“The ecology of war” on the cover of Nature

December 16, 2009

So after 5 long years the research is finally out in print. The study titled “Common Ecology Quantifies Human Insurgency” is featured on the cover of this week’s issue of the scientific journal ‘Nature’. It puts forward a scientific model that can help to quantify collective violent activity in humans and makes a connection between [...]

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Conflict over global death tolls for wars

December 16, 2009

My colleague Mike Spagat has a new paper out today in the Journal of Conflict Resolution. In they paper the authors call into question the use of surveys to estimate the death totals from conflict. The press release for the JCR paper has this to say; The online Appendix to the Journal of Conflict Resolution [...]

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Focused Distraction (quick links)

December 16, 2009

The 15 latest military research projects, from quantum cryptography to super light IED resistant armor http://is.gd/B6Ly ‘Reality Mining’ – how we can use our electronic footprints to forecast human behaviour from pandemics to financial markets http://bit.ly/XeRUS and http://bit.ly/XL2PA Modeling human crowd dynamics – how one New Zealand startup is taking lessons from Orcs and Elves [...]

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Mexico’s little drug ‘problem’

December 16, 2009

Mexico’s drug “problem”: with 9,500 deaths since December 2006 and over 5,300 killed last year alone – maybe it’s now time to start thinking of it less as a ‘drug’ problem and more as a war that hasn’t officially been started yet. We are currently conducting research to compare the statistical patterns of the drug [...]

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Modeling credit card debt patterns

December 16, 2009

Use your credit card in a bar and you’re statistically four times more likely to miss payments over the next 12 months than if you used the same card to pay for the dentist. Of course this is an example of correlation and not causation. But in the world of credit card data crunching and [...]

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Quantum Physics and Poker

November 25, 2009

Advances in processing power, game theory and network analysis have enabled computers to beat humans in almost every board game…..except poker. But quantum physics may take this one advantage away from the human species. At first glance it would seem that quantum physics and poker are unlikely bedfellows? But look a little closer and it [...]

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