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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Two AAAS sessions trace humanity’s place in the web of life

Jennifer Dunne, Stefani Crabtree, and colleagues present their ArcheoEcology work in two back-to-back symposia, “How Human Interactions with Biodiversity Shape Socio-Ecological Dynamics in Deep Time” on Sunday, Feb. 17 at 1:30 and 3:30 pm at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C.

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Age is not a number. Is resilience?

The Dynamic Multi-System Resilience in Human Aging working group meets in November to discuss new data on the aging process, and how to understand the physiological and psychological systems that lead to resilience in elderly people.

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