This book provides a self-contained presentation of the physical and mathematical laws governing complex systems. Complex systems arising in natural, engineering, environmental, life and social sciences are approached from a unifying point of view using an array of methodologies such as microscopic and macroscopic level formulations, deterministic and probabilistic tools, modeling and simulation. The book can be used as a textbook by graduate students, researchers and teachers in science, as well as non-experts who wish to have an overview of one of the most open, markedly interdisciplinary and fast-growing branches of present-day science.

This book provides a self-contained presentation of the physical and mathematical laws governing complex systems. Complex systems arising in natural, engineering, environmental, life and social sciences are approached from a unifying point of view using an array of methodologies such as microscopic and macroscopic level formulations, deterministic and probabilistic tools, modeling and simulation. The book can be used as a textbook by graduate students, researchers and teachers in science, as well as non-experts who wish to have an overview of one of the most open, markedly interdisciplinary and fast-growing branches of present-day science.

There is no term that better describes the essential features of human society than complexity. On various levels, from the decision-making processes of individuals, through to the interactions between individuals leading to the spontaneous formation of groups and social hierarchies, up to the collective, herding processes that reshape whole societies, all these features share the property of irreducibility, i.e., they require a holistic, multi-level approach formed by researchers from different disciplines. This Special Issue aims to collect research studies that, by exploiting the latest advances in physics, economics, complex networks, and data science, make a step towards understanding these economic and social systems. The majority of submissions are devoted to financial market analysis and modeling, including the stock and cryptocurrency markets in the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic risk quantification and control, wealth condensation, the innovation-related performance of companies, and more. Looking more at societies, there are papers that deal with regional development, land speculation, and the-fake news-fighting strategies, the issues which are of central interest in contemporary society. On top of this, one of the contributions proposes a new, improved complexity measure.

This book offers new arguments for determinism. It draws novel and surprising consequences from determinism for our attitudes toward such things as death, regret, grief, and the meaning of life. The book argues that rationalism is the right attitude to take toward reality. It then shows that rationalism implies determinism and that determinism has surprising and far-reaching consequences. The author contends that the existence of all of humanity almost certainly depends on the precise time and manner of your death and mine; that purely retrospective regret, relief, gratitude, and grief are irrational for all but those who hold extreme values; and that everyone’s life has an unending impact on the future and thereby achieves the strongest kind of meaning that it makes sense to desire. Written in a direct and accessible style, Determinism, Death, and Meaning will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in metaphysics, philosophy of religion, and value theory, as well as general readers with a serious interest in these topics.

This volume outlines a theory of translation, set within the framework of Peircean semiotics, which challenges the linguistic bias in translation studies by proposing a semiotic theory that accounts for all instances of translation, not only interlinguistic translation. In particular, the volume explores cases of translation which does not include language at all. The book begins by examining different conceptualizations of translation to highlight how linguistic bias in translation studies and semiotics has informed these fields and their development. The volume then outlines a complexity theory of translation based on semiotics which incorporates process philosophy, semiotics, and translation theory. It posits that translation is the complex systemic process underlying semiosis, the result of which produces semiotic forms. The book concludes by looking at the implications of this conceptualization of translation on social-cultural emergence theory through an interdisciplinary lens, integrating perspectives from semiotics, social semiotics, and development studies. Paving the way for scholars to analyze translational aspects of all semiotic phenomena, this volume is essential reading for graduate students and researchers in translation studies, semiotics, multimodal studies, cultural studies, and development studies.

Advances in Nonlinear Geosciences is a set of contributions from the participants of “30 Years of Nonlinear Dynamics” held July 3-8, 2016 in Rhodes, Greece as part of the Aegean Conferences, as well as from several other experts in the field who could not attend the meeting. The volume brings together up-to-date research from the atmospheric sciences, hydrology, geology, and other areas of geosciences and presents the new advances made in the last 10 years. Topics include chaos synchronization, topological data analysis, new insights on fractals, multifractals and stochasticity, climate dynamics, extreme events, complexity, and causality, among other topics.

The Encyclopedia of Cell Biology, Four Volume Set offers a broad overview of cell biology, offering reputable, foundational content for researchers and students across the biological and medical sciences. This important work includes 285 articles from domain experts covering every aspect of cell biology, with fully annotated figures, abundant illustrations, videos, and references for further reading. Each entry is built with a layered approach to the content, providing basic information for those new to the area and more detailed material for the more experienced researcher. With authored contributions by experts in the field, the Encyclopedia of Cell Biology provides a fully cross-referenced, one-stop resource for students, researchers, and teaching faculty across the biological and medical sciences. Fully annotated color images and videos for full comprehension of concepts, with layered content for readers from different levels of experience Includes information on cytokinesis, cell biology, cell mechanics, cytoskeleton dynamics, stem cells, prokaryotic cell biology, RNA biology, aging, cell growth, cell Injury, and more In-depth linking to Academic Press/Elsevier content and additional links to outside websites and resources for further reading A one-stop resource for students, researchers, and teaching faculty across the biological and medical sciences

This book seeks to provide new perspectives, to broaden the field of philosophy of science, or to renew themes that have had a great impact on the profession. Thus, after an initial chapter to situate the current trends in philosophy of science and the prospective of the near future, it offers contributions in five thematic blocks: I) Philosophy of Medicine and Climate Change; II) Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence and the Internet; III) New Analyses of Probability and the Use of Mathematics in Practice; IV) Scientific Progress Revisited; and V) Scientific Realism and the Instrumentalist Alternative. Within this framework, the volume addresses such relevant issues as the methodological validity of medical evidence or decision making in situations of uncertainty; recent advances in Artificial Intelligence and the future of the Internet; current forms of empirically based methodological pluralism and new ways of understanding mathematics with scientific practice; and the revision of the approaches to scientific progress based on the experiences accumulated in recent decades.

Complexity is emerging as a post-Newtonian paradigm for approaching a large body of phenomena of concern at the crossroads of physical, engineering, environmental, life and human sciences from a unifying point of view. This book outlines the foundations of modern complexity research as it arose from the cross-fertilization of ideas and tools from nonlinear science, statistical physics and numerical simulation. It is shown how these developments lead to an understanding, both qualitative and quantitative, of the complex systems encountered in nature and in everyday experience and, conversely, how natural complexity acts as a source of inspiration for progress at the fundamental level.

This book tackles the challenging question which mathematical formalisms and possibly new physical notions should be developed for quantitatively describing human cognition and behavior, in addition to the ones already developed in the physical and cognitive sciences. Indeed, physics is widely used in modeling social systems, where, in particular, new branches of science such as sociophysics and econophysics have arisen. However, many if not most characteristic features of humans like willingness, emotions, memory, future prediction, and moral norms, to name but a few, are not yet properly reflected in the paradigms of physical thought and theory. The choice of a relevant formalism for modeling mental phenomena requires the comprehension of the general philosophical questions related to the mind-body problem. Plausible answers to these questions are investigated and reviewed, notions and concepts to be used or to be taken into account are developed and some challenging questions are posed as open problems. This text addresses theoretical physicists and neuroscientists modeling any systems and processes where human factors play a crucial role, philosophers interested in applying philosophical concepts to the construction of mathematical models, and the mathematically oriented psychologists and sociologists, whose research is fundamentally related to modeling mental processes.