The Continu..um? is a series of discussions affiliated with the Alergic and Life and Mind groups. It is not independent from these other two groups in that it does not have its own mailing list and all meetings will be announced on both the Alergic and Life and Mind mailing lists. It is intended, however, to be different in that Continu..um? meetings are intended to be

• Focused upon dynamical systems and dynamical systems analysis tools
• A mixture of reading-group meetings as well as the occasional presentation and problem solving session (let's work through some dynamical systems maths together!)
• More technical and mathematics focused
• What else?
  • Less formal meetings in general - you don't have to have a polished PowerPoint presentation to chair a Continu..um? meeting.

• Thermodynamics - Chair: Nathaniel Virgo

Summary: Introduction to thermodynamics and it's relation to dynamical systems - Entropy as a Lyapunov Function

• 1D and 2D Dynamical Systems - Chair: Lucas Wilkins

Summary: Introduction to dynamical systems, basic examples and techniques

• Alergic - http://alergic.pbworks.com/
• Life and Mind - http://lifeandmind.wordpress.com
• CCNR - http://www.informatics.sussex.ac.uk/research/groups/ccnr/

• Phase Spaces of (non)-Interest (in Continuous Time Recurrent Neural Networks (CTRNN))
• Spatiality, Symmetry, Modularity in CTRNN (and in other dynamical systems)
• Limitations of CTRNN
• Putting thermodynamic-style constraints on systems
• Stochasticity in dynamical systems
• Reaction-diffusion systems and their possible applications in CCNR-y type studies
• Review all those systems and principles that have many realisations in different systems
  • Van der pol / Fitzhugh-Nagumo / Lotka–Volterra / Liénard (2 var, first order / 1 var second order )
• Regular Arrays: CAs, Regular Neural Networks, Reaction Diffusion, Neural Fields
• Entropy, Energy and Information in dynamical systems

• Lots of R. Beer's work – although Chris is probably best to pick out which papers
• Perhaps “The Barrier of Objects: From Dynamical Systemsto Bounded Organizations” by W. Fontana and L. Buss (although I'll reread this before properly recommending it to be read as part of the group).
• Dissipative Dynamical Systems: Part I General Theory Jan C. Willems

• Can we evolve a neuron from arbitary differential equations
• … or better still from first order equations
• Imposing constraints upon dynamical systems. For instance, imagine having a dynamical model of how a ball behaves (e.g. just gravity). How can constraints upon these dynamics be added to the dynamical model (e.g. the floor (or a non-discrete equivalent).