Adaptive walks are an optimization technique for searching a space of possible solutions, for example, a space of different molecules. The goal is to find a point in space (a molecule) optimal or near-optimal in some property, generally referred to as the ``fitness,'' such as its ability to bind...

We do two things in this paper. First, we put forward some elements of a microeconomic theory of technological evolution. This involves adding nascent (essentially undiscovered) technologies to the existing technologies of neoclassical production theory, and, more importantly, expanding the...

Technological change at the firm level has commonly been modeled as random sampling from a fixed distribution o f possibilities. Such models, however, typically ignore empirically important aspects of the firm's search process, notably the observation that the present state of the firm guides...

Phage display, SELEX and other methods of combinatorial chemistry have become very popular means of finding ligands with high affinities to given targets. Despite their success, they suffer from numerous sources of error and bias, such as very low initial concentrations of species, non-specific...

In just a few years, molecular diversity techniques have revolutionized pharmaceutical design and experimental methods for studying receptor binding, consensus sequences, genetic regulatory mechanisms, and many other issues in biochemistry and chemistry. Because of the enormous libraries of...

An important issue in understanding the retina is finding candidate functional roles for different cell pathways and the details of their anatomy and physiology. We consider various spatial properties of the three main cone == cone bipolar cell == on-beta ganglion cell pathways in the cat retina...

Technological change at the firm-level has commonly been modeled as random sampling from a fixed distribution of possibilities. Such models typically ignore empirically important aspects of the firm's search process, namely the related observations that a firm's current technology constrains...

Optimization of systems with many conflicting constraints arises in numerous settings. Common optimization procedures seek to improve performance of the system as a whole. We show that coevolutionary problem solving, in which a system is partitioned into subsystems each of which selfishly...

Complex, fractal structures are widespread in ecological systems and in some characteristic features of evolutionary processes. The origin of such patterns in terms of their dynamics is a challenging problem. A theory for these phenomena might have important implications in issues like the...

Control rules governing activity of eukaryotic genes appear strongly biased toward large numbers of "canalizing" inputs. The ensemble of networks with the observed bias predicts cells are in an ordered regime with convergent flow in transcription state space, a percolating subnetwork of genes...