Complex Multilayer Networks Lab

Could the logic of life be shaped by the architecture of biological circuitry? In this paper, @manlius.bsky.social shows how genetic, metabolic, and social networks can govern slow evolutionary dynamics in a unified nonequilibrium framework. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Language models cannot reliably distinguish belief from knowledge and fact - Nature Machine Intelligence Suzgun et al. find that current large language models cannot reliably distinguish between belief, knowledge and fact, raising concerns for their use in healthcare, law and journalism, where such disti...

TL;DR: Even the most advanced language models crumble on first-person false beliefs, showing sharp accuracy drops and revealing that their “understanding” of others’ minds is still shallow pattern mimicry, not genuine epistemic reasoning.

www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Cooperation isn’t weakness, it’s strategy.

Axelrod’s rules remind us: fairness, reciprocity and humility often outcompete envy and cleverness.

In complexity, often simplicity wins.

When matter came alive: the physics of life’s emergence Exploring the origins of life through the mathematical theory of transitions

Phase transitions, bifurcations, thermal vents, exoplanets and their interactive maps, as well as pointers to a whole special issue just published in @royalsocietypublishing.org about origin of life.

With Spotify and Apple podcasts as usual.

What do you need more?

CC: @ricardsole.bsky.social

Understanding the process that favored the emergence of life is not just about looking backward to 🌎’s first dawn: it’s about learning how complexity itself begins and how it might arise again, elsewhere.

Life as a cascade of transitions?

#ComplexityThoughts

manlius.substack.com/p/when-matte...

What a location for a seminar.👀

#ComplexSystems #Padova

Network Medicine is entering a new phase: one that demands we rethink how we study, model and ultimately treat complex diseases.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

#ComplexSystems #NetworkScience #Medicine #MedSky 🧪🧬🌐

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Complexity Thoughts: Issue #67 Unraveling complexity: building knowledge, one paper at a time

A super-interesting new issue of #ComplexityThoughts out!
🧪🌐🧬🌍

🔗 Read: open.substack.com/pub/manlius/...

🎙️ As usual, it’s accompanied by a podcast episode where we explain complex results in a clear, accessible way, almost like “pop science” for complexity: creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/...

📌 Save the Date!

The flagship conference of the Network Science Society - 𝗡𝗲𝘁𝗦𝗰𝗶 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲 - is coming to Northeastern University’s Network Science Institute, 𝗝𝘂𝗻𝗲 𝟭-𝟱, 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟲.
Prepare to share ideas, discoveries & challenges in network science.

Registration opens soon! 🔗 www.netsci2026.com

Want to promote transparency and clarity in network research by helping develop 𝐆𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐤 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐚 (𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐃)?

Sign up to get involved here: tinyurl.com/help-with-GR...

▪️ All career stages welcome
▪️ All fields welcome
▪️ Be compensated for your time

Nearly 4,000 y ago, Egyptians finished their pyramids

Meanwhile, across the ocean, termites in NE Brazil were building something even larger: a hidden empire of 200M mounds, over an area the size of UK 🌍🐜

Still active today, a masterpiece of non-human engineering!
🧪🌐 HT @ricardsole.bsky.social

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences: Vol 380, No 1936

How dit life originate in our planet? How can we create it in the lab?Our @royalsocietypublishing.org Theme Issue "Origins of Life: the possible and the actual", coedited with @sfiscience.bsky.social C Kempes and Susan Stepney is out! royalsocietypublishing.org/toc/rstb/202... @manlius.bsky.social

Bifurcations and phase transitions in the origins of life | Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences The path towards the emergence of life in our biosphere involved several key events allowing for the persistence, reproduction and evolution of molecular systems. All these processes took place in a given environmental context and required both molecular ...

It is often argued that the origin of life must be related to "phase transitions"

This concept is often misused, or even abused.

In a new paper with @ricardsole.bsky.social we discuss which types of transitions might be involved and some relevant models.

royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Between rocky Earths and gas-rich Neptunes, there are worlds that should exist but don’t. Why?

New exoplanet surveys reveal how stellar radiation may strip planets bare, showing that our solar system isn’t the rule: maybe it’s the exception.
🧪🌐🪐

www.scientificamerican.com/article/exop...

Honored to receive the 2024 Outstanding Publication Award from the Intl Soc for Artificial Life @alife2025.bsky.social for our @royalsocietypublishing.org ublishing.org paper “Fundamental Constraints to the Logic of Living Systems” @sfiscience.bsky.social
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Pencil sketch of a horned demon conducting symbols of time and physics. A flock of birds flows from a ‘PAST’ side, through a cracked tunnel/bed, toward ‘FUTURE’. Around it: pendulums, clocks, magnets, induction coils, and a solar-system diagram

Getting ready for a talk. Inspired by the brilliant drawings of @ricardsole.bsky.social, I tried one myself (with a little help from AI).

Did I pull it off? What does this image represent?

📸 Nearly every dot in this James Webb image isn’t a star: it’s a galaxy, each with billions of stars and even more worlds.

And this? It’s just a tiny corner of the observable universe.

A short thread 🧵1/

L'articolo di Ettore Majorana su "Il valore delle Leggi Statistiche nella Fisica e nelle Scienze Sociali" (Ettore Majorana's article on "The value of Statistical Laws in Physics and in Social Sciences... The mentioned article was written by Ettore Majorana, in a partially educational way, for a journal of Sociology; but he gave up publishing it (and threw it away). It appeared posthumous, thanks to Gi...

In the '30s of the past century, the Sicilian physicist Ettore Majorana wrote an article about the value of statistical laws in physics and in social sciences. A pioneering non-technical work.

I am wondering if successive ('40s-'50s) “sociophysics” papers are related.

arxiv.org/abs/0709.3537

“we might add “natural cooperation” as a third fundamental principle of evolution beside mutation and natural selection”

🧪 #ComplexSystems #Evolution
www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

Due update to the lab 📸

Hello world!

Welcome @valedand.bsky.social to BlueSky!

If you are interested in biological complexity, computational neuroscience and population dynamics (eg epidemics) click on the follow button 🧠🦠!

🚨 Thrilled to release the official repository of the @comunelab.bsky.social!

It centralizes access to decade-long research outputs, including 57 data sets and 22 code libraries.

A titanic effort: 28,000 lines of code

We hope to accelerate #openScience in #ComplexSystems

👉 github.com/CoMuNeLab

Precision is not limited by the second law of thermodynamics - Nature Physics Clock precision is thought to be fundamentally limited by entropy production in out-of-equilibrium systems. A theoretical work now introduces a quantum clock design where precision grows exponentially...

Physical devices operating out of equilibrium are affected by thermal fluctuations, limiting their operational precision

Coherent quantum dynamics can surpass the traditional thermodynamic precision limits, guiding development of future high-precision quantum devices
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

🚨 A new work from an international collaboration with the great @yuetinghan.bsky.social, Paolo Turrini, Marya Bazzi, @giuliandr.bsky.social & Eugenia Polizzi

Measuring the co-evolution of online engagement with
(mis)information and its visibility at scale

👉 arxiv.org/abs/2506.06106

Short 🧵 1/

🚨 New paper from @comunelab.bsky.social !

We review the latent geometry emerging from network-driven processes, with an eye to network functionality and applications from biological systems to infrastructures.

👉 arxiv.org/abs/2506.09616

#ComplexSystems #NetworkScience 🧪🌐

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It was a pleasure to lecture at the @netsciconf.bsky.social for an interested & interactive audience.

What's a model? Why do we model? Is our network a network? Can we restore broken and forgotten links?

I will post on #ComplexityThoughts about this lecture, which I have enjoyed to prepare.

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I own a math proof for a slides to a young network scientist attending my lecture this morning.

I promised the proof at the end of the talk, but it was lunchtime and we missed the chance to discuss.

Can you help me to find/reach him? 🙏

Tomorrow, 10:35, FSE C1.005 at PHS1

@netsciconf.bsky.social

The joint prob that you are in Maastricht and you still don't which satellite to attend is nearly zero.

But still, you can show up to our MIX-NEXT if you are curious about where the field is going and what we can do to make it happen.

Scales, structure, dynamics, information

#NetSci20025

Abiotic aldol reactions of formaldehyde with ketoses and aldoses—Implications for the prebiotic synthesis of sugars by the formose reaction The formose reaction is proposed to produce sugars of relevance to biomolecules (RNA). By 13C-NMR, the aldol reactions of formaldehyde are shown to proceed to form linear and finally branched ketoses....

"the concept of the formose reaction as a prebiotic source of ribose on early Earth needs serious reconsideration, and other models/options should be explored"

#OoL #OriginOfLife 🧪🧬

www.cell.com/chem/abstrac...

“The view from my window” – Cassini-Huygens spacecraft

It's so reassuring that that little, pale, blue dot it's us, about 1 billion km away.