sequestering carbon, several books at a time CXIX

 The latest batch:

overview of physical reservoir computing

There's a new book on Reservoir Computng out from Springer, and it has lots of interesting chapters, including one from us:

Matthew Dale, Julian F. Miller, Susan Stepney, Martin Trefzer.
Reservoir Computing in Material Substrates.
in Kohei Nakajima, Ingo Fischer, eds, Reservoir Computing: Theory, Physical Implementations and Applications, pp.141–166. Springer, 2021.
doi:10.1007/978-981-13-1687-6_7

Abstract: We overview Reservoir Computing (RC) with physical systems from an Unconventional Computing (UC) perspective. We discuss challenges present in both fields, including encoding and representation, or how to manipulate and read information; ways to search large and complex configuration spaces of physical systems; and what makes a “good” computing substrate.

Reservoir Computingis an interesting area of unconventional computing, because it supports computing directly with a wide variety of different physical materials, so it is finding many novel applications.

complexity and parasites

 Our new paper published today, open access:

Simon Hickinbotham, Susan Stepney, Paulien Hogeweg.
Nothing in evolution makes sense except in the light of parasitism: evolution of complex replication strategies.
Royal Society Open Science, 8(8):210441, 2021.

Abstract: Parasitism emerges readily in models and laboratory experiments of RNA world and would lead to extinction unless prevented by compartmentalization or spatial patterning. Modelling replication as an active computational process opens up many degrees of freedom that are exploited to meet environmental challenges, and to modify the evolutionary process itself. Here, we use automata chemistry models and spatial RNA-world models to study the emergence of parasitism and the complexity that evolves in response. The system is initialized with a hand-designed replicator that copies other replicators with a small chance of point mutation. Almost immediately, short parasites arise; these are copied more quickly, and so have an evolutionary advantage. The replicators also become shorter, and so are replicated faster; they evolve a mechanism to slow down replication, which reduces the difference of replication rate of replicators and parasites. They also evolve explicit mechanisms to discriminate copies of self from parasites; these mechanisms become increasingly complex. New parasite species continually arise from mutated replicators, rather than from evolving parasite lineages. Evolution itself evolves, e.g. by effectively increasing point mutation rates, and by generating novel emergent mutational operators. Thus, parasitism drives the evolution of complex replicators and complex ecosystems.

Parasites drive complexity.  But how?  Here, we examine the outcomes of some computer experiments using our Stringmol automata chemistry (where ‘molecules’ are short assembly language programs, that bind and execute to copy each other), where we can see parasites evolve, then see the measures that evolve that replicators use to guard against parasites, then the counter-measures that parasites use to get round these, then the counter-counter-measures, and so on.

evolution of complex execution strategies (see paper for details)

Interestingly, we don’t see separate lineages of replicators and parasites co-evolving, but rather each new strain of parasite evolves from a replicator, so that it can exploit that replicator’s defence code itself.

The original bioRxiv version of the paper got a mention in preLights.

new phone

I’ve had my current phone, a Samsung Galazy S7, for a bit over 4 years, two on full contract, two on SIM only.  I have been thinking for a while about replacing it, because its light sensor has been getting dodgy (clogged with pocket lint, I think, as it improves if I use an air blower on it), and the wifi keeps dropping out.

Anyway, today it bricked.  It said something like “UI app stopped”, and nothing would restart it.  So, off to Carphone Warehouse, to get a new phone.  (This was my first foray into a big shop for over a year!)  A very helpful sales assistant and I chatted about phones through our masks.  He quickly ascertained I didn’t want anything fancy, or Apple, or large, but did want a reasonable camera.  This left the Pixel 4a as about the only option.

That made decision making easy, and it's absolutely fine.  It’s pretty basic (which I wanted).  It does waste some screen real estate with a Google search bar that can’t be removed.  It’s about the same size as my previous phone, but much lighter (I keep checking my pocket, thinking I’ve forgotten it), with more memory, more data, and a relatively cheap monthly contract.  I wonder how long this one will last?

My data and apps transfered across really smoothly.  But I will have to get a bunch of new charging cables, as I move from proprietary Samsung ones to standard USB-C.

Oh, and it has a sensible alarm clock, where you can make the alarm get slowly louder (functionality annoyingly removed from my previous phone).  It doesn’t have the gentle Angel’s Feather sound, but Rolling Fog is a suitable replacement.  So tomorrow morning I should be woken gently, at least.