Institut für Physik und Astronomie
Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (212)
- Preprint (9)
- Postprint (8)
- Monograph/Edited Volume (4)
- Other (1)
Keywords
- Amazon rainforest (2)
- Complex networks (2)
- channel (2)
- complex networks (2)
- diffusion (2)
- droughts (2)
- prediction (2)
- space-dependent diffusivity (2)
- 3D medical image analysis (1)
- African climate (1)
Institute
We study possible interrelations between the 300-year record of the yearly sunspot numbers and the solar inertial motion (SIM) using the recently developed technique of synchronization analysis. Phase synchronization of the sunspot cycle and the SIM is found and statistically confirmed in three epochs (1734-1790, 1855-1875 and 1907-1960) of the whole period 1700-2000. These results give quantitative support to the hypothesis that there is a weak interaction between the solar activity and the SIM.
Many cellular processes require decision making mechanisms, which must act reliably even in the unavoidable presence of substantial amounts of noise. However, the multistable genetic switches that underlie most decision-making processes are dominated by fluctuations that can induce random jumps between alternative cellular states. Here we show, via theoretical modeling of a population of noise-driven bistable genetic switches, that reliable timing of decision-making processes can be accomplished for large enough population sizes, as long as cells are globally coupled by chemical means. In the light of these results, we conjecture that cell proliferation, in the presence of cell-cell communication, could provide a mechanism for reliable decision making in the presence of noise, by triggering cellular transitions only when the whole cell population reaches a certain size. In other words , the summation performed by the cell population would average out the noise and reduce its detrimental impact.
Forecasting the onset and withdrawal of the Indian summer monsoon is crucial for the life and prosperity of more than one billion inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent. However, accurate prediction of monsoon timing remains a challenge, despite numerous efforts. Here we present a method for prediction of monsoon timing based on a critical transition precursor. We identify geographic regions-tipping elements of the monsoon-and use them as observation locations for predicting onset and withdrawal dates. Unlike most predictability methods, our approach does not rely on precipitation analysis but on air temperature and relative humidity, which are well represented both in models and observations. The proposed method allows to predict onset 2 weeks earlier and withdrawal dates 1.5 months earlier than existing methods. In addition, it enables to correctly forecast monsoon duration for some anomalous years, often associated with El Nino-Southern Oscillation.
The transition from fully synchronized behavior to two-cluster dynamics is investigated for a system of N globally coupled chaotic oscillators by means of a model of two coupled logistic maps. An uneven distribution of oscillators between the two clusters causes an asymmetry to arise in the coupling of the model system. While the transverse period-doubling bifurcation remains essentially unaffected by this asymmetry, the transverse pitchfork bifurcation is turned into a saddle-node bifurcation followed by a transcritical riddling bifurcation in which a periodic orbit embedded in the synchronized chaotic state loses its transverse stability. We show that the transcritical riddling transition is always hard. For this, we study the sequence of bifurcations that the asynchronous point cycles produced in the saddle-node bifurcation undergo, and show how the manifolds of these cycles control the magnitude of asynchronous bursts. In the case where the system involves two subpopulations of oscillators with a small mismatch of the parameters, the transcritical riddling will be replaced by two subsequent saddle-node bifurcations, or the saddle cycle involved in the transverse destabilization of the synchronized chaotic state may smoothly shift away from the synchronization manifold. In this way, the transcritical riddling bifurcation is substituted by a symmetry-breaking bifurcation, which is accompanied by the destruction of a thin invariant region around the symmetrical chaotic state.