Related papers: Are biological systems poised at criticality?
In complex systems, the interplay between nonlinear and stochastic dynamics, e.g., J. Monod's necessity and chance, gives rise to an evolutionary process in Darwinian sense, in terms of discrete jumps among attractors, with punctuated…
Life occurs in concentrated `Ringer Solutions' derived from seawater that Lesser Blum studied for most of his life. As we worked together, Lesser and I realized that the questions asked of those solutions were quite different in biology…
The dynamic instability of the living systems and the "superposition" of different forms of randomness are viewed as a component of the contingently increasing organization of life along evolution. We briefly survey how classical and…
Biologists and physicists have a rich tradition of modeling living systems with simple models composed of a few interacting components. Despite the remarkable success of this approach, it remains unclear how to use such finely tuned models…
One of the central aims of neuroscience is to reliably predict the behavioral response of an organism using its neural activity. If possible, this implies we can causally manipulate the neural response and design brain-computer-interface…
The multifarious internal workings of organisms are difficult to reconcile with a single feature defining a state of being alive. Indeed, definitions of life rely on emergent properties (growth, capacity to evolve, agency) only symptomatic…
We discuss the relevance of studying ecology within the framework of Complexity Science from a statistical mechanics approach. Ecology is concerned with understanding how systems level properties emerge out of the multitude of interactions…
Recent research on the network modeling of complex systems has led to a convenient representation of numerous natural, social, and engineered systems that are now recognized as networks of interacting parts. Such systems can exhibit a…
We present a game of interacting agents which mimics the complex dynamics found in many natural and social systems. These agents modify their strategies periodically, depending on their performances using genetic crossover mechanisms,…
Proteins are the common constituents of all living cells. They are molecular machines that interact with each other as well as with other cell products and carry out a dizzying array of functions with distinction. These interactions follow…
In network science complex systems are represented as a mathematical graphs consisting of a set of nodes representing the components and a set of edges representing their interactions. The framework of networks has led to significant…
Nature provides us with abundant examples of how large numbers of individuals can make decisions without the coordination of a central authority. Social insects, birds, fishes, and many other living collectives, rely on simple interaction…
Many cellular processes involve information processing and decision making. We can probe these processes at increasing molecular detail. The analysis of heterogeneous data remains a challenge that requires new ways of thinking about cells…
The enterprise of trying to explain different social and economic phenomena using concepts and ideas drawn from physics has a long history. Statistical mechanics, in particular, has been often seen as most likely to provide the means to…
Why life is complex and --most importantly-- what is the origin of the over abundance of complexity in nature? This is a fundamental scientific question which, paraphrasing the late Per Bak, "is screaming to be answered but seldom is even…
Complex systems are characterized by specific time-dependent interactions among their many constituents. As a consequence they often manifest rich, non-trivial and unexpected behavior. Examples arise both in the physical and non-physical…
The information implicitly represented in the state of physical systems allows one to analyze them with analytical techniques from statistical mechanics and information theory. In the case of complex networks such techniques are inspired by…
The science of complex networks is a new interdisciplinary branch of science which has arisen recently on the interface of physics, biology, social and computer sciences, and others. Its main goal is to discover general laws governing the…
Biological phenomena differ significantly from physical phenomena. At the heart of this distinction is the fact that biological entities have computational abilities and thus they are inherently difficult to predict. This is the reason why…
Stochastic processes offer a flexible mathematical formalism to model and reason about systems. Most analysis tools, however, start from the premises that models are fully specified, so that any parameters controlling the system's dynamics…