Search

IN TASMANIAN WRITER RICHARD FLANAGAN'S Death of a River Guide (1996) there is fleeting mention of an Aboriginal woman named Lallah. Friend to the contemporary indigenous protagonist's ancestor, Black Pearl, [...]

Nicholas Shakespeare, In Tasmania. 374 pp. London: The Harvill Press, 2005. ISBN 0-0994-6608-2, 8.99 £ (paperback). British author Nicholas Shakespeare is well known as a writer of both fiction and [...]

Simulations of evolutionary dynamics often employ white noise as a model of stochastic environmental variation. Whilst white noise has the advantages of being simply generated and analytically tractable, empirical analyses demonstrate that most real environmental time series have power spectral densities consistent with pink or red noise, in which lower frequencies contribute proportionally greater amplitudes than higher frequencies. Simulated white noise environments may therefore fail to capture key components of real environmental time series, leading to erroneous results. To explore the effects of different noise colours on evolving populations, a simple evolutionary model of the interaction between life-history and the specialism-generalism axis was developed. Simulations were conducted using a range of noise colours as the environments to which agents adapted. Results demonstrate complex interactions between noise colour, reproductive rate, and the degree of evolved generalism; importantly, contradictory conclusions arise from simulations using white as opposed to red noise, suggesting that noise colour plays a fundamental role in generating adaptive responses. These results are discussed in the context of previous research on evolutionary responses to fluctuating environments, and it is suggested that Artificial Life as a field should embrace a wider spectrum of coloured noise models to ensure that results are truly representative of environmental and evolutionary dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2019, a workshop on principled development of future agent-based simulations was held at Keele University. Participants spanned companies and academia, and a range of domains of interest, as well as participant career stages. This report summarizes the discussions and main outcomes from this workshop. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The figurations of the Canadian island of Newfoundland with those of the Australian island of Tasmania through close analysis of two significant contemporary novels, 'The Shipping News' by E. Annie Proulx and 'Death of a River Guide' by Richard Flanagan, are compared. Proulx's novel, in particular, exemplifies the pitfalls of the symmetry of redemption.

An essay concerning Australian and Canadian literature writing is presented.

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) consist of multiple, distributed nodes each with limited resources. With their strict resource constraints and application-specific characteristics, WSNs contain many challenging tradeoffs. This paper proposes a bioinspired load balancing approach, based on pheromone signalling mechanisms, to solve the tradeoff between service availability and energy consumption. We explore the performance consequences of the pheromone-based load balancing approach using (1) a system-level simulator, (2) deployment of real sensor testbeds to provide a competitive analysis of these evaluation methodologies. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is evaluated with different scenario parameters and the required performance evaluation techniques are investigated on case studies based on sound sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines two Romanticist paintings created for Indigenous audiences in the British colonies of Tasmania and Newfoundland. The paintings discussed are "Governor Arthur's Proclamation to the Tasmanian Peoples, 1830" by George Frankland and a lost, untitled painting by Amelia Curran. It is suggested that the paintings are examples of what the author calls alternative Romanticisms, which adapt global cultural forms for local purposes. Particular focus is given to the implications of the artists' acknowledgment of Indigenous presence in these colonies. Topics discussed include Aboriginal Australian peoples, the Beothuk people in Newfoundland, art as a means of communication, and symmetry.

We propose a framework for engineering emergent behaviour that allows system specification and design at the level of the emergence. We discuss how rule migration can be used to translate this high-level multi-layer design (mobile process model) into an equivalent simple cellular automaton model with only local rules, and emergent behaviour. In this paper, we use a case study in 2D to illustrate the process involved in deriving a migration rule for a simple random walk. We discuss how the mobile process architecture may be extended to model systems with multiple levels of emergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A metamodel has been defined as: a model of a model; a definition of a language; a description of abstract syntax; and a description of a domain. Because of these varied definitions, it is difficult to explain why metamodels are constructed, what can be done with them, and how they are built. This tutorial introduces the key concepts, terminology and philosophy behind metamodelling, focusing on its use for language engineering , and expressed in a way that is intended to be accessible to researchers who may be more familiar with the use of traditional context-free grammar techniques. We highlight the main differences between metamodelling and grammar-based approaches, describe how to map metamodelling concepts and techniques to grammar concepts and techniques, and highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses of metamodelling via a set of small, but realistic examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simulations of evolutionary dynamics often employ white noise as a model of stochastic environmental variation. Whilst white noise has the advantages of being simply generated and analytically tractable, empirical analyses demonstrate that most real environmental time series have power spectral densities consistent with pink or red noise, in which lower frequencies contribute proportionally greater amplitudes than higher frequencies. Simulated white noise environments may therefore fail to capture key components of real environmental time series, leading to erroneous results. To explore the effects of different noise colours on evolving populations, a simple evolutionary model of the interaction between life-history and the specialism-generalism axis was developed. Simulations were conducted using a range of noise colours as the environments to which agents adapted. Results demonstrate complex interactions between noise colour, reproductive rate, and the degree of evolved generalism; importantly, contradictory conclusions arise from simulations using white as opposed to red noise, suggesting that noise colour plays a fundamental role in generating adaptive responses. These results are discussed in the context of previous research on evolutionary responses to fluctuating environments, and it is suggested that Artificial Life as a field should embrace a wider spectrum of coloured noise models to ensure that results are truly representative of environmental and evolutionary dynamics., (© 2022 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.)

The application of computational and mathematical modelling to explore the mechanics of biological systems is becoming prevalent. To significantly impact biological research, notably in developing novel therapeutics, it is critical that the model adequately represents the captured system. Confidence in adopting in silico approaches can be improved by applying a structured argumentation approach, alongside model development and results analysis. We propose an approach based on argumentation from safety-critical systems engineering, where a system is subjected to a stringent analysis of compliance against identified criteria. We show its use in examining the biological information upon which a model is based, identifying model strengths, highlighting areas requiring additional biological experimentation and providing documentation to support model publication. We demonstrate our use of structured argumentation in the development of a model of lymphoid tissue formation, specifically Peyer's Patches. The argumentation structure is captured using Artoo (www.york.ac.uk/ycil/software/artoo), our Web-based tool for constructing fitness-for-purpose arguments, using a notation based on the safety-critical goal structuring notation. We show how argumentation helps in making the design and structured analysis of a model transparent, capturing the reasoning behind the inclusion or exclusion of each biological feature and recording assumptions, as well as pointing to evidence supporting model-derived conclusions.

Computer simulation can be used to inform in vivo and in vitro experimentation, enabling rapid, low-cost hypothesis generation and directing experimental design in order to test those hypotheses. In this way, in silico models become a scientific instrument for investigation, and so should be developed to high standards, be carefully calibrated and their findings presented in such that they may be reproduced. Here, we outline a framework that supports developing simulations as scientific instruments, and we select cancer systems biology as an exemplar domain, with a particular focus on cellular signalling models. We consider the challenges of lack of data, incomplete knowledge and modelling in the context of a rapidly changing knowledge base. Our framework comprises a process to clearly separate scientific and engineering concerns in model and simulation development, and an argumentation approach to documenting models for rigorous way of recording assumptions and knowledge gaps. We propose interactive, dynamic visualisation tools to enable the biological community to interact with cellular signalling models directly for experimental design. There is a mismatch in scale between these cellular models and tissue structures that are affected by tumours, and bridging this gap requires substantial computational resource. We present concurrent programming as a technology to link scales without losing important details through model simplification. We discuss the value of combining this technology, interactive visualisation, argumentation and model separation to support development of multi-scale models that represent biologically plausible cells arranged in biologically plausible structures that model cell behaviour, interactions and response to therapeutic interventions.

Quantum error-correcting codes can protect multipartite quantum states from errors on some limited number of their subsystems (usually qubits). We construct a family of Bell inequalities which inherit this property from the underlying code and exhibit the violation of local realism, without any quantum information processing (except for the creation of an entangled state). This family shows no reduction in the size of the violation of local realism for arbitrary errors on a limited number of qubits. Our minimal construction requires preparing an 11-qubit entangled state.