Granted, I have only read the abstract, but the research methodology strikes me as a bit weak. Whatever way you dress it up, it looks like this guy has just done a literature review.
Now, if this was an article reporting on a study that followed the general health and well-being of a number of participants over a certain period of time, relating health to water consumption, with a control group given a placebo of, say, Mr. Pibb or something, then I would be a bit more inclined to read on beyond the abstract.
If literature reviews get you a publication in the Journal of Physiology and a spot on NPR, then I think I'm in the wrong line of academic inquiry.
"I have a personal bias towards the Sante Fe Institute, specifically that they do a lot with Complexity theory"
Check out John Horgan's feature on SFI in Scientific American, "From Complexity to Perplexity" (Scientifc American, June 1995; the Web archive only seems to go back to 1996 now) and Melanie Mitchell's retort, ("Complexity and the Future of Science")
Both make for interesting reads on the Sante Fe Institute.
The whole agent-based modeling paradigm has had a profound influence on social science research in recent years.
Essentially, advances in computing power (grid computing, graphics, CPUs, etc.), theory (complexity studies, systems science, geographic information science) and object-oriented programming paradigms now allow us to simulate cities with incredible levels of detail, often at the scale of individual people, homes, cars, etc. and in time-scales sometimes approximating "real" time. And there is a lot of data out there at this scale to "feed" these models. We're doing SimCity for real! (Well, kind of anyway....)
In the field of geography and urban planning, people such as myself are working on these style simulations to help us develop virtual laboratories that serve as artificial cities to test all sorts of hypotheses and ideas about various urban systems: suburban sprawl in my case (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/sprawl), but also traffic congestion (http://transims.tsasa.lanl.gov/), pedestrian shopping in downtown areas (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/streets.pdf), residential location decisions (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/paper32.pdf), etc.
I have some more info. and links at http://www.geosimulation.com if anybody is interested.
Slashdot Mirror
Now, if this was an article reporting on a study that followed the general health and well-being of a number of participants over a certain period of time, relating health to water consumption, with a control group given a placebo of, say, Mr. Pibb or something, then I would be a bit more inclined to read on beyond the abstract.
If literature reviews get you a publication in the Journal of Physiology and a spot on NPR, then I think I'm in the wrong line of academic inquiry.
Roll on tenure!
Check out John Horgan's feature on SFI in Scientific American, "From Complexity to Perplexity" (Scientifc American, June 1995; the Web archive only seems to go back to 1996 now) and Melanie Mitchell's retort, ("Complexity and the Future of Science")
Both make for interesting reads on the Sante Fe Institute.
My personal pick for most notable researcher in this area is Joshua Epstein. He's with the Sante Fe Institute.
...
He's with the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C.
The whole agent-based modeling paradigm has had a profound influence on social science research in recent years.
.)
Essentially, advances in computing power (grid computing, graphics, CPUs, etc.), theory (complexity studies, systems science, geographic information science) and object-oriented programming paradigms now allow us to simulate cities with incredible levels of detail, often at the scale of individual people, homes, cars, etc. and in time-scales sometimes approximating "real" time. And there is a lot of data out there at this scale to "feed" these models. We're doing SimCity for real! (Well, kind of anyway...
In the field of geography and urban planning, people such as myself are working on these style simulations to help us develop virtual laboratories that serve as artificial cities to test all sorts of hypotheses and ideas about various urban systems: suburban sprawl in my case (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/sprawl), but also traffic congestion (http://transims.tsasa.lanl.gov/), pedestrian shopping in downtown areas (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/streets.pdf), residential location decisions (http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/paper32.pdf), etc.
I have some more info. and links at http://www.geosimulation.com if anybody is interested.