Yuanzhao Zhang, Adilson E. Motter

Chimera states have attracted significant attention as symmetry-broken states exhibiting the unexpected coexistence of coherence and incoherence. Despite the valuable insights gained from analyzing specific systems, an understanding of the general physical mechanism underlying the emergence of chimeras is still lacking. Here, we show that many stable chimeras arise because coherence in part of the system is sustained by incoherence in the rest of the system. This mechanism may be regarded as a deterministic analog of the phenomenon of noise-induced synchronization and is shown to underlie the emergence of strong chimeras. These are chimera states whose coherent domain is formed by identically synchronized oscillators. Recognizing this mechanism offers a new meaning to the interpretation that chimeras are a natural link between coherence and incoherence.

Read the full article at: arxiv.org

A new analysis traces the story of the draft genome’s impact on genomics since 2001, linking its effects on publications, drug approvals and understanding of disease.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com

2021 promised to save us. The vaccines were finally here. It was a matter of time. Then B117 arrived, exploded in England, collapsed its healthcare system, and spread across the world.

Each country is now in a race between new variants—the English one, the South African one, and the Brazilian one—and mass vaccinations to stop them. What will happen in your country? Will it be saved by vaccines? Or will it suffer like the UK a new wave of deaths?

When will you get back to the new normal?

To answer that, let’s understand what happened in the UK, gather what we know about B117, look into the vaccines, and forecast what will happen between now and the summer.

Read the full article at: tomaspueyo.substack.com

W. Brian Arthur
Nature Reviews Physics volume 3, pages136–145(2021)

Conventional, neoclassical economics assumes perfectly rational agents (firms, consumers, investors) who face well-defined problems and arrive at optimal behaviour consistent with — in equilibrium with — the overall outcome caused by this behaviour. This rational, equilibrium system produces an elegant economics, but is restrictive and often unrealistic. Complexity economics relaxes these assumptions. It assumes that agents differ, that they have imperfect information about other agents and must, therefore, try to make sense of the situation they face. Agents explore, react and constantly change their actions and strategies in response to the outcome they mutually create. The resulting outcome may not be in equilibrium and may display patterns and emergent phenomena not visible to equilibrium analysis. The economy becomes something not given and existing but constantly forming from a developing set of actions, strategies and beliefs — something not mechanistic, static, timeless and perfect but organic, always creating itself, alive and full of messy vitality.

Read the full article at: www.nature.com