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This page lists the abstracts for the talks part of the Think tank event

Talks Abstracts
Ken Buetow
NIH/CCR		 title
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Richard Ebstein
Herzog Hospital, Jerusalem		 The modern demographic transition and its possible impact on human behavioral evolution: Multiple scenarios
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Mirta Gordon
CNRS		 Models of social systems. Recent results and open questions
I will introduce two stylized models of social systems, a customers' model and a public goods model. Equilibrium states of the customers' system, obtained with statistical mechanics, are modified when the individuals' learning capacities are taken into account. The public goods model may present cycles. Comparison of mean field dynamics results and computer simulations exhibit large size effects. These results leave many open questions for future research in social systems.
Plamen Ivanov
Boston University		 title
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François Képès
CNRS & Univ. Evry, France		 Gene Regulatory Networks in Space and Time
Biologists are fond of wiring diagrams abstracting the system's components and their interactions. Network-based approaches extend this common viewpoint, while providing a well-paved path to more formal analysis. In particular, a simple topological or dynamical analysis may sometimes allow to reject a biologist's model with little effort. A deeper analysis may shed light on the plausible mechanisms of a well-described and poorly understood phenomenon. Besides this explanatory capacity, the analysis may in different settings be of predictive value or increase the efficiency of subsequent experimental testing. However, what often appears on the biologist's cartoons and is not directly amenable to network-based analysis stricto sensu is the spatial aspect of the biological process under scrutiny.
Hermona Soreq
Hebrew University		 Molecular Neuroscience in the 21st century
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