Física para estorninos

Esta es la historia:

Inspired by the aerial displays, a group of scientists led by theoretical physicists in Rome set up StarFlag, a multidisciplinary, multinational collaboration to study the birds' flocking behavior. The main aim was to determine "the fundamental laws of collective behavior and self-organization of animal aggregations in three dimensions," says Cavagna, the project's deputy coordinator. In addition to the Rome INFM group, which focuses on collecting quantitative data on flocking, the project includes physicists and theoretical biologists who do computer modeling, biologists who study details of starling flight and behavior, and physicists and economists who work on extending the starlings' collective behavior patterns to such systems as cells in wound healing, aggregates of robots, and financial markets.

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And then there is the question of whether starlings might shed light on human behavior. (...) Bouchaud is currently focusing on two examples of human behavior. One involves how others' choices affect what music people download. The other—topical to France's summer elections—is how people are influenced by others when they vote. Along the same lines, a group of economists in Pisa, Italy, is studying the collective behavior of banks as indicated by where they open branches.