The ourSpaces Virtual Research Environment makes use of Semantic Web technologies to create a platform to support multi-disciplinary research groups. This paper introduces the main semantic components of the system: a framework to capture the provenance of the research process, a collection of services to create and visualise metadata and a policy reasoning service. We also describe different approaches to authoring and accessing metadata within the VRE. Using evidence gathered from data provided by the users of the system we discuss the lessons learnt from deployment with three case study groups.

Small patterns of state 1 cells on an infinite, otherwise empty array of Conway's game of Life can produce sets of growing structures resembling in significant ways a population of spatially situated individuals in a nonuniform, highly structured environment. Ramifying feedback networks and cross-scale interactions play a central role in the emergence and subsequent dynamics of the quasi population. The implications are discussed: It is proposed that analogous networks and interactions may have been precursors to natural selection in the real world.

In this paper we explore the use of proposed semantic grid standards and methodology through deployment of a land use modelling service. The FEARLUS-G service architecture is presented which allows large scale simulation experiments to be distributed over the grid. We also discuss ontology support for simulation parameters, hypotheses and results that facilitates sharing and re-use of such resources among land-use scientists. This leads to a description of infrastructure for semantic data management which integrates Jena2 and the ELDAS data access service.

The paper describes experiments with FEARLUS, an agent-based model of land use change. The agents are satisficing (rather than optimizing) decision-makers. The paper focuses on the effects of varying agents' aspiration threshold : the economic return an agent requires from a parcel of land to persist with the current land use. If the threshold is not reached, the agent chooses a land use at random to apply to that parcel in the next year. It is shown that the optimum level for the aspiration threshold is affected by environmental heterogeneity and the level of return required to break even.

This article describes results from a simulation model of rural land use, focusing on how the relative advantages of imitative and nonimitative approaches to land use selection change under different circumstances. It is shown that the success of "imitation" depends in quite complex ways on the type of imitation used, the strategies of other agents with which the imitator is interacting, and aspects of the heterogeneity of the environment.