The formation of complex patterns in chemical systems is discussed in the following cases: relations of pattern formation to thermodynamics theories; unusually complex pattern formation in very simple experimental chemical systems; and numerical simulation of patterns that develop in...

This special journal issue of Advances in Complex Systems presents a collection of papers describing current research delivered by recognized researchers actively working in various corners of the field of modeling of complex systems by cellular automata and related methods. All included papers...

The social factors that influence cooperation have remained largely uninvestigated but have the potential to explain much of the variation in cooperative behavior observed in the natural world. We show here that certain dimensions of the social environment, namely the size of the social group,...

The idea is advanced that self-organization in complex systems can be treated as decision making (as it is performed by humans) and, vice versa, decision making is nothing but a kind of self-organization in the decision maker nervous systems. A mathematical formulation is suggested based on the...

In this paper, we provide an insight into the emergence of power-law and two-phase behavior in the financial market fluctuations by defining an analytical model for time evolution of stock share prices. The defined model can exhibit bimodal behavior in the supply-demand structure of the market....

We consider the problem of modeling urban mobility using the complex systems key of lecture. We discuss the properties of the Auto-mobilis model, a virtual simulator for private car mobility based on the individual citizen propensities and the existence of "chronotopoi", which are the primary...

We derive a sum rule that constrains the scale based decomposition of the trajectories of finite systems of particles. The sum rule reflects a tradeoff between the finer and larger scale collective degrees of freedom. For short duration trajectories, where acceleration is irrelevant, the sum...

Firstly, the application of a cellular automata (CA) model to simulate the dynamics of lasers is reviewed. With this kind of model, the macroscopic properties of the laser system emerge as a cooperative phenomenon from elementary components locally interacting under simple rules. Secondly, a...

Ideas on educational psychology suggest that a learning process occurs when people participate within social communities. A model is constructed based on two primary factors in the learning process : knowledge storage and interactive ability of each person. Results of simulations are consistent...

This special issue of Advances in Complex Systems presents a collection of selected papers of the 4th Conference of the European Social Simulation Association held in Tolulouse, France on 10–14 September 2007.