It is uncommon that we observe the background details of a well-produced film or notice the subtle masterpieces behind a state-of-the-art play. Aside from those that are very observant, these elements usually only come into view when production experiences a horrible mishap, perhaps if an actor’s costume is ruined or they forget their lines. The same can be said for the quiet mechanisms and systems, which our lives are dependent on, on a daily basis, namely our organs and their exceptionally complex makeup that we often take for granted. This issue aims to take a deep look at some of the processes that affect us every day that we usually do not think about.

Modern medicine is perhaps one of the greatest blessings of our time, as synthetic drugs are able to cure complex diseases in previously unknown ways. These medicines undergo intense research, testing, and scrutiny before being released to the general public. We quickly rush to the doctor’s office and pop a few pills when we feel ill, yet we rarely ponder over highly exhausting and costly process of developing these drugs.

Our hearts never rest from the moment we are born to the day we die. This organ we don’t usually think about pumps onwards multiple times per minute and allows us to perform our daily functions. In her piece in this issue, Ceyda Sablak reminds us how delicate the anatomy of this organ is and why we should maintain a healthy, balanced life of physical and spiritual activity, as many spiritual masters have seen a connection between our biological heart and our spiritual well-being.

Stem cell research has been a common point of discussion, debate, and controversy in the past few decades. Researchers argue that they possess an almost endless number of possibilities while advocates argue that they are derived in an unethical manner. The science behind them is fascinating, and the potential that they possess is undoubtedly inspiring.

Lastly, it turns out that our tears are integral to keeping our eyes healthy and itch-free. A lack of tears can result in a multitude of annoying and harmful disorders that can severely affect a person’s life. Searches have been underway to find the perfect “alternative tear” for those that suffer from tear related disorders. Who would have thought that something so simple contributes so much to our normal happiness and peace?

The Coronavirus pandemic has swept the world in recent months and with it came a wave of panic, unease, and a need for courage. Humanity is collectively fighting for its health, a treasure that we sometimes take for granted. It is imperative that we constantly look to maintain our health through reviewing potentially harmful practices and working to discover new methods of cleanliness and purity. Many of our articles in this issue will explore the theme of health across the spectrum including bodily, psychological, spiritual, and moral health. We also discuss Coronavirus in detail in this issue’s Science Square and dispel some conspiracy theories that the virus is man-made.

Washing our hands regularly is actually one of the most simple and effective ways to help prevent the spread of viruses, including Covid-19. Such a simple procedure seems like common sense nowadays, but this process was actually a breakthrough in the nineteenth century. Consistent hand washing and sterilization is especially important for hospital staff as they can easily transmit new diseases and germs into patients with weakened immune systems. Taking responsibility for our individual health will contribute to the overall health of our society by at least not spreading disease.

Diabetes is another disease that threatens the well-being of millions across the globe. It is complicated, and we explore in this issue the differences that excessive fat and sugar consumption can have in regards to causing and accelerating diabetes. We can best preserve our health with reasonably sized diets that are rich in nutrients, and routines that physical exercise.  

The effects of selfishness versus selflessness on the mind are also explored. It is no secret that many current societies promote selfishness over the well-being of others whether through subliminal advertisement messaging or the consistent emphasis placed upon trampling over others for career success. The way that we view and treat others, whether positively or negatively, has a rippling effect throughout society and works to either bolster or deteriorate our collective mental health and happiness.

We must especially work hard to preserve the health of our children, from the food that they eat to the media and technology that they use. Cell phone usage among infants and toddlers is becoming more and more widespread, however studies have shown that excessive usage can stunt their growth or even permanently alter their very fragile and rapidly developing brains.

Our world is rapidly changing, as it seems that every year produces new innovations and challenges to keep up with. It is up to us to stay informed and aware, lest we fall behind and fail to preserve the very things that we hold most dear.

“The human brain, then, is the most complicated organization of matter that we know.”
Isaac Asimov

If someone asks what you recall when you look at the following pictures, I can hear you say ‘President Obama’ and ‘Statue of Liberty’. You just see a fragment of the pictures and remember them.

So, how does it happen? This is just a simple task for the brain. It stores an image and retrieves it whenever a part of it is seen. Amazing features of the brain, especially its power to learn and make decisions, inspires computer scientists in the field of artificial intelligence.

In computer science, an artificial neuron is a simple computational model of a neuron in the brain that excludes biological properties. Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are composed of artificial neurons, and they are utilized to solve specific problems, especially those that require learning and decision-making. ANNs may not be the best solutions in various machine learning problems; however, they are accepted as strong alternatives. Although ANNs don’t claim to be so, currently they are not even close to producing a simple model of the brain. Let’s take a short journey into the world of ANNs to experience the extreme difficulty of modeling the brain.

Some Applications of ANNs

Figure 1: Overview of ALVINN structure. Images obtained from the camera installed on the vehicle are provided to the ANN, and ANN decides the steering angle.

(adapted from: http://virtuallab.kar.fei.stuba.sk/robowiki/images/e/e8/Lecture_ALVINN.pdf).

ANNs have various applications in very large spectrum of problems that require learning, such as the Autonomous Land Vehicle in a Neural Network (ALVINN). The structure of ALVINN is shown in Figure 1. The ALVINN project by Carnegie Mellon University started in 1986 and aims to make a vehicle without a driver (Mitchell, 1997). In this project, ANN learns the steering habits of a driver. A camera is mounted on the vehicle to capture the images of the road. With respect to the continuous images provided, ALVINN determines the steering level with 45 different angle positions from sharp left to sharp right. Steering is updated 15 times per second so that it allows real-time control while driving at 55 mph. The system is trained by the data obtained from a human driver in a simulator and a real vehicle. ALVINN was able to speed up to 70 mph and successfully drive at 55 mph for 90 miles.

Figure 2: Handwritten zip codes (LeCun, et al., 1989)

Another example is handwritten zip code recognition (LeCun, et al., 1989). Zip codes from US Mail written by various people with large variety of styles and sizes were used in the experiments. Figure 2 presents some examples of zip codes in the experiment database. After the ANN was trained with more than 7,000 digits in the zip codes, it was 99% successful in recognizing around 2,000 digits in new zip codes.

Learning and Decision-making in ANNs

In order to understand the challenges better, we will first examine learning and decision-making in neurons and ANNs on simple examples.

Figure 3: (a) A typical neuron (adopted from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Neuron_-_annotated.svg), (b) artificial neuron in computer

Figure 3(a) illustrates a typical neuron which is the constituent of brain’s complicated network structure. Each neuron receives information as signals via dendrites, then evaluates it and generates a signal that is transmitted through its axon. A neuron has many connections between its dendrites and the axons of various other neurons. Figure (b) demonstrates an artificial neuron in computer science. It is considered a function: dendrites as the inputs of the function and generated signal via the axon as the output of the function.

Let’s see an example of an artificial neuron that understands if a given produce is a red apple or not. Think about how you understand whether a produce is a red apple or not. You see the shape and the color. However, it might be an artificial one for decoration. Then you can taste it and you get the sweetness of the apple. Similarly, our neuron receives three pieces of information as the input; ‘has circular shape?’, ‘is sweet?’, and ‘has red color?’. If the output is ‘yes’, that means the neuron recognizes the produce as a red apple. Otherwise, it will be ‘no’, which means the produce is not a red apple (Figure 4). Here, the neuron’s function is defined in such a way that it only generates ‘yes’ when all the inputs are ‘yes’.

Figure 4: Example inputs and outputs for the artificial neuron.

In an artificial neuron, some of the information can be more important than the others. For instance, to have red color may be more valuable in determining the price of produce. Assume that round shape and sweetness has equal value of $1; however, having red color is $2 – twice as valuable as the other features (Figure 5).

Figure 5: Artificial neuron with different input weights. Arrow thickness indicates the importance.

So, what is the big fuss about artificial neurons if they are only functions? In fact, the main feature of artificial neurons is learning. Considering the last example above, the neuron initially does not know the importance of the dendrites, i.e. the weights of inputs are all the same. If not trained, the neuron will generate the following answers which are sometimes wrong as indicated in Table 1.

Table 1: Artificial neuron before training; highlighted answers are wrong.

In real life, a teacher trains students. For instance, the teacher asks a question and if the received answer is not correct, she provides the right answer. Students learn the right answer and use this correct information in their lives. It is similar in artificial neurons as depicted in Figure 6. When the response of the neuron is incorrect, it adjusts the importance of the dendrites with respect to the correct answer hence it answers the same question correctly next time. During the training session, the neurons will be continuously asked the values of all the produce until it learns them all.

Figure 6: The learning process of the artificial neuron.

What if the problem gets complicated? Then one artificial neuron will not be sufficient, and we will need a network of neurons; ANNs. A more complex problem, ‘learning the digits’ is indicated in Figure 7.

Figure 7: (a) Digit learning problem, (b) ANN structure that learns digits. Due to the difficulty, only the connections between the input layer and first / last neurons in the middle layer are shown.

ANN has 3 x 5 = 15 input units like receptors of an eye retina. Each input unit corresponds to one square in the digits; either filled or blank. Each input unit is connected to the dendrites of all neurons in the middle layer. The output of each cell in the middle is connected to the dendrites of all neurons in the output layer. There are 10 output neurons corresponding to the digits from 0 to 9. After the ANN is trained, it provides a correct answer to the given digit as input. When digit ‘3’ is provided to the network, the neuron labeled with number ‘3’ in Figure 7(b) is triggered and outputs ‘yes’ whereas the rest of the neurons output ‘no’.

Figure 8: Faulty digit ‘3’ with a missing black square on the top right side.

Initially, all neurons in the network have equally weighted dendrites. After a reasonable amount of training, neurons adjust their weights, and ANN is able to identify digits. Here, we have some major challenges: what does ‘reasonable amount of training’ mean? When the ANN is undertrained, it will not always answer correctly to the digits given in Figure (a). In the other case, when the ANN is overtrained, it will memorize the digits provided during the training and will not recognize the faulty ones such as the one in Figure 8.

Challenges of ANNs

Beyond the mentioned the overtraining / undertraining problems, ANNs have a bigger challenge – how to determine the structure of ANN that fits the problem? In the digit learning example, we’re lucky because the structure is provided in Figure 7(b). However, the outcome of the solution may drastically depend on the number of neurons and the connections among them which is indeed a hard problem for ANNs.

The huge capability of the brain in learning and decision making comes from the huge number of neurons – around 100 billion – and the enormous amount of connections among them – from 100 to 500 trillion. The challenge to design such a huge network requires huge computation power. With the increasing number of neurons, ANN dramatically slows down especially during the learning process. Here, our example is a simple learning task of 3×5 pixel digits compared to the brain’s acquisition capacity of hundreds of images in our daily life. 

When the number of neurons gets larger, the reliability of network also reduces. Small adjustments in weights may change the entire behavior of the network hence it is easy to lose control of ANN. In contrast, the brain has a robust system, and its fault tolerance is admirable. Although neurons die every day, this doesn’t affect its performance significantly. The training method and how to update the weights are other hard problems leading to many different approaches in the neural computation field.

We have presented some simple tasks that can be solved using a few neurons and their challenges. On the other hand, consider the thousands of problems, various and incredible amount of information we have learned, and the thousands of decisions we make. The brain is truly amazing from the computer science perspective.

Bibliography

• Hertz, J. A., Krogh, A. S., & Palmer, R. G. (1991). Introduction To The Theory Of Neural Computation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Hopfield, J. J. (1982). Neural networks and physical systems with emergent collective computational properties. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA , 79, 2554-2588.
• LeCun, Y., Boser, B., Denker, J. S., Henderson, D., Howard, R. E., Hubbard, W., et al. (1989). Backpropagation applied to handwritten zip code recognition. 1 (4), 541-551.
• Mitchell, T. M. (1997). Machine Learning. McGraw-Hill.

In the mountains, people use mason jars for everything: canning, flower vases, gifts, moonshine, drinking glasses, treasure jars – the list goes on and on. There’s not much a good old mason jar can’t do for us country folk. Believe me, a person has never had a good glass of tea until they have drank it from a mason jar full of ice, with a slice of lemon shoved down in it. It is m…..m….good!

The treasure jar is the one I want to write about. The name treasure jar explains itself. It’s very simple. People decorate the jars and then put items in them that they treasure themselves. The treasure can be a simple recipe passed down generations through the family, or it can contain rare old coins worth a fortune. It all depends on what the person holds dear to them in their own hearts. Once the jars are filled, they are given as gifts.

When I was a child, I would catch lightning bugs and put them in an old mason jar and set them on a table beside my bed. I would watch them light up until I fell asleep. It was a “simple” but “great” treasure in my young eyes. But no matter how hard I would pray for them to live forever beside my bed, they would always die.

I have thought about it a lot, and if I only had seventy-two hours to live, this is what I would do: First, I would buy five-hundred mason jars in different sizes, then I would put my “prized” possessions in them. Next, I would distribute them in unique ways so that the people getting them would surely smile. Remember that where I’m from, “prized” possessions do not have to have monetary value. They only have to mean something special to the one giving the jars.

The people that I would give my jars to would be chosen very carefully because, after all, I’m giving away “my” prized treasures. The first jars made would be for my four grandchildren. I have three boys and one girl, ages running from newborn to age seven. In my granddaughter’s jar I would put some pictures of us together, as well as a recording of my voice with a special message just for her. I would also add my pearls and ask her to wear them on her wedding day. That way a part of me will be with her on her special day. I would arrange for the jar to be given to her on her wedding day. The boys’ jars would also contain a recording of my voice and some pictures as well , but one would contain a watch given to me by my father. Another, a case knife I’ve had for years. The last one would contain an old engagement ring of mine, so that whoever receives it can give it to his true love someday. I would want their jars given on special days as well, such as their senior graduation or eighteenth birthday.

The next jars would go to my son and daughter. My daughters jar would contain the rest of my jewelry, and then I would share with her my whole life story. I would tell her things about myself that I have never told anyone. I think she would be very surprised about some of the things she would learn. I believe some things are better left unsaid until the time is right to share them.

My sons jar would contain some old coins that belonged to his father and all of my old love letters written by his father when I was only fifteen years old. I would also include the poetry and songs I’ve written over the years that no one else has ever seen or heard.

The next thing I would do is take twenty of the jars and write down all of the hopes and dreams and goals that I had, but never got to accomplish. I would release them into the river along with a note to those who found them that would say,” live everyday like it’s your last, because it may well be.”

The rest of my jars would travel across the seas, to other states, and hopefully to the White House. Some jars would be painted red, white and blue and sent over seas for the men and women serving our country. Their jars would contain thank-you notes for their brave gestures, and also a lucky penny in each one. Next, I would love for one of my jars to make it to the president and his family. In their jar I would place inspirational notes for them to read to lift them up when times seem really hard. I would also explain how happy I was to have lived long enough to see a historical moment in time. I would also include two handkerchiefs that were embroidered. one would say, “MR. PRESIDENT’ and the other one would say, “FIRST LADY”. The only way I can think of to get it to the president is to go to the media, so that’s exactly what I would do.

Finally, the rest of my jars would be divided in half and shipped to The Shriners Hospital and to The ST. Judes Hospital, because they treat very sick children for free. The jars would be decorated and filled with small toys and trinkets along with an inspirational note to encourage them to keep on fighting until they find a cure for their diseases. I would want the jars to be given to the children as soon as possible, because these children are fighting for their lives, and some may not make it.

I believe my jars would bring peace to others as well as myself because they would know they were on my mind in my final moments of life. It would also bring me peace to know that I left a part of myself all over the world. And that’s something special, considering I’ve always lived in the mountains and have lived a very simple life.

Once my goal was achieved, I would spend time in prayer. I would pray for my loved ones as well as myself because I would not tell them I was going to die, because I want to remember them with a happy, joyful spirit, not with a sad broken one. But if, for some reason, I was given more time to live, I would do the things I’ve always wanted to do, like write a book, record the songs I’ve written, and I would love to be able to travel to places I’ve never been to.

Life is short, and time passes quickly, but I want to live. But just like the lightning bugs I caught as a child, I will eventually die. Life and Death walk together hand in hand. Life screams, “LIVE!” and Death screams, “YOU BETTER LIVE BECAUSE I AM COMING AFTER YOU SOONER THAN YOU THINK!”

Belinda Sturgill is a freelance writer. She lives in McRoberts, KY, and she can be reached at belindasturgill12@yahoo.com. With this essay, she won an honorable mention in The Fountain Essay Contest 2010.

Ants and Ecosystem³

The abundance of ants on earth is legendary. They live almost everywhere except very cold places such as Antarctica and Greenland. A worker is less than one-millionth the size of a human being, yet ants taken collectively rival people as dominant organisms on the land. Lean against a tree almost anywhere and the first creature that crawls on you will probably be an ant. Stroll down a suburban sidewalk with your eyes fixed on the ground, counting the different kinds of animals you see. The ants will win hands down. The British entomologist⁴ C. B. Williams once calculated that the number of insects alive on earth at a given moment is one million trillion, 1018. If, to take a conservative figure, one percent of this host is ants, their total population is ten thousand trillion. Individual workers weigh on average between one to five milligrams, according to the species. When combined, all ants in the world taken together weigh about as much as all human beings. But being so finely divided into tiny individuals, this biomass⁵ saturates the terrestrial environment.⁶

Ants absolutely dominate in rainforests, which are the most biologically diverse ecosystems on earth. Rainforests are so diverse that in a single leguminous tree (a relative to beans and peas) in Peru, 43 species of ants belonging to 26 genera⁷ were found, about equal to the ant fauna⁸ of the British Isles. In a single square mile of tropical forest in Peru or Brazil, there may be 1,500 or more species of butterflies-twice the total number found in the United States and Canada combined.⁹ In Amazon rainforests ants and termites together compose nearly a third of the animal biomass. In other words, when all kinds of animals, large and small, from jaguars to monkeys down to roundworms and mites, are weighed, nearly a third of the weight consists of the flesh of ants and termites.

All of the ants, composing in formal taxonomic classification the family Formicidae of the order Hymenoptera, contain about 9,500 species known to science and at least twice that number of species remaining to be discovered, most of which are confined to the tropics. The total number of species of social insects is about 13,500 out of a grand total of 750,000 insect species that have been recognized to date by biologists. These numbers show that social insects seem to constitute 2 percent of all insects yet, in terms of biomass, social insects are half or more of all insects. Why are ants and other social insects so successful in the terrestrial environment? Their strength comes from their social organization.¹⁰ In addition to the question of why ants and other highly social insect species have been so successful, it is also important to understand how such a large collection of individuals maintains order and collectively accomplishes tasks without producing chaos. With potentially thousands of individual ants to coordinate, how do they make decisions regarding who does what and when, especially critical decisions regarding reproduction?¹¹ These questions become even more intriguing when you realize that ants have quite limited sensory devices to experience the world. They also have relatively simple nervous systems that process only a limited number of stimuli and are aware of only a few minutes to a few hours into the past.¹²

What is Collective Intelligence?¹³

Intelligence can be defined simply as the ability to solve problems. One system is more intelligent than another system if in a given time interval it can solve more problems, or find better solutions to the same problems. A group can then be said to exhibit collective intelligence if it can find more or better solutions than the whole of all solutions that would be found by its members working individually.

All organizations, whether they are firms, institutions or sporting teams, are created on the assumption that their members can do more together than they could do alone. Yet, most organizations have a hierarchical structure, with one individual at the top directing the activities of the other individuals at the levels below. Although no president, chief executive or general can oversee or control all the tasks performed by different individuals in a complex organization, one might still suspect that the intelligence of the organization is somehow merely a reflection or extension of the intelligence of its hierarchical head. This is no longer the case in small, closely interacting groups such as soccer or football teams, where the “captain” rarely gives orders to the other team members. The movements and tactics that emerge during a soccer match are not controlled by a single individual, but result from complex sequences of interactions. Still, they are simple enough for an individual to comprehend, and since soccer players are intrinsically intelligent individuals, it may appear that the team is not really more intelligent than its members.

With the growing interest in complex adaptive systems, artificial life, swarms, and simulated societies, the concept of “collective intelligence” is coming more and more to the fore. The basic idea is that a group of individuals (e.g. people, insects, robots etc.) can be smart in a way that none of its members is. Complex, apparently intelligent behavior may emerge from the synergy created by simple interactions between individuals that follow simple rules.

How do ants succeed?

Now we have lots of questions to ask about the success of ants as a group. How do they govern? Who is the ruler? How do they foresee the future? How do they elaborate plans and preserve equilibrium? These, indeed, are puzzling questions. Every single ant in a colony seems to have its own agenda, and yet an insect colony looks so organized. The seamless integration of all individual activities does not seem to require a supervisor. For example, leaf-cutter ants cut leaves from plants and trees to grow fungi. Workers forage for leaves hundreds of meters away from the nest, literally organizing highways to and from their foraging sites. Weaver ant workers form chains of their own bodies, allowing them to cross wide gaps and pull stiff leaf edges together to form a nest. Several chains can join to form a bigger one over which workers run back and forth. In their moving phase, army ants organize impressive hunting raids, involving up to 200,000 workers, during which they collect thousands of prey.¹⁴

A harvester ant colony performs many tasks: It must collect and distribute food, build a nest, and care for the eggs, larvae, and pupae. It lives in a changing world to which it must respond. When there is a windfall of food, more foragers are needed. When the nest is damaged, extra effort is required for quick repairs. Task allocation is the process that results in certain workers engaged in specific tasks, in numbers appropriate to the current situation. Task allocation is a solution to a dynamic problem and thus it is a process of continual adjustment. It operates without any central or hierarchical control to direct individual ants into particular tasks. Although “queen” is a term that reminds us of human political systems, the queen is not an authority figure. She lays eggs and is fed and cared for by the workers. She does not decide which worker does what. In a harvester ant colony, many feet of intricate tunnels and chambers and thousands of ants separate the queen, surrounded by interior workers, from the ants working outside the nest and using only the chambers near the surface. It would be physically impossible for the queen to direct every worker’s decision about which task to perform and when. Consider the commercially available ant farms being sold. Since it’s forbidden to transfer ant queens, in the US ant farms are sold with only worker ants. Still they work in harmony. They build their nest, they build bridges, they collect food and they defend their colony. They do all these things without a queen. The absence of central control may seem counterintuitive, because we are accustomed to hierarchically organized social groups in many aspects of human societies, including universities, businesses, governments, orchestras and armies. This mystery underlies the ancient and pervading fascination of social insect colonies.

No ant is able to assess the global needs of the colony, or to count how many workers are engaged in each task and decide how many should be allocated differently. The capacity of an individual is limited. It cannot make complicated assessments. It probably cannot remember anything for very long. Its behavior is based on what it perceives in its immediate environment. Each worker needs to make only fairly simple decisions. There is abundant evidence, throughout physics, the social sciences and biology that such simple behavior by individuals can lead to predictable patterns in the behavior of the group. It should be possible to explain task allocation in a similar way, as the consequence of simple decisions by individuals.

Though ant colonies must respond to changing conditions, the response does not have to be perfect. It is not like clockwork, or an army, each unit snapping into place so the whole system ticks on without a hitch. There must be enough ants to collect food, often enough for the colony to survive and grow. The appropriate range of numbers should be allocated over a set of similar occasions. If the colony did not get enough food today, perhaps it will tomorrow. The process results in more or less the right number of ants engaged in the appropriate task, often enough for the colony to carry on.

Maximizing the number of ants that perform each task may not always be best for the colony. A task allocation problem for a human city is how to get the right number of firefighters to the scene of a fire. It may be a waste to have too many firefighters on the city payroll. Too many ants allocated to each task may be expensive for a colony if the excess ants could be doing something more useful than waiting around when they are not needed.

The most difficult thing to grasp about task allocation is that it is not a deterministic process even at the individual level. An ant does not respond the same way every time to the same stimulus; nor do colonies. Some events influence the probabilities that certain ants will perform certain tasks, and this regularity leads to predictable tendencies rather than perfectly deterministic outcomes. The ant is jostled in a stream of events that send it sometimes into one task, sometimes another. Task allocation is not a system in which each ant awaits the crucial event that defines its status forever. Like a twig in a turbulent river, an ant may tend to go in one direction, but there are many places it could get washed ashore, to be picked up and then swept in another direction altogether.

Stories about totalitarian societies, inexorable armies, and voracious monsters are often told as stories about ants. But ants have no dictators, no generals and no evil masterminds. In fact, there are no leaders at all.

In short, the basic mystery about ant colonies is that there is no management. A functioning organization with no one in charge is so unlike the way humans operate as to be virtually inconceivable. There is no central control. No insect issues commands to another or instructs it to do things in a certain way. No individual is aware of what must be done to complete any colony task. Each ant scratches and prods its way through the tiny world of its immediate surroundings. Ants meet each other, separate, go about their business. Somehow these small events create a pattern that drives the coordinated behavior of colonies.¹⁵

Elements of Collective Intelligence¹⁶

More is different. This old slogan of complexity theory actually has two meanings that are relevant to our ant colonies. First, the statistical nature of ant interaction demands that there is a critical mass of ants for the colony to make intelligent assessments of its global state. Ten ants roaming across the desert floor will not be able to accurately judge the overall need for foragers or nest-builders, but two thousand will do the job admirably. Individual ants do not know that they are prioritizing pathways between different food sources when they lay down a pheromone¹⁷ gradient near a pile of nutritious seeds. In fact, if we only studied individual ants in isolation, we’d have no way of knowing that those chemical secretions were part of an overall effort to create a mass distribution line, carrying comparatively huge quantities of food back to the nest. It is only by observing the entire system at work that the global behavior becomes apparent.

Ignorance is usually useful for ants. The simplicity of the ant language-and the relative stupidity of the individual ants-is, as the computer programmers say, a feature but not a bug. Emergent systems can grow unwieldy when their component parts become excessively complicated. Better to build a densely interconnected system with simple elements, and let the more sophisticated behavior trickle up. That is why an ant does not respond to all stimuli around her, namely she ignores until she decides that the stimulus is strong enough to be responded to.

Encourage random encounters. Decentralized systems such as ant colonies rely heavily on the random interactions of ants exploring a given space without any predefined orders. Their encounters with other ants are individually arbitrary, but because there are so many individuals in the system, those encounters eventually allow individuals to gauge and alter the state of the colony itself. Without those haphazard encounters, the colony would not be capable of stumbling across new food sources or of adapting to new environmental conditions.

Look for patterns in the signs. While the ants do not need an extensive vocabulary and are capable of syntactical formulations, they do rely heavily on patterns in the semiochemicals they detect. A gradient in a pheromone trail leads them toward a food source, while encountering a high ratio of nest-builders to foragers encourages them to switch tasks. This knack for pattern detection allows meta-information to circulate through the colony mind: signs about signs. Smelling the pheromones of a single forager ant means little, but smelling the pheromones of fifty foragers imparts information about the global state of the colony.

Pay attention to your neighbors. This may well be the most important lesson that the ants have to give us, and the one with the most far-reaching consequences. You can restate it as “Local information can lead to global wisdom.” The primary mechanism of swarm logic is the interaction between neighboring ants in the field: ants stumbling across each other, or each other’s pheromone trails, while patrolling the area around the nest. Adding ants to the overall system will generate more interactions between neighbors and will consequently enable the colony to solve problems and regulate itself more effectively. Without neighboring ants stumbling across one another, colonies would be just a senseless assemblage of individual organisms-a swarm without logic.

Conclusion

Ants, first of all, have something to teach us about how nature works. Any system whose behavior arises from the interactions of its components has something in common with ant colonies. Using ants and other social insects as models, computer scientists have developed software agents that cooperate to solve complex problems, such as the rerouting of traffic in a busy telecom network or internet. Another example, the famous traveling salesman problem, in which a salesman tries to find the shortest and fastest route between many cities, is almost impossible to solve definitively. But with the methods inspired by ants the problem can be solved at least approximately, because ants are very good at finding the shortest path between the food and the nest collectively. Collective robotics borrowed from collective intelligence in ant colonies is being used to manage systems composed of lots of robots in synchronization.

Nature is a book to be read by the people who approach it to live in harmony, not to dominate. We are not the owners of the beautiful things around us, but observers searching for signs which reveal the wisdom behind them.

Footnotes

1. Haskins C.P., Of Ants and Men, Prentice-Hall Inc., 1939.
2. Huxley J., Ants, AMS Press, 1969.
3. An ecosystem is a grouping of plants, animals, and other organisms interacting with each other and with the environment in such a way as to perpetuate the grouping more or less indefinitely.
4. The scientific discipline in which ants are studied is called myrmecology and it is one of the branches of the study of insects, entomology.
5. Biomass is the total weight of all living organisms in a biological environment.
6. Holldobler B. and Wilson E.O., Journey to the Ants, Harvard University Press, 1994.
7. The word Genera is the plural of genus. Genus is a taxonomic category ranking below a family and above a species and generally consisting of a group of species exhibiting similar characteristics.
8. Fauna (Flora) is the animals (plants) of a particular region or period, considered as a group.
9. http://www.savenature.org/images/pdfs/ecoandinsects.pdf
10. Holldobler and Wilson, ibid.
11. Bonabeau E., Dorigo M., and Theraulaz G., Swarm Intelligence: From Natural to Artificial System, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Oxford University Press, NY:1999.
12. Holldobler and Wilson, ibid.
13. Heylighen, F. “Collective Intelligence and its Implementation on the Web: Algorithms to Develop a Collective Mental Map,” Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory. 1999, Vol. 5, no. 3, pp. 253-280.
14. Bonabeau et al, ibid.
15. Gordon D., Ants at Work, W. W. Norton. 1999.
16. Johnson S., Emergence Simon & Schuster. 2001.
17. The pheromone is the semiotic chemical ants use to communicate with each other and with other colonies. Every colony has its own odor. That is why ants can recognize their sisters from the same colony easily.

At the same time as these events are happening almost simultaneously, information from my eyes and my finger is being sent to the brain so that my finger will move in the way I expect it to. For example, if the path of my finger’s movement is somehow blocked, my brain can redirect it.

However, the event described above is not that simple. Starting from the neurons and continuing until we reach the muscles, every element that acts during this process displays extraordinarily complex alterations at both cellular and molecular levels.

Consider muscle cells, since they are moderately well understood. Upon arriving at the muscle cell, the electrical impulse causes the voltage-sensitive calcium channels in specific compartments within the cell to open and release calcium into the cell. You might remember from high school biology that muscle contraction is the result of two proteins (myosin and actin) sliding over each other. Normally, actins are masked by proteins known as tropomyosin. During the waiting period, therefore, the interaction between myosin and actin, which leads to contraction, cannot occur. This is why the muscle cell releases calcium, for when calcium is free in the cell, it binds to tropomyosin and enables it to move. As a result, actin is free to interact with myosin.1

After that, millions of molecules containing energy, known as ATP, bind to millions of myosin proteins, and the muscle contracts. When the contraction ends, the freed-up calcium is stored once again in specific compartments. When calcium is not present, tropomyosins again mask the actin proteins, and millions of muscle cells revert to their initial position, ready to respond to another contraction.

I realize that all of this is hard for the average reader to understand. However, the events that take place are even more complicated.

Expressions like “ATP binds to myosin” and “calcium is stored in compartments” are, in fact, simplified ways of explaining a highly complex event. Since there is a reason for everything, our cells should contain something that is performing these functions and carrying out such events. If we expand this problem to its limits, we will have to understand that each cell contains a large set of rapid and specific chemical reactions that occur constantly and yet do not interfere with one another. Based on current scientific knowledge, we can say that enzymes conduct almost all reactions in a cell, and that DNA has all the necessary information to produce enzymes. Enzymes are protein molecules that speed up and regulate all of the reactions that take place in a cell. If there were no enzymes, the reaction that a cell carries out in seconds could only be completed in thousands of years, and consequently, life as we know it would not exist. Life requires that the correct enzyme be found in the correct place and at the correct concentration.

Based on this, let’s revisit the above example. When the electric impulse reaches the muscle cell and calcium ions are released, this and every external and internal signal is conveyed to the DNA through a mechanism that we are just beginning to appreciate: signal transduction. Later, RNA is produced in those regions of the DNA that are responsible for producing the enzymes that enable the cell to give the appropriate answer (RNA helps DNA to produce enzymes). The synthesis of the enzyme is regulated at various checkpoints, such as during RNA production or RNA translocation out of the nucleus by other enzymes.2 ATPase, one of the many enzymes produced, makes it possible to use ATP, while another enzyme makes sure that the ATPases are in the correct location in the cell. Meanwhile, in order to sustain life, thousands of other enzymes conduct various reactions at the correct time and place. Therefore, when I move my finger, the number of active elements increases enormously.

Let’s look at the finer points of the cell. Using a simple calculation, in which each number is much smaller than the actual number used, if we assume that one million cells perform some kind of action from the reception of the first impulse in the brain until the time the muscle contracts, and if we calculate that one thousand reactions occur in each of these cells, this means that one billion reactions are performed for the simple action of moving a finger. One billion reactions, in just one second. And at the same time, my heart is beating, new blood cells are being produced, my eyes are sending visual information to my brain, my kidneys are filtering my blood, my lungs are exchanging old air with new, fresh air, my digestive system is supplying the necessary nutrients to my blood stream, and much, much more. Moreover, all of these are continually taking place. The fact that all of these actions are occurring, again based on a very rough and simple calculation, means that maybe one trillion reactions are occurring every second. As a result, a person might feel that it is quite possible, at any instant, for this perfect machine-the human body-to fall apart.

Realizing this, one might actually find it hard to believe that he or she is really alive. For example, I would never believe that such a machine would work if I did not have the empirical knowledge that it does work. How, for example, can I believe that I can produce one trillion reactions every moment and never confuse one with another, that it takes one billion reactions to move my finger, and that one trillion gears are working by themselves without making any mistakes?

With this idea in mind, I see the following lines in Epitomes of Light: “Also, since a building that contains every kind of artwork and riches cannot exist without having been built by someone, the existence of this universe is intimately connected with the existence of the Builder. If someone thinks carefully, it is impossible to accept one without the other.”3 Upon reading these words, I start to realize that all of these gears are not working by themselves, but rather that every second all of the trillion gears are being regulated by the One for whom nothing is difficult.

Suddenly, I remember that whenever the names of God are recited, I hear the name al-Hayy right next to al-Qayyum: God is He besides Whom there is no god; He is al-Hayy (the Ever-Living), al-Qayyum (the One Who sustains and protects all that exists) (Qur’an 2:255). Putting al-Qayyum next to “life” indicates, at least to me, that every living being is kept alive at each instant by al-Qayyum. If His control over each person’s existence were to be lost for even one second, one trillion gears would become irreversibly mixed up and the body would fall apart instantly. While thanking God for all that He has given me, I realize that I cannot thank Him enough for even one gear.

References

1. Harvey Lodish et al., Molecular Cell Biology, New York: Scientific American Books, c1995, 1027-29.
2. Lewin, Benjamin, Genes VI, Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997, 847.
3. Nursi, S., Epitomes of Light: Mathnawi al-Nuriya: The Essentials of the Risale-i Nur, Kaynak A.S., 1999.

Answer: Consider our position in this universe. We are neither omnipotent nor self-sufficient, and so have needs, many of which are beyond our power to obtain. We are weak and vulnerable, and subject to worry, illness, and other negative events. When we look at the sheer abundance of animate and inanimate things around us, as well as their tremendous harmony and order, we cannot help but reflect on our frailty and relative insignificance.

This realization awakens a deep need to acknowledge the Divine and to worship the great mysterious power that controls everything. Since whatever we see and touch is transient and dependent on something else, it is unworthy of our worship, for logic dictates that behind them is a Supreme Being, a Transcendent Will guiding and controlling everything. This Being, therefore, must be the goal of our worship.

Reflecting on existence, we see the all-encompassing lawfulness and order, the uniformity and regularity of things and events, and their obedience to an All-Powerful Will. We become aware that everything has a part in that lawfulness and order. That part is its purpose or duty. As we realize that each us is also a part, we conclude that each person’s existence is not an accident; rather, each individual has a specific purpose and duty to fulfil.

In aesthetic terms, we can never emulate the beauty of creation. From our own form to the vigorous and lively beauty of the innumerable forms and colors surrounding us, not to mention the stars and planets, everything causes a strong desire to know the Creator. It is as if everything were designed and produced elsewhere and then simply placed before us so that we could marvel at them while using and benefiting from them. The world is presented as a richly laid table of foods and ornaments for our use. Reaching for an item, we inevitably sense the Giver’s presence, and so experience an even greater joy and wonder.

In religious terms, such sentiments and conceptions aroused in human consciousness, as it were by nature, are a stage in acknowledging the Beautiful Names and Attributes of the Creator making Himself known through His creation. Every blessing, excellence, and beauty speaks of the one who made it possible. Every system, balance, and order indicates the one who established and sustains it. In sum, we naturally feel grateful for what God has provided and so worship Him in response to His making Himself known.

Some scholars argue that even without Prophets or guides, we should be able to gain some knowledge of God by observing the universe and then act accordingly. There is some evidence to support this argument. Before Islam, many people, including Muhammad, were born and lived in Makkah, the heartland of Arab paganism and idolatry. No one showed them the way to God or spoke to them of the Oneness of God. And yet history records a simple nomad’s remarks: “Camel droppings point to a camel’s existence. Footprints on the sand tell of a traveler. Heaven with its stars, the Earth with its mountains and valleys, and the sea with its waves- don’t they point to the All-Powerful, Knowing, Wise, and Caring Maker?”

If even a simple bedouin could understand this much, what about others? What about Muhammad, who one day would be appointed to deliver God’s final Revelation? Long before the Revelation began, he understood the world’s reality, perceived the Truth in the grand Book of the Universe, and began to search for it. Taking refuge in the Hira Cave, he devoted himself to worship, only occasionally coming home for provisions. This might indicate that we can reach some degree of knowledge and so worship God.

Zaid ibn ‘Amr, ‘Umar ibn al-Khattab’s uncle, reached a similar understanding. Although he died before Muhammad’s Prophethood, he intuitively felt the truth of Islam in the air, as well as the meaning and significance of Prophet Muhammad’s coming. As he lay dying, he called his family members and said: “God’s light is on the horizon. I believe it will emerge fully very soon. I already feel its signs over our heads.” Addressing God, he continued: “O Great Creator, I have not been able to know You thoroughly. Had I known, I would have prostrated before You and never raised it in quest of Your pleasure.”1

Evidently, a pure conscience free of any traces of paganism and polytheism can understand its own station and duty when it seen creation’s splendor and harmony, and thus seek to serve and please the One who created and ordained all things.

Knowing God entails worshipping Him. As he provides everything for us, we are obliged to serve Him. One blessing is prayer. God tells us how to pray so that we will do it correctly and effectively. God told the Prophet how to pray, and we are told to follow his example. There are certain rules to follow.

Praying as taught by Divine teachings and guidance is the best worship, for it flows from the love, awe, and submission to God that belief in Him and knowledge of His Divine Being engender. Following the method prescribed by God and His Prophet please Him further and benefit us the most.

We are in constant need of help, guidance, and counsel. Imagine that a successful business owner gives you sound and free advice on how to run your business. Would you refuse such advice? If we pray according to the revealed method, we avoid the pitfalls of excess and impropriety, and obtain advantage and blessings beyond our imagination. In fact, every word that we recite from the Qur’an might be opening hidden doors and secret locks leading to hidden realms and eternal bliss.

Prayer straightens all ways and opens all doors. God hears our recitals and supplications, and angels gather around us when we prostrate with sincerity. This is why the most accepted pattern of worship is the one prescribed by God. When we buy something, do we make up our own instructions concerning how to use it, or do we use the instructions provided by the manufacturer? Similarly, the Creator knows the best way for us to operate so that we can prosper in this world and the next. Therefore, we should follow what He has revealed and how His Messenger practiced it in his daily life.

It is we who need to worship God; not God who needs to be worshipped-He is free of all need. May He grant us the favor and honor to worship Him rightly and with sincerity.

Footnote

1. Ibn Sad, Tubaqat, 1, 161-2; Ibn Hajar, al-Isaba.