Living systemsLiving systems are open self-organizing life forms that interact with their environment. These systems are maintained by flows of information, energy and matter. In the last few decades, some scientists have proposed that a general living systems theory is required to explain the nature of life. Such a general theory, arising out of the ecological and biological sciences, attempts to map general principles for how all living systems work.
Lyapunov exponentIn mathematics, the Lyapunov exponent or Lyapunov characteristic exponent of a dynamical system is a quantity that characterizes the rate of separation of infinitesimally close trajectories. Quantitatively, two trajectories in phase space with initial separation vector diverge (provided that the divergence can be treated within the linearized approximation) at a rate given by where is the Lyapunov exponent. The rate of separation can be different for different orientations of initial separation vector.
Micro-Micro (Greek letter μ, mu) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of 10−6 (one millionth). Confirmed in 1960, the prefix comes from the Greek μικρός (mikrós), meaning "small". It is the only SI prefix which uses a character not from the Latin alphabet. In Unicode, the symbol is represented by or the legacy symbol . The prefix "mc" is commonly used in healthcare or when the character "μ" is not available; for example, "mcg" commonly denotes a microgram.
Architecture description languageArchitecture description languages (ADLs) are used in several disciplines: system engineering, software engineering, and enterprise modelling and engineering. The system engineering community uses an architecture description language as a language and/or a conceptual model to describe and represent system architectures. The software engineering community uses an architecture description language as a computer language to create a description of a software architecture.
Ergodic processIn physics, statistics, econometrics and signal processing, a stochastic process is said to be in an ergodic regime if an observable's ensemble average equals the time average. In this regime, any collection of random samples from a process must represent the average statistical properties of the entire regime. Conversely, a process that is not in ergodic regime is said to be in non-ergodic regime. One can discuss the ergodicity of various statistics of a stochastic process.
Logistic mapThe logistic map is a polynomial mapping (equivalently, recurrence relation) of degree 2, often referred to as an archetypal example of how complex, chaotic behaviour can arise from very simple nonlinear dynamical equations. The map was popularized in a 1976 paper by the biologist Robert May, in part as a discrete-time demographic model analogous to the logistic equation written down by Pierre François Verhulst. Mathematically, the logistic map is written where xn is a number between zero and one, which represents the ratio of existing population to the maximum possible population.
Decentralised systemA decentralised system in systems theory is a system in which lower level components operate on local information to accomplish global goals. The global pattern of behaviour is an emergent property of dynamical mechanisms that act upon local components, such as indirect communication, rather than the result of a central ordering influence of a centralised system. A centralised system is one in which a central controller exercises control over the lower-level components of the system directly or through the use of a power hierarchy (such as instructing a middle level component to instruct a lower level component).
Fractal analysisFractal analysis is assessing fractal characteristics of data. It consists of several methods to assign a fractal dimension and other fractal characteristics to a dataset which may be a theoretical dataset, or a pattern or signal extracted from phenomena including topography, natural geometric objects, ecology and aquatic sciences, sound, market fluctuations, heart rates, frequency domain in electroencephalography signals, digital images, molecular motion, and data science. Fractal analysis is now widely used in all areas of science.
Large numbersLarge numbers are numbers significantly larger than those typically used in everyday life (for instance in simple counting or in monetary transactions), appearing frequently in fields such as mathematics, cosmology, cryptography, and statistical mechanics. They are typically large positive integers, or more generally, large positive real numbers, but may also be other numbers in other contexts. Googology is the study of nomenclature and properties of large numbers.
