This is the third volume in a series of books on general topics in supersymmetric mechanics. This collection presents material from the well established international and annual INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati Winter School on the Attractor Mechanism.

This book is based upon lectures presented in June 2007 at the INFN-Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati School on Attractor Mechanism, directed by Stefano Bellucci. The symposium included such prestigious lecturers as S. Ferrara, M. Günaydin, P. Levay, and T. Mohaupt. All lectures were given at a pedagogical, introductory level, which is reflected in the specific "flavor" of this volume. The book also benefits from extensive discussions about, and related reworking of, the various contributions. In addition, this volume contains contributions originating from short presentations of recent original results and an essay on the relation between complexity science and high-energy physics by A. Zichichi. It is the fourth volume in a series of books on the general topics of supersymmetry, supergravity, black holes and the attractor mechanism.

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Perception is the first step in the whole of the cognitive processes (attention, learning, memory, categorization, imagery, intuition, inference, comprehension, thought, judgement, expression) which culminate in the reasoning activity and to which emotions make a contribution. The production of perception representations is correlated with the perception events. Such perception representations occur by means of the contribution of two kinds of factors: sensory signals which reproduce the spatio-temporal characteristics of the receptor modifications, and interpretation of the intrinsic ambiguity of such signals by means of unconscious inferences. Various interactions intervene between bottom-up signals from peripheral receptors and top-down signals from higher centres.

These lecture notes are dedicated to the most recent theoretical applications of Black Hole solutions in high-energy physics. The main motivation of this volume is to present the latest black hole backgrounds that are relevant for gauge/gravity correspondence. Leading scientists in the field explain effective techniques for finding singular and cosmological solutions embedded in gauged supergravity, shedding light on underlying properties and symmetries. Starting from a basic level, the mathematical structures underlying black holes and cosmologies are revealed, helping the reader grasp the connection between theoretical approaches and physical observations with insights into possible future developments from both a theoretical and experimental point of view. The topics covered in this volume are based on lectures delivered during the “Theoretical Frontiers in Black Holes and Cosmology” school, held in Natal in June 2015.

From 29 August to 7 September 2007, a large group of distinguished lecturers and young physicists from various countries met in Erice, Italy, at the “Ettore Majorana” Foundation and Centre for Scientific Culture (EMFCSC) to attend the 45th Course of the International School of Subnuclear Physics: “Search for the ‘Totally Unexpected’ in the LHC era”.This book is a collection of lectures delivered during the course, which covered the most recent advances in theoretical physics and the latest results from the current experimental facilities. In the School's effort to encourage and promote young physicists achieve recognition at an international level, students who distinguished themselves for the excellence of their research have been given the opportunity to publish their presentation in this volume.

A new approach to understanding nonlinear dynamics and strange attractors The behavior of a physical system may appear irregular or chaotic even when it is completely deterministic and predictable for short periods of time into the future. How does one model the dynamics of a system operating in a chaotic regime? Older tools such as estimates of the spectrum of Lyapunov exponents and estimates of the spectrum of fractal dimensions do not sufficiently answer this question. In a significant evolution of the field of Nonlinear Dynamics, The Topology of Chaos responds to the fundamental challenge of chaotic systems by introducing a new analysis method-Topological Analysis-which can be used to extract, from chaotic data, the topological signatures that determine the stretching and squeezing mechanisms which act on flows in phase space and are responsible for generating chaotic data. Beginning with an example of a laser that has been operated under conditions in which it behaved chaotically, the authors convey the methodology of Topological Analysis through detailed chapters on: * Discrete Dynamical Systems: Maps * Continuous Dynamical Systems: Flows * Topological Invariants * Branched Manifolds * The Topological Analysis Program * Fold Mechanisms * Tearing Mechanisms * Unfoldings * Symmetry * Flows in Higher Dimensions * A Program for Dynamical Systems Theory Suitable at the present time for analyzing "strange attractors" that can be embedded in three-dimensional spaces, this groundbreaking approach offers researchers and practitioners in the discipline a complete and satisfying resolution to the fundamental questions of chaotic systems.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems, Living Machines 2016, held in Edinburgh, UK, in July 2016. The 34 full and 27 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 63 submissions.The theme of the conference encompasses biomimetic methods for manufacture, repair and recycling inspired by natural processes such as reproduction, digestion, morphogenesis and metamorphosis.

The basic idea, simple and revolutionary at the same time, to replace the concept of a point particle with a one-dimensional string, has opened up a whole new field of research. Even today, four decades later, its multifaceted consequences are still not fully conceivable. Up to now string theory has offered a new way to view each particle: as different excitations of the same fundamental object. It has celebrated success in discovering the graviton in its spectrum, and it has naturally led scientists to posit space-times with more than four dimensions—which in turn has triggered numerous interesting developments in fields as varied as condensed matter physics and pure mathematics. This book collects pedagogical lectures by leading experts in string theory, introducing the non-specialist reader to some of the newest developments in the field. The carefully selected topics are at the cutting edge of research in string theory and include new developments in topological strings, or AdS/CFT dualities, as well as newly emerging subfields such as doubled field theory and holography in the hydrodynamic regime. The contributions to this book have been selected and arranged in such a way as to form a self-contained, graduate level textbook.

One of the most exciting and potentially rewarding areas of scientific research is the study of the principles and mechanisms underlying brain function. It is also of great promise to future generations of computers. A growing group of researchers, adapting knowledge and techniques from a wide range of scientific disciplines, have made substantial progress understanding memory, the learning process, and self organization by studying the properties of models of neural networks - idealized systems containing very large numbers of connected neurons, whose interactions give rise to the special qualities of the brain. This book introduces and explains the techniques brought from physics to the study of neural networks and the insights they have stimulated. It is written at a level accessible to the wide range of researchers working on these problems - statistical physicists, biologists, computer scientists, computer technologists and cognitive psychologists. The author presents a coherent and clear nonmechanical presentation of all the basic ideas and results. More technical aspects are restricted, wherever possible, to special sections and appendices in each chapter. The book is suitable as a text for graduate courses in physics, electrical engineering, computer science and biology.