Thilo Gross
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thilogross.bsky.social
Thilo Gross
@thilogross.bsky.social

Simplifier of things. bridgewalker. Island-person. Nets and Complexity. Prof of Biodiversity Theory. Former Prof. of Computer Science, Reader in Eng. Maths. Once a Physicist. Interested in art and language and generally making the world a better place. .. more

Physics 27%
Biology 18%

Reposted by Thilo Groß

Simply amazing how this is happening and US media is focusing only on absolute nonsense. Now that Ellison and Weiss will control most of media, hard denial of climate crisis will be locked in.

Reposted by Thilo Groß

SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class

Internal emails show tech giant used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement.
migrantinsider.com/p/scoop-appl...
SCOOP: Apple Quietly Made ICE Agents a Protected Class
Internal emails show tech giant used anti-hate-speech rules meant for minorities to block an app documenting immigration enforcement.
migrantinsider.com
Any academic folks on H1B visas (even with stamps in passports) please get legal advice from your University attorneys before leaving the US.

Reposted by Thilo Groß

In just about a week, the season's first NetSci Colloquium will happen. And we're starting with a bang . . . with none other than Iain Couzin talking about Collective Behavior in Animal Groups. September 24, 10 AM ET. Register here to get a Zoom link: iu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Reposted by Thilo Groß

Paper alert! See the new pre-print up on arXiv by Tim Mauch (@timmauch.bsky.social) and Thilo Gross (@thilogross.bsky.social) on opinion formation:
arxiv.org/abs/2508.15377

The paper discusses the very nice results of Tim's master thesis, so let's get into the details, shall we?

1/5
Diffusion-driven pattern formation in an opinion dynamical network model
The spatial organization of individuals and their interactions in communities are important factors known to preserve diversity in many complex systems. Inspired by metapopulation models from ecology,...
arxiv.org

→ Are you interested in multiscale phenomena such as the complex dynamics that arise in biology, chemistry, neuroscience, and physics when multiple spatial or temporal scales interact? 🧪

Then join us this summer in Groningen for the summer school:

lnkd.in/gViS3cCZ
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HIFMB @hifmb.de · Jun 23
The call for our 2026 Postdoc Cohort is now open. We offer 4 full-time positions. Apply until August 24th. hifmb.de/jobs
Please spread the word.
#postdoc #jobsinscience #marinebiodiversity #antarctica
@awi.de @hillebr1.bsky.social @ibaums.bsky.social @thilogross.bsky.social @merenbey.bsky.social 🦑

The rot is spreading ...
Just a reminder that Orwell’s protagonist in 1984, Winston Groom, works as a copy editor, except that his job entails endlessly “correcting the data” so that the archival record conforms to the Party’s preferred fictions, and what is “known” becomes a principal instrument of conformity.

This focus on using research funding to support business is harmful.
Just a reminder that Orwell’s protagonist in 1984, Winston Groom, works as a copy editor, except that his job entails endlessly “correcting the data” so that the archival record conforms to the Party’s preferred fictions, and what is “known” becomes a principal instrument of conformity.

Reposted by Thilo Groß

Our new article in Chaos. One of my favorite articles so far. Connecting different disciplines and building on recent breakthroughs in ancient fields (Linear Algebra!).

link.growkudos.com/1ebwrn9qkn4

doi.org/10.1063/5.02...
How individual systems and their connections react to each other to ensure stability of the whole.
We live in a complex world with a plethora of connections and interactions. Many important processes, such as power grid dynamics, ecological interactions, opinion formation, or brain plasticity, can ...
link.growkudos.com

Reposted by Thilo Groß

insane moment in world history right here

I would just leave the country in which there is a financial crisis in higher education. In fact, I have.

Reposted by Thilo Groß

New paper led by @janamassing.bsky.social, with @jdyeakel.bsky.social and @thilogross.bsky.social, on dynamics of cooperative bacteria: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
We are hiring postdocs in Computational Social Science
📍SweCSS, Norrköping, Sweden
⏰Deadline June 3
🔗https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/26854
Please apply // help us spread the word

To explore this further we need models that can exhibit both tipping and gradual transitions in biodiversity. The cross-feeding model proposed here is a very simple model that fills this need.

Of course there is still much room for improvement, but this is how far we got.

There is another reason why this is interesting. Presently there is a debate whether or when biodiversity in diverse systems can actually tip. See for example this paper by @hillebr1.bsky.social et al.

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thresholds for ecological responses to global change do not emerge from empirical data - Nature Ecology & Evolution
The utility of the threshold paradigm, such that relatively small perturbations drive abrupt ecosystem changes, is challenged by a synthesis of 36 meta-analyses, which detected few signatures of thres...
www.nature.com

In the lab we then supply the community with growth media which supply some of the metabolites. This effectively removes these metabolites as limiting requirements. So this can be also modelled as an attack: C(x)->C(B(x)), where B describes the medium.
...

Why is this interesting: First, it shows why diversity tends to collapse in small samples. By missing some of the producers of metabolites we can cross the tipping point. In the equations we can model this effect of sampling as an attack on the network: We replace M(x)->M(A(x)).

Of course this is the classic two-folds scenario of tipping, so when we vary a second parameter (e.g. mean number of producers per metabolite), we find a nice Cusp bifurcation. This shows that the transition from high diversity to low diversity can occur by tipping/gradually depending on params...

For reasonable choices of parameters this system exhibits tipping points between a low and high diversity state ...

So this becomes a percolation problem. The whole setup is captured by two nice eqs. Here c* is num of bacteria chance m^* is num of metabolites, and C, M, are the GFs for number of requirements, number of producers per metabolite ...

So this becomes a directed bipartitie network, but if you want you can also think of it as a multilayer net or hypergraph.

What fascinates me is the algebraic structure: Bacteria in the system need ALL their requirements to be met, whereas metabolites need ONE of their producers to be present...

So this is about about crossfeeding, that is the exchange of molecules between bacteria. Think of this as a network where each node is a species of bacteria or a type of metabolite. Directed links indicate which metabolites are required by, or produced by the bacteria. ...

I finally got around to edit the second part of the video on the walk (it mostly explains the math of how it was made).
youtu.be/g52Lcr3rRHc
(The first part is here: youtu.be/Mnaf2Y_ydq8 )
Bridge-building, Chinese Postman, and Hierholzer's Algorithm (NC 3-2)
YouTube video by Complexity Papers
youtu.be

Everybody should read this ...
1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.


I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

Great idea!

Thank you for finding this great content!

The link seems to be broken.