The book gives an overview of the self-propelled motion of chemical objects far from their thermodynamic equilibrium at various spatial scales and its applications. The book will discuss theoretical aspects, the characteristics of the motion, and design procedures of such systems from the viewpoint of nonlinear dynamics. The book is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in physical and theoretical chemistry as well as soft matter.

Self-propelled objects (particles, droplets) are autonomous agents that can convert energy from the environment into motion. These motions include nonlinear behaviour such as oscillations, synchronization, bifurcation, and pattern formation. In recent years, there has been much interest in self-propelled objects for their potential role in mass transport or their use as carriers in confined spaces. An improved understanding of self-organized motion has even allowed researchers to design objects for specific motion. This book gives an overview of the principles of self-propelled motion in chemical objects (particles, droplets) far from their thermodynamic equilibrium, at various spatial scales. Theoretical aspects, the characteristics of the motion and the design procedures of such systems are discussed from the viewpoint of nonlinear dynamics and examples of applications for these nonlinear systems are provided. This book is suitable for researchers and graduate students interested in physical and theoretical chemistry as well as soft matter.

This is the second of two volumes offering the very first comprehensive treatise of self-organization and non-linear dynamics in electrochemical systems. The first volume covers general principles of self-organization as well as temporal instabilities. The content of both volumes is organized so that each description of a particular electrochemical system is preceded by an introduction to basic concepts of nonlinear dynamics, in order to help the reader unfamiliar with this discipline to understand at least fundamental concepts and the methods of stability analysis. The presentation of the systems is not limited to laboratory models but stretches out to real-life objects and processes, including systems of biological importance, such as neurons in living matter. Marek Orlik presents a comprehensive and consistent survey of the field.

This book integrates the theories of complex self-organizing systems with the rich body of discourse and literature developed in what might be called ‘social theory of cities and urbanism’. It uses techniques from dynamical complexity and synergetics to successfully tackle open social science questions.

An autonomous agent is a computational system that acquires sensory data from its environment and decides by itself how to relate the external stimulus to its behaviors in order to attain certain goals. Responding to different stimuli received from its task environment, the agent may select and exhibit different behavioral patterns. The behavioral patterns may be carefully predefined or dynamically acquired by the agent based on some learning and adaptation mechanism(s). In order to achieve structural flexibility, reliability through redundancy, adaptability, and reconfigurability in real-world tasks, some researchers have started to address the issue of multiagent cooperation. Broadly speaking, the power of autonomous agents lies in their ability to deal with unpredictable, dynamically changing environments. Agent-based systems are becoming one of the most important computer technologies, holding out many promises for solving real-world problems.The aims of this book are to provide a guided tour to the pioneering work and the major technical issues in agent research, and to give an in-depth discussion on the computational mechanisms for behavioral engineering in autonomous agents. Through a systematic examination, the book attempts to provide the general design principles for building autonomous agents and the analytical tools for modeling the emerged behavioral properties of a multiagent system.

The self-organizing map, first described by the Finnish scientist Teuvo Kohonen, can by applied to a wide range of fields. This book is about such applications, i.e. how the original self-organizing map as well as variants and extensions of it can be applied in different fields. In fourteen chapters, a wide range of such applications is discussed. To name a few, these applications include the analysis of financial stability, the fault diagnosis of plants, the creation of well-composed heterogeneous teams and the application of the self-organizing map to the atmospheric sciences.

The book deals with the development of continual models of turbulent natural media. Such models serve as a ground for the statement and numerical evaluation of the key problems of the structure and evolution of the numerous astrophysical and geophysical objects. The processes of ordering (self-organization) in an originally chaotic turbulent medium are addressed and treated in detail with the use of irreversible thermodynamics and stochastic dynamics approaches which underlie the respective models. Different examples of ordering set up in the natural environment and outer space are brought and thoroughly discussed, the main focus being given to the protoplanetary discs formation and evolution.