WORKSHOPS ON COMPLEXITY AND NANO-TECHNOLOGY
The UNT Center for Nonlinear Science is associated to the TWU Center for Nonlinear Science and to the Center for Complex Quantum Systems, formerly The Ilya Prigogine Center for Studies in Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems. Jointly with these two Centers and with the ARO financial support the UNT Center for Nonlinear Science has organized the following international Workshops:
• In Search of a Theory of Comlexity ( Denton , August, 2005)
The Organizers of this Workshop were P. Allegrini, P. Grigolini and B. J. West. The Workshop was sponsored by ARO and the Proceedings will be published in a special issue of Chaos, Solitons and Fractals.
The contributors to these Proceedings were some of the world leaders in the field of fractional calculus and complexity. These Proceedings will contain the last paper of the late emeritus professor Balescu, a well known scientist who gave fundamental contributions to out of equilibrium statistical physics.
Excerpt from the Preface: “The main purpose of this workshop has been the physical significance of the new theoretical tools of fractional calculus and the adoption of the Continuous Time Random Walk (CTRW) perspective to study anomalous diffusion and especially the physical effects of non-Poisson renewal processes. It is a widely accepted fact that the fractional calculus affords a representation of the real world more accurate than that afforded by ordinary integer derivative. It is also a widely accepted fact that the experimental properties of many complex systems, especially those of physiological interest, are emergent properties that are not necessarily derived from the microscopic dynamics as prescribed by the reductionism perspective. Some of the generalized master equations discussed at the Workshop are derived from the CTRW perspective, which happens to be appropriate to describe intermittent processes, for instance the blinking quantum dots, which are characterized by jumps that accurate methods of statistical analysis reveal to be of renewal type.
An argument of vivacious discussion at the Workshop has been whether the Generalized Master Equations derived from the ordinary Liouville prescription can always be interpreted in terms of renewal jumps. Professor Balescu, to whom this issue is dedicated, wrote a remarkable contribution to this issue, dealing with a delicate problem that has been debated for years by some of the participants to this Workshop, and concerning a generalized diffusion equation, yielding superdiffusion. Professor Balescu's final verdict has been that this equation can properly reproduce some fluidodynamic properties of plasmas, but is incompatible with the existence of renewal and abrupt jumps.
Among the ideas debated at the 2005 August Denton Workshop one that attracted the attention of the guest editors and got their approval and interest is that non-Poisson renewal processes might properly reflect the combination of order and randomness that is judged to be the most important property of organized system of biological and physiological interest. Thus, we are inclined to judge fractional calculus to be a proper way to deal with emergent properties, whatever the microscopic physics may be. Of course, although this aspect was not discussed at the Denton Workshop, fractal properties may have an even deeper impact on physics, and the processes discussed in this issue may have also a microscopic counterpart. The E-infinity theory proposed by Professor El Naschie is realizing the 1984 prophecy of Prof. Hohenberg "Nonlinear dynamics and chaos will invade the foundation of quantum mechanics and elementary particle physics"
On this basis we are inclined to believe that this issue, with the papers published on Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, on the E-infinity theory, by professor El Naschie and his followers, will contribute to proving that fractal dynamics play a fundamental role in physics, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level.”
• Non-Stationary Time Series: a Theoretical, Computational and Practical Challenge ( Denton , October 13-19, 2002)
The organizers of this Workshop were P. Grigolini, P. Hamilton, director of the TWU nonlinear center, J. Roberts and B. J. West. The Workshop was sponsored by ARO.
The Workshop dealt with the following subjects:
• P. A. Y. Gunter, Analysis and its discontents: Nonlinearity and the way things aren't.
• P. Allegrini, M. Giuntoli, P. Grigolini and B. J. West, From Knowledge, knowability and the search for an objective randomness to a new vision of complexity.
• B. J. West, Comments on the renormalization group, scaling and measures of complexity .
• P. Winsor, Complexity in the experimental audio/visual arts .
• M. Buiatti and M. Buiatti, Towards a statistical characterization of the living state of matter.
• E.Elliott and L. D. Kiel, A complex systems approach for developing public policy toward terrorism: an agent-based approach .
• V. Latora and M. Marchiori, How the science of complex networks can help developing strategies against terrorism.
• P. Allegrini, L. Fronzoni, P. Grigolini, V. Latora, M. S. Mega, A. Rapisarda and S. Vinciguerra, Detection of invisible and crucial events: from seismic fluctuations to the war against terrorism.
• M. Ignaccolo, P. Grigolini and G. Gross, Towards the timely detection of toxicants .
• P. Allegrini, P. Grigolini and L. Palatella, Intermittency and scale-free networks: a dynamical model for human language complexity.
• C. Bonanno and M. S. Mega, Towards a dynamical model for prime numbers .
• N. Scafetta, T. Imholt, J. A. Roberts and B. J. West, An intensity-expansion method to treat non-stationary time series: an application to the distance between prime numbers.
• C. Aquisti, P. Allegrini, P. Bogani, M. Buiatti, E. Catanese, L. Fronzoni, P. Grigolini, G. Mersi and L. Palatella, In the search for the low-complexity sequences in prokariots and eukaryotic genomes: how to derive a coherent picture fromglobal and local entropy measures.
• M. C. Storrie-Lombardi, F. A. Corsetti, P. Grigolini, M. Ignaccolo, P. Allegrini, S. Galatolo and G. Tinetti, Complexity analysis to explore the structure of ancient stromatolites.
• M. Ignaccolo, A. Schwettmann, R. Failla, M. C. Storrie-Lombardi and P. Grigolini, Stromatolites: why do we care?
• G. Buresti, G. Lombardi and J. Bellazzini, On the analysis of fluctuating velocity signals through methods based on the wavelet and Hilbert transforms.
• M. Latka, M. Glaubic-Latka, D. Latka and B. J. West, Fractal rigidity in migraine.
• R. Balocchi, D. Menicucci, E. Santarcangelo , L. Sebastiani, A. Gemignani, B. Ghelarducci and M. Varanini, Deriving the respiratory sinus arrhythmia from the heartbeat time series using empirical mode decomposition
• N. Scafetta and B. J. West, Multiresolution diffusion entropy analysis of time series: an application to births to teenagers in Texas .
The Proceedings of this Workshop have been published on Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Volume 20, Issue 1, April 2004.
• Mechanism for Decoherence-Theory and Applications to Nanotechnology and Quantum Information Science ( Austin , October 2001)
The organizers of this Workshop were Professors P. Grigolini, I. Prigogine, L.E. Reichl and Dr. B. J. West. This Workshop was sponsored by a number of organizations, including IC2 Institute, the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Complex Systems, both at the University of Texas at Austin, and the US Army Research Office. The participants were 12 from Austin, University of Maryland, University of Rochester, Texas A&M University, Princeton, University of Virginia, University of Michigan, Boulder NIST, Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, MIT.
The Proceedings of this Workshop have been published on Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Volume 16, Issue 3, April 2003.
• Classical and Quantum Complexity and Non-extensive Thermodynamics ( Denton , April 3-6, 2000)
This Workshop took place at Denton , with 26 talks on the following topics:
A. Hamiltonian Systems with long-range interactions.
B. Quantum Information.
C. Information Theory.
D. Turbulence and Intermittent Processes.
E. Equilibrium Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics.
F. High-Energy Physics.
G. Gravitational Systems.
The participants came from US, Brazil , France, Germany , Italy , Japan , Belgium , Spain , Argentina , England , Mexico , Romania and Poland
The Proceedings of this Workshop have been published on Chaos, Solitons and Fractals, Volume 13, Issue 3, March 2002.
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