Nurses with an interest in chaos and complexity theories are naturally interested in what is available on the Internet and the World Wide Web. At present, there is little dealing with chaos, complexity or nonlinear dynamics related specifically to nursing, health or health care. This selective review outlines both nursing and non-nursing sites and materials available on-line, including Websites and discussion areas.
The Internet, and in particular the World Wide Web (www or Web), are increasingly being used as a means of both providing and searching for information on nursing, medicine and allied health subjects. What, then, is available on-line to the "surfer of the Net" who is interested in the emerging field of nonlinear dynamical nursing? The short answer has to be, very little. An on-line search using Lycos, one of the most comprehensive on-line Web browsers, found over 400 documents containing the terms nonlinear or non-linear. The terms chaos or complexity resulted in over 40,000 documents being found. But the inclusion of "nurse", "nursing" or "health" in the search parameters narrowed the results to only a handful of documents. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the other sites should be ignored. The very nature of nonlinear dynamics, with its origins within mathematics and subsequent application in a wide range of other disciplines, indicates that materials in these sites still have relevance to the development or analysis of nonlinearity in nursing and health care.
This focused review article will outline some of the more readily accessible Websites, available documents and information sources. Where appropriate the nature of the material and its relevance to nursing and health care is indicated.
http://www.scsu.ctstateu.edu/scsu/chaos-nursing/index.html
The most targeted Website is associated with the journal Complexity and Chaos in Nursing. It contains information about the journal, abstracts of the journal's articles and a current reference list of complexity and chaos articles found in the nursing literature. There are Internet links to most of the articles' authors to facilitate direct communication between Web readers and sources. In addition, this article is on-line with all the cited Websites hot-linked to their respective home pages.
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/ans/psychology/cogsi/chaos/links.html
This is the Website of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences and has links to a wide range of resources for researchers in nonlinear dynamics.
http://www.ccc.fau.edu/ccs.html
The Center for Complex Systems at Florida Atlantic University has a focus on brain studies and a PhD program in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences.
http://www.duth.gr/~mboudour/nonlin.html
The Nonlinearity and Complexity Home Page is principally a listing of links to other sites.
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~rsauzier/chaos.html
Chaos, Complexity and AI is also mainly a list of links, with a focus on artificial life.
http://www.eden.mercy.edu/chaos.html
This Website at Mercyhurst College has an extensive compilation of Internet resources for research into chaos complexity, artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms, and fractals.
http://nsgsun.aae.uiuc.edu/info/research.html
http://www.phy.ohiou.edu/research/chaos.html
These two sites deal mainly with applications in engineering and physics, but have useful links from their pages to other sites. The first address is for the Non-linear Systems Laboratory Page and the second site is the Non-linear Systems and Chaos Research, Condensed Matter and Surface Science Program at Ohio University.
FAQs are self-explanatory; they are collections of questions, points or issues that have frequently arisen within particular discussion areas, and are available from ftp (file transfer protocol) or similar sites. Their main intention is to try and prevent the same questions being asked repeatedly in a discussion area (although, often, they do not prevent this). They also serve as a useful repository of introductory information.
http://www.fen.bris.ac.uk/engmaths/research/non-linear/faq.html
or
http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/sci/ non-linear-faq/faq.html
The sci.nonlinear FAQs, available at a number of sites via ftp or Web access, are particularly useful as an introduction to some of the basic questions of nonlinear dynamics. They also contain details on paper and electronic texts and links to a variety of sites. Among the questions answered in these FAQs are: What is non-linear science, time series analysis, chaos?, What are complex systems, fractals? Is there chaos in the stock market? What are the net sites for non-linear science materials? What non-linear science software is available?
http://www.me.umn.edu/~kdooley/casdef.html
This website answers questions about chaos and complexity. When you go to the page /chaos.html there are descriptions of courses, programs and projects at the University of Minnesota as well as links to other sites.
As Web browsers become more sophisticated, opportunities increase for not only the presentation of text and still images, but also audio and video transmission. Increasingly, the opportunity for some degree of interaction exists.
http://www.softlab.ntua.gr/mandel/mandel.html
This is one site which takes advantage of such interaction. As one might discern from the URL (Uniform Resource Locator), it provides a full-color graphical exploration of the Mandelbrot yet, allowing the user to zoom in or out to view a wide range of fractal designs.
http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/fractals.html
At this site you are able to download programs, Sprott's out-of- print book and at the bottom of the page is a set of animated GIF (Graphical Information File) attractors.
http://ecg.mit.edu/time-series
At Goldberger's site you can download two time series to explore their properties. Each series contains 1800 evenly-spaced measurements of instantaneous heart rate at 0.5 second intervals. The prognoses of the two subjects were very different.
The Internet is not only a "place" where one can go and retrieve information; it also provides opportunities for interaction and discussion with other Internet users. Discussion areas can broadly be divided into two types, the Usenet newsgroup and the listserv type of discussion list. Of the Usenet list, there are currently no areas dealing solely with chaos and/or complexity relating to nursing or health. Although, with over 500 people sufficiently interested in the issues to read this journal, there is perhaps hope for the establishment of such a list.
http://cnls-www.lanl.gov/nbt/sites.html
Only two Usenet newsgroups are specifically identifiable as dealing with nonlinear issues, i.e., sci.nonlinear and sci.chaos, although several others are listed in the Center for Non-linear Studies (CNLS) pages. Generally, the level of discussion is extremely technical. Messages on sci.nonlinear covers such areas as books on chaos/nonlinear topics, requests for Lyapunov code, discussions of fractal dimensions, the roots of nonlinear equations and discussion of areas (e.g. fuel prices) that might exhibit nonlinear behavior.
There are a small number of listserv types of discussion areas dealing with nonlinear issues. The list titled "Chaos, Complexity & Related Theories as They Relate to Social Science" is hosted in Texas. The number of messages per month on the list is generally low, averaging less than five per month over the past year. The short name of the list is n-linear, and to subscribe you should send an e-mail to:
owner-n-linear@tamvm1.tamu.edu
Leaving the subject line of the message blank, put as the message: subscribe n-linear Yourfirstname Yourlastname
Two United Kingdom-based discussion lists, both of which seem quite technical and appear to require detailed knowledge of their subject areas are evolutionary-computing and time series. To subscribe you should send an e-mail to:
To join evolutionary-computing leave the subject line blank and send the message: Join evolutionary-computing firstname lastname
To join timeseries leave the subject line blank and send the message: Join timeseries firstname lastname
To join the listserv of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology & Life Sciences, send an e-mail to: listproc@list.uvm.edu. Leave subject line blank and send the message: subscribe chaopsyc yourname
Complexity International, an electronic journal published fromAustralia, describes itself as a refereed journal for scientific papers dealing with any area of complex systems research. The journal aims to include theoretical papers covering any aspect of complex systems and applications of chaos theory in biology, sociology and economics.
http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/Applied/news.dir/
The Centre For Non-Linear Studies (CNLS) at the University of Leeds has an on-line newsletter UK Nonlinear News. Five issues are available, the most recent is July 1996. The newsletters contain links to activities of the Centre and a number of short review and news items.
http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/cnls/publish/ijbca.html
This CNLS site also mentions an International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos although there do not appear to be online copies.
http://www.springer-ny.com/nst/
This is the site of the journal Nonlinear Science Today.
A number of articles discussing nonlinear topics are available, generally via Gopher searches, and include some of T.R. Young's discussions of the links between chaos theory and postmodern social science. Of particular interest to nurses may be the article "The head and heart of chaos: non-linear dynamics in biological systems" which resulted from a workshop held at the National Institutes of Health in June 1992.
gopher://gopher.nih.gov:70/00/clin/tech_conf/items/11.ta-chaos.fmt.txt
Readers who wish to develop a global perspective are advised to visit non-U.S. sites. One curious aspect of the Web that struck me, as I have browsed many Web sites, is that, regrettably, United States-based sites rarely make mention of or provide links to sites outside the U.S. In contrast, sites in other parts of the world usually provide links to sites all over the globe.
http://www.helmholtz.uni-wuerzburg.de/WiW/wiw.html
The Who Is Who Handbook of Non-Linear Dynamics is an on-line directory of researchers interested in nonlinear dynamics and electronic communication. While the directory does not claim to be exclusive it contains only entries posted by the researchers. It is probably one of the most extensive collections of references and is searchable by name of researcher, country, institute, and research field. Nursing is not mentioned in the directory, nor are any nurse researchers. However, there is a medical section which lists several researchers with an interest in nonlinear dynamics. Other areas of interest to nurses philosophy of science, physiology and sociology.
http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/cnls
A second Centre For Non-Linear Studies exists at the University of Leeds, UK. With the stated aim of encouraging research work and collaboration in nonlinear systems within a wide range of disciplines, the Centre's principal research interests are mathematical chemistry, nonlinear problems in combustion and biological fluid dynamics.
http://www.leidenuniv.nl/medfac/fff/groepc/chaos/homepage.htm
One site that would appear to have a more direct relevance to nursing and health care is that of the Non-linear Systems Analysis group of the Department of Physiology and Physiological Physics at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Their research program addresses the application of nonlinear theory to physiological systems, in particular normal and eleptiform EEG (electroencephalogram) time series and atrial fibrillation using ECG (electrocardiogram) time series. Their home page includes links to several other nonlinear sites around the world.
http://cnls-www.lanl.gov/nbt/sites.html
The Center for Non-linear Studies at Los Alamos National laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico has an extensive listing of Web servers, ftp and gopher sites, and Usenet newsgroups dealing with nonlinear issues. In addition to links to Websites listing institutes undertaking nonlinear and complex systems research, and Web searching tools, it also has links to a number of electronic textbooks dealing with chaos and fractals. Materials available from the listed ftp sites are primarily data analysis programs.
Occasionally there is limited discussion of chaos theory on some of the general nursing discussion lists. An extensive collection of details on these lists is available at Rod Ward's Nursing and Health Care Pages:
and Peter Ramme's 'Idea Nurse' site:
http://www.callamer.com/itc/nurse.html
Individual discussion lists can be subscribed to as follows:
An open, unmoderated, global forum for discussion of a wide range of nursing issues in the areas of nursing administration, education, research and practice. Subscribe by sending e-mail (with subject line blank) to listserv@listserv.utoronto.ca In the body of the message say only: nursenet yourfirstname yourlastname
A listserv for the discussion of nursing and health care informatics. Subscribe by sending e-mail (with subject line blank) to listproc@lists.umass.edu In the body of the message say only: subscribe NRSING-L yourfirstname yourlastname
A list dealing primarily with United Kingdom nursing issues.
Subscribe by sending e-mail (with subject line blank) to majordomo@birmingham.ac.uk In the body of the message say only: subscribe NURSE-UK yourfirstname yourlastname
http://www.ualberta.ca/~jnorris/nt/theory.html
Readers may also find the Nursing Theories pages at Judy Norris's Website of interest.
http://www.lemmus.demon.co.uk/diff01.htm
In addition, The Complexity and Chaos in Nursing Website has links to it from my own Website.
As the Internet continues to expand, more resources are becoming available - some mirroring paper versions and some available exclusively in electronic form. There exists an exciting opportunity to make available minority interests and new ideas (often for little if any cost). But despite the growing amount of nursing material available on-line, there is little information derived from chaos and complexity applied to nursing. This necessarily selective review of nonlinear on-line resources is intended to show the current state of the Internet and to provide guidance about resources of interest to those with Internet and Web access. If, as a result, it include the behavioral sciences, biology, cardiovascular medicine, neuroscience, encourages readers to join discussion lists or make nursing-related materials available on-line, it will have been more than worth the effort.
The problems of writing about the Internet and the Web in traditional print-based journals are illustrated by the changes that have occurred -between the first submission of this review and its final revision several months later. While there are now many more sites available dealing with chaos and complexity theory or nonlinear dynamics, some have changed their addresses or URLs (Uniform Resource Locators); others will probably change their addresses between the time of publishing this review and your reading it. This means that any review of this kind can, with the best intentions in the world, be only partial and will be inaccurate before the ink has dried. That is the somewhat quixotic nature of the Internet but you should gain, at least, some useful starting points from this -review.