Portal:Systems science
The systems science portal
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| Complex systems approach |
Systems science is an transdisciplinary[1] field that studies the nature of systems—from simple to complex—in nature, society, cognition, engineering, technology and science itself. To systems scientists, the world can be understood as a system of systems. The field aims to develop interdisciplinary foundations that are applicable in a variety of areas, such as psychology, biology, medicine, communication, business management, engineering, and social sciences.
Systems science covers formal sciences such as complex systems, cybernetics, dynamical systems theory, information theory, linguistics or systems theory. It has applications in the field of the natural and social sciences and engineering, such as control theory, operations research, social systems theory, systems biology, system dynamics, human factors, systems ecology, systems engineering and systems psychology. Themes commonly stressed in system science are (a) holistic view, (b) interaction between a system and its embedding environment, and (c) complex (often subtle) trajectories of dynamic behavior that sometimes are stable (and thus reinforcing), while at various 'boundary conditions' can become wildly unstable (and thus destructive). Concerns about Earth-scale biosphere/geosphere dynamics is an example of the nature of problems to which systems science seeks to contribute meaningful insights.
Selected article -
In mathematics, particularly in dynamical systems, Arnold tongues (named after Vladimir Arnold) are a pictorial phenomenon that occur when visualizing how the rotation number of a dynamical system, or other related invariant property thereof, changes according to two or more of its parameters. The regions of constant rotation number have been observed, for some dynamical systems, to form geometric shapes that resemble tongues, in which case they are called Arnold tongues.
Arnold tongues are observed in a large variety of natural phenomena that involve oscillating quantities, such as concentration of enzymes and substrates in biological processes and cardiac electric waves. Sometimes the frequency of oscillation depends on, or is constrained (i.e., phase-locked or mode-locked, in some contexts) based on some quantity, and it is often of interest to study this relation. For instance, the outset of a tumor triggers in the area a series of substance (mainly proteins) oscillations that interact with each other; simulations show that these interactions cause Arnold tongues to appear, that is, the frequency of some oscillations constrain the others, and this can be used to control tumor growth. (Full article...)Selected picture
Turbulence in the tip vortex from an airplane wing. Studies of the critical point beyond which a system creates turbulence was important for Chaos theory, analyzed for example by the Soviet physicist Lev Landau who developed the Landau-Hopf theory of turbulence. David Ruelle and Floris Takens later predicted, against Landau, that fluid turbulence could develop through a strange attractor, a main concept of chaos theory.
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Selected biography -
Yu-Chi "Larry" Ho (Chinese: 何毓琦; pinyin: Hé Yùqí; born March 1, 1934) is a Chinese-American mathematician, control theorist, and a professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
He is the co-author of Applied Optimal Control, and an influential researcher in differential games, pattern recognition, and discrete event dynamic systems. (Full article...)Did you know
- ... that the Yugoslavian Mihajlo D. Mesarovic in 1970s wanted to provide a unified and formalized mathematical approach to all major systems concepts.
- ... that a successful experimental system must be stable and reproducible enough for scientists to make sense of the system's behavior, but unpredictable enough that it can produce useful results?
- ... that the American biologist Christopher Langton in the late 1980s is one of the founders of the field of artificial life.
- ... * then a science of complexity,
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