In this paper we present a new measure to investigate the functional structure of financial markets, the Sector Dominance Ratio (SDR). We study the information embedded in raw and partial correlations using random matrix theory (RMT) and examine the evolution of economic sectoral makeup on a...

We discuss the possible utility of statistical physics in elucidating some of the puzzling phenomena that seem to occur in the brains of patients affected with Alzheimer’s disease. Further, we report three specific results from this approach: (i) The size distribution of senile plaques appears...

This brief overview is designed to introduce some of the advances that have occurred in our understanding of percolation phenomena. We organize our presentation around three simple questions: (i) What are percolation phenomena? (ii) Why do we care? (iii) What do we actually do? To answer the...

We review recent numerical simulations of several models of interface growth in d-dimensional media with quenched disorder. These models belong to the universality class of anisotropic diode-resistor percolation networks. The values of the roughness exponent δ=0.63±0.01 (d=1+1) and...

It is known that some dimeric tandem repeats (DTR) are very abundant in noncoding DNA. We find that certain DTR length distribution functions in noncoding DNA can be fit by a power law function. We analyze a simplified model of unequal chromosomal crossing over and find that it produces a stable...

We study the optimal distance ℓopt in random networks in the presence of disorder implemented by assigning random weights to the links. The optimal distance between two nodes is the length of the path for which the sum of weights along the path (“cost”) is a minimum. We study the case of...