Tales from the ArXiv: Motto: "Somebody has to Study this Shit!"

Motto: Somebody has to study this shit!

And I mean this literally: the title of the paper is "An Agent-Based Model for Bovine Viral Diarrhea".

Update: Normally, I hate it when papers are full of bullshit. However, I may need to make an exception in this case.

United States Senators and Social Licking Among Cows

I am amused by this 2002 paper by Faust and Skvoretz, called Comparing Networks Across Space and Time, Size and Species.

Here is a choice quote: "The model of social licking among cows best predicts, as a target, cosponsorship among U.S. senators in the Ninety-Third Congress."

Note: The sentence is highly amusing, and I understand it in the context of the paper, but (1) the term "predicts" is misleading with respect to the analysis performed, and (2) one of course has to ask how the result changes if a different sample of networks is used. There has, of course, been a bunch of work (including by my collaborators and me) in the last decade and a half on examining similarities among networks.

(Tip of the cap to Brian Keegan.)

"Modeling the Lowest-Cost Splitting of a Herd of Cows by Optimizing a Cost Function"

I have a new paper out in final form today. This one took quite a lot of effort to write and to polish the exposition.

Title: Modeling the Lowest-Cost Splitting of a Herd of Cows by Optimizing a Cost Function

Authors: Kelum Gajamannage, Erik M. Bollt, Mason A. Porter, and Marian S. Dawkins

Abstract: Animals live in groups to defend against predation and to obtain food. However, for some animals—especially ones that spend long periods of time feeding—there are costs if a group chooses to move on before their nutritional needs are satisfied. If the conflict between feeding and keeping up with a group becomes too large, it may be advantageous for some groups of animals to split into subgroups with similar nutritional needs. We model the costs and benefits of splitting in a herd of cows using a cost function that quantifies individual variation in hunger, desire to lie down, and predation risk. We model the costs associated with hunger and lying desire as the standard deviations of individuals within a group, and we model predation risk as an inverse exponential function of the group size. We minimize the cost function over all plausible groups that can arise from a given herd and study the dynamics of group splitting. We examine how the cow dynamics and cost function depend on the parameters in the model and consider two biologically-motivated examples: (1) group switching and group fission in a herd of relatively homogeneous cows, and (2) a herd with an equal number of adult males (larger animals) and adult females (smaller animals).



Chaos, the journal in which we published our paper, decided to write a press release. Thus far, our work has been covered by Wired.

Cow Magnetization

Here is a cool video of what I will call cow magnetization. Maybe we should bring out the spin models after all? :)

(Tip of the cap to Erik Bollt.)

This is Improbable Too

I didn't realize this before last night's Ig Nobel show (in which I performed), but our work on cow synchrony made not only the new Improbable Research book but also its cover.

Now all I need is an actual Ig Nobel Prize to go with it...

Additionally, here is a video of an Ig Nobel show in which I performed in 2012. I am introduced and start discussing cow synchronization at about 39:00 in the video.

The Social Status of British Cows

Patrick Stewart explains the different types of moos from cattle based on their social status. As Sir Patrick explains, bovine dialects also depend on political, environmental, and cultural conditioning.

(Tip of the cap to Meredith Alden.)

Some Unusual Areas of Research

This interesting article has some interesting mini-profiles on some people who are pursuing areas of study that are a bit off of the beaten track.

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

"Synchronized Lying in Cattle in Relation to Time of Day"

A new paper of mine is now available in final form. This is the first sequel to the cow-synchronization paper, and it presents observations that was directly motivated by some of our work on our theory paper. The phrasing in the previous sentence in the previous sentence is important. It's not that our model per se motivated this biological sequel; rather the observations reported in this new paper was motivated by our research into what observations had and had not been reported previously. Our model effectively assumed that space was not an issue, so cows must be in fields rather than pens to use that simplistic model (which still exhibits very complicated dynamics), and we noticed when writing our paper that nearly all previously reported observations are for cows in pens rather than cows in fields. That's the origin of this paper. Here are the details.


Title: Synchronized Lying in Cattle in Relation to Time of Day

Authors: Sophie Stoye, Mason A. Porter, Marian Stamp Dawkins


Abstract: Postural synchrony, in which cattle lie down or stand up at the same time as other members of their herd, occurs both in animals housed indoors when enough resources are available and in those out at pasture, but the mechanisms by which such synchrony is achieved are poorly understood. We report a study of 6 groups of young cattle (Bostaurus) at pasture in which our aim was to study postural synchrony at different times of day and in relation to the postures of neighbouring cattle.

All of the observed groups exhibited a high degree of synchrony in lying/standing, as 70% of animals in a group exhibited the same posture over 93% of the time. Time of day had a significant effect (P ≈ 0.0046): cattle were least synchronized in the middle of the day and most synchronized in the morning and evening. With the increasing use of synchrony of lying as a measure of welfare in cattle, such temporal effects need to be taken into account.

Cattle were more synchronized with the posture of a near neighbour than they were with that of a randomly chosen member of the herd (P ≈ 0.016), suggesting that cattle were actively synchronizing their postures with that of their neighbours. These results indicate that a full understanding of the mechanisms of postural synchronization in cattle herds will need to incorporate both collective (allelomimetic) and concurrent (individual) responses.

My "Performance" at the Imperial College Ig Nobel Show (3/9/12)

Here is the video for the show that includes my 5-minute "performance" on cow synchronization as part of the Ig Nobel show at Imperial College on 9 March. My 5 minutes of fame occurred right after Marc's long introduction.

(Tip of the cap to the Annals of Improbable Research's very own Marc Abrahams --- the head honcho there --- with whom I just finished having coffee.)

2012 UK Ig Nobel Tour

If you want to see me talk about cow synchronization (for 5 whole minutes) as part of the 2012 UK Ig Nobel Tour, then you want to be at Imperial College on 9 March.

2011 Ig Nobel Prizes

Here are the 2011 Ig Nobel Prizes. By the way, "structured procrastination" (see the literature prize in the link) is exactly what I do to be productive.

Also, in case anybody wants to nominate me for an Ig Nobel, I do kind of hope that this paper will eventually be found deserving of one.

Finally, hopefully this is the year when Michael Berry finally wins his richly deserved Nobel Prize. He would then become the second person to have both an Ig Nobel and a Nobel.

Somerville College and the Immutable Laws of Physics

An e-mail sent today at 3:15 pm included the following statement: I would be grateful if you were able to reply to the Academic Office by noon on Friday, 23 September, if possible.

My response to this was: It will be impossible for us to reply by noon on Friday 23 Sept as you requested below, given that you did not send us this message until several hours after that 'deadline'. Of course, as you did not specify the year, the only way to interpret that would be to imply that we have 1 year less 3 hours to respond, so what deadline do you actually have in mind?

We will, of course, be prompt about this.


Now, this is pretty clearly a simple typo that didn't have the intended 'deadline' or perhaps was an e-mail that originally was going to be sent earlier (for which that deadline would make sense), so this is a rather easy bug to make in an e-mail, and I'm sure that I have done the same thing on several occasions. What is amusing in this context, however, is the phrasing "if possible" in the request. The e-mail sender was referring to the time schedules of people like me---which is why this is a 'deadline' rather than a deadline---but the relative times indicate naturally made me think of physical impossibility rather than ones that have to do with my own schedule. Hence, it is excellent that the fact that the request might not be possible was included, though I'm sure that relativistic effects were probably not part of the equation. Still, the phrasing is uncanny. (Or maybe it's just that I'm easily amused?)

Perhaps it's best to end this by quoting Jerry Seinfeld: Unfortunately the immutable laws of physics contradict the whole premise of your account.

Yesterday's e-mail from a Mathematical Institute colleague about the changing of a schedule because of a "dairy clash" was arguably even more amusing---especially given that I'll actually be talking a bit about cows when it's my turn to speak.

Update: My Ph.D. student Martin Gould has reminded me about this exciting, hot-off-the-presses piece of physics news.

Moo

My first paper on cow synchronization has now been published in final form.

Title: A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows

Authors: Jie Sun, Erik M. Bollt, Mason A. Porter, and Marian S. Dawkins

Abstract: We formulate a mathematical model for the daily activities of a cow (eating, lying down, and standing) in terms of a piecewise linear dynamical system. We analyze the properties of this bovine dynamical system representing the single animal and develop an exact integrative form as a discrete-time mapping. We then couple multiple cow "oscillators" together to study synchrony and cooperation in cattle herds. We comment on the relevant biology and discuss extensions of our model. With this abstract approach, we not only investigate equations with interesting dynamics but also develop biological predictions. In particular, our model illustrates that it is possible for cows to synchronize less when the coupling is increased.

Cow Dung Flung

Some cows are more adventurous than others.

(Tip of the cap to Maria Satterwhite.)

Celebrating April 1st

This year's April 1st celebrations weren't as good as last year's.

Google introduced TiSP, which had its moments (especially the 'file not found' page, which took an amusing stab at a certain class of physicists). Google.uk introduced GMail Motion. (This does remind me, though, that Google announced GMail for real on a previous April 1st.) Do any of you know whether Google did anything in other countries?

Tor introduced new fantasy game, and I gave a talk on "Synchronization of Cows" (several people needed to be assured that that is in fact real).

(Tip of the cap to Puck Rombach and Justin Howell.)

Update (4/2/11): CNN.com has an article with some pranking highlights of April 1st.

Are tensors more romantic than cows?

I link, you decide.

(Hey, I almost went a full week without a blog entry! I haven't checked, but I think it's been a pretty long time since I had a gap that long.)

Cows are apparently sexier than tensors.

As you know, I am the coauthor on a new paper on community structure in multislice networks, which has just appeared in Science and which I genuinely believe makes a very big advance.

I am also the coauthor of a recently submitted paper entitled A Mathematical Model for the Dynamics and Synchronization of Cows that has been posted on the arXiv, as is normal procedure in mathematics and physics (and, increasingly, other fields). Nevertheless, this paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, and I can't stress this enough.

Guess which paper is getting more attention?

I will readily admit that I have some fun when I get media attention, and that it's pretty damned cool to be see articles in places like Technology Review, Boing Boing, and Marginal Revolution about my work. I'm flattered, and some of what is written is entertaining (and some of the accompanying pictures are entertaining). This has been a fun project with some interesting scientific results (on which I believe we can build with a lot of additional hard work), and we included a couple of jokes in the paper because frankly it makes it nicer to read. Also, I am happy to see a lighthearted tone in some of the places that have discussed our work, but I am a bit disturbed by a couple of things:

(1) Some of the venues that have discussed our work used figures without asking for our permission. That's just not cool. I would gladly give permission, but you really ought to ask.

(2) I'm not surprised by the media attention on something that hasn't been peer-reviewed and indeed have experienced this before, but can we please make a distinction between something that is published and something that is on a preprint server and has not yet undergone peer review? Some (but not all) of the articles that I have seen are ignoring this crucial distinction, and it's a bit annoying to see increasingly inaccurate statements from people who are playing a sort of "whispering game" and making incorrect approximations of what other people wrote (and writing unsubstantiated things as if they were facts). I know that's the nature of things, but it's frustrating, and when I see a post that is not lighthearted but instead tries to use our work to advocate some cause that has absolutely nothing to do with what we studied (which is a biologically-inspired mathematical model, and I feel a very interesting one), I feel just a little bit worse about the world than I did before.


If you are reading this and are a journalist, please note that my coauthors and I wish to wait until after the peer review process runs its course (and the paper is accepted to a scientific journal---ideally the one to which we have already submitted it) before we grant any interviews. We are very excited about our work, but please let's not be premature about things! Now if you want to talk to me about multislice networks, then I would be extremely pleased to talk to you now.

Thank you.