Condensed concepts

Consider a system comprised of many interacting components.  1. Many different definitions of emergence have been given. I take the defining characteristic of an emergent property of the system is novelty. The individual components of the system do not have this property. 2. Many other characteristics have been associated with emergence, such as universality, unpredictability, irreducibility, diversity, self-organisation, discontinuities, and singularities. However, it has not been established whether most of these characteristics are necessary or sufficient for novelty. 3. Emergent properties are ubiquitous across scientific disciplines from physics to biology to sociology to computer science. Emergence is central to many of the biggest scientific challenges today and some of the greatest societal problems. 4. Reality is stratified. A key concept is that of strata or hierarchies . At each level, there are unique ontologies (properties, phenomena, processes, entities, and effectiv

"Ecological and evolutionary dynamics are intrinsically entwined. On short timescales, ecological interactions determine the fate and impact of new mutants, while on longer timescales evolution shapes the entire community."   Spatiotemporal ecological chaos enables gradual evolutionary diversification without niches or tradeoffs         Aditya Mahadevan, Michael T Pearce, and Daniel S Fisher Understanding this interplay is "one of the biggest open problems in evolution and ecology." New experimental techniques for measuring the properties of large microbial ecosystems have stimulated significant theoretical work, including from some with a background in theoretical condensed matter physics. For an excellent accessible introduction see: Understanding chaos and diversity in complex ecosystems – insights from statistical physics This is a nice 2.5-page article by Pankaj Mehta at the Journal Club for Condensed Matter.  He clearly introduces an important problem in the

In Australia, most Ph.D. students are fully funded by scholarships to allow them to focus on their research. This is unlike in the USA where many students must be TAs (teaching assistants) to be paid.  In most Australian universities, such Ph.D. students can earn extra income by being tutors (same as TAs) for undergraduate courses. Many do, as earning extra money is attractive. Ph.D. students doing teaching saves universities tons of money as it means they don't need to hire and pay permanent academic staff to do this tutoring. What is my advice to students who have this option? Here are some of the advantages and disadvantages for a Ph.D. student doing such tutoring. Advantages You earn additional income. Having teaching experience listed on your CV may help you get a faculty position at some institutions. For example, in Australia, this seems to be almost a pre-requisite these days. Furthermore, if you can be innovative, and get high student evaluations, that may be viewed favour