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Inspiring Science

~ Casting light on great ideas

Inspiring Science

Category Archives: Modelling

How does an ant colony coordinate its behaviour?

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by sedeer in Complex systems, Hymenoptera, Insects, Modelling

≈ 51 Comments

Tags

animals, anternet, ants, Behavior, biology, complexity, emergence, emergent behavior, internet, network, Popular science, science

Two Cataglyphis workers meeting at the nest entranceA recent study looking at how colonies of ants regulate their foraging behaviour has caused a bit of a buzz online. A lot of the coverage has focused on a similarity highlighted in the press release, which says that the ants “determine how many foragers to send out of the nest in much the same way that Internet protocols discover how much bandwidth is available for the transfer of data”. While it’s wonderful that the study has received so much attention, I can’t help but feel that the really interesting aspect of this study has been overlooked in the excitement about the “anternet”. While the similarity between the two systems is striking, I’m more fascinated by a basic difference: unlike our computer networks, the regulation system in ants isn’t purposefully designed but emerges from uncoordinated decisions made by individuals.
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Promoting incompetence

10 Friday Aug 2012

Posted by sedeer in Humans, Modelling

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

competence, Hierarchy, organisation, organisational psychology, Peter Principle, Popular science, promotion, psychology, simulation, Work

From Dilbert’s PHB to The Office, the incompetent manager is such a popular trope that it’s in danger of becoming a tired cliché. Is this just a sign of the times or might it reflect some deeper truth? Could this be because of how we decide who to promote? A recent study has confirmed a counter-intuitive idea proposed over 30 years ago — that promoting those who perform best may, in fact, be a losing strategy.
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All text and original images by Sedeer El-Showk. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

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