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The increasing volume of ecologically and biologically relevant data has revealed a wide collection of emergent patterns in living systems. Analyzing different datasets, ranging from metabolic gene-regulatory to species interaction…
Evolution in time-varying environments naturally leads to adaptable biological systems that can easily switch functionalities. Advances in the synthesis of environmentally-responsive materials therefore open up the possibility of creating a…
Minimising the energy consumption associated with periodic motion is a priority common to a wide range of technologies and organisms - among them, many species of flying insect, for which flapping-wing flight is a life-essential mode of…
Theoretical physicists have been fascinated by the phenomena of life for more than a century. As we engage with more realistic descriptions of living systems, however, things get complicated. After reviewing different reactions to this…
A notion of biologic system or just a system implies a functional wholeness of comprising system components. Positive and negative feedback are the examples of how the idea to unite anatomical elements in the whole functional structure was…
Computer systems can be found everywhere: in space, in our homes, in our cars, in our pockets, and sometimes even in our own bodies. For concerns of safety, economy, and convenience, it is important that such systems work correctly.…
Networked systems are systems of interconnected components, in which the dynamics of each component are influenced by the behavior of neighboring components. Examples of networked systems include biological networks, critical…
When a biological system robustly corrects component-level errors, the direct pressure on component performance declines. Components may become less reliable, maintain more genetic variability, or drift neutrally in design, creating the…
The principle of self-organization has acquired a fundamental significance in the newly emerging field of computational philosophy. Self-organizing systems have been described in various domains in science and philosophy including physics,…
Nature has found one method of organizing living matter, but maybe other options exist -- not yet discovered -- on how to create life. To study the life "as it could be" is the objective of an interdisciplinary field called Artificial Life…
Many biological systems collectively construct complex, adaptive, and functional architectures, where function emerges from bottom-up building processes rather than top-down planning or centralized control. However, general strategies for…
Biological systems offer a great many examples of how sophisticated, highly adapted behavior can emerge from training. Here we discuss how training might be used to impart similarly adaptive properties in physical matter. As a special form…
Many living and non-living complex systems can be modeled and understood as collective systems made of heterogeneous components that self-organize and generate nontrivial morphological structures and behaviors. This chapter presents a brief…
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…
This article proposes a universal simulation platform for simulating systems undergoing duress. In other words, this paper introduces a total simulation package which includes a number of methods of simulating the flexibility of a given…
I propose here a new concept of information based on two relevant aspects of its expression. The first related to the undeniable fact that the expression of information modifies the physical state of its receiver. The second to the…
The ubiquity of modules in biological networks may result from an evolutionary benefit of a modular organization. For instance, modularity may increase the rate of adaptive evolution, because modules can be easily combined into new…
In this position paper (1) we discuss two particular aspects of Systems of Systems, i.e., variability and evolution. (2) We argue that concepts from Product Line Engineering and Software Evolution are relevant to Systems of Systems…
Our binary intuitive understanding of life and lifelikeness is good enough for daily life, but not for research in the natural sciences. Here we propose an operational definition of lifeness of a particular entity as a scalar, product of…
A central biological question is how natural organisms are so evolvable (capable of quickly adapting to new environments). A key driver of evolvability is the widespread modularity of biological networks--their organization as functional,…