Collective emergent structure

Biology offers innumerable examples where the increase of complexity is attended by the onset of sophisticated emergent properties. In the previous chapter the beehive-like structure of silicon fluids was mentioned if we now consider a real honeycomb, each bee appears to behave as an independent element, acting apparently on its own account, but the whole population of bees gives a highly sophisticated collective emergent structure. The same can be said for an anthill or... 

A similar picture emerges from a reassessment of the data on the O... C = 0 interactions [63]. Of particular interest are the structures containing intermolecular nucleophile-carbonyl group contacts. For a rather heterogeneous collection of structures, (a) was found to be about 96° for distances shorter than 3.1 A is slightly... 

Several excellent reviews have appeared recently covering emerging therapies in CF, including CFTR modulators [45-47] and a collection of CFTR modulators are available through the CFF Consortium for research purposes [48]. Multiple structural classes that potentiate CFTR have been identified by screening compound libraries, natural products, and approved drugs. A subset is described below, which has proved amenable to lead optimization. 

It is noteworthy that redundancy within and among collections meant that classes of compounds, rather than discrete compounds, emerged from the screen, indicating that compounds with the desired biological activity shared a similar structure. In one instance, the same class of compounds was discovered in two different collections. 

In a self-organizing system, agents pursue individual courses that are unpredictable. Reliable, reproducible structures emerge at the collective level from the interactions of those agents. Individual agents are literally out of control, but the system as a whole produces relatively stable results (see Kelly, 1994 for many interesting applications of this concept to economic life). 

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