Riddling: Chimera's dilemma.

We investigate the basin of attraction properties and its boundaries for chimera states in a circulant network of Hénon maps. It is known that coexisting basins of attraction lead to a hysteretic behaviour in the diagrams of the density of states as a function of a varying parameter. Chimera states, for which coherent and incoherent domains occur simultaneously, emerge as a consequence of the coexistence of basin of attractions for each state. Consequently, the distribution of chimera states can remain invariant by a parameter change, and it can also suffer subtle changes when one of the basins ceases to exist. A similar phenomenon is observed when perturbations are applied in the initial conditions. By means of the uncertainty exponent, we characterise the basin boundaries between the coherent and chimera states, and between the incoherent and chimera states. This way, we show that the density of chimera states can be not only moderately sensitive but also highly sensitive to initial conditions. This chimera's dilemma is a consequence of the fractal and riddled nature of the basin boundaries.

Chaos, strange attractors, and fractal basin boundaries in nonlinear dynamics.

Recently research has shown that many simple nonlinear deterministic systems can behave in an apparently unpredictable and chaotic manner. This realization has broad implications for many fields of science. Basic developments in the field of chaotic dynamics of dissipative systems are reviewed in this article. Topics covered include strange attractors, how chaos comes about with variation of a system parameter, universality, fractal basin boundaries and their effect on predictability, and applications to physical systems.

Chaotic advection in blood flow.

In this paper we argue that the effects of irregular chaotic motion of particles transported by blood can play a major role in the development of serious circulatory diseases. Vessel wall irregularities modify the flow field, changing in a nontrivial way the transport and activation of biochemically active particles. We argue that blood particle transport is often chaotic in realistic physiological conditions. We also argue that this chaotic behavior of the flow has crucial consequences for the dynamics of important processes in the blood, such as the activation of platelets which are involved in the thrombus formation.

Exploiting the natural redundancy of chaotic signals in communication systems

Chaotic signals can be used as carriers of information in communication systems. In this work we describe a simple encoding method that allows one to map any desired bit sequence into a chaotic waveform. The redundancy of the resulting information carrying signal enables us to devise a novel signal reconstruction technique that is able to recover relatively large parts of the chaotic signal starting from just a few samples of it. We show that this technique allows one to increase both the transmission reliability and the transmission rate of a communication system even in the presence of noise.

Modeling of an impact system with a drift.

A physical model to examine impact oscillators has been developed and analyzed. The model accounts for the viscoelastic impacts and is capable to mimic the dynamics of a bounded progressive motion (a drift), which is important in practical applications. The system moves forward in stick-slip phases, and its behavior may vary from periodic to chaotic motion. A nonlinear dynamic analysis reveals a complex behavior and that the largest drift is achieved when the responses switch from periodic to chaotic, after a cascade of subcritical bifurcations to period one. Based on this fact, a semianalytical solution is constructed to calculate the progression of the system for periodic regimes and to determine conditions when periodicity is lost.

Validity of numerical trajectories in the synchronization transition of complex systems.

We investigate the relationship between the loss of synchronization and the onset of shadowing breakdown via unstable dimension variability in complex systems. In the neighborhood of the critical transition to strongly nonhyperbolic behavior, the system undergoes on-off intermittency with respect to the synchronization state. There are potentially severe consequences of these facts on the validity of the computer-generated trajectories obtained from dynamical systems whose synchronization manifolds share the same nonhyperbolic properties.

Model for tumour growth with treatment by continuous and pulsed chemotherapy.

In this work we investigate a mathematical model describing tumour growth under a treatment by chemotherapy that incorporates time-delay related to the conversion from resting to hunting cells. We study the model using values for the parameters according to experimental results and vary some parameters relevant to the treatment of cancer. We find that our model exhibits a dynamical behaviour associated with the suppression of cancer cells, when either continuous or pulsed chemotherapy is applied according to clinical protocols, for a large range of relevant parameters. When the chemotherapy is successful, the predation coefficient of the chemotherapic agent acting on cancer cells varies with the infusion rate of chemotherapy according to an inverse relation. Finally, our model was able to reproduce the experimental results obtained by Michor and collaborators [Nature 435 (2005) 1267] about the exponential decline of cancer cells when patients are treated with the drug glivec.

Combined effect of chemical and electrical synapses in Hindmarsh-Rose neural networks on synchronization and the rate of information.

In this work we studied the combined action of chemical and electrical synapses in small networks of Hindmarsh-Rose (HR) neurons on the synchronous behavior and on the rate of information produced (per time unit) by the networks. We show that if the chemical synapse is excitatory, the larger the chemical synapse strength used the smaller the electrical synapse strength needed to achieve complete synchronization, and for moderate synaptic strengths one should expect to find desynchronous behavior. Otherwise, if the chemical synapse is inhibitory, the larger the chemical synapse strength used the larger the electrical synapse strength needed to achieve complete synchronization, and for moderate synaptic strengths one should expect to find synchronous behaviors. Finally, we show how to calculate semianalytically an upper bound for the rate of information produced per time unit (Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy) in larger networks. As an application, we show that this upper bound is linearly proportional to the number of neurons in a network whose neurons are highly connected.