Eric Bonabeau

Coordination in Distributed Building

A formal model of distributed building is presented that was inspired by the observation of wasp colonies. Algorithms have been obtained that allow a swarm of simple agents, moving randomly on a three-dimensional cubic lattice, to build coherent structures.

Role and variability of response thresholds in the regulation of division of labor in insect societies.

In this chapter, the regulation of division of labor in social insect colonies is studied from the perspective of response thresholds. Response thresholds refer to likelihood of reacting to task-associated stimuli. Low-threshold individuals perform tasks at a lower level of stimulus than high-threshold individuals. Task performance reduces the level of task-associated stimuli. A model based on fixed response thresholds is described, its assumptions discussed, and some of its predictions are shown to be in agreement with empirical observations. This model can be modified to make thresholds variable, but experimental results are scarce to guide the design of a model with variable thresholds. It is suggested, however, that the response threshold framework can help us understand the regulation of division of labor in social insects from a unifying perspective.

On the effective activation energy due to flux avalanches in the Bean state

Abstract We study the effective activation energy due to flux avalanches in the Bean critical state of dirty type-II superconductors. It is shown that such an activation energy, computed within a recently proposed framework combining thermally activated avalanches with a scaling hypothesis, cannot be reliably distinguished in relaxation experiments from activation energies derived from classical theories. We argue that this is true as the characteristic pinning barriers are large compared to temperature, and that it is also true in the other cases, owing to the rapid deay of the current density.