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As observers of the universe we are physical systems within it. If the universe is very large in space and/or time, the probability becomes significant that the data on which we base predictions is replicated at other locations in…
We consider a model of random permutations of the sites of the cubic lattice. Permutations are weighted so that sites are preferably sent onto neighbors. We present numerical evidence for the occurrence of a transition to a phase with…
Environmental changes greatly influence the evolution of populations. Here, we study the dynamics of a population of two strains, one growing slightly faster than the other, competing for resources in a time-varying binary environment…
Extensive cooperation among unrelated individuals is unique to humans, who often sacrifice personal benefits for the common good and work together to achieve what they are unable to execute alone. The evolutionary success of our species is…
Since the early 1970s, stellar population modelling has been one of the basic tools for understanding the physics of unresolved systems from observation of their integrated light. Models allow us to relate the integrated spectra (or…
A population of individuals with the same genes can present heterogeneous traits (phenotypes). The prevalence of this heterogeneity can be explained as a bet-hedging strategy that improves the population proliferation rate (fitness) in…
The depiction of populations - of humans or animals - as "population pyramids" is a useful tool for the assessment of various characteristics of populations at a glance. Although these visualisations are well-known objects in various…
Human settlements on Earth are scattered in a multitude of shapes, sizes and spatial arrangements. These patterns are often not random but a result of complex geographical, cultural, economic and historical processes that have profound…
Online social networks play a major role in the spread of information at very large scale and it becomes essential to provide means to analyse this phenomenon. In this paper we address the issue of predicting the temporal dynamics of the…
Human social behavior is organized in stratified, hierarchical networks, with a support group with about 5 members, expanding proportionally at each layer up to a maximum of approximately 150 frequent interactions per individual. This is…
To analyze the evolutionary emergence of structural complexity in physical processes we introduce a general, but tractable, model of objects that interact to produce new objects. Since the objects--\emph{$epsilon$-machines}--have well…
Perhaps more than other physical sciences, astronomy is frequently statistical in nature. The objects under study are inaccessible to direct manipulation in the laboratory, so the astronomer is restricted to observing a few external…
Artificial broadcasts from extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) are a hypothetical class of celestial phenomena. Unlike known astrophysical objects, the societies that generate them may be able to replicate on galactic scales through…
(1) Results of analysis of new sets of anthropogenic data are presented. They confirm earlier results of similar analyses. The expected and inevitable massive deceleration of human-induced global change process is demonstrated as an ongoing…
Recent developments in the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics have brought the theory closer to that of classical probability and statistics. On the other hand, the unique character of quantum physics sets many of the questions…
The diffusion of a particle in a crowded environment typically proceeds through three regimes: for very short times the particle diffuses freely until it collides with an obstacle for the first time, while for very long times diffusion the…
To describe the nonequilibrium states of a system we introduce a new thermodynamic parameter - the lifetime (the first passage time) of a system. The statistical distributions that can be obtained out of the mesoscopic description…
Diseases and other contagion phenomena in nature and society can interact asymmetrically, such that one can benefit from the other, which in turn impairs the first, in analogy with predator-prey systems. Here, we consider two models for…
Curiously overlooked in physics is its dependence on the transmission of numbers. For example the transmission of numerical clock readings is implicit in the concept of a coordinate system. The transmission of numbers and other logical…
The fluid physics of the heat and mass transfer from an object in its wake has much importance for natural phenomena as well as for many engineering applications. Here, we report numerical results on the population density of the spatial…