At last, acknowledging royal women's political power

Across the globe in a variety of societies, royal women found ways to advance the issues they cared about and advocate for the people important to them as detailed in a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Research.

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Death as a system collapse

A working group, “Hallmarks of Biological Failure,” meets to discuss the patterns of mortality, biological failure, and system collapse.

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Are you with me? New model explains origins of empathy

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute and the Santa Fe Institute have developed a new model to explain the evolutionary origins of empathy and other related phenomena, such as emotional contagion and contagious yawning. The model suggests that the origin of a broad range of empathetic responses lies in cognitive simulation.

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More than the sum: Working group scopes higher-order interactions

When only two things interact, the outcome is usually easily to predict. But what happens when you add a third — or fourth, or fifth, or more — component to the mix? The effects of such higher-order interactions can be difficult to forecast, and are the subject of a working group that meets this week at SFI.

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Could energy overload drive cancer risk?

New research by External Professor John Pepper offers an intriguing theory for how cancer evolves in people with obesity, diabetes, and chronic inflammation: By providing an over-abundance of energy to cells, these diseases might super-charge their growth and cause them to become cancerous.

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Which ecosystem changes can be reversed?

A working group meets to explore the complex dynamics between plants and animals, predators and prey, and how changes in those interactions can lead to irreversible transitions in ecological communities.

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Video: Networks Thinking Themselves

Danielle Bassett presented an SFI Community Lecture on networks and how we, as networks, use network science to think about ourselves at The Lensic Performing Arts Center on February 19.

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