Word: complex
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...climate change is likely to unfold. Instead, scientists worry about potential tipping points - triggers that, once reached, could lead to sudden and irrevocable changes in the climate, almost without warning. It's the same phenomenon of sudden collapse that can be seen in any number of complex systems that seem perfectly stable, until they're not - ecosystems, financial markets, even epileptic seizures. The trick is to identify the warning signs that indicate a tipping point - and collapse - are about to be reached and to take action to avoid them. (Read "Heroes of the Environment...
...article in the Sept. 3 issue of Nature shows there may be ways to do this, since certain warning signals appear to be similar across a variety of complex systems. Researchers from Wageningen University, the University of Wisconsin and Scripps Institution of Oceanography found that an assortment of systems they studied all had critical thresholds that could trigger change from one state to another - changes that tend to be abrupt, not gradual. "Such threshold events don't happen that often, but they are extraordinarily important," says study co-author Stephen Carpenter of the University of Wisconsin. "They are the portals...
...Lastly, the ongoing global financial crisis has moved once highly niche words into the mainstream. People that bandy about complex terms like quantitative easing (increasing the supply of money in order to stimulate economic activity) can now check that they are actually using them correctly. The recession's effect on our behavior has impacted language too. Holidaymakers trying to rein in spending have popularized the term staycation (taking a holiday without going abroad). Glamping (glamorous camping) is less popular at the moment, for obvious reasons...
...these theories are just speculation, and the researchers concede that the interaction of white and gray matter is so complex that hard conclusions remain elusive. "We have a new piece to the puzzle here," says Emory's Monica Capra, one of the study's authors. "But we don't have it all together." (Read more about the mind and body on TIME's Wellness blog...
During these first days in the Yard, new, fragile Harvardians need time to process and reflect on the complex information being hurled at them from all sides. With no time alone on campus before upperclassmen move in, how will bright-eyed newbies have any chance of fully contemplating the nuanced lessons of Sex Signals, for instance...