The InterPlex

1/ Why would a scientist spend a lifetime studying processes that never end? In this InterDialogue excerpt, Japanese complex systems scientist Hiroki Sayama traces his career-long question, inspired by Carl Sagan's Cosmos: "what is that kind of process that never ends."

4/ Watch the full InterDialogue with @hirokisayama.bsky.social, director of @binghamtoncoco.bsky.social, recorded at @css-conference.bsky.social: theinterplex.org/interdialogu...

5/ Sayama is vice president of @netscisociety.bsky.social, a council member of @cssociety.bsky.social and former vice president of @isalofficial.bsky.social. He co-organized the definition-of-life workshop at @alifeconf.bsky.social.

2/ For Sayama, "endless" has a double meaning: no endpoint in time, and no built-in purpose. "I strongly believe we have no purpose. We are just here, right?" he says.

3/ He also argues that living processes unfold at microscopic and macroscopic levels at once: "I think life exists at every scale." #artificiallife #complexsystems #science #interdialogue

1/ What happens when a country stops valuing science? Brazil has been living the answer. In this updated republished article, originally published by Undark in December 2022 and now refreshed with audio clips from leading Brazilian scientists who work at the science-policy interface,

6/ Rasolt concludes: “Whether Brazil, the U.S. or any other country defunds, attacks, or ignores science, devaluing research and innovation is detrimental to the long-term well-being of any modern society, as well as for the interconnected global community.”

buff.lyWhat the World Can Learn From Brazil's Shifting Stance on Science - The InterPlexHow the country fostered research and innovation through scientific investment – and what happened when it disinvested.

7/ The updated article features Luiz Davidovich, Marcelo Knobel, Ricardo Galvão, Paulo Artaxo, and Carlos Nobre, along with their affiliated institutions that promote evidence-based policy and sustainable development: Read and listen to the full article: buff.ly/u4yZuBd @undark.org

4/ This in turn makes it easier to confuse, disinterest or even foster hostility towards science, to discredit scientists, and to allow governments to defund research and innovation.”

5/ The article also points to a way forward. Science can be a common language for dialogue across disciplines and cultures. It should be a nonpartisan, unifying pillar. And a scientifically literate society must demand sustainable development based on science.

2/ The InterPlex Founder and Chief Editor @dhrasolt.bsky.social explores Brazil as a case study of what any society risks when science loses public trust. As environmental physicist Paulo Artaxo of São Paulo University puts it:

3/ “The lost funds make work very difficult, but the lost minds make it nearly impossible.” Rasolt’s argument goes beyond Brazil: “Anti-scientific rhetoric and misinformation… breeds a polarized environment where reality becomes subjective and science is categorically mistrusted and devalued.

1/ “It’s very difficult and time consuming to grow a system, but it’s very easy to destroy it,” says Brazilian physicist Marcelo Knobel, in reference to Brazil’s robust scientific research and higher education ecosystem.

buff.lyMarcelo Knobel: Effective Science Communication, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, TWAS, and the Future of Science and Higher Education - The InterPlexIn this InterDialogue recorded at the 17th General Conference of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in October 2025, The InterPlex founder Daniel Henryk

9/ Asked about colleagues in the United States, Knobel says many researchers there are concerned and some are considering leaving die to disinvestment in science.

10/ He acknowledges how hard it is to move, but, drawing on his own family’s experience, adds that the consequences can be unexpected and even positive. Learn more in the full InterDialogue: buff.ly/h93f1kL

7/ His call is for the scientific community to act. “It’s important that the Brazilian community mobilizes itself in order to… pressure the government to really, really keep giving enough money for science,” he says.

8/ And the message needs to travel: “Science is not expenditure, it’s an investment. So we have to convince the government on that, not only here in Brazil but all over the world.”

5/ In a global market for talent, well-trained scientists who lack the conditions to do research can find a place elsewhere, benefiting that country instead of their own and often never returning. Funding cuts, political persecution, and visa problems only add to the pull.

6/ In Brazil, he notes, the effects are already visible in fewer PhDs, fewer master’s theses, and fewer publications, and recovery will take time. He sees the pattern as a global phenomenon, affecting countries in both the Global South and the Global North.

3/ Brazilian science, he says, has grown to a size that makes it worth protecting, yet many universities and research institutes are now struggling without funding: “The system grew to a size that it’s important to keep it working, to keep the infrastructure.

4/ Otherwise, we will lose the importance in the science arena that we have now.” Knobel describes how the damage compounds nonlinearly. Equipment stops and sometimes never recovers, and researchers leave.

2/ In this InterDialogue excerpt, Knobel, the former rector of @unicampoficial.bsky.social and the current Executive Director of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), reflects on what is at stake when countries disinvest in science.

buff.lyAn Overview of Academic Integrity and AI Ethics: Indian and Global Contexts - The InterPlexThe issue of academic integrity has gained considerable prominence in the last couple of decades. In this article I will attempt to summarize what I see as

1/ Why is academic misconduct so prevalent, in India and globally? In a new article for The InterPlex, Indian theoretical physicist Sunil Mukhi surveys the state of academic integrity today. Learn more in the full article: buff.ly/OrgehRe

8/ Sunil Mukhi is an honorary emeritus professor and the Raja Ramanna Chair at IISER Pune. He also chairs the first ethics committee of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). His other affiliations have included @tifr.res.in, the Indian Academy of Sciences, and the Indian National Science Academy.

9/ Learn more about academic integrity, AI ethics, and his work in string theory in his full InterDialogue: buff.ly/WNrw4Wc #academicintegrity #researchethics #science #theinterplex

6/ “In our society, ‘loyalty’ is considered very important and—illogical as it may be—calling out an unethical friend or colleague is seen as disloyal,” he explains.

7/ In the end, Mukhi sees leadership as decisive: “When the leader states ethical ground rules explicitly and often, it can work wonders.”

4/ Some of these pressures are also technological. When institutions ask AI tools to flag AI-generated manuscripts, the same technology ends up both enabling misconduct and policing it.

5/ “It is not clear how an internal ethical conflict between an LLM and itself ends,” Mukhi writes. Others are cultural. Students in his ethics training sessions readily grasped why integrity serves their own interests, yet hesitated to report a peer.

2/ According to Mukhi, its most powerful driver is “the desire to be seen as successful and, through that success, to attain promotions, awards, and leadership positions.”

3/ Drawing on more than two decades of service on ethics committees in India and internationally, he covers everything from publish-or-perish pressures and unintentional plagiarism to university rankings gamed through publications vacant of any new knowledge.

1/ Network science has quietly become the methodological backbone behind many of society's most pressing challenges, from climate change to global health, mobility and supply systems, ecological systems, inequality, and disinformation.

8/ Alessandro Vespignani is the Sternberg Family Distinguished University Professor of Physics, Computer Sciences, and Health Sciences at @northeasternu.bsky.social, where he directs @nunetsi.bsky.social.

9/ He is also President of @isi.it in Turin and co-leads the CDC-funded EPISTORM initiative. He is a Fellow of the @apsphysics.bsky.social and won the European Physical Society's 2025 Statistical and Nonlinear Physics Division Prize. #networkscience #complexsystems #science #complexity #theinterplex

6/ "It's a scientific community that is truly interdisciplinary," says Vespignani, describing physicists, mathematicians, political scientists, engineers, psychologists, and many more experts, working in a shared language.

7/ Funders took notice, and so did the tech industry, whose platforms now run on the social-network science the community helped pioneer. Looking ahead, Vespignani feels the stakes rising: "Society and the public are asking us to solve those problems," he says.

4/ That changed once "network science immediately brought us in contact with data," he says, citing supply chains, power grids, and disease spread as examples. He traces that momentum to the "data deluge" of the 2010s, as digitization made nearly everything machine-readable.

5/ The growth wasn't just about data; it was also about the community that formed around it and the complex, interconnected challenges that they work to address.

theinterplex.orgAlessandro Vespignani: Complex Networks, Computational Epidemiology, and Interdisciplinarity - The InterPlexIn this wide-ranging InterDialogue, Vespignani traces network science's shift from foundational theory toward urgent, data-driven application, and discusses

2/ In this InterDialogue clip, Italian American physicist @alexvespi.bsky.social traces how a field once confined to theoretical statistical physics and mathematics grew into an interdisciplinary toolkit built for the real world. Learn more in the full InterDialogue: buff.ly/ye19RUC

3/ "Network science is a way to approach complex systems," he says, pointing to the nonlinear feedback loops that simpler models miss. Vespignani recalls training in statistical physics decades ago, when much of the work could feel abstracted from reality.

theinterplex.orgThe Convergence of Health and Complexity: How an Interdisciplinary Approach to Complex Networks and Nonlinear Phenomena is Helping to Address Interconnected Maladies of Minds and Bodies - The InterPlex“Our methodological approach goes on and on down to the level of microbiology and finally finding cures for many diseases,” says Italian American physicist

1/ Complexity science has moved from a niche corner of theoretical physics into one of the most consequential interdisciplinary lenses for understanding health, from cells to societies, argues Daniel Henryk Rasolt in this new InterArticle: buff.ly/0pP73Aj

8/ "The many lessons, challenges, and advances revealed through the impactful convergence of complexity and health can therefore potentially inform and be applied to the evidence-based preservation and recovery of the 'health' of other complex systems, at all scales."

9/ Other contributors include Javier Buldú (CSG-URJC), Chris Danforth (@vcsi.bsky.social), @ccattuto.bsky.social (@isi.it), Enver Oruro (U. Andina del Cusco), and K. Brandon Barker (Dept. of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, Indiana University). #complexsystems #publichealth #science #theinterplex

6/ Spanish physicist @gomezgardenes.bsky.social of @gotham-lab.bsky.social, who has modeled outbreaks in Colombia, adds: "A lot of social science ingredients have to be incorporated; it's not only mobility, demography, containers, and vital information like mutation rates and intrahost dynamics."

7/ Rasolt closes by extrapolating outward from human health to other complex systems. "Nonlinear dynamics, scale-free networks, and adaptive systems are seemingly universal phenomena found throughout nature," he writes.

4/ Neurophysicist Jordi Soriano is testing this in practice, growing live neuronal cultures toward therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, to "insert the healthy cells into the patients to see if they can integrate with the damaged area to recover their lost functions."

5/ In public health, mobility data and modeling are reshaping epidemic tracking. "COVID-19 was an important transition point," says Venezuelan American urban scientist Marta González of UC Berkeley's HuMNet Lab, on how the pandemic transformed access to mobility data.

2/ "Our methodological approach goes on and on down to the level of microbiology and finally finding cures for many diseases," says Italian American physicist @alexvespi.bsky.social, director of Northeastern's @nunetsi.bsky.social.