All living organisms collect information from their environments and use it to adapt. The Santa Fe Institute has been awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) investigate such biological processes as computations.
Research by Santa Fe Institute Professor Jennifer Dunne is the first to examine in detail the feeding habits of human hunter-gatherers in the food webs on which they depended.
In a study in PLoS Computational Biology, two Santa Fe Institute researchers trace the development of life-sustaining chemistry to the earliest forms of life on Earth.
In some human societies, men transfer their wealth to their sister's sons, a practice that puzzles evolutionary biologists. A new study by SFI's Laura Fortunato has produced insights into "matrilineal inheritance."
The Santa Fe Institute's highly successful Omidyar Fellows program for interdisciplinary postdocs will be expanded in 2013, with enhancements designed to sharpen the program’s focus on preparing promising early-career scientists to lead tomorrow’s most critical scientific research.
Two Santa Fe Institute researchers offer a coherent picture of how metabolism, and thus all life, arose. Their paper offers new insights into the likelihood of life emerging and evolving as it did on Earth, and the chances of it arising elsewhere in the universe.
A new research project at the Santa Fe Institute, in collaboration with Slum Dwellers International and backed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, seeks to initiate a scientific study of urban slums worldwide.
Research by a Santa Fe Institute researcher and his collaborators at the University of Missouri seeks better data that could help preserve the threatened landscapes on which indigenous human groups depend.
A new quantitative study of data assembled from the online multiplayer game Pardus examines ways men and women manage their social networks drastically different, even online.
One of literature’s oldest mysteries is a step closer to being solved. A new study dates Homer's The Iliad to 762 BCE and adds a quantitative means of testing ideas about history by analyzing the evolution of language.
A new paper in PLOS Biology this week shows that taking the unusual step of including parasites in ecological datasets does alter the structure of resulting food webs, but that's mostly due to an increase in diversity and complexity rather than the particular characteristics of parasites. The work answers some longstanding questions about the unique role parasites play in ecological networks.
In Nature this week, Santa Fe Institute External Professor Andreas Wagner and University of Zurich colleague Aditya Barve, by simulating changes in an organism’s metabolism, show that most traits may emerge as non-crucial "exaptations" rather than as selection-advantageous adaptations.
Analysis of a highly detailed picture of feeding relationships among 700 species from a 48 million year old ecosystem provides the most compelling evidence to date that ancient food webs were organized much like modern food webs.
An analysis led by the Santa Fe Institute's Marcus Hamilton paints a grim picture of the experiences of indigenous societies following contact with Western Europeans, but also offers hope to those seeking to preserve Brazil’s remaining indigenous societies.
David Krakauer, an evolutionary theorist and director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has been selected as the Santa Fe Institute’s next president. He plans to join the Institute on August 1, 2015.
A new Santa Fe Institute study by Paul Hooper and collaborators details the intergenerational food sharing in a society of Amazon forager-farmers and shows that differences in relative need determine contributions to children from parents, grandparents, and other kin.
A statistical technique that sorts out when changes to words’ pronunciations most likely occurred in the evolution of a language offers a renewed opportunity to trace words and languages back to their earliest common ancestor or ancestors.
Despite notable differences in appearance and governance, ancient human settlements function in much the same way as modern cities, according to new findings by researchers at the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Colorado Boulder.
New research by Santa Fe Institute scientists reveals a surprising insight: publicly-traded firms die off at the same rate regardless of their age or economic sector.
A new study from the Santa Fe Institute confirms quantitatively that partisan disagreements in the U.S. Congress are worsening and that polarization is harmful to policy innovation.
Most new patents are combinations of existing ideas and pretty much always have been, even as the stream of fundamentally new core technologies has slowed, according to a new study led by Santa Fe Institute researchers.
Dispersal and adaptation are two evolutionary strategies available to species given an environment. Generalists, like dandelions, send their offspring far and wide. Specialists, like alpine flowers, adapt to the conditions of a particular place. New research models the interplay between these two strategies and shows how even minor changes in an environment can create feedback and trigger dramatic shifts in evolutionary strategy.
In a new study, researchers used anonymized cell phone data to assess the feasibility of electrification options for rural communities in Senegal, demonstrating a potentially valuable approach to using data to solve problems of development.
The dramatic resurgence of whooping cough is due, in large part, to vaccinated people who are infectious but who do not display the symptoms, suggests a new study by two Santa Fe Institute researchers in BMC Medicine. The study suggests that the number of people transmitting without symptoms could be many times greater than the number of people transmitting with symptoms – and much higher than previous estimates.
As the Paris climate conference approaches, a new report by SFI External Professor Jessika Trancik’s lab advocates for more realistic energy policies that acknowledge, and employ, complex systems approaches.
The North American research landscape is increasingly recognizing the value of interdisciplinary, collaborative work. But how do researchers from differing backgrounds practically engage one another?
Environmental triggers may have tipped the transition from single- to multi-cellular life, according to new research by SFI REU Emma Wolinsky and Omidyar Fellow Eric Libby
A team from the Santa Fe Institute, Arizona State University, and Slum Dwellers International has been selected to find new ways to help the world's poorest, most vulnerable communities.
Using a new methodology that measures how closely words’ meanings are related within and between languages, an international team of researchers has revealed that for many universal concepts, the world’s languages feature a common structure of semantic relatedness.
New research explores the impact of hunter-gatherers on north Pacific marine food webs and the behaviors that helped preserve their network of food sources. The findings hold implications for modern food webs.
Young male bluebirds may gain an evolutionary advantage by delaying breeding and helping out their parents' nests instead, according to new research led by Caitlin Stern of the Santa Fe Institute.
Feel like your conservation efforts are a drop in the bucket? Don’t want to bike to work if your neighbors get to drive?
A new article co-authored by a number of SFI-affiliated researchers explores the psychological barriers that drive our distinct lack of “foresight intelligence” regarding climate change and our failure to take meaningful mitigating steps.
When we choose fruit from a grocery store shelf, we use sight, smell, and touch to pick the most appealing selections. We know that a too-firm, unripe pear won’t be as tasty, and to leave behind the over-ripe avocado that yields, mushy, to light pressure. The need to identify ripe fruit may have helped our primate ancestors develop fine motor skills in the first place, suggests a new paper published in Interface Focus, co-authored by SFI Omidyar Fellow alum Justin Yeakel.
Jeremy (Jerry) Sabloff, an SFI External Professor and an Institute past president, has been selected by the American Anthropological Association to receive its 2016 Alfred Vincent Kidder Award for Eminence in the Field of American Archaeology.
New research suggests that larger crowds do not always produce wiser decisions. Moderately-sized crowds are likely to outperform larger ones when faced with combinations of easy and difficult qualitative decisions.
When disease outbreaks occur, front-line workers become infected and healthy individuals take their places. Based on network models of this “human exchange,” researchers from the Santa Fe Institute and the University of Vermont find that replacing sick individuals with healthy ones can actually accelerate the spread of infection.
Three researchers have devised a new network community detection technique that hopscotches over the limitations of other methods, revealing network structure at the microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels quickly and simultaneously.
A new study suggests that people who participate in regular religious acts send a clear signal to others that they're ready and willing to contribute to their communities.
In a study published this week in Environmental Science and Technology, her team finds that that low-emission cars aren't more expensive over their life cycles than conventional internal combustion vehicles on the market today. Her team released the results of their study in the form of an app, Carbon Counter, that prospective car and truck buyers can use to evaluate any of 125 vehicle types.
What is the best way for a group to collaborate on solving a difficult problem? A new study finds that the answer depends on how that particular group learns.
Modern European cities and medieval cities share a population-density-to-area relationship, a new paper concludes – the latest research to find regularities in human settlement patterns across space and time.
A new technique based in information theory promises to improve researchers' ability to interpret ice core samples and our understanding of the earth's climate history.
When energy and nutrients abound, a bacterium will repair itself while synthesizing new parts to create a twin and then split, all as quickly as conditions allow. But if resources shrink, so does growth rate. The cell responds by shunting its dwindling supplies from replication to repair, shutting down processes until it’s running a skeleton crew to survive.
Investigating the lower bound of energy required for life helps us understand ecological constraints on other planetary bodies in our solar system as well as our own. In a new study, researchers analyze cellular processes across species and sizes of bacteria, to zoom in on life's minimal energy requirements.
By analyzing how religious practice correlates with social support networks in two villages in South India, Eleanor Power suggests an evolutionary benefit to active religious participation.