It’s not you, it’s the network

A new paper exploring social perception biases finds that the greatest perception biases emerge when majority and minority groups are disproportionate in size, and when nodes of the same group are highly connected to each other.

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Wanted: Algorithms for quantum computing

Today’s quantum computers sustain temperatures approaching absolute zero and are designed to solve problems that would require millions of years for even the world’s best supercomputers. However, the rate of hardware development is seemingly outpacing the growth of algorithms that can leverage the phenomena of quantum mechanics. A July 30 through Aug. 2 working group aims to address this shortage of algorithms.

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Archaeology of the People

The July issue of Knowable Magazine published an interview with Jeremy Sabloff, External Professor Emeritus of SFI and past President of the Institute (2009-2015), about his work on “the archaeology of common folk,” which is reviewed in the 2019 Annual Review of Anthropology.

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Jeremy Van Cleve receives NSF CAREER award

Former SFI Postdoc Jeremy Van Cleve, now an assistant professor of biology at the University of Kentucky, has received a CAREER award for early career faculty from the National Science Foundation.

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A new normal: Study explains universal pattern in fossil record

Instead of the typical bell-shaped curve, the fossil record shows a fat-tailed distribution, with extreme, outlier, events occurring with higher-than-expected probability. Using the same mathematical tools that describe stock market crashes, SFI researchers explain the evolutionary dynamics behind this universal pattern in the fossil record and uncover "a new normal."

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Aeon: Life ≠ alive

In their essay for Aeon, External Professor Sara Walker and Professor Michael Lachmann argue that we would do well to understand life as a process of transmitting information.

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