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Collective cell migration plays a central role in tissue development, morphogenesis, wound repair and cancer progression. With the growing realization that physical forces mediate cell motility in development and physiology, a key…
The standard assumptions that underlie many conceptual and quantitative frameworks do not hold for many complex physical, biological, and social systems. Complex systems science clarifies when and why such assumptions fail and provides…
Unravelling current complex food systems is relevant for their adjustment and redesign under the current changing climate conditions. Redesign may be necessitated by migration of people and changes of locations of major agri-food…
To learn useful dynamics on long time scales, neurons must use plasticity rules that account for long-term, circuit-wide effects of synaptic changes. In other words, neural circuits must solve a credit assignment problem to appropriately…
Eco-evolutionary dynamics is crucial to understand how individuals' behaviors and the surrounding environment interplay with each other. Typically, it is assumed that individuals update their behaviors via linear imitation function, i.e.,…
Recent theories from complexity science argue that complex dynamics are ubiquitous in social and economic systems. These claims emerge from the analysis of individually simple agents whose collective behavior is surprisingly complicated.…
A fundamental assumption in our understanding of material rheology is that when microscopic deformations are reversible, the material responds elastically to external loads. Plasticity, i.e. dissipative and irreversible macroscopic changes…
Aging is a fundamental aspect of living systems that undergo a progressive deterioration of physiological function with age and an increase of vulnerability to disease and death. Living systems, known as complex systems, require complexity…
It is well known that periodic potentials can be used to induce freezing and melting in colloids. Here, we transfer this concept to active systems and find the emergence of a so-far unknown active matter phase in between the frozen…
Living systems continuously transform matter and energy through the chemical processes that constitute their metabolism. The overall metabolic rate of an organism correlates positively with its body mass, however both the exact scaling…
Antifragility characterizes the benefit of a dynamical system derived from the variability in environmental perturbations. Antifragility carries a precise definition that quantifies a system's output response to input variability. Systems…
Many organisms live in populations structured by space and by class, exhibit plastic responses to their social partners, and are subject to non-additive ecological and fitness effects. Social evolution theory has long recognized that all of…
Substrate-based cell motility is essential for fundamental biological processes, such as tissue growth, wound healing and immune response. Even if a comprehensive understanding of this motility mode remains elusive, progress has been…
For the study of complex synthetic and biological molecular systems by computer simulations one is still restricted to simple model systems or to by far too small time scales. To overcome this problem multiscale techniques are being…
We propose a generic model to describe the mechanical response and failure of systems which undergo a series of stick-slip events when subjected to an external load. We model the system as a bundle of fibers, where single fibers can…
A general formalism of the relation between geometric phases produced by circularly evolving interacting spin systems and their criticality behavior is presented. This opens up the way for the use of geometric phases as a tool to study…
Mechanical loading generally weakens adhesive structures and eventually leads to their rupture. However, biological systems can adapt to loads by strengthening adhesions, which is essential for maintaining the integrity of tissue and whole…
The mechanical behaviour of solid biological tissues has long been described using models based on classical continuum mechanics. However, the classical continuum theories of elasticity and viscoelasticity cannot easily capture the…
A polycrystalline solid is modelled as an ensemble of random irregular polyhedra filling the entire space occupied by the solid body, leaving no voids or flaws between them. Adjacent grains can slide with a relative velocity proportional to…
Resilience in coupled systems is increasingly critical in addressing global challenges such as climate change and pandemics. These systems show unpredictable behaviour due to dynamic complexity and deep uncertainty across spatiotemporal…