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Correlated randomness and switching phenomena
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Stanley, H. Eugene, Buldyrev, Sergey V., Franzese, Giancarlo, Havlin, Shlomo, Mallamace, F., Kumar, Pradeep, Plerou, V. and Preis, Tobias (2010) Correlated randomness and switching phenomena. In: Statistical, Fluid and Biological Physics Problems : An MIT Symposium and Articles dedicated to A. Nihat Berker on his 60th Birthday. Published in: Physica A : statistical mechanics and its applications, Volume 389 (Number 15). pp. 2880-2893. doi:10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.023 ISSN 0378-4371 .
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.023
Abstract
One challenge of biology, medicine, and economics is that the systems treated by these serious scientific disciplines have no perfect metronome in time and no perfect spatial architecture—crystalline or otherwise. Nonetheless, as if by magic, out of nothing but randomness one finds remarkably fine-tuned processes in time and remarkably fine-tuned structures in space. Further, many of these processes and structures have the remarkable feature of “switching” from one behavior to another as if by magic. The past century has, philosophically, been concerned with placing aside the human tendency to see the universe as a fine-tuned machine. Here we will address the challenge of uncovering how, through randomness (albeit, as we shall see, strongly correlated randomness), one can arrive at some of the many spatial and temporal patterns in biology, medicine, and economics and even begin to characterize the switching phenomena that enables a system to pass from one state to another. Inspired by principles developed by A. Nihat Berker and scores of other statistical physicists in recent years, we discuss some applications of correlated randomness to understand switching phenomena in various fields. Specifically, we present evidence from experiments and from computer simulations supporting the hypothesis that water’s anomalies are related to a switching point (which is not unlike the “tipping point” immortalized by Malcolm Gladwell), and that the bubbles in economic phenomena that occur on all scales are not “outliers” (another Gladwell immortalization). Though more speculative, we support the idea of disease as arising from some kind of yet-to-be-understood complex switching phenomenon, by discussing data on selected examples, including heart disease and Alzheimer disease.
| Item Type: | Conference Item (Paper) | ||||||
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| Subjects: | Q Science > QC Physics | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School > Behavioural Science Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Switching theory, Random dynamical systems | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Physica A : statistical mechanics and its applications | ||||||
| Publisher: | Elsevier | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0378-4371 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 1 August 2010 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | Volume 389 | ||||||
| Number: | Number 15 | ||||||
| Number of Pages: | 13 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 2880-2893 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1016/j.physa.2010.02.023 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Description: | Dedicated to Professor A. Nihat Berker on the occasion of his 60th birthday |
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| Funder: | National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF), National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH), Great Britain. Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR), United States. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), Bechtel Foundation | ||||||
| Conference Paper Type: | Paper | ||||||
| Title of Event: | Statistical, Fluid and Biological Physics Problems : An MIT Symposium and Articles dedicated to A. Nihat Berker on his 60th Birthday | ||||||
| Type of Event: | Other | ||||||
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