing. He had visiting professor and visiting scientist positions in the Netherlands, France, Japan and Korea. In years 2002-2004 he was professor in KAIST – Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology where he participated in research on humanoid robotics and quantum computing. He chaired the IEEE Technical Committee on Multiple-Valued Logic in years 2003-2005 and is currently chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Task Force on Quantum Computing. His main current interests are in quantum circuits and algorithms, humanoid bipeds, emotional quantum robots, robotics for teenagers and Grover algorithm. He collaborates with many groups worldwide.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Radu Popa
TITLE: "The complexity-independence of the origin of life"
ABSTRACT: It is often stated that the macroevolution of life is driven toward increased Complexity, and indeed, biosystems situated at higher evolutionary level show higher levels of Complexity. Yet, evidence also shows that some dynamic systems evolve toward lower entropy states, and not by increasing Complexity, but by increasing Organization. Organization is a parameter with two almost orthogonal components: Order and Complexity. Hence, it is possible for a dynamic system to experience changes in Organization in ways that do not elicit changes in Complexity. Whether Order or Complexity controls changes in Organization is dictated by the capacity of a system to store Meaningful information, and by the costs and payoffs of changes in Order or Complexity. This presentation analyzes transitions in the evolution of prebiotic systems (microevolution events) that are Complexity-independent. It is concluded that the actual driver of evolution is not the need for more Complexity, but the need to maximize the efficiency of energy dissipation.
BIO: Radu Popa has been an Associate Professor in the Biology Department at Portland State University since 2005. His research interests include microbial ecology and the origin and evolution of prebiotic systems (the origin of homochirality).
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
FACILITATOR: Joshua Hughes
TOPIC: "Generalists, specialists, and the best experts: Where do systems thinkers fit in?"
"GENERALIST / SPECIALIST: A generalist is someone who has studied a little bit of everything, and in the end knows nothing well in particular. By contrast, a specialist is someone who has studied a single subject, and as a consequence does not even know his own subject, because every item of knowledge is related to other components of the whole system. The good scholar or scientist--like the good chef, manager, clinician, or orchestra conductor--is an expert in one field or craft, and knowledgeable in many. Like a mouse, he can explore the details of a terrain; and, like an owl, he can also soar to get a good view of the landscape--mice and all. He is capable of learning new subjects as needed, as well as placing every particular subject in a wide context and a long-term perspective. He is thus open to multiple inputs and capable of multiple outputs. In sum, the best expert is the specialist turned generalist. This holds in all fields of thought and action, particularly in philosophy." -- Mario Bunge, Philosophical Dictionary
Bunge's definitions of the generalist, the specialist, and the "best expert" are thought-provoking (and may provoke other responses as well). Are systems practitioners, analysts, and theorists generalists, specialists, or the best experts? Because systems science concerns itself with general theories (e.g. graph theory, information theory, control theory, game theory, etc.) that can be applied to a wide range of problems, it appears to be a generalist field; but systems science has its own contributors, jargon, and history and is not widely studied (at least in the U.S.), and so appears to be a specialist field as well. And yet many of the early contributors to the systems project such as von Bertalanffy, Boulding, Wiener, and Ashby did indeed fit Bunge's definition of the best expert, as all were specialists turned generalists. Since systems science is mostly taught at the graduate level, perhaps Bunge's position is an implicit assumption in the systems field.
You may not agree with all of Bunge's assertions (or the conjecture above), but it is clear the views of the mice and the owls are needed for most (if not all) problems. Is the systems view that of the owls or that of mice in owl clothing? The answer may be fuzzy and a good starting point for our discussion. Perhaps a more interesting question is this: How we can use systems thinking to improve our problem solving abilities? A quick look at the jobs graduates of the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program have gone on to (http://www.pdx.edu/sysc/resources-jobs) makes it clear that systems principles are applicable in all kinds of fields. It is also clear that systems science can be useful for framing and solving global problems related to economics, energy, climate, and politics. So whether generalist or specialist--or whether one can meet the criteria Bunge requires of a "best" expert--what roles can a systems thinker fill?
Here are a few questions to get the discussion going:
- Are you interested in being a general problem solver, or do you have a specific (i.e. specialized) problem you'd like to solve using systems thinking?
- Can you describe an instance when your knowledge of systems science gave you an insight you would not otherwise have had?
- What roles can systems theorists, analysts, and practitioners play in national and global debates?
- Do (or will) the public, politicians, and other experts accept systems thinkers as experts?
- Can (or do) systems practitioners and theorists act as liasons between specialists or between specialists and the public?
- Can you think of a field or a problem that is not being considered from a systems perspective but should be?
- (Extra credit) Can you think any field in which systems science would not be useful?
This discussion can also be an opportunity for new students to ask questions about the systems field and discuss what they hope to gain with systems science knowledge, and for other students, graduates, and faculty to share their insights and experiences about the systems field and what they have gained from their systems science knowledge.
BIO: Joshua Hughes is a second year, core-option PhD student and graduate assistant in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He is beginning research with George Lendaris on contextual learning and experience-based identification and control; he is also collaborating with Martin Zwick on a few papers that show how systems theories might provide insights into some contemporary problems. He is interested in information theory, cybernetics, reconstructability analysis, neural networks, fuzzy logic, catastrophe theory, game theory, and many other things.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Heejun Chang
TITLE: "Water as a complex system: understanding the dynamics in a changing environment"
ABSTRACT: The water resources system is constantly evolving over space and time at a range of scales. Human-induced climate change and land development are probably two major driving forces of water resource system changes. However, the impacts of such changes are region specific, which depend on watershed characteristics such as topography and geology. Numerical simulation models are useful tools for understanding the system dynamics by allowing the multiple interactions of system components. I will introduce case studies of the Pacific Northwest that examine how changing climate and population growth affect regional water resources at multiple spatial and temporal scales and explain the major determinants of such changes in the system. A combination of a GIS-based hydrologic model and a hydroeconomic model is used for integrated environmental change impact assessment.
BIO: Heejun Chang is an Associate Professor of Geography at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon, USA where he teaches courses in physical geography, hydrology, climate and water resources, global water issues and sustainability, GIS for water resources, and spatial quantitative analysis. His research areas include impacts of climate variability and change on regional water resources, land cover change and water quality, use of geospatial technology for hydrology and water resources, and urban flooding in Monsoon Asia. Professor Chang’s work has been funded by the Sustainable Water Resources Program at the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology of Korea (Technology for Climate Impact Assessment), the US National Science Foundation (Urban Water Quality), NOAA (climate change and urban water demand), NRCS (spatial database development), and the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation (Sustainable Water Resources Management, Hydrologic Ecosystem Services Dynamics, Coupled Carbon and Water Cycle in Urban Areas). His recent publications appear in such interdisciplinary, international journals as Climatic Change, Climate Research, Hydrological Processes, International Journal of Climatology, Journal of Environmental Management, River Research and Applications, Science of the Total Environment, and Water Research. Chang is currently a representative for the Willamette River Basin in UNESCO’s HELP (Hydrology, Environment, Land and Policy) program. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from the Pennsylvania State University. For more information about Chang’s research, please visit http://www.web.pdx.edu/~changh/research.html.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Richard Beyler
TITLE: "Doing the history of science and the suspension of belief"
ABSTRACT: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817) described the "suspension of disbelief" as a sort of bargain between the author and the audience necessary to creative literature. Conversely, one might describe the "suspension of belief" as a necessary element of doing the history of science. In modern civilization, science counts as the social institution which delineates the boundaries of knowledge per se, as opposed to belief, opinion, etc. We might describe this as the cultural myth of science--not in the sense of judging its truth or falsehood, but rather in the sense of its being foundational and largely unquestioned in modern society. Yet a historical account of how science developed requires that we suspend our current state of knowledge as a relevant factor, unless we are prepared to claim, teleologically, that this current state of knowledge played a causative role in past developments. Two aspects of the cultural myth of science have seemed to me particularly persistent and needing of suspension in order to create a cogent historical account: 1) an almost overwhelming tendency to interpret historical significance (exclusively) from the perspective of the known "winners"; 2) Uncritical belief in pure science or "knowledge for its own sake" which casts any kind of economic, political, or other "external" involvement as necessarily deterimental to the scientific enterprise.
BIO: Richard Beyler received his Ph.D. in history of science from Harvard University in 1994. After post-doctoral fellowships in Berlin and in Washington, he came to Portland State University in 1996, where he is associate professor of history. His teaching fields are history of science, European intellectual history, and German history. His current research follows two main tracks: biophysics in the 1920s and 1930s, and the political realignment of German scientific institutions before and after World War II.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Tad Shannon
TITLE: "Linguistic Adaptive Critics and Human in the Loop Dynamic Programming"
ABSTRACT: Adaptive critic methods for approximate dynamic programming are a subset of reinforcement learning techniques developed over the past several decades. Actor-critic methods segment control system design problems so that assemblages of computational devices can efficiently find near optimal control policies for complex systems. While much effort has been devoted to designing autonomous adaptive critics, relatively little work has been done on human interaction with actor-critic systems. This talk will provide a taxonomy for adaptive critic systems, review developments in the use of linguistic reinforcement signals in such systems, and suggest a variety of options for human interaction with actor-critics.
BIO: Tad Shannon is an Assistant Professor of Theatre-Dance at Western Oregon University in Monmouth, Oregon. He has been the resident designer with Portland’s Do Jump Movement Theatre since 1992, designing the lighting and rigging for national tours in 2000, 2001, and 2007. He received a Theatre LA Ovation award for best lighting design for Do Jump’s Openings and Doors in 2002. His design work has been seen with many regional dance and theatre companies in Portland and San Francisco. He received his Ph.D. in Systems Science from Portland State University in 2007.
LOCATION: Harder House, Room 104
TIME: 12 noon - 1 pm
PRESENTER: Mark Bedau
TITLE: "Beyond Biobricks: synthesizing synergistic biochemical systems from the bottom-up"
ABSTRACT: Engineers who attempt to discover and optimize the behavior of complex biochemical systems face a dauntingly difficult task. This is especially true if the systems are governed by multiple qualitative and quantitative variables that have non-linear response functions and that interact synergistically. The synthetic biology community has responded to this difficulty by promoting the use of "standard biological parts" called "BioBricks", which are supposed to make biology into traditional engineering and enable engineers to "program living organisms in the same way a computer scientists can program a computer". But the BioBricks research program faces daunting hurdles, because the nonlinearity and synergy found throughout biochemical systems generates lots of unpredictable emergent properties. This talk describes an alternative vision of how to engineer complex biochemical systems, according to which we would refashion engineering to fit biology (rather than the other way around). The resulting method (termed "Predictive Design Technology" of PDT) is a robot- and computer-driven automatic and autonomous implementation of traditional Edisonian science. The PDT method is described and illustrated in application to a number of practical biochemical design tasks, including (2) optimizing combination drug therapies, (2) optimizing cargo capacity of liposomes that self-assemble from complex amphiphile mixtures, (3) optimizing the liposomal formulation of insoluble drugs, and (4) optimizing in vitro protein expression.
BIO: Mark A. Bedau is Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, Co-Founder of the European Center for Living Technology (ECLT), Partner in the EU-funded Programmable Artificial Cell Evolution (PACE) program, Co-organizer of the Eleventh International Conference on the Simulation and Synthesis of Living Systems (Artificial Life XI), and Visiting Professor, Ph.D. Program in Life Sciences: Foundations and Ethics, European School of Molecular Medicine. He is the coeditor of Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Science and Philosophy and Protocells: Bridging Nonliving and Living Matter, both published by the MIT Press in 2008.
SPRING 2009
Date: June 5, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Rich Jolly
Title: The Role of Feedback in the Assimilation of Information in Markets: Applications to Prediction Markets
Abstract: “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three times more productive” - Lew Platt, while CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Leveraging the combined knowledge of an organization is an ongoing challenge and has given rise to the field of knowledge management. Yet, despite spending enormous sums of organizational resources (time and money) on IT (Information Technology) systems, executives recognize there is much more knowledge to harness – as expressed by Lew Platt’s comment above. Prediction markets are emerging as one tool to help extract, and make operational, that extra knowledge. Yet, prediction markets, like other markets, are susceptible to pathologies which compromise their accuracy (e.g. bubbles and crashes). This makes their use problematic for organizations.
The goal of this research is to study aspects of the feedback relationships in markets. A simplified form of a commonly used organizational prediction market will be studied. Some preliminary results of system simulations will be discussed in the seminar.
Bio: Rich Jolly is a PhD candidate in Systems Science and Business Administration at PSU. His interest is in the application of systems science tools and methodologies to business problems--in particular the flow of information in organizations. Rich currently works full time at Intel doing strategic marketing for server products.
File attached or Link to Recording?
Coming Soon
Date: May 29, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Chad Wiener
Title: R.G. Collingwood on Object and Method in History
Abstract: Historical knowledge seems problematic in several ways. First, the knowledge would be of particular events at a specific time and place. The standard scientific method of finding classes and constructing hypotheses to predict phenomena will not work for historical knowledge. Second, although historical knowledge is empirical, it is not clear that it can be confirmed or falsified by experiment. I will show how Collingwood argues historical knowledge is possible and defend his thesis that all history is the history of thought. His argument is based on the claim that the object of history is human actions, and human actions contain as one of its constituent elements thought. I will explain what a human action is for Collingwood and how we can have knowledge of such actions in the past.
Bio: Chad Wiener received his Masters in Social Science from the University of Chicago and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Georgia. He is currently working on scientific inquiry in Plato and Aristotle. He specifically works on Aristotle's biology and its connection to Aristotle's metaphysics and logic. He also dabbles in and intends to publish on methodology in history, especially on the thought of R.G. Collingwood.
File attached or Link to Recording?
Coming Soon
Date: May 22, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-12:50
Presenter: Bobby Cochran
Title: WHO´S MAKING DECISIONS IN MARKETS FOR ECOSYSTEM SERVICES?: Using Network Science to Reveal New Patterns
Abstract: Market-based approaches to meeting environmental goals present an exciting governance mechanism with a potential to bridge these divides between urban and rural communities, technocratic and deliberative forms of governance, and the equity issues of who is best able to produce environmental benefits. Using social network analysis, this research provides empirical support that the power of environmental markets as a bridge stems not from their conception as places of economic exchange, but as forums for new social exchanges as diverse stakeholders negotiate new institutional designs.
Bio: Bobby Cochran is an Adjunct Professor in the Dept of Urban Studies and Planning at Portland State and the Environmental Marketplace Analyst at Clean Water Services in Washington County. He has his PhD in Urban Studies and Masters in Conflict Resolution and Public Policy.
File attached or Link to Recording?
Coming Soon
Date: May 15, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Joshua Hughes
Title: Is the panarchy adaptive cycle a special case of the cusp catastrophe?
Abstract: Comparison of the panarchy adaptive cycle, a general model for human and natural systems, with the cusp catastrophe of catastrophe theory suggests that the adaptive cycle can be considered a special case of the cusp catastrophe. Both the adaptive cycle and the cusp catastrophe have been used to model various ecological, economic, and social systems in which slow, small, continuous changes in one or two control variables produce a fast, large, discontinuous change in system behavior. Use of the panarchy adaptive cycle, the more recent of the two, has so far been limited to that of metaphor, but the adaptive cycle still provides rich explanatory power and philosophical insight for many living systems. The cusp catastrophe, while often used as a metaphor, has been derived from topology and so is capable of being used much more rigorously. By using the constrained control variables from the adaptive cycle as parameters in the behavior equation for the cusp catastrophe, a cycle very similar to the adaptive cycle is constructed. Where the constructed cycle differs from the adaptive cycle is where the adaptive cycle is least well-defined, and several ways for eliminating this discrepancy are discussed. Considering the panarchy adaptive cycle to be a special case of the cusp catastrophe may provide direction for more rigorous and more general applications of the adaptive cycle, thereby extending its usefulness in guiding sustainability efforts, the primary purpose for which it was created.
Bio: Joshua Hughes is a first year, core-option PhD student in the PSU Systems Science Graduate Program. He is interested in information theory, cybernetics, reconstructability analysis, neural networks, fuzzy logic, catastrophe theory, game theory, and many other things.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p24958174/
Date: May 8, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenters: Rajesh Venkatachalapathy and Robin Fenske
Title: A Discussion about Science and Advocacy
Abstract: As scientists we strive for objectivity and developing unbiased knowledge in our research, but as human beings we often feel compelled to try to influence the systems we study...which can introduce bias. How do we/should we strike the proper balance between scientific objectivity and advocacy--trying to make the world a better place? Scientific ideas can be shared, but at what point do they become biased and inaccurate? Come and discuss 1) your own challenges with sharing your ideas while minimizing unnecessary bias, and 2) thoughts on how much advocacy of scientific ideas is too much or not enough (i.e. should scientists be advocates? At what point do we dilute, mystify, or popularize science too much? Perhaps there should be an interplay between objectivity (science) and functionality (advocacy), but the two ideas should remain separate).
Bio(s): Rajesh is currently a Systems Science student and is working with Martin Zwick on comparing RA with other Machine Learning Models. Robin is a second year PhD student in the Systems Science Graduate Program. She is a Core Student. She is interested in applying Systems Science to Sustainability in Food Systems, and Human Decision Making.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p13716382/
Date: May 1, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Jess Laventall
Title: It's the System: Crack Dealing and Systems Dynamics
Abstract: Crack dealing gangs may not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about systems dynamics. Yet, that is exactly what is described in Levitt and Dubner’s best-selling book, Freakonomics. These two economists devote a chapter to explaining why drug dealers still live with their mothers. Based on the study they reference, original research conducted by their colleague Sudhir Venkatesh, who actually infiltrated a notorious drug gang to collect data over a four year period, we find some revealing facts that inform and make apparent the behaviors of a dynamic system a drug gang operated under given the conditions described.
This presentation provides an overview of a systems dynamics approach to how a crack dealing drug gang operated in an inner-city environment. A model was constructed to explore the interaction effects of gang violence, finances and member recruitment. The volatility of the situation these gangs faced in their environment offers and excellent observable system.
Bio: Jess Laventall is a graduate certificate student in the Systems Science Department at Portland State University. He is co-founder of American Choice Modeling, an advanced market modeling and simulation firm. His background includes a wide variety of quantitative approaches to marketing and marketing research.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p80733809/
Date: April 24, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-12:50
Presenter: Lonneke Eeuwes
Title: Bioelectric fields in aquatic organisms: a hidden information source?
Abstract: All aquatic organisms are surrounded by a weak bioelectric field that consists of a direct current (DC) and an alternating current component (AC). The AC component is caused by (ventilatory) movements, whereas the DC component results from biochemical processes such as osmoregulation. A variety of factors modulate osmoregulation, which in turn causes the bioelectric fields to be dynamic in both strength and shape. Since bioelectric fields of electroreceptive fish exceed their behavioral detection tresholds, it is implied that information herein could be used by conspecifics.
Bio: My research interest is focused on how sensory information is processed by the neural system, especially in a complex (sensory) environment. I received a M.Sc. in Neurobiology/Zoology from Utrecht University (The Netherlands), where I did my PhD research as well. At the moment, I work as a postdoctoral research fellow at WSU on encoding of complex sounds in the mammalian auditory system.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p71075510/
Date: April 17, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Olgay Cangur
Title: Modeling Subprime Mortgage Delinquency, Termination and Loss
Abstract: The mortgage industry is facing a very challenging environment. Declining house prices have surfaced the importance of delinquency, loan default and loss predictions. Simple models of prepayment behavior are no longer applicable. Investors, originators, servicers and regulators are in need of accurate predictions for their portfolio of interest. My research focused on two topics relevant to modeling residential mortgages.
The first topic provided a framework for modeling delinquencies, prepayments, defaults and losses that represents an enhancement over previous studies. A total of nine loan payment statuses were used (current, thirty days late, sixty days late, ninety days late, early foreclosure, late foreclosure, real estate owned, paid in full, and terminated with loss). This framework was compared to the previous framework discussed in the literature that used seven statuses.
The second topic applied reconstructability analysis (RA) to residential mortgage data in order to find new and interesting models. Many statistical methods are unable to reflect non-linearities and significant high-level interactions. RA is capable of doing both. The study explored the performance of RA versus logistic regression (LR). It also explored the hypothesis that inclusion of RA suggested interaction effects improves the accuracy of the LR. All three methods were compared.
The first topic's result made two unique and important contributions to the mortgage management literature. First, it determined that nine-state framework yields more accurate results compared to the seven-state framework. It also introduced a new state 'terminated with loss' that enabled the framework to predict losses. The second topic's results confirmed that RA was helpful in detecting and suggesting interactions effects that can be utilized in the logistic regression models within the payment model framework. However, the research could not conclude that RA yields better results than LR as a standalone prediction methodology, due to computational constraints and methodological limitations.
Bio: Olgay is currently working as a research analyst for Wilshire Credit Corporation in Beaverton, Oregon. He is developing a mortgage payment model for predicting future mortgage loan behavior that is similar in some ways to the models described above. The Wilshire model is used for risk assessment and pricing of mortgage loans. He is also pursuing his PhD in the Systems Science Graduate Program at Portland State University. His dissertation topic is described above. His research interests include data mining, optimization, and dynamic modeling.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p50687609/
Date: April 10, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter(s): Ralf Juengling
Title: Reconstructing Piecewise Polynomial Functions with Leclerc's Algorithm
Abstract: In signal reconstruction one attempts to recover a "true signal" from noisy data. Ingredients for a successful approach include models of the true signal, sensors, and noise processes at differentstages of data acquisition. Reconstruction of smoothsignals is typically done by convolution. Reconstructionof signals with discontinuities can, in general, not bedone so cheaply.
Algorithms for reconstruction of different classes ofpiecewise smooth signals have been proposed. In 1989 Leclerc, motivated by work in image analysis, published an algorithm for reconstructing two-dimensional,piecewise polynomial signals from noisy data. Leclerc's algorithm features remarkable adaptivity: in addition torecovering regions over which the true signal is smooth, it reconstructs a signal with variable polynomial orderand variable noise parameters, each chosen on a per-regionbasis. While the algorithm is very powerful, it is alsocomputationally very expensive and, it seems, has not been adopted by other researchers since its invention.
In the first part of my talk I derive Leclerc's algorithm, which is cast in the form of an unconstrained optimization problem with a discontinuous objective function. A continuation method is devised to enable numerical optimization algorithms for this problem. In the second part I discuss my efforts to find an optimization method that would turn Leclerc's algorithm into practical tool for reconstruction.
Bio: Ralf Juengling is Portland State graduate student in the Computer Science department since 2004. Ralf's research interests are in machine learning and computer vision.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p50467851/
Date: April 3, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Bill Bloom
Title: Theory grounded in data
Abstract: Much research in Systems Science is quantitative in nature, relying upon applications of advanced mathematics, including statistics, calculus and similar disciplines. But the discipline is also amenable to qualitative research methodologies. One such methodology is grounded theory, which emphasizes the generation of "theory grounded in the data" using qualitative rather than quantitative techniques. Bill Bloom will lead a discussion on the application of grounded theory methodology within the business arena, using as an example his dissertation study of why some domestic manufacturers adapt successfully to the threats of global competition while others do not.
Bio: Bill Bloom has been in the SySc Ph.D. program since 2004, pursuing the business option. He practiced law in the Portland area for 20+ years before obtaining his MBA from PSU in 2001, and has been teaching business courses in Portland and overseas for the past several years. He is interested in the systemic aspects of globalization, in particular the dynamics of offshoring manufacturing jobs overseas in pursuit of low wages.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p58536053/
WINTER 2009
Date: March 13, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Robin Fenske
Title: What is your favorite tangible/physical metaphor related to Systems Science?
Abstract: Hoil and I were talking about metaphors related to different fields of study, and how these metaphors can be used to popularize or synthesize or iconify ideas in these fields of study. For example, the ideas/images of Bull and Bear markets are iconic to economics.
There are different levels of metaphors, more abstract and more concrete. For example, the image of the Supply and Demand curves are sometimes used as a metaphor or icon in economics, but it is more abstract (when not implemented) than the Bull and Bear ideas So maybe Systems Science also has some helpful and fun metaphors.
Try to limit yourself to a more concrete metaphor, and not a meta-metaphor, meaning, try to think of a metaphor that can be represented by a real world thing (like a butterfly effect) not a more abstract metaphor (e.g. not Zwick's Function and Structure).
More examples:
We'd like to talk about things like:
Butterfly effect
Maxwell's Demon
Slime mold
Cornucopia
We wouldn't like to talk about things like:
Emergence
Wholism and Holism
A Level and B Level
Hierarchy
Please bring your ideas to seminar and we'll compare and discuss.
Bio(s): Robin Fenske is a full time second year PhD student in the Systems Science Graduate Program at PSU. She is a Core Student. She is interested in applying Systems Science to Sustainability in Food Systems, and Human Decision Making. She is planning on taking Comprehensives in Spring 2010.
She is a research assistant for the Winter 2008 through Winter 2009 quarters with Dr. Wayne Wakeland and Dr. Mellie Pullman on a "Food Delivery Carbon Foodprint" inter-departmental research grant. This research is on sustainable food purchasing within institutions, exploring institutional buyers’ demographics, values, motivations, and decision-making in the supply chain. She is also developing her own research. She is interested in understanding consumer behavior, intention, and assumptions, and how this understanding can help promote sustainable food systems and lessen rampant consumerism. She is also very interested in applying Qualitative research methods to her research topic. She holds a Bachelor of Science from The Evergreen State College in Washington, and has professional experience as an energy economics research analyst.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p55669871/
Date: March 6, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Ed Ramsden
Title: Mechanics and Implementation of a Systems Dynamics Simulation Engine
Abstract: System dynamics models can be developed using either general-purpose programming languages such as 'C++', or specialized modeling tools such as Vensim, Stella, or Powersim. The discussion this week will be on the
development of a simple system dynamics modeling tool, and will encompass the topics of data structures and algorithms used 'under the hood' in this type of software.
Bio: None
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p20739208/
Date: February 27, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Rajesh Venkatachalapathy
Title: In silico Experiments and Simulation
Abstract: In silico experiments have become common place practice in all areas of science as an accepted way of discovering knowledge. However there is no rigorous foundation on which the methods and practice stand. Our discussion this week will be on gathering opinion on what is the right and the wrong way to do simulation and possibly seek patterns of implicit definitions that people use in their respective fields.
Bio: None
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p47116900/
Date: February 20, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: James Kar
Title: Reconstructability analysis (RA) as an alternative modeling technique for time-series prediction
Abstract: RA is based in information-theory and uses the principle of maximum (Shannon) entropy to fit models. Specifically, we explore RA models for predicting stock market returns (S&P500). Using thirteen (13) macroeconomic and financial variables, we find that according to the BIC model selection criterion the best model uses only one predictor. For the sample sub-period from January 3, 2003 to October 15, 2008, the best model uses DAX as the predictor. However, for the sample sub-period from January 3, 2002 to October 15, 2008, and for the entire sample period from January 3, 2001 to October 15, 2008, the best model uses FTSE instead. This signals possible changes in the underlying (data) structure of the stock market over time. The surprising result is that, according to BIC, no model is predictive beyond 1-day ahead forecasting.
Bio: James is a practicing certified financial planner (CFP) focusing on global investment and stocks and options trading. He had taught a variety of finance courses at Portland State University, such as Investment, and Equity Valuation. He has an undergraduate degree in business (finance) and a master's degree in taxation. Currently, James is working on his PhD in Systems Science/Finance where he specializes in financial market forecasting.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p23363363/
Date: February 13, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Martin Zwick
Title: Reconstructability Analysis in Biomedical Research
Abstract: This talk will briefly explain reconstructability analysis (RA), a graphical modeling methodology developed in the systems community from the early work of Ashby. RA is based in information theory and graph theory and both overlaps and augments more widely known machine learning and statistical methods such as log-linear models and Bayesian networks. The talk will report on the use of RA in a recent bioinformatics study of human gene (SNP)- disease (diabetes) association and epistasis, and will mention some other biomedical applications.
Bio: Martin Zwick is a core faculty member in Systems Science.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p11503839/
Date: February 6, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Rod Walker
Title: Management Training Simulations Using System Dynamics Models
Abstract: In the first edition of The Fifth Discipline, written over 18 years ago, Peter Senge made a strong case for "microworlds" business simulations which allow managers to "learn by doing". Despite his endorsement and their intuitive appeal, successful simulations of this type are still relatively rare. In the last 5 years, we have successfully implemented 4 large online training simulations, all built around iThink/Stella models of relevant parts of the client?s business. Two of these simulations were created for executive training at Fortune 500 firms. We have seen strong acceptance for these simulations, and the internal system dynamics models provide a way to generate the rich, realistic experiences that are critical for this type of learning. This presentation will discuss some of these simulations, their general structure, key implementation considerations, and important characteristics.
Bio: Rod Walker is a current student in Systems Science, and is a management consultant with a concentration in business dynamics. He holds BSEE and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. After 25 years as an engineer, manager, and executive at Texas Instruments and Compaq Computer, Mr. Walker left Compaq in 1998 to begin consulting. As a VP at Compaq, he participated in several corporate-wide projects utilizing systems modeling experts with McKinsey & Company. The breakthrough nature of those projects prompted the inclusion of business simulation modeling as part of his emerging consulting practice.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p40325441/
Date: January 30, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter(s): Christof Teuscher, Portland State University, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
http://www.teuscher.ch/christof
Title: Computers: Quo Vadis?
Abstract: Since the beginning of modern computer science some sixty years ago, we are building computers in more or less the same way. Silicon electronics serves as a physical substrate, the von Neumann architecture provides a computer design model, while the abstract Turing machine concept supports the theoretical foundations. However, the landscape of computing machines and computing paradigms is changing. The reasons are diverse and I will start this talk by highlighting the major trends and challenges. I will outline my visionary and long-term research efforts to address the grand challenge of building, organizing, and programming future computing machines. I will delineate potential solutions on how these challenges might be addressed. Self-assembled nano-scale electronics, cellular automata (CAs), and random boolean networks (RBNs) will serve as a simple showcase. Last, I will discuss the need for novel paradigms and unconventional solutions to address complexity issues, to obtain self-adaptation, self-(re)configuration, self-repair, and to build more adaptive, cognitive, and robust machines.
Bio: Christof Teuscher holds an assistant professor position in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Portland State University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor appointment in Computer Science at the University of New Mexico (UNM). He obtained his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degree in computer science from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in 2000 and 2004 respectively. In 2004 he became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in 2005 a distinguished Director's Postdoctoral Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and in 2007 a Technical Staff Member. His main research interests include emerging computing architectures and paradigms, biologically-inspired computing, complex & adaptive systems, and cognitive science. Teuscher has received several prestigious awards and fellowships. For more information visit: http://www.teuscher.ch/christof
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p40269281/
Date: January 23, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: Dr. Christopher Joel Dubay
Title: Systems Biology for Health & Disease
Abstract: None
Bio: Dr. Dubay's primary research interest is in complex genetic diseases (e.g. diabetes, hypertension, etc.) and the dissection of their genetic basis in model systems and eventually humans.
I have concentrated on the use of bioinformatic tools to aid in the scaling up of experiments and analyses required to address the isolation of multiple genetic loci present in complex traits. I currently direct the Oregon National Primate Research Center Colony Demographics & Informatics unit, which provides bioinformatic tools and genetics resources to support colony management and our research on a wide variety disease models for translational research.
I hold joint appointments in the departments of Medical Molecular Genetics and Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology in the Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine, where I support research and training in bioinformatics and related subjects. I am interested in developing and evaluating systems for clinical and research genetic analysis laboratories, such as laboratory information systems, and translating our new biological knowledge into clinical interventions. I am a founder of Genetic Information Management Systems, and an information management consultant for Proteogenix Inc, as well as a board member of the personal genomics firm Iverson Genetics.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date: January 16, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenters: Wayne Wakeland and Hoil Kang
Title: Web-based Remote Access Curriculum Delivery
Abstract: A discussion and demonstration of synchronous web-based remote access course delivery technology, including thoughts about why this technology will become increasingly important in the future.
Bio: Wayne is a core Systems Science faculty member with a wide variety of research interests, including topics related to computer simulation and sustainability.
File attached or Link to Recording?
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/p40983065/
Date: January 9, 2009
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-1 pm
Presenter: None
Title: Discussion on Systems Science for Undergraduates at PSU
Abstract: None
Bio: None
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
FALL 2008
Date: December 5, 2008
Location: Harder House, Room 104
Time: 12-12:50
Presenter: Robin Fenske
Title: Systems Science Community
Abstract: The general topic is: How communication platforms help us strengthen our Systems Science community AND How to communicate with non Systems Scientists about this crazy grad program you're involved in.
It's hard to communicate within our own Systems Science community about what we are all working on, and to express in a cohesive way the multitude of ideas from all the classes we've taken. And it's even harder to talk to our relatives and friends about what we are interested in. As espoused generalists, why is this so hard to do? What communication platforms might help us strengthen our own Systems Science community? Let's talk about it!
Bio: Robin Fenske is a 2nd year PhD Student, interested in understanding consumer behavior (and the level of conscious decision-making), intention, and assumptions, and how this understanding can help promote sustainable food systems and lessen rampant consumerism.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
November 21, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-12:50
Presenter(s):
Louis Macovsky, DVM, MS
Title:
From Computer Model to Laboratory Model: Action at a Distance in Metapopulation Theory
Abstract:
Built upon metapopulation theory, a toxicant-dosed model was created to explore the range of possible dynamics of populations in sites contaminated by chemical toxins. A laboratory model using the beetle Tribolium castaneum was then created to partially test simulation results. Both the computer and the laboratory models support the “action at a distance” hypothesis, which states that mortality in one subpopulation has ecologically significant effects on nondosed subpopulations. Principle conclusions from these studies include: 1) If populations are connected by migration, uncontaminated sites cannot be reference sites. 2) The arrangement of patches is critical to overall impact of a toxicant. 3) If sufficient cleanup is not possible, it may be necessary to isolate the contaminated patch allowing formerly connected patches to regain more typical population dynamics.
Bio(s):
Louis Macovsky is a veterinarian (UGA, 76) with a wide range of practice experience (household pets, farm, and wildlife). With a lifelong interest in ecology, he returned to school and in 1999 received a MS (Environmental Science) at Huxley College of the Environment, WWU. It was during the latter that Louis was introduced to computer modeling. Since that time his primary interest has been exploring biological systems using computer modeling and simulation, particularly with the System Dynamics methodology. It is his intention to apply this approach of understanding and education to bring together stakeholders of current biological and ecological problems.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
November 14, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Ed Ramsden
Title:
High Performace Discrete-System Simulation using Specialized Hardware
Abstract:
Common discrete-event (DE) simulation algorithms are both compute-intensive, and can be difficult to effectively partition for parallel execution on multiprocessors or other parallel computer architectures. By modeling the discrete-event system as a series of discrete-time state machines, it is possible to map certain types of DE models onto special-purpose electronic hardware - in effect a discrete analog computer. This computataional approach offers the potential for order-of-magnitude performance improvements over execution on general-purpose computer architectures.
Bio(s):
Ed Ramsden is currently an MS candidate in the Systems Science core program at PSU. Previously, he worked in the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing industries in a variety of technical and marketing positions, and holds a BSEE from Boston University
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
November 7, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Rod Walker
Title:
An Agent-Based Simulation of Stock Market Behavior
Abstract:
How much do investors really understand about how stock markets work? Even professional investment advisers over the last 20 years have generally recommended "buy and hold" strategies, implicitly admitting that they do not understand the markets very well themselves. Other investors believe they can do better using certain signals that tell them when to enter or exit the market. Traders buy and sell many times a day. To what extent do all of these different strategies actually affect the market itself? For example, if enough people follow a "buy and hold" strategy even Ponzi schemes will work -- until the scheme runs out of enough new investors. Stock markets are complex systems that are difficult to understand. Earnings seem to be important, but in the days of the dot-com boom, profits were almost seen as a bad thing. News events seem to be important, but stocks frequently rise on bad news and fall on good news. Investor sentiment seems to be important, yet markets are described as "climbing a wall of worry", with prices improving the most during times when most people think they won't. Given the complexity of the system, an agent-based simulation model has been created as a tool for exploring market behavior. This initial model will be presented for discussion. Rod Walker is a management consultant with a concentration in business dynamics. He holds BSEE and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. After 25 years as an engineer, manager, and executive at Texas Instruments and Compaq Computer, Mr. Walker left Compaq in 1998 to begin consulting. As a VP at Compaq, he participated in several important projects utilizing systems modeling experts with McKinsey & Company. The breakthrough nature of those projects prompted the inclusion of business simulation modeling as part of his emerging consulting practice
Bio(s):
Rod Walker is a current student in Systems Science, and is a management consultant with a concentration in business dynamics. He holds BSEE and MBA degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. After 25 years as an engineer, manager, and executive at Texas Instruments and Compaq Computer, Mr. Walker left Compaq in 1998 to begin consulting. As a VP at Compaq, he participated in several corporate-wide projects utilizing systems modeling experts with McKinsey & Company. The breakthrough nature of those projects prompted the inclusion of business simulation modeling as part of his emerging consulting practice.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 31, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Jeff Fletcher
Title:
A Simple and General Explanation for the Evolution of Altruism
Abstract:
This talk presents a simple framework that highlights the most fundamental requirement for the evolution of altruism: assortment between individuals carrying the cooperative genotype and the helping behaviors of others with which these individuals interact. The framework decomposes fitness effects on individuals into those due to self and those due to the individual's ‘interaction environment’. For altruism to evolve, interaction environments experienced by altruists must be more generous than interaction environments experienced by non-altruists. This framework underlies, and is more general than, traditional explanations for the evolution of altruism (e.g. kin selection, multilevel selection, and reciprocal altruism). While kinship (genetic similarity) among those interacting is one way favorable interaction environments may be created, kinship is not a requirement for the evolution of altruism (as has been recently argued). In fact, even suicidal aid can theoretically evolve without help ever being exchanged among genetically similar individuals. This simple framework also helps clarify a common confusion made in the literature between alternative fitness accounting methods (which may equally apply to the same biological circumstances) and unique causal mechanisms for creating the assortment necessary for altruism to be favored by natural selection.
Bio(s):
Jeff Fletcher's research focuses on understanding the relationship among different theories on the evolution of altruism. He is also interested in developing ways to create more cooperative learning environments in the classroom and introducing undergraduate students to System Science ideas. He has a BS in Biology, an MS in Computer Science, and a Ph.D. in Systems Science. Jeff recently completed an NSF International Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia where he did research in the Department of Zoology and taught in the Integrated Science Program. He currently has a joint appointment in the University Studies Program and the Systems Science Graduate Program here at Portland State University.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 24, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Tim Kochanski
Title:
A deeper understanding of iteration in simulations
Abstract:
I present an iterative model, programmed in Mathematica, which solves time paths for repeated Cournot games allowing us to see how output, price, profits, and market share in the 2-firm case change over time when one firm experiences per turn marginal cost reductions. By adjusting the marginal cost reduction rate for one firm and iterating, students can explore the various solutions and gain a better understanding of how the variables in the model diverge over time and the properties of that divergence. More generally, students gain experience designing models and programming in Mathematica and furthermore develop a deeper understanding of iteration in simulations.
Bio(s):
Formal Education and Project Background
Ph.D. Program Systems Science - Economics, Portland State University
M.S. Economics, U. of Oregon
B.A. Economics U. of Kansas
My primary academic interests include the history and practice of computational economics. The following presentation is based on a computational microeconomic project that I developed as an assignment in an undergraduate mathematics course. The theoretical model is common in undergraduate Industrial Organization texts today. While teaching at the University of Alaska Southeast I incorporated the project into the microeconomics course I was teaching and wrote up a paper. I modeled the paper after one that I had read in CHEER (Computers in Higher Education Economics Review). I presented the paper at a regional economics teaching conference, made a few changes, and submitted it to CHEER where it was recently published.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 17, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dan Coates
Title:
What do we really understand about natural vision?
Controversy, consensus, and future directions in visual cognition, as informed by computational neuroscience.
Abstract:
The visual cortex is one of the most widely studied parts of the brain, and some believe it may be the key to cracking the so-called 'neural code.' Yet even after more than 50 years of intense scrutiny many mysteries remain. This talk offers an overview of the wide spectrum of fact and opinion in neural sensory processing.
Implementation of neural models, including recent computational studies, could provide insight into how we perceive and may help us understand the nature of cognition itself. Here particular attention will be paid to theories containing holistic notions, such as the Gestalt school of thought. It will be argued that only dynamic structured representations with intrinsic systematicity can accurately simulate neural function.
Bio(s):
Dan Coates is a Master's student in Computer Science at Portland State. He was recently an intern at Los Alamos Laboratory working with the PetaVision team building high-performance cortically-inspired models for visual object recognition. He is currently studying Gestalt perception in Melanie Mitchell's group, as well as working with Dan Hammerstrom on neurally-inspired hardware platforms.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 10, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Rajesh Venkatachalapathy
Title:
RA and other Graphical Models
Abstract:
Graphical Models are one of the most used cook-book recipes in Machine Learning applications involving categorical data. After an introduction to Machine Learning and its connection with other fields (past,present,future),this talk will survey the connections between Reconstructibility Analysis and the more well known Graphical Models.
Bio(s):
Rajesh is currently a Systems Science student and is working with Martin Zwick on comparing RA with other Machine Learning Models.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
June 6, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Scott Schecklman
Title:
Terahertz Rough Surface Scattering
Abstract:
"Terahertz research is one of the most intriguing and challenging fields to emerge in the 21st century. In less than a decade, this previously hidden section of the electromagnetic spectrum has caught the imagination of scientists around the world." ~ Gwo-Ching Wang, Physics Chair, RPI
Recent advances in laser technology have made it possible for scientists and engineers to access the far infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Within this so-called "THz gap" most non-polar packaging materials become transparent, while many other materials of interest have molecular resonances which can be used for spectroscopic detection and identification. This technology is proving to be useful in security screening and medical scanning for remote detection of drugs, explosives and even skin cancer.
However, at THz frequencies the penetration depth in hydrated materials, such as the human body, is quite limited. This restricts the usefulness of THz imaging to surface scans in a reflection arrangement. Furthermore, due to the very short wavelengths (hundreds of microns) many materials of interest appear to have random rough surfaces in this regime. Thus scattering of THz waves from rough surfaces threatens to corrupt THz spectroscopy and imaging measurements.
The Northwest Electromagnetic and Acoustics Research (NEAR) Lab at PSU is developing analytic and numeric algorithms to model electromagnetic wave scattering from random rough surfaces such as sandpaper. These models may one day be used to account for the scattering effect and recover the THz signature for material identification.
Bio(s):
Scott Shecklman received a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 1995. He worked for over 10 years as a radio frequency engineer designing and optimizing antenna systems and wireless telecommunications networks for Sprint, Qwest and US Cellular. Scott returned to school full time in 2007 and is currently pursuing a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering at Portland State University. He works as a research assistant for Professor Lisa Zurk in the Northwest Electromagnetic and Acoustics Research (NEAR) Lab and hopes to graduate in the fall of 2008.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 30, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Tim Kochanski
Title:
An Agent Based Cournot Simulation with Innovation – Identifying the Determinants of Market Concentration
Abstract:
This paper uses an agent based Cournot simulation to study the effects of innovation on market concentration, as measured by a Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), under various market conditions. The model accommodates the following components: multiple firms with heterogeneous marginal costs, market entry and exit, barriers to entry, low or high cost industries, changing demand, varying levels of marginal cost reducing returns-to-innovation, varying costs associated with innovation, cost penalties for new entrants, increased returns to innovation from past experience innovating, and varying propensities to innovate within the market. The components mentioned above are commonly sited as determinants of market concentration.
To study the effects that each parameter has on market concentration a sensitivity analysis similar to that developed by previous research is employed (Brenner, Thomas 2001). Parameter ranges are specified based on economic theory and logical reasoning given the numeric values assigned to the intercept and slope of the demand function. All parameters are varied simultaneously except one which is varied systematically. At each setting of the systematically varied parameter a number of HHI means are collected in a sample. The systematically varied parameter is adjusted incrementally so that samples for a number of settings are generated.
The mean value of the HHI means is then collected for each sample. Via regression analysis, a line of best fit is used to estimate the effect of the systematically varied parameter on market concentration measured as the firm-adjusted HHI. A t-test is then performed to determine if the variation in HHI caused by each systematically varied parameter, given random variation in the other parameters, is statistically significant. The findings, which are consistent with economic theory, suggest that innovation in high cost industries leads to greater market concentration than does innovation in low cost industries, innovation under increasing demand leads to lower market concentration than does innovation under decreasing demand, and innovation under high barriers to entry lead to increased market concentration.
Bio(s):
Tim Kochanski was raised in a small college town in Kansas. After many trials, tribulations, and near-death experiences, he graduated from the University of Kansas with a B.A. in economics and made his way to Oregon arriving around the turn of the new millennium. He received his M.S. in economics from the University of Oregon in 2001 and started thinking about systems science as a possible doctoral program based on a buddy's recommendation. He worked many odd jobs through 2005 and audited many math classes at the U of O. In 2005 he took a part-time visiting professor position in Alaska and returned to Portland the following year to begin his Ph.D. in Systems Science - Economics.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 23, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Katie McDonald, Dora Raymaker, Christina Nicolaidis
Title:
Participatory Action Research Strategies with Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Advancing Scientifically Sound, Socially Relevant, Ethical Research
Abstract:
To address negative attitudes towards individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), promote self-determination, and increase positive development, scientists have been called to embrace new research strategies. Participatory action research (PAR), which brings researchers and individuals with IDD into partnership, encourages science that recognizes the contribution of individuals with IDDs, focuses on issues of importance to individuals with IDDs, and better positions those individuals to improve their lives. Here, we discuss how principles of PAR foster scientifically sound, socially relevant, ethical research aimed at promoting positive social change. We will provide examples from an autistic-academic researcher partnership, the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (AASPIRE). We will also relate PAR and AASPIRE with concepts from Senge's _The Fifth Discipline_, the value of multiple perspectives, and ecological models of research.
Bio(s):
None
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 16, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. Martin Zwick
Title:
Systems Metaphysics: A Bridge from Science to Religion
Abstract:
"Systems theory" is familiar to many as the scientific enterprise that includes the study of chaos, networks, and complex adaptive systems. It is less widely appreciated that the systems research program offers a world view that transcends the individual scientific disciplines. We do not live, as some argue, in a post-metaphysical age, but rather at a time when a new metaphysics is being constructed. This metaphysics is scientific and derives from graph theory, information theory, non-linear dynamics, decision theory, game theory, generalized evolution, and other transdisciplinary theories. These 'systems' theories focus on form and process, independent of materiality; they are thus relevant to both the natural and social sciences and even to the humanities and the arts. Concerned more with the complex than the very small or very large, they constitute a metaphysics that is centered in biology, and thus near rather than far from the human scale.
Systems metaphysics forges a unity of science based on what is general instead of what is fundamental; it is thus genuinely about everything. It counters the nihilism of narrow interpretations of science by affirming the link between fact and value and the reality of purpose and freedom in the natural world. It offers scientific knowledge that is individually useful as a source of insight, not merely societally useful as a source of technology. With the new world view that it brings, systems metaphysics contributes to the recovery of cultural coherence. It builds a philosophical bridge between science and religion that is informed by our understanding of living systems. It suggests a secular theodicy in which imperfection is lawful yet perfecting is always possible, and uses this perspective to analyze religions as systems. It provides scientific insights into traditional religious concepts, including those ideas that guide spiritual practice.
Full paper at: http://www.metanexus.net/magazine/tabid/68/id/10051/Default.aspx
Related papers at: http://www.pdx.edu/sysc/research_systemsphilosophy.html
Bio(s):
Martin Zwick was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics at MIT in 1968, and joined the Biophysics Department faculty of the University of Chicago in 1969. Initially working in crystallography and macromolecular structure, his interests shifted to systems theory and methodology, the field now known as the study of chaos, complexity, and complex adaptive systems. Since 1976 he has been teaching and doing research in the Systems Science PhD Program at Portland State University; during the years 1984-1989 he was director of the program.
His main research areas are information theoretic modeling, machine learning, theoretical biology, game theory, and systems theory and philosophy. Scientifically, his focus is on applying systems theory and methodology to the natural and social sciences, most recently to biomedical data analysis, the evolution of cooperation, and sustainability. Philosophically, his focus is on how systems ideas relate to classical and contemporary philosophy, how they offer a bridge between science and religion, and how they can help us understand and address societal problems.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 2, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. George G. Lendaris
Title:
Some Ideas on How to Achieve Human-Like Experience-Based Control via Computational Agents – and Lots of Unanswered Questions
Abstract:
Distinguishing features of human-like control vis-à-vis current technological control include the abilities to make use of experience while selecting control policies for distinct situations, and to do so faster and faster as more experience is gained. The latter is in stark contrast to current technological implementations that slow down as more knowledge is stored. How do we humans do it? The notions of context and context discernment are posited to be important stepping stones to understanding and implementing these human abilities.
Whereas methods known as Adaptive Control and Learning Control focus on modifying the design of a controller as changes in context occur, experience-based control (EB) entails selecting a controller design from a collection of designs previously developed for similar contexts. Developing the EB approach entails a shift of the technologist's focus "up a level", away from designing individual (optimal) controllers to that of developing on-line algorithms that efficiently and effectively select designs from a repository of existing controller solutions, previously populated via "experience".
A notion to be described is that of Higher Level Learning Algorithm. This is a new application of Reinforcement Learning -- Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) variety -- with its focus shifted to the posited higher level. Some promising examples will be described.
Bio(s):
George G. Lendaris is Professor of Systems Science and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Portland State University.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
April 25, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. Radu Popa
Title:
Fundamental asymmetries and the origin of homochiral order
Abstract:
Attached
Bio(s):
Dr. Popa is an associate professor of microbiology at Portland State University. His research projects include Microbial Ecology, Geomicrobiology, and Astrobiology. He previously worked as a research assistant professor at USC, and a post doctoral fellow at the Jet Propulstion Laboratory at Caltech. He is the author of the book, "Between Necessity and Probability: Searching for the Definition and Origin of Life."
File attached or Link to Recording?
.pdf
Date:
April 18, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Edward Ramsden
Title:
Simulation with Distributed Variables
Abstract:
Physical systems with spatially distributed variables are widespread in scientific and engineering models. Examples of such systems include electro-magnetic fields and mechanical vibrations. Modeling and simulating these systems requires techniques that are significantly different from than those used for either traditional systems dynamics or discrete event systems. This seminar will describe some of the techniques for formulating models of these types of systems and simulating them.
Bio(s):
Ed is currently working toward an MS in Systems Science. Before that, he spent twenty years working in the field of electronic engineering.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
April 11, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. Steve Bleiler
Title:
An Introduction to the Quantum Theory of Games
Abstract:
Computers and networks that exploit the bizarre properties of quantum mechanics will have capabilities far exceeding those of the conventional computing environment. The encryption of data, the searching databases, and even the play of simple games such as on-line poker will undergo profound changes when implemented in the quantum environment.
This is because players who communicate their strategic choices via quantum channels can, in effect, put their strategic choices in superposition, and thus have access to a vastly larger selection of strategic choices than that available to players communicating via classical channels.
For some simple games, it is enough that one player have access to these quantum strategies when the other does not to ensure the first player's certain victory. Yet for most two-player games, mere access to quantum strategies is merely an expensive way to implement what game theorists call mixed strategies. Strategic choices in a mixed strategy are determined randomly with specific probabilities by the individual players. Accessing the larger collection of quantum strategies in this instance requires the utilization of yet another strange phenomenon of the quantum world, that of entanglement. In the entangled version of a given game new "solutions" to the game present themselves that perform better than the "solutions" available to players of the classical version.
The talk will begin with a brief review of the relevant axioms of quantum mechanics. After a short discussion of what is meant by a "quantization" of a game, we will consider some simple examples, D. Meyers original "penny flip" game and a specific entangled protocol, originally developed by Eisert, Wilkens and Lowenstein, for quantizing simple games via mediated quantum communication. If time allows, by appealing to a quaternionic representation of the EWL protocol developed by S. Landsburg, we'll illustrate the final sentence of the previous paragraph for a simplified form of poker, where "quantum" bluffing is always more profitable than bluffing "classically", and even is profitable when classical bluffing is not!
Bio(s):
As for me: I received my Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Oregon in 1981, have held positions at the Universities of Texas, Utah, British Columbia, and Melbourne (Australia) in addition to my Professorship at PSU where I have been since September of 1988. I am the author of nearly 30 scientific articles and books (some of which have been translated into Russian), have a knot named after me, and am an accomplished juggler, poker player, x-country skier, and mountaineer. In 2003 I was the Mathematical Association of America's Distinguished Teacher for the Pacific Northwest and I hold a John Elliot Allan Award for Distinguished Teaching here at PSU. Classically trained as a topologist, I have published papers in topology, geometry, combinatorics, group theory, chaos, fractals , and solotons, and now game theory. In my spare time, I competed in the Championship event of the WSOP in 2003 and 2007 (finishing 297th out of 839 in 2003 and 2145th out of 8757 in 2007) playing my way in through the satellite system in 2003 and on-line in 2007.
My lectures on the game theory of poker at places such as the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, the University of Illinois-Chicago, the University of Washington, and Oregon State University, have played to sold out crowds. I teach a course here at PSU on the mathematics of poker (next offered this coming summer) and the notes for which are scheduled to be published in book form in the Springer-Verlag Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics Series.
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Date:
April 4, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Joe Fusion
Title:
Python for the Systems Scientist
Abstract:
In this seminar, I will present an overview of the Python programming language. Python is a high-level, general-purpose language, available on many platforms. It features a large standard library of useful extensions, and the ability to connect to many other languages and protocols. These characteristics, and many others, make Python a highly useful tool for a wide variety of research tasks. My goal will be to familiarize you with these characteristics, rather than to teach programming. I'll show some examples, including how Python is used with Dr. Zwick's Occam software, and perhaps some other data processing and presentation techniques.
Bio(s):
Joe Fusion is a Ph.D. student in the core Systems Science program. His research interests include artificial life, theoretical biology, systems modeling, and philosophy.
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None
Date:
March 14, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
John Anasis
Bonneville Power Administration
Title:
Power System Congestion Management:
The Balance Between Reliability, Equity, and Economics
Abstract:
Load growth, the addition of new generation, and the lack of new transmission infrastructure over the past 10-20 years have placed an ever increasing strain on the electric power grid. Grid operators are finding that flows on the system are approaching or exceeding reliability limits more frequently. This loading of the power system up to or past its reliability limits is known as “congestion”. Grid operators have several competing criteria they must balance in order to manage congestion. They must take actions that preserve the reliability of the power system; however, they must do so in a manner that does not unfairly discriminate between participants in the power market. Their actions must also not result in large financial costs to all users of the grid.
Bio(s):
John Anasis received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Physics from the University of Portland in 1985 and a Masters in Public Administration from Portland State University in 1989. He is currently a student in the Systems Science Ph.D. program at Portland State. John joined the Bonneville Power Administration in 1985 as an electrical engineer in the Remedial Action Scheme design section of BPA's Control Engineering Branch. He has since held several positions with BPA's System Operations and Transmission Marketing groups where he has performed a wide range of duties, including power system analysis, development of operating instructions, determination of available transmission capacity for sale, tariff and business practice development, and the review of power industry restructuring issues. He is currently with BPA's Technical Operations Branch where his primary duties are the determination of safe operating limits for the BPA transmission grid.
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None
Date:
March 7, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Sharon Glaeser & Andrew Toland
Title:
Neural Networks and Call Recognition in Elephants
Abstract:
Relatively little is known about the vocal repertoire of Asian elephants. A categorization of basic call types and modifications of these call types by quantitative acoustic parameters is needed to examine acoustic variability within and among call types, to examine individuality, to determine meaning of calls via playback, and to develop rigorous call recognition algorithms for acoustic monitoring and census of wild populations. By studying communication of known individuals in the more controlled setting offered by captivity, more rigorous analyses can be done with regards to individuality, social context, variability, reproductive state, and perceived emotional state. This project aims to 1) categorize sounds by acoustic parameters, 2) define an acoustic repertoire of captive Asian elephants, 3) examine functional relevance of acoustic variability in a captive environment, 4) investigate individuality, 5) examine the function of low-frequency communication in captivity to determine potential impact of low-frequency anthropogenic noise, and 6) develop call recognition and potentially individual recognition algorithms for the Asian elephant acoustic repertoire. Through collaboration with Andrew Toland in Systems Science, neural networks are being used for call recognition by classifying elephant vocalizations from within a time series containing other acoustic events and background noises. Starting from a spectrographic representation of the vocalizations, a reduced representation is obtained using an autoassociative network. Following this, a recurrent neural network is trained to recognize the dynamic patterns associated with specific vocalization types. Early results indicate that the suggested architecture succeeds in classifying approximately 90% of the samples in the test set.
Bio(s):
Sharon Glaeser is a masters student in the Department of Biology at Portland State University. For her masters research she is studying acoustic communication in the Oregon Zoo's Asian elephants. In short, she aims to define an acoustic repertoire for Asian elephants, to investigate variability and individuality, to develop a call recognition algorithm through collaboration with Andrew Toland in Systems Science, and to provide a basis for comparisons between captive and wild Asian elephants and between Asian and African elephants. Her major advisor at PSU is Dr. Randy Zelick.
Andrew Toland is a graduate student in Systems Science, and is interested in neural networks.
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None
Date:
February 29, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dan Hammerstrom
ECE Department, PSU
Title:
The Cortical Algorithm As A Bayesian Network - Some Speculation
Abstract:
The semiconductor industry has been following Moore's law for over 40 years, enabling a revolution in computing that has had huge societal and industrial impact. The industry is now designing and manufacturing transistors that are in the 45 nanometer range, in chips that have over 1 billion transistors.
However, in spite of all this processing speed and cheap computing power, we still have not solved the hardest problems in computing, making computers more intelligent.
Motivated by the fact that biological systems have successfully dealt with similar issues, a number of researchers are beginning to look at biological models, primarily those from computational and systems neuroscience, and cognitive science, for inspiration for new chip architectures that are a better match to the molecular scale electronics.
A number of neuroscientists are focused, in particular, on cerebral cortex. Nature has, so it appears, produced a general purpose computational device in cortex that is a fundamental component of higher level intelligence. Although we are a long ways from understanding the details of how cortex works, some of the basic computations are beginning to take shape.
Preliminary speculation of the cortical algorithm assumes a modular structure, where each module is implemented by a simple associative network that does a kind of Bayesian inference. The modules are then organized in a 2D layout with sparse inter-module interconnect.
In this presentation I introduce the Bayesian Memory, which is loosely based on ideas and principles from the current, limited, understanding of cerebral cortex. We believe that the Bayesian Memory is a rough first step in creating a generalized building block for Intelligent systems and which has a clean mapping to hybrid CMOS / nano-electronic implementations.
Bio(s):
Dan Hammerstrom is Professor and Associate Dean for Research in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Portland State University.
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None
Date:
February 15, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Marek Perkowski
Title:
Engineering Introduction to Quantum Computing
Abstract:
The overview talk will present research on Quantum Computing performed by the group of Dr. Perkowski in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. It will include the presentation of basic quantum computing concepts, gates and circuits. The second part will present our research in synthesis of binary and multiple-valued quantum circuits, testing quantum circuits, quantum algorithms and specifically the Grover-based solving of combinatorial problems, especially from electronics CAD. Grover algorithm gives quadratic speedup on every NP problem provided that we can design a quantum oracle for it.
Bio(s):
Dr. Perkowski is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University. He is a member of the Portland Quantum Logic Group and the Portland Logic and Optimization Group. He is also the Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory at PSU. His interests include many aspects of machine learning, programming, and teaching. He teaches courses in Quantum Computing, Intelligent Robotics, Advanced Logic Synthesis, Robot Vision and Perception, among others.
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None
Date:
February 8, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Andrew Toland
Title:
Discussion of Mathematica
Abstract:
The seminar for Friday, Feb. 8 will be canceled due to an unfortunate scheduling misshap.
However, for those who are interested, Andrew Toland will continue his discussion of Mathematica by presenting several examples from class projects. The presentation will be ad-hoc, so there is not an abstract. The examples will come from numerical math and engineering courses mainly.
Bio(s):
None
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None
Date:
February 1, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Jeff Fletcher
Title:
Evolution of Altruism Theory: Different Accounting Methods or Different Causal Explanations?
Abstract:
For several decades the mechanisms by which altruistic and cooperative behaviors evolve have been vigorously debated. The main theories are kin selection (or inclusive fitness) theory, reciprocal altruism theory (including variations based on reputation, sanctions, and spatial structure), and multilevel (or group selection) theory. This debate has recently intensified in the literature with publications emphasizing the role of group selection in the evolution of eusociality and several articles in the last year that claim kin selection (genetic similarity between altruists and recipients) is the only mechanism that can account for biological altruism. My work has focused on unifying different theories of how altruism evolves and my talk will consider this recent controversy and its history from this perspective, including how these theories vary in their definitions of altruism and differences in the way they keep track of fitness consequences.
Bio(s):
Jeff Fletcher has a BS in Biology, an MS in Computer Science, and designed medical records software for 7 years. He completed his Ph.D. in Systems Science from Portland State University in 2004. He recently completed an NSF International Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of British Columbia, Department of Zoology, where he also taught in the Integrated Science Program. His research has focused on understanding the relationship among different theories on the evolution of altruism. Currently Jeff teaches for the University Studies and System Science Ph.D. Programs here at Portland State.
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None
Date:
January 25, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Robin Fenske
Title:
An Prisoner's Dilemma Solution in Agent Based Simulation
Abstract:
This model explores the problem of the Prisoner's Dilemma using Agent Based Simulation without the traditional solution of iterations with the same partner (Axelrod 1984).
Agent-based models differ from most computer models in that the computation is decentralized, not centralized. Each individual agent can have variables associated with it, instead of having variables representing the aggregate properties of the system. These variables can change as the agents move and interact with their environment. Agents can be identical or they can be of different 'breeds.' One can specify behaviors and decision-making rules for a each breed of agent and control each breed separately. The aggregate behavior "emerges" from the interaction of the agents and the environment. (From the class description). ABS is offered as SySc 525/625.
In an attempt to make the standard Prisoner's Dilemma model closer to real world community interactions, noniterative interactions were used, and methods of increasing cooperation in this setting were developed. Non-traditional solutions to the Prisoner's Dilemma have presented before, such as voluntary re-partnering (Joyce, Kennison, Densmore, Guerin, Barr, Charles, and Thompson, 2006) and (Boone & Macy, 1999), interpersonal commitment (Back & Flache, 2006), and reliance on personal experience (Fort, 2003). The model presented here is unique from the articles mentioned above. * *The agents in this model do not have an assigned multi-round pattern of behavior, nor do they have any memory of their own experience or knowledge of other agent's experiences.
Bio(s):
Robin Fenske is a full time first year PhD student in the Systems Science Graduate Program. She is interested in applying Systems Science concepts to Sustainability, Local Economies, and Human Decision Making. She holds a Bachelor of Science from The Evergreen State College. She is also working with Dr. Wayne Wakeland on a "Food Delivery Carbon Foodprint" inter-departmental research grant.
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None
Date:
January 18, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Andrew Toland
Title:
An Introduction to Mathematica
Abstract:
This week we'll take an introductory look at Mathematica, another commercially available math package. For students, I think it's well worth the price and the time to learn it. If I had to choose one piece of software to take with me to a desert island, this might be it (and I might need some time alone on a desert island to fully learn it). I hope to show the basics of interacting with the "front end" and enough syntax to feel comfortable getting started. We'll look at version 6, the latest version. It looks like it has some really nice new features for direct interactivity and visualization. Also, there has been a major revision in the help browser that should make the process of learning the software more accessible.
Bio(s):
Andrew Toland is a graduate student in the Systems Science department. He's had opportunities to use Mathematica in school and on the job (in the rare instances when he's actually had a job).
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None
Date:
January 11, 2008
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Lars Holmstrom
Title:
Demystifying the Matlab Computing Environment
Abstract:
Matlab is a software computing environment that is becoming more and more popular across a number of disciplines, including finance, biology, statistics, and, yes, Systems Science. While it may appear at first to be a high powered graphic calculator, its extensibility and toolbox expansions allow it to be much more. Unfortunately, this "everything" tool seems prohibitively complicated to many who may find it very valuable. In this seminar, I will be giving a tutorial on how to get your feet wet in the world of Matlab. All are welcome, but my target audience is people who have never heard of Matlab, have been curious about it, or are just getting started on this exciting path. I won't be focusing on individual toolboxes or techniques, but will rather make use of the time to demystify the startup phase and to provide people with the tools and direction for learning more on their own.
Bio(s):
Lars Holmstrom is a PhD student in the Systems Science Program at Portland State University. He often ponders what his life as a mathematical modeler would be like without Matlab and doesn't like where his mind wanders.
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None
Date:
November 30, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
Olgay Cangur
Title:
Modeling Subprime Delinquency, Termination and Loss
Abstract:
The proposed research focuses on several topics relevant to modeling residential mortgages while each topic is described separately, they will, in fact, be done in parallel and each influence the other. The first topic provides a framework for modeling prepayments and defaults that represents an enhancement over previous studies. A total of nine loan payment statuses will be used (current, thirty days late, sixty days late, ninety days late, early foreclosure, late foreclosure, real estate owned, paid off, and terminated with loss). This framework will be compared to the previous framework discussed in the literature that uses seven statuses.
The second topic will investigate the effect of a servicer's loan workout and their loss mitigation efforts on the finalized loan loss. Effect of the key variables related to loan workout and loss mitigation efforts will be tested for significance. A stand-alone loss model will be built to predict expected losses for a horizon of 6, 12, and 18 months incorporating these findings. The result will be compared to the existing loss models found in the literature.
The third topic will apply reconstructability analysis (RA) to modeling residential mortgage data in order to find new and interesting models. Many statistical methods are unable to reflect non-linearities and significant high-level interactions. RA is capable of doing both. The new modeling framework and the loss model, mentioned as the first and second topics respectively, will utilize the findings of the RA research. In order to prove the effectiveness of RA, results will be tested with actual data and compared with similar statistical models.
Bio(s):
Olgay has been a Systems Science student since 2002. He is currently working on his dissertation. He is also a full time employee of Merrill Lynch. His areas of interest are forecasting mortgage delinquencies.
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None
Date:
November 16, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. Niles Lehman
Title:
Self-replication and autocatalysis: How can chemicals come alive?
Abstract:
We are investigating the chemical origins of life on the Earth. According to practical definitions of "life" a collection of chemicals can only be alive if they can self-replicate, and this requires a chemical property known as autocatalysis. We have engineered a system of RNA molecules that we believe has this property, in that a collection of short oligomeric RNAs can spontaneously self-assemble into a self-replicating catalytic RNA. In this talk I will discuss the chemical nature of life itself and how our system may shed some insight into the abiotic-biotic transition on the Earth 4 billion years ago.
Bio(s):
Dr. Lehman is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Portland State University. He received his Ph.D. in Biology at UCLA, and his M.A. in Comparative Biochemistry at UC Berkeley. His research projects include quantitative studies of in vitro evolution of catalytic RNA, and computer parameterization, information-theoretical analysis, and modeling of the origins of life and of RNA evolution in vitro. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Molecular Evolution, an editorial board member of Astrobiology, and a faculty member of the Center for Life in Extreme Environments.
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None
Date:
November 9, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Cecily Froemke
Title:
National Material Capabilities Prediction of Conflict: A Non-Linear Approach Using Reconstructability Analysis.
Abstract:
This paper applies reconstructability analysis (RA), an approach developed in the systems science community and a tool of discrete multivariate modeling, to a selection of variables contained in data sets from the Correlates of War Project. The goal of this paper is to contribute the methods of reconstructability analysis to the field of international conflict. Specifically, I will look at the following questions: To what extent does a nation's material capabilities affect whether or not the nation becomes engaged in an international conflict? Additionally, how well do these material capabilities do in predicting the outcomes of international conflict?
Bio(s):
I am currently a graduate student in the Systems Science program and studying for comprehensive exams in the spring. I have an interest in all the elements and relations of Systems Science but am especially interested in information theory, from multiple perspectives at multiple scales. Discrete Multivariate Modeling is one of my more technical forays in this arena.
As for that thing I do from 8-5: I work as an Application Specialist with a local software company that participates in outcomes data management for cardiovascular, thoracic, transplant, orthopedic and vascular surgery.
I truly enjoy dialogue with folks from all walks of life, inside and outside of academia. Unfortunately, work has kept me from the wonderful happenings at Harder House lately, but I am looking forward to talking with you all on Friday!
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None
Date:
November 2, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Michael S. Johnson
Title:
Report back from M2007 Data Mining Conference
Abstract:
The annual MYYYY data mining conference brings together academic researchers, practitioners from a range of industries, and hardware/software vendors for presentations and discussions about data mining methods and applications. The conference is held in Las Vegas, home to some of the world's most experienced and sophisticated data mining practitioners (employed, for the most part, by the gaming industry). I'll provide an overview of this year's conference and will seed the discussion with some observations based on the presentations I attended.
Bio(s):
Michael S. Johnson (SYSC Ph.D. 2005) is the Director of the Utility for Care Data Analysis (UCDA), an analytical department within the Program Office of the Kaiser Permanente health care organization (KP). The UCDA was created in 2005 to improve the quality of care and service for KP's 8.7 million members by applying advanced analytical methods to the data accumulating in KP's electronic medical record system.
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None
Date:
October 26, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
Scott Mist
Title:
Can questionnaires be used to predict Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis?
Abstract:
Astonishingly, most Traditional Chinese Medicine (CM) research in the West proceeds without CM diagnoses, which raises serious questions. One way to improve the feasibility of incorporating CM diagnosis would be to prescreen participants using questionnaires. Consequently, Mr. Mist used baseline questionnaires to predict CM diagnosis in 195 participants of a temporomandibular joint disorder study.
Two methods, logistic regression (LR) and reconstructability analysis (RA), were used in conjunction to test Hypothesis 1. Models were created that predicted CM diagnosis from pre-treatment questionnaires. LR models were prepared to predict the diagnosis for each subject using direct effects only. Then variable-based and state-based RA techniques were used to select potentially important interaction terms. These terms were then introduced into the original LR model and assessed for clinical relevance, model simplification, and improved diagnosis prediction. Scott will present the methods and results of these efforts.
Bio(s):
Scott Mist is an acupuncturist and a Traditional Chinese Medicine researcher for the Oregon College of Oriental Medicine. Mr. Mist has worked on research funded by the National Institutes of Health for the last 8 years and is currently the project director for a multisite trial with the University of Arizona. Scott completed a post-graduate research fellowship through the NIH, was granted a NIH Loan Repayment Grant, and is currently completing his PhD in the Systems Science program.
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None
Date:
October 19, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
Wayne Wakeland
Title:
Effectiveness of a Web-based Training on the Carbon Content of Food
Abstract:
A project is underway to determine the degree to which people's knowledge and attitudes about how their food choices impact the environment can be influenced by participation in a short interactive web-based training. The training utilizes a tool called CarbonScope that was developed recently by Kumar Venkat. The training itself and the pre-test post-test questionnaires were developed by Lindsay Sears, a graduate student in Psychology. The seminar will give some background and then discuss the tool, the training, and the assessment aspects of the study.
Bio(s):
Wayne is a core Systems Science faculty member with a wide variety of research interests, including topics related to computer simulation and sustainability.
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None
Date:
October 12, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
Joe Fusion
Title:
Environmental Sensitivity and the Evolution of Altruism
Abstract:
We have seen several models of the evolution of altruism involving the Prisoner's Dilemma. This variation takes into account the affects of environmental stresses on the benefits of altruism. I used an agent-based/cellular model, and explored conditions such as hostile vs. friendly environments, and periodic bottlenecks. My current results will be presented, followed by a discussion of future directions.
Bio(s):
Joe Fusion is Ph.D. student in the Systems Science program at PSU. His research interests include artificial life, evolution, and modeling systems. His other interests include everything else.
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None
Date:
October 5, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
Lars Holmstrom
Title:
Assessing Wind Farm Avian Collision Risk: A Model Based Approach
Abstract:
Wind power is increasingly becoming recognized as a clean and viable renewable energy resource. Despite the fact that conversion to wind power can significantly offset greenhouse gas production on a global scale, there are still numerous environmental impacts to be considered. One of the primary impacts being researched is the effect of wind farms on bird and bat populations, both due to habitat disruption and direct collisions with the wind turbines themselves. This presentation will discuss a model based approach for estimating the mortality risk to birds and bats as a result of these collisions before the construction of a proposed wind farm is even begun. This information is a key step in assessing the environmental impact of these large scale installations and can influence whether construction is ever initiated.
Bio(s):
Lars Holmstrom is a PhD student in the System Science Department at Portland State University. While focusing on statistical, state based modeling and estimation techniques for his dissertation, this presentation reports the results of a summer project performed for a private environmental survey company.
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None
Date:
September 28, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
1-2 pm
Presenter(s):
None
Title:
Meet-n-Greet
Abstract:
For the first Friday of each term, the Seminar is usually a meet-and-greet type of get-together. For this Friday's Seminar, we will have a welcoming party for all Systems Science students. Refreshments will be served.
Bio(s):
None
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
June 1, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
None
Title:
System Science Round Table Discussion
Abstract:
This week, we will have our year-end round table discussion with students and faculty to address all things that are Systems Science (well, all things we have time for). This includes questions/gripes/compliments/discussions about courses, departmental direction, web presence, student lounge, etc. This is a great opportunity to touch base with each other and to share ideas. Hope to see you there!
Bio(s):
None
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 25, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Casey Quinlan
Title:
Cardiac protective signaling mechanisms and pathways to mitochondria
Abstract:
Cardioprotection is an endogenous phenomenon whereby the heart protects itself from a myocardial infarction, or heart attack. Cardioprotective drugs mimic this process by triggering cellular signaling events that target the mitochondria. The mechanistic delivery of the signal to mitochondria is an area of some debate. I will present data to support the hypothesis that administration of cardioprotective drugs induces assembly of a plasma membrane signaling platform. Subsequently, this platform interacts with mitochondria and opens the mitochondrial ATP-sensitive K+ channel.
Bio(s):
Casey Quinlan is a fourth year Ph.D. student in the biology department at Portland State University. Her work focuses on mitochondrial physiology and intracellular signaling pathways. She received her undergraduate degree in botany and did a brief foray studying ornithology before she realized that the only hope for civilization lay in mitochondrial bioenergetics. She has since worked tirelessly, with minimal compensation, to bring mitochondria to the people. She also enjoys spaghetti and the song "Dancing Queen" by the Swedish recording artists ABBA.
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None
Date:
May 18, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Byrne Lovell
Title:
Reflections on Systems Science and my career as an analyst at the Bonneville Power Administration.
Abstract:
I'm not in academia - I don't do research, and don't have a research specialty to talk about. I work in a fairly large, technically oriented bureaucracy on a variety of analytical tasks that generally can be described as quantitative decision support. I have had a successful career, and am now one of BPA's most senior technical experts. I will talk about how some of the themes from my first years in the Systems Science Ph.D. program relate to my success as an analyst here.
Bio(s):
BA, Math, Pomona College, 1974
MS, Counseling, Oregon, 1980
Ph.D., Systems Science (Uncertainty), PSU, 1995
I started working at BPA in the summer after my first year in the Systems Science Ph.D. Program. I did programming and modeling for the first few years, working with Monte Carlo production cost models and wrote a small, fast model that estimated the market value of BPA's surplus hydro energy. I spent several years in the Office of Finance, and then moved to BPA's Strategic Planning group for five years. I am now in the Chief Risk Officer's group. My particular field of expertise is the financial uncertainty BPA faces due to the highly variable annual supply of water, and various risk mitigation methods we can use in our rates to ensure that we can safely tolerate a very dry year when our power sales revenues are much lower than average.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 11, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Shari Matzner
Title:
Model-Based Information Extraction from Synthetic Aperture Radar Data
Abstract:
Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a remote sensing technology that is capable of imaging large areas at high resolution, and can operate at any time, day or night, and in cloudy conditions unlike optical and infrared sensors. SAR has been used primarily for remote monitoring of the natural environment, where the general or average characteristics of an area are of interest. Examples include land use and land cover studies, monitoring tree density in forested areas and estimating soil moisture content.
Conventional processing of the recorded SAR signal produces a two-dimensional image that is an estimate of the surface reflectivity. However, the nature of a SAR reflectivity image is very different from what we are used to seeing with our own optical sensors, our eyes. This makes extracting information about individual structures in the scene challenging. To extract this type of information requires a better understanding of the complicated electromagnetic scattering produced by structures and the impact of the synthetic image processing on these signatures.
This presentation will discuss how a physics-based model of a building can be used in conjunction with a model of the SAR sensor to formulate a building signature, which can then be used in the SAR signal processing to extract information about buildings present in the scene.
Bio(s):
Ms. Matzner is a Systems Science Ph.D. student currently working in the Northwest Electromagnetic and Acoustic Research (NEAR) Lab here at PSU.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
April 20, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Josef Lotz
Title:
The development of a remote sensor system for monitoring coral reef morphology and fish abundance
Abstract:
Current methods of coral reef morphology and fish abundance estimation are mature and well known among Fishery Sciences/Engineering researchers. They give highly precise estimations but are dependent on complex technology. Equipment costs have made basic estimation unobtainable to countries and researchers with small budgets. A Matlab toolbox, named EchoMap, is being developed at the NW Electromagnetic and Acoustics Research Lab (PSU) that produces morphology and abundance estimations using a low cost, single-beam echosounder by applying principles of acoustics and signal processing.
Bio(s):
Josef Lotz is a Master's of Science student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at PSU. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Portland State University in 2005. He was a member of the NW Computational Intelligence Laboratory in 2005-2006 and is currently a member of the NW Electromagnetic and Acoustics Laboratory.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
April 13, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
James McNames
Title:
Tracking Physiologic Rhythms
Abstract:
Physiologic signals are monitored in many medical applications for a variety of purposes such as diagnosis, prognosis, and locating pathologic tissue. Many of these signals contain rhythms and oscillations due to natural mechanisms, such as the respiratory and cardiac cycles, and pathologic mechanisms such as tremor in Parkinson's disease. Oscillations also occur in natural vocalizations such as speech, animal calls, and echo location. A wide variety of methods have been employed to study these signals ranging from techniques based on chaos theory, time series analysis, hidden Markov models, and detection theory. Members of the Biomedical Signal Processing Laboratory at Portland State University have recently started investigating a new approach based on nonlinear state space models and sequential Monte Carlo methods. During this talk Dr. McNames will define the problem, show several examples of signals from many different domains, summarize the applications, and show preliminary results of our new approach to this problem.
Bio(s):
James McNames received a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA, in 1992. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1995 and 1999, respectively.
He has been with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Portland State University, Portland, OR since 1999, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers. His primary research interest is statistical signal processing with applications to biomedical engineering.
He founded the Biomedical Signal Processing (BSP) Laboratory (bsp.pdx.edu) in fall 2000. The mission of the BSP Laboratory is to advance the art and science of extracting clinically significant information from physiologic signals. Members of the BSP Laboratory primarily focus on clinical projects in which the extracted information can help physicians or medical devices make better critical decisions and improve patient outcome.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
March 16, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Martin Jetton
Title:
Agent Based Simulation of Sales Floor Activity and Store Sales
Abstract:
In previous modeling of individual sales performance I have found that 'good' sales people can be identified during hiring using a personality trait assessment test. These better sales people perform around 3% better ($/hour) than individuals scoring lower on the personality assessment test percentile score. Using agent based simulation I model two kinds of sales people; those who score well (call them Green sales people) on a sales performance personality assessment and those who did not (call them not-Green sales people). The purpose of this study is to show that store sales variability (the probability that someone will buy at the given store and the amount they will purchase) masks the underlying value of these 'green' sales people if the sales people to customer ratio is low. I show the impact of percentages of green individuals in the store and total store sales relative to customer flow.
One of the reasons I'm using agent based simulation to address this sales person model is the fact that the complexity of human interactions can be tested without impacting the real world. There are a lot of fluffy thoughts around scheduling and testing the parameters of this situation will create a good learning environment to build upon. Human resource management is full of touchy feely individuals and situations that cannot be easily tested in the real world. ABS will allow me to set up a world that could be used to test or baseline rules of interaction on the sales floor relative to customer and sales person characteristics.
In attempting to tackle the chaotic nature of the sales floor in a retail environment, I've explored queuing based models using service models for a structured mathematical approach. I found integrating in other non-queuing rules difficult, if not impossible. I've encountered difficulties in the description and education of clients in the use of modeling environments such as systems dynamics and discrete event simulations, while I find the visual nature of ABS through NetLogo to be perfect to talk to and involve non-technical people in the analytical effort.
Bio(s):
Martin is a Practice Manager, Modeling and Analytics, Talent Management Division, Kronos Inc in Beaverton Oregon. He is enrolled in the Core PhD Systems Science program in his second year of class work. He has a Masters of Science in Operations Research / Applied Statistics, Oregon State University, 1989 and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematical Sciences from OSU, 1985.
Martin has around 17 years of experience ranging from Marketing Research, Product Marketing/Sales Performance analysis, Expert System development, Supply Chain Logistics and Human Capital management analytics.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
March 9, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Dan Iancu
Title:
Non-linear interaction between neurons underlie sensory processing in electric fish
Abstract:
The mormyrid electric fish displays extremely fine temporal resolution as measured in behavioral studies. The first stage of sensory processing, the sensory afferents, also display very precise temporal responses to electrical stimulation. The afferents are connected through gap junctions to the granular cells, which in addition receive a corollary discharge signal at the time of the electric pulse. The granular cells have a relatively long time constant, seemingly at odds with their presumed role as coincidence detectors. We use experimental data to build a compartmental model that investigates the mechanism by which the relative timing of the two inputs to the granular cells determines the effect of the afferent spike through the electrical synapse.
Bio(s):
Ovidiu Dan Iancu is currently a graduate student in the Biomedical Engineering PhD program (Oregon Health Sciences University) in Portland, Oregon. He completed his MS degree in Mathematics at Oregon State University (1999). For the last three years he has worked in the Roberts lab, where he studies the biophysical substrates of adaptive sensory processing. The model systems investigated in the Roberts lab include electrosensory fish and the neuronal substrates of song processing in zebra finches.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
March 2, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Andrew Toland
Title:
Temporal pattern classification using a biologically inspired coupled oscillator system
Abstract:
Drawing inspiration from one of nature's great pattern classifiers, the olfactory system, I demonstrate that a randomly instantiated coupled oscillator system can be used to improve the classification of time-series signals. The time series used to illustrate the principal are taken from sampled quadruped robot joint positions as the robot walks over surfaces of different characterists using a variety of gaits.
Bio(s):
Andrew Toland is a graduate student in the Systems Science Ph.D. Program. He has a background in physics and biology, and has done some work in image and signal processing. He is currently associated with the NW Computational Intelligence Laboratory, where he is exploring ideas such as the one described in the abstract.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
February 23, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
J. Alan Yeakley
Environmental Science
Portland State University
Title:
Nutrient Cycling in Forested Watershed Systems: Responses to Disturbance
Abstract:
I will discuss watershed ecosystem analysis with respect to both hydrologic and elemental (i.e. nutrient) system dynamics, with a particular focus on responses of nutrient fluxes to disturbance.
While much research has been done over the past 50 years on watershed ecosystems from a whole systems analysis standpoint, much less is known about internal mechanisms that control whole watershed systems responses. I will review a case study in a mountain watershed, where we investigated effects of removing near-stream understory vegetation and of natural blowdown of canopy trees on nutrient export to streams at the sub-watershed scale. The results from this study suggested that understory vegetation plays a relatively minor role in controlling nutrient export to headwater streams. Our results further suggested that nutrient uptake by canopy trees is a key control on nitrogen export in upland riparian zones, and disruption of the root-soil connection in canopy trees via uprooting can promote significant nutrient loss from the watershed ecosystem.
Bio(s):
J. Alan Yeakley is an Associate Professor of Environmental Science at Portland State University, in Portland, Oregon. Dr. Yeakley's research interests span ecosystem ecology and watershed hydrology, with a focus on riparian processes and urban ecology. He holds a BS in mathematics from Texas A&M-Commerce, an MS in environmental science from UT-Dallas and a Ph.D. in environmental science from the University of Virginia, where he was a presidential fellow. Alan has published articles in a variety of ecological science journals such as BioScience, Ecosystems, Ecology, Biogeochemistry and Landscape Ecology. He helped found the environmental science (ESR) undergraduate and masters programs at PSU, the Urban Ecosystem Research Consortium (UERC) of Portland/Vancouver, and is a member of the editorial board of ?coscience, an international journal of ecology. During this coming spring term, Alan will teach courses in Environmental Sustainability in Rosario, Argentina. For more information, please see http://web.pdx.edu/~yeakleya/alan.htm.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
February 16, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Radu Popa
Title:
Xenobiology - The other side of life
Abstract:
"Xenobiology - Scientific discipline aiming to decipher life, its origin and evolution apart from its physical makeup"
Many dynamic systems including fire, fluid vortices, periodic reactions, chemical automata, crystals while growing, computer games, economy, society, GAIA and the Internet have features resembling life. Common sense tells us these are not alive. Yet, in the absence of a material-independent and quantifiable description of life we cannot tell how close these systems are to become alive. If we expect life to exist on other celestial bodies or to be simulated by computer modeling and algorithmic chemistry, we have to acknowledge that the concept of life is independent of the particular materials living entities are made of. In Xenobiology the essence of life is independent of things such as proteins, DNA, carbon or even water; this discipline considers that Earth's prebiotic chemistry was just one of the many possible frameworks on which life could have originated. The truly universal features of life relate to: energy
flow, self-control, departure from thermodynamic equilibrium, handedness, complexity, manipulating information and adaptive evolution. The ultimate goal of Xenobiology is to identify conditions allowing life to self-originate without design. This presentation reviews challenges and approaches when connecting energy flow with changes in complexity and the origin of genetic information. This approach requires connecting disequilibrium thermodynamics with changes in order and complexity, exploring strategies used by complex dynamic systems to evade deterministic chaos and identifying physical drivers of the evolution of dynamic systems. In the near future such knowledge will help model the link between energy dissipation and
changes in the organization of dynamic systems, and help explain general trends such as: the origin of life, macroevolution and the evolution of ecosystems toward climax.
Bio(s):
EDUCATION
California Institute of Technology and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, CA) (Post Doc., 2002)
University of Cincinnatti, (OH) Environmental Microbiology (Ph.D., 2000)
The American University (Washington, DC) Evolutionary Biology (M.S., 1996)
University of Bucharest (Romania) Biology (B.A., 1983)
APPOINTMENTS
08/2005 => Present Tenure tracking, Associate Professor, Portland State University (Portland, OR).
2002-2005 Research Assistant Professor, University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA)
1990-1994 Microbiologist, "E. Racovitza" Institute of Biospeleology (Bucharest, Romania).
1986-1990 Biologist, Central Institute of Biology (Bucharest, Romania)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
2006 Fisk M.R., R. Popa, O.U. Mason, M.C. Storrie-Lombardi, and E.P. Vincenzi, Iron-magnesium silicate bioweathering on Earth (and Mars?), Astrobiology, 6:48-68.
2006 Capone D., R. Popa, B. Flood and K.H. Nealson, Follow the nitrogen, Science, 312:708-709.
2005 Abboud R., R. Popa, V. Souza-Egipsy, C.S. Giometti, S. Tollaksen, J.J. Mosher, R.H. Findlay and K.H. Nealson, Low temperature growth of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. Appl. Environ. Microbiol., 71:811-816.
2005 Nealson K.H. and R. Popa, Introduction and Overview: What do we know for sure? 1-24, Chapt. 1, In: Quantitative Approaches Towards Biogeochemistry: Processes, Scaling, and Interfaces, (L?ttge A. and R. Rye (eds.), American Journal of Science, Yale University, New Haven.
2005 Nealson K.H. and R. Popa, Metabolic diversity in the microbial world: relevance to exobiology, In: Gadd G.M., K.T. Temple and H.M. Lapin-Scott (eds.), 65th Symposium of the Society for General Microbiology, Micro-organisms and Earth Systems, Advances in Geomicrobiology, 151-171, Cambridge University Press.
2004 Popa R. and B.K. Kinkle, Controlled Mineralization of Pyrite by Thiomonas thermosulfatus str.51, Geomicrobiol. J., 21:193-206.
2004 Popa R., A. Badescu and B.K. Kinkle, Pyrite framboids as biomarkers for iron-sulfur systems, Geomicrobiol. J., 21:1-14.
2003 Fisk M.R., M.C. Storrie-Lombardi, S. Douglas, G.D. McDonald, R. Popa and A.I. Tsapin, Evidence of Biological Activity in Hawaiian Subsurface Basalts, Geochem. Geophys. Geosys, 4:1525-2027.
2002 Cox L., R. Popa, K.H. Nealson, and D. Bazylinsky, 2002, Organization of P-, S- and Fe-inclusions in a freshwater Magnetococcus, Geomicrobiol. J., 19:387-406.
2000 Popa R. and B.K. Kinkle, Discrimination among iron sulfide species formed in microbial cultures, J. Microbiol. Meth., 42:167 174.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
February 9, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Lars Holmstrom
Title:
Receptive Field Models of Auditory Neurons
Abstract:
The modern quest to understand the physiology of sound processing and speech perception is often traced back to the work of Hermann von Helmholtz in the mid 19th century. While much has been learned since then, far more questions have been generated than have been answered. While Helmholtz was primarily focused on the mechanics of the ear, the modern auditory physiologist is often focused on the neural mechanisms at play. This is a daunting task considering the numerous auditory nuclei (functional collections of neurons) which are connected by a web of both ascending (toward the audio cortex) and descending (towards the ear) neural pathways. While it is generally understood that a systemic approach is required to fully understand this complex system of interactions, the state of the art is still primarily focused on making sense of how individual neurons respond to auditory stimulus. This talk will focus on some of the common techniques used for modeling the response characteristics of individual auditory neurons. It will focus primarily on Spectro-Temporal Receptive Field (STRF) models with special attention to the effects of experimental design on the fitting of the model. Examples will be provided of using these models in the context of researching the role played by neurons in the inferior colliculus (IC) of the mustached bat in the perception of social vocalizations.
Bio(s):
Lars Holmstrom is a PhD student in the Systems Science Department at Portland State University. Primary academic interests involve the use of statistical signal processing methodologies in the analysis of neural signals. His "other life" as a musician has led him in the direction of applying these tools to further our understanding of neural signal processing in the auditory system.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
February 2, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Elizabeth Turgeon
Title:
Optimality vs. Resilience in an Agent-Based Evolutionary System
Abstract:
In evolutionary systems, there is a trade-off between optimality and resilience. Optimally-adapted populations show little variation in their descendants, thus making their descendants better able to compete in current conditions, while resilient populations preserve variation, trading this-moment competitiveness for the potential to withstand future, unknown threats. From observation of evolutionary systems, however, there appears to be a distinct advantage to optimality over resilience. Elizabeth Turgeon will be presenting an agent-based simulation that explores the trade-off between optimality and resilience in one evolutionary system.
Bio(s):
Elizabeth Turgeon is an engineering master's student, and has spent the past six years as a safety engineer, trying to prevent injuries, fires, and other unintended effects of manufacturing processes.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
January 26, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Rich Jolly
Title:
Simulation of Information Sharing in Organizations
Abstract:
Game theory and agent based simulation have been used to study information sharing in organizations. In particular, the central tendency of organizational members to either freely share information, or keep it to themselves for their own personal gain, was studied in detail. First, the fundamental interactions are understood using a game theoretic perspective. Then, a simulation was conducted with the tool Netlogo where agents were assigned the fundamental property of either being a hoarder of information (unwilling to share) or a sharer of information. The effect of sharing on the organization was studied and it was found, as expected, that sharing greatly increases the overall information within the organization. The unexpected result is that agents who share tend to acquire more information than agents that hoard. This result is due to the synergy that develops between groups of agents who are sharing with each other building up the information levels greatly. It is also seen that the density of the agents is a critical parameter. As the density increases the probability increases that an agent is located near someone who has a large amount of information to share. The simulation results counsels organizations to use techniques to foster information sharing and discourage hoarding. This study has shown agent based simulation and a careful simulation methodology to be powerful tools in the study of organizational phenomena.
Bio(s):
Rich Jolly is a PhD candidate with the Systems Science and School of Business option. Rich's research interests are focused around using the systems perspective to improve the effectiveness of information technology in organizations and business. Rich also works at Intel Corporation in planning and market research for the server products group.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
January 19, 2007
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
5-7 pm
Presenter(s):
Dr. Ftitjof Capra
Center for Ecoliteracy, Berkeley
Title:
The contemporary importance of systems ideas
Abstract:
He will talk briefly about the contemporary importance of systems ideas and we will have an informal, open-ended discussion with him.
Bio(s):
Dr. Fritjof Capra, Center for Ecoliteracy, Berkeley,is well known systems theorist, ecological activist, author, and filmaker.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
December 1, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Lars Holmstrom
Title:
Two Birds With One Stone: Funding Your Dissertation
Abstract:
For many PhD students, two large hurdles include completion of a dissertation proposal and staying funded throughout the process of completing the dissertation. One angle for funding this process is dissertation grants, which are available from a number of institutions covering a range of research topics. There is substantial overlap between these grant proposals and the dissertation proposal. For seminar this week, we will continue the focus of last week's talk on grant writing with a description of the components that go into a dissertation proposal and a dissertation grant proposal. The goal is to encourage students pursuing a PhD to maximize the effort that goes into a dissertation proposal by using much of the content to apply for dissertation funding.
Bio(s):
Lars Holmstrom, aspiring Systems Science PhD student
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
November 17, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Wayne Wakeland
Title:
Introduction to Writing Grant Proposals
Abstract:
Writing a successful grant proposal depends on telling a compelling story. For major funding sources such as NIH and NSF, most of the review panel members will read carefully only the abstract, which is less than a page long. The rest of the proposal will be reviewed in detail by 2 or 3 members of the panel. Of course, the entire proposal must be clearly written and responsive to the RFP in order to garner the enthusiastic support of the assigned readers, but without a great abstract, the proposal has no chance of being funded. This seminar presentation will provide the highlights from a grant-writing workshop that Wayne attended recently.
Bio(s):
Wayne is a core Systems Science faculty member with a wide variety of research interests, including topics related to computer simulation and sustainability.
File attached or Link to Recording?
.ppt
Date:
October 27, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Rich Jolly, Chris Bartio, Kelly Waugh, and David Angel
Title:
System Science Program Strategic Analysis
Abstract:
This past summer, as part of the SYSC 610: Organizational Theory and Dynamics class, our group conducted a study of the current challenges and opportunities facing the Systems Science program. The goal of this project was to assist the Systems Science program in the development of a strategic plan.
The data collection for this project consisted of primarily 12 interviews. These interviews included current and former students, faculty from within the program and associated departments and members of the program management chain (provost and vice-provost). The interviews were designed to uncover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the Systems Science program. The data collected from interviews was supplemented by 10 years of enrollment data as well as a report generated by Michael Dejardin about other Systems Science related programs around the country.
Bio(s):
Rich Jolly is a PhD candidate in Systems Science and the School of Business. His research focus is on the use of systems science techniques to solve some of the tough business organizational problems such as effective sharing of information and knowledge. Rich works as a strategic marketing manager at Intel.
Chris Bartlo has been a student of the Systems Science program for the past two years. He has worked in the NWCIL and is currently an educator at OMSI. His interest is in using systems ideas and techniques to enhance and develop interactive learning experiences.
Kelly Waugh is a second year PhD student in the Systems Science PhD core program. His research interests are in the application of Systems Science methods to Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness. Kelly works as a Quality Program Manager at Sun Microsystems.
David Angel is a Graduate of the ETM Masters program at PSU. He is currently employed as a Systems Administrator at Siltronic Corporation and has recently taken a few Systems Science classes for personal development.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 20, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Professor Bruce Lusignan
Title:
International Space Projects
Abstract:
At the end of the Cold War, U.S. and Russian engineers planned to convert cold-war budgets to planetary exploration. The Stanford-Russian Mars study showed it could be done at a fraction of the cost of a US-only project; but cooperation faded away. The "Stanford on the Moon" project proposes cooperation to put an International Lunar Observatory on the Moon by 2015. Stanford has already launched student-made small satellites to earth orbit on a Russian SS-18 rocket, and plans a future launch to orbit the Moon. Cooperation for a manned mission in the future would include the Europe, Russia and China as well as the United States. The Stanford-Russian study and the proposed Lunar projects will be described.
Bio(s):
Professor Lusignan has taught Space-Systems Engineering at Stanford for 30 years. He headed the Stanford-Russian study. This year he's at PSU on sabbatical and will be permanently at PSU in January.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 13, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Rich Jolly, Chris Bartio, Kelly Waugh, and David Angel
Title:
System Science Program Strategic Analysis
Abstract:
This past summer, as part of the SYSC 610: Organizational Theory and Dynamics class, our group conducted a study of the current challenges and opportunities facing the Systems Science program. The goal of this project was to assist the Systems Science program in the development of a strategic plan.
The data collection for this project consisted of primarily 12 interviews. These interviews included current and former students, faculty from within the program and associated departments and members of the program management chain (provost and vice-provost). The interviews were designed to uncover the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the Systems Science program. The data collected from interviews was supplemented by 10 years of enrollment data as well as a report generated by Michael Dejardin about other Systems Science related programs around the country.
Bio(s):
Rich Jolly is a PhD candidate in Systems Science and the School of Business. His research focus is on the use of systems science techniques to solve some of the tough business organizational problems such as effective sharing of information and knowledge. Rich works as a strategic marketing manager at Intel.
Chris Bartlo has been a student of the Systems Science program for the past two years. He has worked in the NWCIL and is currently an educator at OMSI. His interest is in using systems ideas and techniques to enhance and develop interactive learning experiences.
Kelly Waugh is a second year PhD student in the Systems Science PhD core program. His research interests are in the application of Systems Science methods to Leadership and Organizational Effectiveness. Kelly works as a Quality Program Manager at Sun Microsystems.
David Angel is a Graduate of the ETM Masters program at PSU. He is currently employed as a Systems Administrator at Siltronic Corporation and has recently taken a few Systems Science classes for personal development.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
October 6, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Christine V. Portfors, PhD
School of Biological Sciences
Washington State University
Title:
Neural responses to complex sounds in the auditory midbrain
Abstract:
A fundamental function of the auditory system in humans is to process speech. Both speech sounds and vocalizations of other animals are complex in that they are comprised of many frequency elements that vary over time. When these sounds are first encoded by the cochlea in the inner ear, they are broken down into their individual frequency elements and single neurons respond to individual frequency elements. However, to enable perception of the whole sound, neurons in the auditory system likely recombine the individual frequency elements in the appropriate temporal order. In other words, individual neurons integrate multiple frequency elements over time. The first site in the ascending auditory system where individual neurons integrate across frequency elements in complex sounds is the inferior colliculus (IC). In this talk, I will discuss how individual neurons in the IC of bats and mice respond to pure tones, combinations of tones and natural vocalizations. I will focus on neurons that display nonlinear interactions to the combination of two sounds with energy in different frequency bands and show how these types of neurons may be involved in encoding natural vocalizations.
Focus of my laboratory -
My long term research goals are to understand how complex sounds are processed by the auditory system and to determine how age-related hearing loss impacts this processing. To achieve these goals, I utilize a systems-level neuroethological approach that makes use of my broad academic training from behavior to neurophysiology and neuroanatomy. I use natural vocalizations to probe the neural mechanisms underlying encoding of species-specific vocalizations in the auditory brainstem, midbrain and cortex of awake animals. I employ both mustached bats and mice as model systems because of their rich repertoires of complex species-specific vocalizations and my ability to record from individual neurons under awake conditions in these animals. I enhance my research program through collaborations with computational neuroscientists and neuroanatomists.
Bio(s):
None
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
May 26, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
Sean Larsen
Title:
Proofs and Refutations in the Undergraduate Mathematics Classroom
Abstract:
In his 1976 book, Proofs and refutations, Imre Lakatos makes the observation that mathematical concepts often develop in the service of answering a mathematical question. For example, Lakatos describes how the concept of uniform convergence was generated through the analysis of proofs of the naive conjecture that the limit of a series of continuous functions is continuous. Lakatos contends that this happened through a process he calls "proofs and refutations". This process begins with a naive conjecture and a proof of the conjecture. The proof is then analyzed to find hidden lemmas, which may be incorporated into the hypotheses of the theorem (and may necessitate the defining of new concepts). The purpose of this talk is to share two classroom episodes in which undergraduate mathematics students were engaged in a similar process. One episode is drawn from an introductory group theory course and the other from a college geometry course. The analysis of these episodes will illustrate Lakatos' ideas and the potential of these ideas to inform instructional design
Bio(s):
Sean Larsen received his PhD in mathematics from Arizona State University in 2004. This is his second year teaching at PSU. His current research focuses on the teaching and learning of advanced undergraduate mathematics and on the mathematical preparation of teachers.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Date:
March 10, 2006
Location:
Harder House, Room 104
Time:
12-1 pm
Presenter(s):
David Ostberg
Title:
A Comparative Analysis of Artificial Neural Networks, Classification Trees, and Multivariate Linear Regression for Predicting Retail Employee Tenure and Turnover
Abstract:
Two methodological studies were carried out to empirically demonstrate the value of applying neural network modeling for predicting three selected employee job performance criteria; namely, employee tenure, eligibility for rehire, and voluntary/involuntary termination classification.
Overall, the findings suggest that neural modeling techniques offer a viable alternative to traditional predictive approaches, and further, may lend insight into potential relationships among variables that may be overlooked when using conventional analyses. These studies also suggest that the different modeling techniques may vary in usefulness for different prediction contexts, in particular, where there are significant "cost" differences between false positive or false negative predictions.
Bio(s):
David Ostberg joined Unicru in January 2001 and is responsible for assessment design, advanced data analytics, technical writing, selection science consulting, and client-specific validation of the Unicru personnel selection assessment products. While at Unicru, David has facilitated development and deployment of a range of assessment tools in a variety of industries including casual dining, hospitality, grocery, and retail.
David received a Ph.D. in Systems Science: Psychology from Portland State University, and has a BS degree in Psychology from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1994. David is a member of and reviewer for the Society for Industrial & Organizational Psychology and the American Psychological Associations, and has presented research papers in several peer-reviewed academic conferences.
Prior to joining Unicru, David worked as a consulting job analyst and has conducted job analyses on over 200 job positions for various organizations in the Pacific Northwest. Additionally, he has developed numerous personnel selection and performance management systems and has taught undergraduate courses in industrial/organizational psychology, human motivation, and research design at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon.
File attached or Link to Recording?
None
Directions to watch remotely via adobe connect
<Web-based remote access seminar>
We will use Adobe Connect for web-based remote access seminar.
Here is the URL that people should use to participate remotely:
http://psuniv.na3.acrobat.com/rooma
- Enter as a Guest: Type your name and enter the room
- What you can do:
1) Remote participants will hear the speaker and questions from the audience.
2) Remote participants will see the speakers and his/her presentation slides.
3) Remote participants can join the discussion by typing or speaking (if remote participants' mic is available)
