Complexity Explorer Santa Few Institute

Papers

West, Geoffrey B., James H. Brown, and Brian J. Enquist. "A general model for the origin of allometric scaling laws in biology." Science 276.5309 (1997): 122-126.  [pdf]

Savage, Van M., Eric J. Deeds, and Walter Fontana. "Sizing up allometric scaling theory." PLoS Comput Biol 4.9 (2008): e1000171-e1000171.  [html]

Savage, Van M., et al. "The predominance of quarter‐power scaling in biology."Functional Ecology 18.2 (2004): 257-282.  This is an extensive review of empirical evidence for scaling in metabolic systems.  [pdf]

West, Geoffrey B., and James H. Brown. "Life's universal scaling laws." Physics Today. 57.9 (2004): 36-43.  A good overview t roughly the same mathematical level as this course.  [pdf]

Savage, Van M., and Geoffrey B. West. "A quantitative, theoretical framework for understanding mammalian sleep." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104.3 (2007): 1051-1056.  This is the paper on sleep scaling that Van Savage mentioned in his interview.  [pdf]

Books

Tung, K. K. Topics in Mathematical Modelling. Princeton University Press, 2007.

 

Web Pages

The web page for a UCLA course on The Structure, Function, and Evoluation of Vascular Systems, taught by Van Savage. Includes lecture noes, problem sets, and solutions.

The lab page for Brian Enquist's research group at Arizona State University.  Includes links to papers and a number of large data sets.

 

Lectures

The surprising math of cities and corporations.  A TED talk by Geoffrey West.  An excellent overview of metabolic and urban scaling.

Toward a Metabolic Theory of Ecology. A talk given at UCLA on May 16, 2012 by James Brown. 

Cities as Complex Adaptive Systems: from human interactions in space to innovation and economic productivity.  A talk given by Luis Bettencourt in November 2013 at the Simposio Complejidad e Interdisciplina, at El Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades (CEIICH), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).