This is the first book devoted to chimera states - peculiar partial synchronization patterns in networks. Providing an overview of the state of the art in research on this topic, it explores how these hybrid states, which are composed of spatially separated domains of synchronized and desynchronized behavior, arise surprisingly in networks of identical units and symmetric coupling topologies. The book not only describes various types of chimeras, but also discusses the role of time delay, stochasticity, and network topology for these synchronization-desynchronization patterns. Moreover, it addresses the question of robustness and control of chimera states, which have various applications in physics, biology, chemistry, and engineering. This book is intended for researchers with a background in physics, applied mathematics, or engineering. Of great interest to specialists working on related problems, it is also a valuable resource for newcomers to the field and other scientists working on the control of spatio-temporal patterns.

The focus of this thesis is the interplay of synchrony and adaptivity in complex networks. Synchronization is a ubiquitous phenomenon observed in different contexts in physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience, medicine, socioeconomic systems, and engineering. Most prominently, synchronization takes place in the brain, where it is associated with cognitive capacities like learning and memory, but is also a characteristic of neurological diseases like Parkinson and epilepsy. Adaptivity is common in many networks in nature and technology, where the connectivity changes in time, i.e., the strength of the coupling is continuously adjusted depending upon the dynamic state of the system, for instance synaptic neuronal plasticity in the brain. This research contributes to a fundamental understanding of various synchronization patterns, including hierarchical multifrequency clusters, chimeras and other partial synchronization states. After a concise survey of the fundamentals of adaptive and complex dynamical networks and synaptic plasticity, in the first part of the thesis the existence and stability of cluster synchronization in globally coupled adaptive networks is discussed for simple paradigmatic phase oscillators as well as for a more realistic neuronal oscillator model with spike-timing dependent plasticity. In the second part of the thesis the interplay of adaptivity and connectivity is investigated for more complex network structures like nonlocally coupled rings, random networks, and multilayer systems. Besides presenting a plethora of novel, sometimes intriguing patterns of synchrony, the thesis makes a number of pioneering methodological advances, where rigorous mathematical proofs are given in the Appendices. These results are of interest not only from a fundamental point of view, but also with respect to challenging applications in neuroscience and technological systems.

The book summarizes the state-of-the-art of research on control of self-organizing nonlinear systems with contributions from leading international experts in the field. The first focus concerns recent methodological developments including control of networks and of noisy and time-delayed systems. As a second focus, the book features emerging concepts of application including control of quantum systems, soft condensed matter, and biological systems. Special topics reflecting the active research in the field are the analysis and control of chimera states in classical networks and in quantum systems, the mathematical treatment of multiscale systems, the control of colloidal and quantum transport, the control of epidemics and of neural network dynamics.

The nonequilibrium behavior of nanoscopic and biological systems, which are typically strongly fluctuating, is a major focus of current research. Lately, much progress has been made in understanding such systems from a thermodynamic perspective. However, new theoretical challenges emerge when the fluctuating system is additionally subject to time delay, e.g. due to the presence of feedback loops. This thesis advances this young and vibrant research field in several directions. The first main contribution concerns the probabilistic description of time-delayed systems; e.g. by introducing a versatile approximation scheme for nonlinear delay systems. Second, it reveals that delay can induce intriguing thermodynamic properties such as anomalous (reversed) heat flow. More generally, the thesis shows how to treat the thermodynamics of non-Markovian systems by introducing auxiliary variables. It turns out that delayed feedback is inextricably linked to nonreciprocal coupling, information flow, and to net energy input on the fluctuating level.

Proceedings of the 49th Session of the International Seminars on Nuclear War and Planetary Emergencies held in Erice, Sicily. This Seminar has again gathered, in 2016, over one hundred scientists from 43 countries in an interdisciplinary effort that has been going on for the last 33 years, to examine and analyze planetary problems which had been followed up, all year long, by the World Federation of Scientists' Permanent Monitoring Panels.

Advances in Nonlinear Geosciences is a set of contributions from the participants of “30 Years of Nonlinear Dynamics” held July 3-8, 2016 in Rhodes, Greece as part of the Aegean Conferences, as well as from several other experts in the field who could not attend the meeting. The volume brings together up-to-date research from the atmospheric sciences, hydrology, geology, and other areas of geosciences and presents the new advances made in the last 10 years. Topics include chaos synchronization, topological data analysis, new insights on fractals, multifractals and stochasticity, climate dynamics, extreme events, complexity, and causality, among other topics.