Stefan C. Müller - Böcker

This richly illustrated book explores the fascinating and ubiquitous occurrence of spirals and vortices in human culture and in nature.

This book explores the fascinating and intimate relationship between music and physics. Beginning with the basics, the authors first address the tonal systems of European-type music, comparing them with those of other, distant cultures.

This book explores the fascinating and intimate relationship between music and physics. Beginning with the basics, the authors first address the tonal systems of European-type music, comparing them with those of other, distant cultures.

How is music born? Is music made by humans or does it already exist and wait to be found? Having these questions in mind the authors ask more questions: How can we share our feelings with other people when listening to music? Why is precise tuning so important in European music and less so in other cultures?

This book explores the fascinating and ubiquitous occurrence of spatial patterns and forms, generated in nature by the interplay of chemical and biological reactions with transport processes, as there are diffusion, convection, chemotaxis, or others.  Their role in our perception and in scientific investigations is immanent in the concepts of natural laws. They have the capacity to explain phenomena like self-organization in systems far away from thermodynamic equilibrium or to formulate the influence of nonlinear interactions on complexity. Just take the omnipresent waves, as they propagate in liquids with or without reactivity, act inside biological cells or become apparent in a biomedical context, as in the heart during arrhythmias or in the visual cortex, when a migraine aura is noticed. Such phenomena are prominent topics of intensive, future-oriented, and hopefully beneficial research.Our colleagues and friends contribute to this book in presentations on the origins, mechanisms, and dynamics relevant for their special research endeavors, from earlier to actual, more complex topics. These comprise numerous scientific fields in theory, mathematics, physics and chemistry laboratories, field studies on morphogenesis and the course of biological evolution, or analysis of specific medical data, including epidemiological studies.On the whole, the book provides a valuable source of information, while also taking the reader on an aesthetic journey through an attractive world full of color and “visual adventures.”

This book presents the general concepts of self-organized spatio-temporal ordering processes. These concepts are demonstrated via prototypical examples of recent advances in materials science. Particular emphasis is on nano scale soft matter in physics, chemistry, biology and biomedicine. The questions addressed embrace a broad spectrum of complex nonlinear phenomena, ranging from self-assembling near the thermodynamical equilibrium to dissipative structure formation far from equilibrium. Their mutual interplay gives rise to increasing degrees of hierarchical order. Analogues are pointed out, differences characterized and efforts are made to reveal common features in the mechanistic description of those phenomena.

This book presents the general concepts of self-organized spatio-temporal ordering processes. The questions addressed embrace a broad spectrum of complex nonlinear phenomena, ranging from self-assembling near the thermodynamical equilibrium to dissipative structure formation far from equilibrium.

All of us are confronted with complex phenomena occurring in daily life and in the living and inanimate nature surrounding us. Our scientific curiosity strives to unravel the mechanisms at work to create such complexity. Among various approaches to solve this problem, the field of synergetics, developed by Hermann Haken, has proven very successful as a general and interdisciplinary concept for describing and explaining complex phenomena that appear in systems under non-equilibrium conditions. These comprise dynamical states in evolving systems, spatial structure-forming processes, synchronization of states and regulatory mechanisms, and many other examples. The encompassing concepts have been applied to many disciplines, like physics, chemistry, biology, and beyond those also from synergetics to information theory, brain science, economics, and others.Starting from basic methods of complexity research and synergetics, this volume contains thirty contributions on complex systems that exhibit spontaneous pattern formation far from thermal equilibrium. Written by international experts and young researchers assembled under one roof, this volume reflects state of the art research from a variety of scientific fields and disciplines where complexity theory and synergetics are important or even indispensable tools today and in the future.

Concepts of nonlinear physics are applied to an increasing number of research disciplines. With this volume, the editors offer a selection of articles on nonlinear topics in progress, ranging from physics and chemistry to biology and some applications of social science. The book covers quantum optics, electron crystallization, cellular or flow patterns in fluids and in granular media, biological systems, and the control of brain structures via neuronal excitation. Chemical patterns are looked at both in bulk solutions and on surfaces in heterogeneous systems. From regular structures, the authors turn to the more complex behavior in biology and physics, such as hydrodynamical turbulence, low-dimensional dynamics in solid-state physics, and gravity.

This collection of articles forms a cohesive text on the rapidly evolving field of nonlinear dynamics of continous systems. It addresses researchers but it can also be used as a text for graduate work. The authors demonstrate through numerous examples the use of common tools of mathematical analyses and dynamical interpretations for the study of nonlinear phenomena. Instead of providing a comprehensive overview of the rapidly evolving field, the contributors treat the essence of what is known about the formation of spontaneous structures in dissipative continuous systems and about the competition between order and chaos that characterizes those systems. The topics discussed in this volume range from mathematical foundations to interpretations of concrete phenomena in fluids, chemical reactions, structure forming processes in semiconductors and even granular matter.

This collection of articles forms a cohesive text on the rapidly evolving field of nonlinear dynamics of continous systems. It addresses researchers but it can also be used as a text for graduate work. The authors demonstrate through numerous examples the use of common tools of mathematical analyses and dynamical interpretations for the study of nonlinear phenomena. Instead of providing a comprehensive overview of the rapidly evolving field, the contributors treat the essence of what is known about the formation of spontaneous structures in dissipative continuous systems and about the competition between order and chaos that characterizes those systems. The topics discussed in this volume range from mathematical foundations to interpretations of concrete phenomena in fluids, chemical reactions, structure forming processes in semiconductors and even granular matter.

Open nonlinear systems are capable of self-organization in space and time. This realization constitutes a major breakthrough of modern science, and is currently at the origin of explosive developments in chemistry, physics and biology. Observations and numerical computations of nonlinear systems surprise us by their inexhaustible and sometimes nonintuitive variety of structures with different shapes and functions. But as well as variety one finds on closer inspection that nonlinear phenomena share universal aspects of pattern formation in time and space. These similarities make it possible to bridge the gap between inanimate and living matter at various levels of complexity, in both theory and experiment. This book is an account of different approaches to the study of this pattern formation. The universality of kinetic, thermodynamic and dimensional approaches is documented through their application to purely mathematical, physical and chemical systems, as well as to systems in nature: biochemical, cellular, multicellular, physiological, neurophysiological, ecological and economic systems. Hints given throughout the book allow the reader to discover how to make use of the principles and methods in different fields of research, including those not treated explicitly in the book.

The review articles in this book treat the overall nonlinear and complex behavior of nature from the viewpoint of such diverse research fields as fluid mechanics, condensed matter physics, biophysics, biochemistry, biology, and applied mathematics. Attention is focussed on a broad and comprehensive overview of recent developments and perspectives. Particular attention is given to the so-far unsolved problem of how to capture the mutual interplay between the microscopic and macroscopic dynamics that extend over various length and time scales. The book addresses researchers as well as graduate students.

Concepts of nonlinear physics are applied to an increasing number of research disciplines. With this volume, the editors offer a selection of articles on nonlinear topics in progress, ranging from physics and chemistry to biology and some applications of social science. The book covers quantum optics, electron crystallization, cellular or flow patterns in fluids and in granular media, biological systems, and the control of brain structures via neuronal excitation. Chemical patterns are looked at both in bulk solutions and on surfaces in heterogeneous systems. From regular structures, the authors turn to the more complex behavior in biology and physics, such as hydrodynamical turbulence, low-dimensional dynamics in solid-state physics, and gravity.

Local and global spatial coupling mechanisms form the basis of transport processes that are of fundamental importance for the occurrence and the dynamic evolution of patterns on a mesoscopic and macroscopic scale. The present volume deals with these concepts and investigates applications in the fields of biophysics and chemistry.