ii WCCS26: World Conference on Complex Systems 20-22nd April

Day 1

Plenary Talk: Reda Benkirane - Lost in Complexity: Welcome to the Real World

A first slide considered Abraham Maslow's book The Psychology of Science and his thought on the "law of the instrument". Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a key primer for new students to many disciplines, including nursing, and psychology. The purpose of Benikrane's focus on instruments concerns the emergence of civilisation and roles of agriculture, and war in the rise of community at several scales from village, to cities, states and nations. In terms of flow the slides highlighted the next speaker Peter Turchin's END TIMES, and two books by Johann Chapoutot, LES IRRESPONSABLES, and FREE TO OBEY.

In response to the slide with Einstein's -

"We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them":

- may I please class 'health - care' as a world? The thought that the medical, bio-medical, and bio-psycho-social encourages, sees enacted, and sustained a : is this fit for the problems of the 21st century. I like the slide's heading 'Beyond Complexity'. Such is the pace of change, which is labelled 'progress' that each one of us wakes up momentarily stupified and lost in complexity.

Keynote Speaker: Peter Turchin - The Great Holocene
Transformation: What Complexity Science Tells Us About The Evolution of Complex Societies

Turchin's keynote reminded me of Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel. Reading GGS I realised there is more to 'axes' than I thought, especially from the individual to collective scales. It appears that whichever label - academia, research or education - you would like to apply, they all need a conceptual framework. Just as, individually, we all need a model of self, others and the world. This was a marvellous journey, through millennia of humanities' evolution, social, and political development, all realised through complexity. While attractors are to the fore, architecture and archaeology are regular distractors for me. Reading Holocene then had me hooked. 

Star Maker

A fellow delegate and speaker I dined with a few times encouraged me to read 'END TIMES'. I will seek it out later this year, (the next Hay-on-Wye visit?). Turchin is seeking to account for how human societies have reached their current state of organisation. The role of self-protection, seeking food, shelter, co-operation are all factors, with the emergence of religions, and agriculture. Several theories to date were covered [including, cultural multilevel selection, see Wilson et al. (2023)], plus a major project on cultural evolution: The Seshat: Global History Databank. For all the current loss and misery, conflict has paid a major role in cultural and political development. The prefix 'macro' features here. There was a social scale (people): FROM 10s - in foraging bands through TO 100,000,000s large nation-states. Mention of levels of scale, took me back to the work of Mario Bunge. The application of the Hertzsprung-Russell 'main sequence' (H-R) diagram is a great idea. I think Olaf Stapleton, author of Star Maker would have approved. 

This itself, for me, is reason enough to read Turchin. There is evolutionary biochemistry too, which is required in terms of a systems account. Is there a reflection of a main sequence construct between the SOCIOLOGICAL and SCIENCES domain of Hodges' model? 

 It is incredible the way new findings are regularly pushing even further the dates of human milestones stepping-stones. Perhaps we should always view progress in this way, and enjoy the 'moment'. There is still the puzzle of ultrasociality, and how to explain it? Turchin is seeking a mathematical history, with a journal Cliodynamics. There is another SF reference here, in Asimov's psychohistory in the Foundation books, but with less emphasis upon maths. This is encouraging for Hodges' model, and the inevitable transdisciplinary approach these questions demand.

More to follow ...

D.S. Wilson, G. Madhavan, M.J. Gelfand, S.C. Hayes, P.W.B. Atkins, & R.R. Colwell, Multilevel cultural evolution: From new theory to practical applications, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 120 (16) e2218222120, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2218222120 (2023).

100,000 signatures to win a parliamentary debate about the ownership of the water industry

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

'I feel thirsty!' 'It's really hot, let's have a swim!'	... Water ...
Public services Public health	I need 100,000 signatures to win a parliamentary debate about the ownership of the water industry. Do your thing internet.https://t.co/kZz1cXBtz3 pic.twitter.com/qWaQPmPEHv — Feargal Sharkey (@Feargal_Sharkey) April 29, 2026

My source: 
https://x.com/Feargal_Sharkey

Previously: 'water' : 'pollution'

Book: "Beyond Belief - How Evidence Shows What Really Works"

Beyond Belief

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

BEYOND BELIEF	How Evidence Shows What Really Works

Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works is a book by science journalist Helen Pearson, published by Princeton University Press.

 

My source: 
Pearson, H. Trials that quietly changed our lives, Life&Arts, FTWeekend, 18-19 April, 2026. p.2 

Previously: 'belief' : 'evidence' : 'information disorder' 

Invite to an In-person Interactive Workshop to Advance Action on SDoH [Geneva]

Advancing the Social Determinants of Health during the World Health Assembly

Dear Colleague

Is it possible to share in HIFA Network the following announcement?

Thanks a lot for your precious help

Dr Eric Comte Director of the Geneva Health Forum https://genevahealthforum.com

HIFA profile: Eric Comte is Executive Director, Geneva Health Forum, External Affairs Directorate, Geneva University Hospitals. eric.comte AT unige.ch

Bonjour,

We are pleased to invite you to take part in an interactive workshop dedicated to advancing action on the social determinants of health.

Forty years after the Ottawa Charter, there is broad consensus on the importance of health promotion and the determinants of health. Yet, translating this knowledge into effective policies and concrete action remains a major challenge. In a context marked by climate change, growing inequalities, rapid urbanisation and geopolitical instability, the need for more integrated, preventive and equity-oriented approaches has never been greater.

Building on this observation, this session will bring together, NGO, practitioners, policymakers and experts to move beyond general principles and focus on what really enables implementation in practice. Through the exchange of real-world experiences and case studies, participants will collectively identify actionable lessons, key barriers, and practical ways forward.

The expected outcome is a set of clear, operational messages to strengthen collaboration across sectors and support the implementation of strategies addressing the social determinants of health in diverse contexts. The session will also provide an opportunity to identify concrete avenues for further work, including potential projects that the Geneva Health Forum could support.

The workshop will take place on Tuesday 19 May from 9.00 to 12.30 at Campus Biotech in Geneva.

We would be delighted to count on your participation and active contribution to this important discussion.

👉 More information and registration on the link : https://worldhealthassembly2026.genevahealthforum.com/rethinking-determinants-of-health-in-todays-global-context-from-knowledge-to-action/

Space is limited, so only register if you really want to attend.

Registration is free but required so we can print badges and organize the workshop.

Link with the World Health Assembly discussions

This workshop is directly aligned with the strategic discussions taking place at the World Health Assembly, particularly in relation to document EB158/27 on well-being and health promotion. This report highlights the growing recognition of health promotion and the social determinants of health as essential pillars of public health, while also emphasizing the persistent gaps in implementation and the need to strengthen multisectoral action, governance, and measurable impact.

In particular, it calls for better integration of health promotion across the full continuum of policies and systems, stronger cross-sector collaboration, and a renewed focus on addressing structural determinants of health, including through more effective implementation mechanisms and improved coordination across actors.

Our session contributes to this agenda by focusing on practical experiences and implementation challenges, with the aim of identifying concrete, actionable lessons that can help accelerate the translation of global commitments into real-world action. In doing so, it also seeks to feed into ongoing reflections at the global level and to support more effective implementation of the priorities discussed at the World Health Assembly.

You are receiving this message because you are a member of the community HIFA - Healthcare Information For All.

View this contribution on the web site

MAACAL: Statues Also Breathe

Catharsis Arts Foundation in collaboration with Obafemi-Awolowo University and 108 students, 2022

This exhibition presents a collaboration between Obafemi-Awolowo University, 108 students from all across Nigeria, and the families of the Chibok girls who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014. 

Inspired by the iconic terracotta heads of Ife, it was initiated by artists Prune Nourry and Ade Bantu and seeks to raise awareness on the plight of the missing girls, and to highlight the diversity of Nigerian culture. . . .

On Thursday I visited MAACAL - Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, an art gallery  I first read about in FTWeekend Life&Arts, not long after first visiting Marrakech in 2023.

The main exhibit presents itself straight away after entering:

Statues Also Breathe, exhibition view, Art Twenty One, Lagos, Nigeria
 ©Dohdohndawa Photography/DDD Studios

A short but touching film in the gallery bears testimony to the fact many 'school girls' are still absent. Repetition is standard method in design. In today's manufactured world you might think what is so special about this? Until you are there physically, and walk through them. You see each one, a who: unique, an individual, a person taken away from where they belong.

As a white man from NW England, there was a moment when I realised: I was on the same continent where this had happened and is ongoing. Searching Youtube reveals other related videos concerning the exhibitions. It's strange watching them again as a check on their availability. A short video of an event to launch three new installations earlier this year is worth watching. Unfortunately, my phone failed until I got back to Marrakech, so I've no photos. I've three works in mind though.

I walked there, and back after trying to sort a taxi with a lovely couple from Germany and their son. Some taxis are limited to carry three persons. This is what arrived. The sun, even behind clouds that day, and flights taking off from the airport helped my sense of direction. The girls, seeking an education, did not have these means of navigation.

The garden at MAACAL was small but lovely. I hope to return one day, and well before then . . .

In Marrakech how can I forget "A is for ..."!

The Arabian world gave us algebra and algorithm and much more besides, as star gazers quickly find. There are many beautiful Arabic names for stars. At the UM6P Conference venue there were some wall displays, highlighting the major contribution of Al Khawarizmi:

Earlier this month I picked up The New York Review of Books, spotting a review of four books (2009-2025) on mathematics, including algebra by Paul Lockhart.

Dan Rockmore. In Defence of Algebra, The New York Review of Books. April 9th, 2026, Vol. LXXIII, No. 6. pp.28-30.
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2026/04/09/in-defense-of-algebra-paul-lockhart/

Picking up sticks: when axes matter ii

This past week at WCCS26, I've put Hodges' model itself on the work-, or more properly the inspection bench. Now, referring back to the - 'Our broken sticks' c/o Roger Lewin "Complexity: life at the edge of chaos" post, perhaps a theatre table is required. That is, as I try to examine the model, take it apart, have a look at the bits - as far as they are. And, what about the question posed in the above post?

'If we take the axes of Hodges' model, and break them at twenty-five points, I wonder what we end-up (or start) with?'

If there are twenty-six sticks, well, amongst other things - we've made quite a mess. But, there's more going on.

There may be some kind of idealised symmetry, or is it equality between the necessary, or projected length of the I-G axis. That is, as it extends for the INTERPERSONAL and SOCIOLOGICAL domains. But is there equivalence, in a default sense, for the SCIENCE and POLITICAL domains? Or am I (once again) overthinking? If medicine, health and by implication social care are bio-psycho-social, then surely we have a structural problem? Not only that, but we see a boundary, partition ... axis - in action. In Hodges' model the axes have two parts, two sides, so they are in effect composite. If the bio-psycho-social model is true, in whatever senses we wish to declare, derive or pursue in research (the literature, logic, practice, political expediency, or realism ...), then the group axis is incomplete. 

Hodges' model: Structure and Content - Axes and Domains

Is this literally why health care systems are so difficult to design, develop, establish and sustain? Think about that too, please. Is this why we as individuals rely on a functioning (caring) society and political systems? Is this why health care systems can suddenly be faced with collapse, as geopolitics has revealed. Vulnerability, becomes more than an individual characteristic and experience; when nations are dependent upon others for their funding, organisation, logistics, personnel, continuity and more. As a result, many understandably want to break with this socio-political and coloanial legacy.

Is there something in the sentence above in italics, that we can actually utilise to help define the foundation of Hodges' model? Again, not wanting to sound grandiose, but is there an axiom hidden in there? Even as 'health' is the inevitable election issue. The irony of this! Even if the politics of health and health in politics is not so much hidden as often denied. History reveals the influence of triage on the battlefield on the emergence of medicine and surgery. The future is here now. There is a political fight to follow for health in all its manifest forms. So here is another post to return to.

ERCIM News No. 144 Special theme: "Advancing Open Science"

 

Dear ERCIM News reader,

ERCIM News 144 is now online [in PDF also]! This issue is dedicated to Advancing Open Science. Open Science is becoming an essential part of the European research landscape, shaping how knowledge, data, software, infrastructures and results are shared, reused and sustained.

The contributions collected in this special theme offer a cross-section insight into the current European effort to make research more open, transparent, collaborative and reusable.

This special theme was coordinated by our guest editors Leonardo Candela (CNR-ISTI) and Roberto Di Cosmo (Inria and University Paris Cité).

Includes: [PJ]

Rethinking Researcher Profiles in the Research Assessment Transition Era: The OpenAIRE Approach. pp.9-10.

P. Manghi, et al., “OpenAIRE Graph Dataset (10.6.0) [Data set]”, OpenAIRE.
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17725827

BibTexViz: Visualizing Research Productivity with Open Science Data. pp.10-12.

D. Hicks, et al., “The Leiden Manifesto for research metrics”, Nature 520, 429-431, 2015.
https://doi.org/10.1038/520429a
T. Munzner, “Visualization Analysis and Design”, CRC Press, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1201/b17511
M. Zaumanis, “Research Data Visualization and Scientific Graphics: For Papers, Presentations and Proposals”, Peer Recognized, 2021.

MOEBA-BIO: An Open and Extensible Framework for Evolutionary Biclustering in Biomedicine. pp.17-19.

Co-Creation as Infrastructure for Open Science Data Spaces. pp.24-25.

A Osterheider, et al., “Conceptualization of the Understanding of Participation and Co-Creation in Interdisciplinary Research Groups developing Digital Health Technology: An Exploratory Study: Conceptualization of the Understanding of Participation and Co-Creation”, Mensch und Computer 2023, 534–538, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1145/3603555.3608572

LICORICE: Deploying Privacy-Enhancing Technologies for Europe’s Digital Sovereignty. pp.30-31.

D4Science: An Enabling Infrastructure for Open Science. pp.38-39.

D. Schaap, M. Assante, et al., “Blue-Cloud: Exploring and demonstrating the potential of Open Science for ocean sustainability,” in Proc. 6th Int. Workshop on Metrology for the Sea; Learning to Measure Sea Health Parameters (MetroSea), IEEE, 2022, pp. 198–202, doi:10.1109/MetroSea55331.2022.9950819.

Next Issue - No. 145

Special Theme: E-values: Statistical Testing for the 21st Century

Call for Contributions

Thanks for reading ERCIM News. If you’ve enjoyed this issue, please feel free to forward it to colleagues who may find it interesting and help us reach even more readers by sharing it on LinkedIn.

If you’re considering an even deeper partnership, advertising in ERCIM News not only helps sustain our publication but also puts your message in front of an expert, highly qualified audience.

[ Posted from Marrakech 17th-27th April ] 

BCS SPECIALIST GROUP ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (SGAI) - Ethical and Legal Aspects of AI

The next in our series of free evening virtual seminars will be on Wednesday May 6th from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. (UK time). The topic will be Ethical and Legal Aspects of AI.

 

The speakers will be

• Prof. Bernd Stahl (University of Nottingham) on 'Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future - An Ecosystem Perspective on the Ethics of AI'
• Prof. Dr. Griet Verhenneman (Ghent University, Belgium) on 'Patch Day in Brussels: How the EU AI Act ran into the unusual scenario of reform prior to application' and
• Dr Uchenna Nnawuchi (Sheffield University) on 'The “Why” being Algorithmic Decision Making: Explainability as the Backbone of AI Governance'.

The seminar will be chaired by Dr. Carlisle George (Middlesex University).

 

The virtual seminar series is free and open to all. For further details and for the zoom link to use go to https://bcs-sgai.org/seminars/2026-05-06/.

 

Details of future SGAI events will be placed on the website at https://bcs-sgai.org as they become available. To register to be sent information about future SGAI events by email go to https://www.bcs-sgai.org/register/.

 

Max Bramer

Chair, BCS SGAI

----------------------------------------------------

Chair, British Computer Society Specialist Group on Artificial Intelligence

Emeritus Professor, School of Computing, University of Portsmouth, UK
http://www.maxbramer.org

My source: BCS SGAI list

WCCS26: World Conference on Complex Systems 20-22nd April

It was good that today I could relax a little sooner than I expected with my presentation delivered over lunch time instead of 1730. To recap, at the 6th edition conference theme of:

“Navigating Contemporary Complexity:
Transdisciplinary Approaches to Economic, Social, Political, and Environmental Challenges”

- my talk (I added "Hodges' model" in the slides):

'Hodges’ model: PRESENTING a UNIVERSAL and SIMPLE CONCEPTUAL WORKBENCH to SITUATE and ENCOMPASS COMPLEXITY'

This after arriving back from a conference dinner near Marrakech at 0100, but the event at Chez Ali was different and most enjoyable. 

I'm conscious that unlike other speakers I (still!) did not have 'data' to share and discuss. Equations have been necessary over the first two days. But overall all sessions have proved accessible. From comments received Hodges' model was understood and deemed relevant. One delegate noted how the visual nature of Hodges' model was apparent, the illustrations revealed the model more clearly than a verbal description the evening before.

There were two questions. I eventually recalled awareness of Franco Basaglia, the Italian pioneer of community mental health and mental health law in Italy. Another questions concerned were I though the arts, drama and culture sit, or fit in Hodges' model? I suggested a search of the blog for posts tagged 'art', 'theatre', or 'culture'; with a warning that it can be a bit of a rabbit-hole.

Discussion, in-sessions and outside have proved refreshing, and not just as a welcome change from 'world news'. There were reminders too of early career researchers, professionals, and policymakers and the need to phone home.

While I pack for a transfer to Marrakech tomorrow afternoon, I will reflect and look to add more here.

In adition to data, I need new angles so I am not self-plagiarizing; hence the attempt to see Hodges' model as a mathematical object.

Many thanks to the WCCS26 Committee for being able to participate and share this model made in the 20th century for the challenges of the 21st.

More to follow and in the meantime, you can read the programme yourself.