JASSS: Vol. 4, issue 1 published

[Nigel Gilbert]

The latest issue of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social 
Simulation (JASSS) was published on January 31st.

JASSS is an electronic, refereed journal devoted to the exploration 
and understanding of social processes by means of computer 
simulation.  It is located at <http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS/>. 
It is freely available, with no subscription.

=================

The new issue has been guest edited by Bruce Edmonds and Kerstin 
Dautenhahn and includes four articles on "Starting from Society: the 
Application of Social Analogies to Computational Systems".

Refereed articles

In their editorial <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/0.html> the 
editors note that, since societies are extremely complex systems, 
they are an ideal source for designing processes and systems that 
work in the face of huge complexity. Biological systems are a similar 
source, whose influence has already started to be felt in computer 
science and artificial intelligence, informing ideas about learning, 
perception and sensori-motor control in robotic models. Now it is the 
turn for social systems to serve as an example for building complex 
artificial systems.

In the articles in this special issue,

* Kerstin Dautenhahn and Steven Coles apply the idea of narrative 
intelligence to autonomous robotic agents. 
<http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/1.html>

* Alexander Staller and Paolo Petta examine the bi-directional 
interrelationship between social norms and emotions. 
<http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/2.html>

* Rosaria Conte and Mario Paolucci analyse social learning and 
imitation in terms of mental processes, drawing heavily on real 
examples to motivate their analysis of social facilitation and 
imitation. <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/3.html>

* Dietrich Fliedner discusses the topics of complexity and society 
from the point of view of a social geographer. He takes examples from 
his field (especially the settlement patterns of the abandoned Indian 
Pueblo Pecos and the area in New Mexico settled by the Spaniards) to 
draw conclusions about how such societies might be profitably 
modelled.  <http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/4.html>


Forum

The Forum section is about AScape, a multi-agent simulation toolkit. 
Miles Parker, who developed Ascape, describes it and its capabilities 
<http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/5.html>, and  Klaus Auer and Tim 
Norris describe their experience of using Ascape to model a 
simulation of the emergence of social networks in Peru 
<http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/6.html>.


Reviews

There are book reviews of:

Would-Be Worlds: How Simulation is Changing the Frontiers of Science
  by John L. Casti

Introduction to Artificial Life
  by Christoph Adami

Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial Systems
  by Eric Bonabeau, Marco Dorigo and Guy Theraulaz

Computation for Metaphors, Analogy, and Agents
  Edited by Chrystopher L. Nehaniv

Computer Modeling of Social Processes
  Edited by Wim Liebrand, Andrzej Nowak and Rainer Hegselmann

They can be accessed through the JASSS home page: 
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/JASSS.html





--
______________________________________________________________________
Professor Nigel Gilbert, Director of CRESS, the Centre for Research on
Simulation in the Social sciences, http://www.soc.surrey.ac.uk/research/cress
Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 7XH, England


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