Related papers: Field-control, phase-transitions, and life's emerg…

Living systems are thermodynamically open but closed in their organization. In other words, even though their material components turn over constantly, a material-independent property persists, which we call organization. Moreover,…

A cyclically dominating three-species ecosystem, modeled within the framework of rock-paper-scissor game, is studied in presence of natural death and an effect of the environment. The environmental impact is parameterized along with the…

Non-reciprocal systems have been shown to sustain time-dependent patterns, most prominently travelling waves. The transition into these time-dependent states generally breaks time-translational invariance, representing a clear deviation…

What features characterise complex system dynamics? Power laws and scale invariance of fluctuations are often taken as the hallmarks of complexity, drawing on analogies with equilibrium critical phenomena[1-3]. Here we argue that slow,…

The emergence and impact of tipping points have garnered significant interest in both the social and natural sciences. Despite widespread recognition of the importance of feedbacks between human and natural systems, it is often assumed that…

We study analytically and numerically a model metabolic cycle composed of an arbitrary number of species of catalytically active particles. Each species converts a substrate into a product, the latter being used as the substrate by the next…

Evolutionary dynamics is often viewed as a subtle process of change accumulation that causes a divergence among organisms and their genomes. However, this interpretation is an inheritance of a gradualistic view that has been challenged at…

Much of today's sustainability discourse emphasizes efficiency, clean technologies, and smart systems, but largely underestimates fundamental physical constraints relating to energy-matter interactions. These constraints stem from the fact…

Growing experimental evidence shows that cell monolayers can induce long-lived perturbations to their environment, akin to footprints, which in turn influence the global dynamics of the system. Inspired by these observations, we propose a…

Key traits of unicellular species, like cell size, often follow scale-free or self-similar distributions, hinting at the possibility of an underlying critical process. However, linking such empirical scaling laws to the critical regime of…

Organisms maintain the status quo, holding key physiological variables constant to within an acceptable tolerance, and yet adapt with precision and plasticity to dynamic changes in externalities. What organizational principles ensure such…

We introduce two sandpile models which show the same behavior of real sandpiles, that is, an almost self-organized critical behavior for small systems and the dominance of large avalanches as the system size increases. The systems become…

Neuronal networks can present activity described by power-law distributed avalanches presumed to be a signature of a critical state. Here we study a random-neighbor network of excitable cellular automata coupled by dynamical synapses. The…

A primary motivation for our research in Digital Ecosystems is the desire to exploit the self-organising properties of biological ecosystems. Ecosystems are thought to be robust, scalable architectures that can automatically solve complex,…

Control theory arose from a need to control synthetic systems. From regulating steam engines to tuning radios to devices capable of autonomous movement, it provided a formal mathematical basis for understanding the role of feedback in the…

Complex evolving systems such as the biosphere, ecosystems and societies exhibit sudden collapses, for reasons that are only partially understood. Here we study this phenomenon using a mathematical model of a system that evolves under…

Nonlinear dynamics can give rise, via the processes of self-organisation and pattern formation, to the spontaneous manifestation of order in open and complex systems far from equilibrium. Self-organising systems, transforming the inflow of…

Group-based reinforcement can induce discontinuous transitions from inactive to active phases in higher-order contagion models. However, these results are typically obtained on static interaction structures or within mean-field…

The question how complex systems become more organized and efficient with time is open. Examples are, the formation of elementary particles from pure energy, the formation of atoms from particles, the formation of stars and galaxies, the…

The rise of multicellularity in the early evolution of life represents a major challenge for evolutionary biology. Guidance for finding answers has emerged from disparate fields, from phylogenetics to modelling and synthetic biology, but…