Statistical Physics (SP) has followed an unusual evolutionary path in science. Originally aiming to provide a fundamental basis for another important branch of Physics, namely Thermodynamics, SP gradually became an independent field of research in its own right. But despite more than a century of steady progress, there are still plenty of challenges and open questions in the SP realm.In fact, the area is still rapidly evolving, in contrast to other branches of science, which already have well defined scopes and borderlines of applicability. This difference is due to the steadily expanding number of applications, as well as ongoing improvements and revisions of concepts and methods in SP. Such particular aspects of SP lend further significance and timeliness to this book about perspectives and trends within the field.Here, the aim is to present the state-of-the-art vision of expert researchers who study SP and Complex Systems. Although a comprehensive treatment is well beyond what can be treated in a single volume, the book provides a snapshot of the field today, as well as a glimpse of where the field may be heading during the next decade.The book is aimed at graduate and advanced undergraduate physics students, as well as researchers who work with SP, Complex Systems, Computational Physics, Biological Physics and related topics. It addresses questions such as: What insights can be gained from recent advances in the study of traditional problems in SP? How can SP help us understand problems that arise in the biological sciences and in the study of complex systems? How can new problems be formulated using the ‘language’ of SP? In this way, it attempts to document partial progress in answering these and related questions.The book also commemorates the occasion of the 70th anniversary in 2011 of two important physicists and friends who dedicated their lives to the understanding of nature in general and to the development of Statistical Physics and the science of Complexity in particular: Liacir Lucena and H Eugene Stanley.

As the most important liquid in our life and one of the most abundant molecules in the universe, water is the least understood substance with a very rich phase diagram (at least 18 crystalline forms and two liquids) and more that 60 dynamical/thermodynamic anomalies whose origins are still under debate. Properties of Water from Numerical and Experimental Perspectives gathers together leading scientists and experts in the field of water. By merging the theoretical/computational point of view with experimental approaches, it presents a state-of-the-art description of the properties of water, enlightening the source of the anomalies of water and describing how such anomalies actively affect the functioning of biological substances.

This book addresses new challenges in soft matter and colloids. It presents timely reports on colloidal self-assembly, soft matters from liquid crystals, nanoparticles in liquid crystals, hydrocolloids, hybrid nanosystems, nanosuspensions, and dispersion of nanoparticles in different media, soft matter processing and modern experiments related with soft matters.

This edited volume provides an essential resource for urban morphology, the study of urban forms and structures, offering a much-needed mathematical perspective. Experts on a variety of mathematical modeling techniques provide new insights into specific aspects of the field, such as street networks, sustainability, and urban growth. The chapters collected here make a clear case for the importance of tools and methods to understand, model, and simulate the formation and evolution of cities. The chapters cover a wide variety of topics in urban morphology, and are conveniently organized by their mathematical principles. The first part covers fractals and focuses on how self-similar structures sort themselves out through competition. This is followed by a section on cellular automata, and includes chapters exploring how they generate fractal forms. Networks are the focus of the third part, which includes street networks and other forms as well. Chapters that examine complexity and its relation to urban structures are in part four.The fifth part introduces a variety of other quantitative models that can be used to study urban morphology. In the book’s final section, a series of multidisciplinary commentaries offers readers new ways of looking at the relationship between mathematics and urban forms. Being the first book on this topic, Mathematics of Urban Morphology will be an invaluable resource for applied mathematicians and anyone studying urban morphology. Additionally, anyone who is interested in cities from the angle of economics, sociology, architecture, or geography will also find it useful. "This book provides a useful perspective on the state of the art with respect to urban morphology in general and mathematics as tools and frames to disentangle the ideas that pervade arguments about form and function in particular. There is much to absorb in the pages that follow and there are many pointers to ways in which these ideas can be linked to related theories of cities, urban design and urban policy analysis as well as new movements such as the role of computation in cities and the idea of the smart city. Much food for thought. Read on, digest, enjoy." From the foreword by Michael Batty

This book provides in-depth insights into assembling dynamics of proteins, DNA and other nanoparticles. The applications of basic knowledge in the development of artificial self-assembling systems will be discussed and state of the art methodology in the field will be presented.This interdisciplinary work brings together aspects of different fields of expertise such as Biology, Physics and Material Sciences and is intended for researchers, professors and graduate students interested in the design of self-assembling materials.

The Topic Editors Paul F. J. Wassmann, dorte Krause-Jensen, Markus A. Janout, and Bodil Annikki Bluhm declare that they are collaborating with pan-arctic community.

This book constitutes the thoroughly revised selected papers of the 4th and 5th workshops on Big Data Benchmarks, Performance Optimization, and Emerging Hardware, BPOE 4 and BPOE 5, held respectively in Salt Lake City, in March 2014, and in Hangzhou, in September 2014. The 16 papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 30 submissions. Both workshops focus on architecture and system support for big data systems, such as benchmarking; workload characterization; performance optimization and evaluation; emerging hardware.

The book outlines selected projects conducted under the supervision of the author. Moreover, it discusses significant relations between Interactive Granular Computing (IGrC) and numerous dynamically developing scientific domains worldwide, along with features characteristic of the author’s approach to IGrC. The results presented are a continuation and elaboration of various aspects of Wisdom Technology, initiated and developed in cooperation with Professor Andrzej Skowron. Based on the empirical findings from these projects, the author explores the following areas: (a) understanding the causes of the theory and practice gap problem (TPGP) in complex systems engineering (CSE); (b) generalizing computing models of complex adaptive systems (CAS) (in particular, natural computing models) by constructing an interactive granular computing (IGrC) model of networks of interrelated interacting complex granules (c-granules), belonging to a single agent and/or to a group of agents; (c) developing methodologies based on the IGrC model to minimize the negative consequences of the TPGP. The book introduces approaches to the above issues, using the proposed IGrC model. In particular, the IGrC model refers to the key mechanisms used to control the processes related to the implementation of CSE projects. One of the main aims was to develop a mechanism of IGrC control over computations that model a project’s implementation processes to maximize the chances of its success, while at the same time minimizing the emerging risks. In this regard, the IGrC control is usually performed by means of properly selected and enforced (among project participants) project principles. These principles constitute examples of c-granules, expressed by complex vague concepts (represented by c-granules too). The c-granules evolve with time (in particular, the meaning of the concepts is also subject of change). This methodology is illustrated using project principles applied by the author during the implementation of the POLTAX, AlgoTradix, Merix, and Excavio projects outlined in the book.

In this book, after discussing the fundamental problems of current science and other philosophic concepts, beginning with controversies between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Ilya Prigogine launches into a message of great hope: the future has not been determined. Contrary to globalisation and the apparent contemporary mass culture society, individual behaviour is beginning to increasingly become the key factor which governs the evolution of both the world and society as a whole. It is a message that challenges existing widespread views, implicitly or explicitly, through mass communication; moreover the importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be ?perfect consumers? in a world dominated only by monetary wealth.Challenging this drive towards the elimination of freedom of thought in the individual is now imperative if we are to save man and his planet from catastrophe, which seems to be ever imminent and (unfortunately) irreversible.This last book of Ilya Prigogine provides a small, disputable, but nonetheless valuable contribution towards that end.

The interest of physicists in economic and social questions is not new: for over four decades, we have witnessed the emergence of what is called nowadays “sociophysics” and “econophysics”, vigorous and challenging areas within the wider “Interdisciplinary Physics”. With tools borrowed from Statistical Physics and Complexity, this new area of study have already made important contributions, which in turn have fostered the development of novel theoretical foundations in Social Science and Economics, via mathematical approaches, agent-based modelling and numerical simulations. From these foundations, Computational Social Science has grown to incorporate as well the empirical component --aided by the recent data deluge from the Web 2.0 and 3.0--, closing in this way the experiment-theory cycle in the best tradition of Physics.