[Biomedical-cybernetics] Applications Galore! SCTPLS 2018 pre-conference Workshop -- Aug 2, 2018 in Raleigh, NC

[Guastello, Stephen]

Dear Nonlinear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce the pre-conference workshop that will take place on August 2 as the prelude to our 2018 SCTPLS conference in Raleigh, NC (August 2-4)!

The Nonlinear Dynamics of Exciting Pre-conference Learning!   
Chaos and complexity may have looked like an academic fantasy years ago,
but now it's real, practical, and accurate:
 
Applications Galore!
 
Workshop Description
One of the fascinating features of nonlinear science is the perpetual discovery that many situations and phenomena that appear unrelated actually share common principles as we observe them change over time. This workshop is dedicated to uncovering those common processes, developing our participants’ flexibility with using them, and facilitating the development of new theories and practical management in a variety of systems. This workshop is designed to reach students and professionals who are just getting started with nonlinear dynamics, those who wish to become immersed in and explore new ideas to enhance current works in progress, and those who are exploring strategies for teaching dynamics at various university levels. This workshop emphasizes coordinating the spatial and mathematical aspects of dynamics with the constructs and propositions found in particular application areas. Untangle the practical and theoretical messes that we could be facing now! This one-day workshop is divided into four segments: Basic principles and four applications areas. These topic areas were chosen because of their deep and fast-growing range of current applications.

BASIC DYNAMICS (presented by Stephen Guastello). The first segment of the workshop is a high-speed romp through the forest of attractors, bifurcations, chaos, fractals, catastrophe, self-organization, and emergence. Emphasis is given to how these constructs connect. Importantly, they are all analytical, meaning that they are testable with real empirical data (and simulation studies too). Seemingly unrelated applications are often connected by some common dynamics; the emphasis of the workshop is on how nonlinear methods and applications cut across diverse content areas, and how techniques from one area may be applied to another.

BIOMEDICAL APPLICATIONS (presented by David Katerndahl). Since the 1960s, medical education has been based on the Biomedical Model, which believes that all illness and disease has a genetic or physiological source. This reductionist perspective views the human body as a complicated machine and, hence, capable of linear description. However, for the past 20 years, systems science has gained traction within the medical community leading to research dependent upon nonlinear methods. This part of the workshop will discuss examples of nonlinear inroads made in heart disease and critical care, epilepsy and psychiatric symptomatology, alcohol abuse and partner violence, employing methods from nonlinearity measurement to differential structural equation modeling, from state space grid analysis to vector autoregression, from cusp catastrophe modeling to orbital decomposition. Nonlinear dynamical analysis will play an increasing prominent role in biomedical research in the future.

PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC TECHNIQUES (presented by David Schuldberg). Psychotherapy has many hallmarks of nonlinear dynamic processes: It comes in many forms, sometimes linked only by family resemblances; clinical practice often moves by heuristics, not rules; it is taught by example, allusion, and “doing;” the work is often contradictory, with elements of art and science; it seeks solutions to dilemmas presenting themselves as insoluble. Indeed, clients’ clinical “complaints” generally meet Plesk’s criteria for “complex” problems, neither simple nor just complicated. This workshop will explore practical psychotherapeutic techniques, grounding many of them in the language and mathematics of nonlinear dynamics, as working with attractors and shaping trajectories. We will discuss “Go fast” and “Go slow” approaches; “Gentle nudge” and “Swift kick;” “Stay on the surface,” “Go deeper,” and “Keep it simple;” “Go with the flow,” “Swim upstream,” and “Swim downstream;” “Dimension-reduction;” “Stabilize ” and “De-stabilize,” and others. Most are familiar –- sometimes in other guises -- to practicing clinicians. The workshop interprets techniques as healers’ dynamic efforts at disrupting, managing, or stabilizing clinical trajectories. Case examples will also be gathered and discussed from participants’ own practices, insights, and experiences.

ECONOMICS (presented by J. Barkley Rosser). Nonlinear dynamics in economics will be considered as part of a broader complexity economics. Other forms of complexity exist, such as computational complexity and hierarchical complexity that also apply to economics.  Dynamic complexity will be defined as involving endogenous irregularity in the form of discontinuous or aperiodic dynamics, with nonlinearity a necessary although not sufficient condition for such dynamic complexity, with some nonlinearly dynamic systems behaving in non-complex ways for certain formulations or parameter values.  Types of dynamic complexity will be classified according to the “Four C’s,” cybernetics, catastrophe, Chaos, and agent-based complexity. Examples of such systems will be presented involving including urban system dynamics, ecologic-economic dynamics such as fisheries, financial market dynamics, and income distribution dynamics.

For full speaker bios, the workshop schedule and other information, please visit the conference website:https://www.societyforchaostheory.org/conf/2018

We hope to see you all there!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And don't forget:
 
Early-bird registration for the main conference will remain in effect until July 10.

Kind Regards,
 
Adam
 
The Conference Committee:
 
David Schuldberg, University of Montana
Steve Guastello, Marquette University
Jayne Fleener, North Carolina State University
Adam Kiefer, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center
Sara Nora Ross, Neurotricional Sciences Education Pty. Ltd.; Saybrook University
 
Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences
                Raleigh, North Carolina, August 2-4, 2018
 
---------------------------------------------------------------

Adam Kiefer, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
Secretary, Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences

adam.kiefer at cchmc.org
 
 


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