Edinburgh Group - physical sciences
Graeme Ackland (PI)
Graeme Ackland holds a chair in Computation Simulation in the School of Physics at the University of Edinburgh and leads the NANIA group. While much of Graeme's early work concerned condensed matter physics, he has more recently become interested in the statistical mechanics of complex, open, non-equilibrium systems.
Recent articles of interest include:
-
Devil's staircase in kinetically limited growth
G.J.Ackland
Phys Rev E 66 (4) 041605 (2002) -
Pack formation in cycling and orienteering
G.J.Ackland and D.Butler
Nature, 413, 127 (2001)
See also
http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/graeme/
Email: G.J.Ackland _at_ ed.ac.uk
Tim Lenton (PI)
Tim Lenton is now based at the University of East Anglia as a Reader in Earth System Analysis. His research into complex systems spans the scales from ecosystem to planetary. His work on the theory of Earth as a self-regulating system covers the history and future of life on Earth, and includes work on the Daisyworld model and other generic models of life-environment feedback.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Developing the Gaia theory,
Lenton, T. M. and D. M. Wilkinson
Climatic Change 58(1-2) 1-12 (2003) - Testing Gaia: the effect of life on Earth's habitability and regulation
Lenton, T. M.
Climatic Change 52 409-422 (2002) - Gaia and natural selection
Lenton, T. M.
Nature 394 439-447 (1998)
See also
http://www.uea.ac.uk/env/people/lenton-t/index.shtml
Email: T.Lenton@uea.ac.uk
Jamie Wood (PDRA)
Jamie Wood was in Edinburgh as a Post Doctoral Research Assistant on the NANIA grant. His work is focused on two distinct areas: Firstly extending the Daisyworld model and related models of atmosphere-biosphere interaction. Secondly, looking at the physics of flocking behaviour and other collective biological phenomena. In his previous research existence he was interested in the theory of wetting, in particular at structured surfaces and in extending exact (Ising) solutions in two dimensions.
Jamie is now an RCUK Research Fellow in Biological Complexity at the University of York. His webpages there are likely to contain up-to-date information.
Articles of interest include:
-
Evolving the selfish herd: emergence of distinct aggregating
strategies in an individual-based model
A.J. Wood and G.J. Ackland
Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 274 1637 (2007) - Mutation of albedo and growth response produces oscillations in a spatial daisyworld
A.J. Wood, G.J. Ackland, and T.M. Lenton
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 242 (2006) - Wetting at a grain boundary
D.B. Abraham, Ville Mustonen and A.J.Wood
Physical Review Letters 93 076101 (2004) - Universal phase boundary shifts for corner wetting and filling
A.O.Parry, A.J.Wood, A. Drzewinski and Enrico Carlon
Physical Review Letters 87 196103 (2001)
See also Jamie's York and Edinburgh homepages
Email: a.j.wood_at_ed.ac.uk
Neelofer Banglawala (PhD)
Email: n.banglawala_at_ed.ac.uk
Tom Adams (PhD)
Homepage
Email: t.p.adams_at_sms.ed.ac.uk
Lawrence Mitchell (PhD)
Homepage
Email:
lawrence.mitchell_at_ed.ac.uk
Edinburgh Group - geological sciences
Ian Main (PI)
Ian Main has been Professor of Seismology and Rock Physics at Edinburgh since 2000 and his research interests include earthquake source mechanics, earthquake hazard, and the statistical mechanics of earthquake and fault/fracture populations. This work involves both laboratory experiments and novel numerical approaches to geophysical problems.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Entropy, energy, and proximity to criticality in global
earthquake populations
I. Main and F. al-Kindy
J. Geophys. Res. 108, 2521 (2002) - Earthquakes - long odds on prediction
I. Main
Nature, 385, 19, (1997)
See also http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/homes/imain/
Email: Ian.Main _at_ ed.ac.uk
Mark Naylor (PDRA)
Homepage
Email: m.naylor_at_glg.ed.ac.uk
Edinburgh Group - biological sciences
Nick Barton (PI)
Nick Barton holds a chair in the Institute for Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh and his research centres on understanding the evolution of traits which depend on interactions between large numbers of genes, distributed across spatially extended populations. Such interactions determine the way populations adapt in response to natural and artificial selection, and also the way they diverge to form separate species.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Neutral evolution in spatially continuous populations.
N. Barton et al.
Theor. Pop. Biol. 61, 31 (2002) - Adaptation at the edge of a species' range
N. Barton
Integrating genetics and ecology in a spatial context, Blackwells, London (2001)
See also
Nick Barton
Email: n.barton _at_ ed.ac.uk
Glenn Marion (PI)
Glenn leads the Biomathematics and Statistics Scotland (BioSS) research team in modelling complex systems and risk. His main research interests involve the stochastic modelling of ecological and agricultural systems in close collaboration with biological scientists, and recent applications include grazing and foraging systems, evolution of pathogen virulence in crops and disease spread in citrus orchards.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Environmental Brownian noise suppresses explosions in
population dynamics.
X. Mao, G. Marion and E. Renshaw
Stochastic Processes and Their Applications 97, 95-110, (2002) - Spatial heterogeneity and the stability of reaction states in autocatalysis.
G. Marion, X. Mao, E. Renshaw, and J. Liu
Phys. Rev. E 66, 051915,(2002)
See also
http://www.bioss.ac.uk/staff/glenn.html
Email: glenn _at_ bioss.sari.ac.uk
Jonathan Coe (PDRA)
Jon was, until September 2006, working with Nick and Glenn on thermodynamics in population genetics. He has now left Edinburgh.
Homepage
Email:
jcoe2_at_ph.ed.ac.uk
Manchester Group - physical sciences
Alan McKane (PI)
Alan McKane is based in the School of Physics at the University of Manchester and works on the statistical mechanics of non-equilibrium systems and the theory of stochastic processes. In particular, he is interested in the application of these methods to theoretical ecology and his "webworld" model incorporates both population and evolutionary dynamics into a model ecology.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Hubbel's community dynamics model
McKane AJ, Alonso D, Sole RV
Theo. Popul. Biol. 65, 67 (2004) - Self-organised instability in complex ecosystems
R.V. Sole, D. Alonso and A. McKane.
Philos T Roy Soc B 357(1421), 667-681 (2002)
See also
http://theory.ph.man.ac.uk/~ajm/home.html
Email: alan.mckane _at_ man.ac.uk
Craig Powell (PDRA)
Craig is in the School of Physics at the University of Manchester and is currently researching the theoretical WebWorld ecology.
See Craig's Manchester homepage for more information.
Manchester Group - social sciences
Bruce Edmonds (PI)
Bruce Edmonds is the director of the Centre for Policy Modelling and is involved in many aspects of agent-based modelling in social science applications. His expertise lies in what makes self organising multi-agent systems work, the relationship between complexity and simulation and the formal equivalence of computer models of different systems.
Recent articles of interest include:
- The Emergence of Symbiotic Groups Resulting From Skill-Differentiation and Tags
Edmonds, B. (in press)
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation
(http://cfpm.org/cpmrep140.html). - Computational Simulation as Theoretical
Experiment
Edmonds, B & Hales, D.
Journal of Mathematical Sociology 29(3), 209-232 (2005)
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0022250x.asp
See also
http://bruce.edmonds.name/
Email: b.edmonds _at_ mmu.ac.uk
Other researchers associated with NANIA
Richard Blythe
Richard is a Royal Society of Edinburgh Personal Research Fellow and working on (amongst other things) a theory of language change with William Croft, Alan McKane and Gareth Baxter. He also keeps us straight on statistical mechanical matters.
Recent articles of interest include:
- The propagation of a cultural or biological trait by
neutral genetic drift in a subdivided population
R. A. Blythe
q-bio/0606037 [Under review] - Utterance selection model of language change
G. J. Baxter, R. A. Blythe, W. Croft and A. J. McKane
Phys. Rev. E 73, 046118 (2006) - An introduction to phase transitions in stochastic
dynamical systems
R. A. Blythe.
J. Phys.: Conf. Ser. 40, 1 (2006)
See also:http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/~rblythe2
Email: r.a.blythe _at_ ed.ac.uk
Mike Cates
Mike Cates holds a chair in Natural Philosophy in the School of Physics at the University of Edinburgh and has a wide range of research interests.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Solvable senescence model showing a mortality plateau
J. Coe, Y. Mao, and M. Cates
Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 288103 (2003) - Multiple glassy states in a simple model system
KN Pham, AM Puertas, J Bergenholtz and M Cates
Science 296 (5565): 104-106 (2002)
See also
http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/
Email: mec _at_ ph.ed.ac.uk
William Croft
Bill Croft holds a chair in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Manchester and is interested in the evolution of language and historical linguistics and many other subjects quoted on his web page: typology, semantics, cognitive linguistics, construction grammar, language change.
See also
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Info/staff/WAC/
Email: croft
_at_ casbs.stanford.edu
Martin Evans
Martin Evans is a Reader in the School of Physics at the University of Edinburgh and has a wide range of research interests in nonequilibrium statistical mechanics including simple models of jamming, flocking and condensation.
Recent articles of interest include:
- The Nature of the Condensate in Mass Transport Models
S. N. Majumdar, M.R. Evans, R.K.P. Zia
Phys. Rev. Lett. 94, 180601 (2005) - Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics of the Zero-Range
Process and Related Models
M. R. Evans and T. Hanney
J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 38 R195--R240 (2005) (Invited topical review) - Flocking regimes in a simple lattice model
J. R. Raymond and M. R. Evans
Phys. Rev. E 73, 036112 (2006)
See also http://www.ph.ed.ac.uk/
Email: martin_at_ ph.ed.ac.uk
James Dyke
James is a DPhil student at the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex.
See also http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Users/jgd20/index.html
Email: j.g.dyke _at_ sussex.ac.uk
Kevin Stratford
Formerly maintained the NANIA web pages Now works for Edinburgh Parallel Computing Centre and is interested in computational fluid dynamics on scales from small to large.
See also
http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/~kevin/
Email: kevin _at_
epcc.ed.ac.uk
David Hales
David is in the Computer Science department of the University of Bologna, working on the EU DELIS project. He is developing techniques for growing reliable, decentralized systems - specifically peer-to-peer systems. The aim being to produce self-configuring, self-repairing and self-organising societies of peer nodes that execute on user machines.
Recent articles of interest include:
- Applying a socially-inspired technique (tags) to improve
cooperation in P2P Networks
Hales D. & Edmonds B.
IEEE Transactions in Systems, Man and Cybernetics - Part A: Systems and Humans, 35(3):385-395 (2005) - Group Reputation Supports Beneficent Norms
Hales D.
The Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation 5, 4 (2002)
http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/5/4/4.html
See also http://www.davidhales.com
Email dave _at_davidhales.com