Decarbonizing the energy supply

Shifting from carbon-emitting energy sources to renewable ones will be an essential part of addressing climate change, but the path to a renewable power grid is uncharted. A February 26-28 working group explores how New Mexico might best approach the transition to renewable energy sources, and what lessons could be useful for other regions.

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Wealth inequality and social network structure

An NSF-funded research project is exploring the effects of network structure on wealth inequality. In February over 40 anthropologists, economists, and others will review their research so far and chart new directions.

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If cancer were easy, every cell would do it

A new Scientific Reports paper puts an evolutionary twist on a classic question. Instead of asking why we get cancer, Leonardo Oña of Osnabrück University and Michael Lachmann of the Santa Fe Institute use signaling theory to explore how our bodies have evolved to keep us from getting more cancer.  

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Video: Copying vs. Transforming Information

New research by SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Artemy Kolchinsky and Bernat Corominas-Murtra presents an important distinction for information theory — copying vs. transforming. Watch the video explainer.

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Learning by omission

What would happen if neural networks were explicitly trained to discard useless information, and how to tell them to do so, is the subject of recent research by SFI's Artemy Kolchinsky, Brendan Tracey, and David Wolpert.

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Biological and physical time meet in sleep

A working group, held November 18-20 at SFI, is beginning to unpack the causes, timescales, and consequences of sleep. In particular, participants are focusing on how sleep time changes across species, and how it changes with age and during adulthood.

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