Enhancement of early warning properties in the Kuramoto model and in an atrial fibrillation model due to an external perturbation of the system.

When a complex dynamical system is externally disturbed, the statistical moments of signals associated to it can be affected in ways that depend on the nature and amplitude of the perturbation. In systems that exhibit phase transitions, the statistical moments can be used as Early Warnings (EW) of the transition. A natural question is thus to wonder what effect external disturbances have on the EWs of system. In this work we study the impact of external noise added to the system on the EWs, with particular focus on understanding the importance of the amplitude and complexity of the noise. We do this by analyzing the EWs of two computational models related to biology: the Kuramoto model, which is a paradigm of synchronization for biological systems, and a cellular automaton model of cardiac dynamics which has been used as a model for atrial fibrillation. For each model we first characterize the EWs. Then, we introduce external noise of varying intensity and nature to observe what effect this has on the EWs. In both cases we find that the introduction of noise amplified the EWs, with more complex noise having a greater effect. This both offers a way to improve the chance of detection of EWs in real systems and suggests that natural variability in the real world does not have a detrimental effect on EWs, but the opposite.

Heart Rate and Systolic Blood Pressure Variability in the Time Domain in Patients with Recent and Long-Standing Diabetes Mellitus.

Diabetes Mellitus (DM) affects the cardiovascular response of patients. To study this effect, interbeat intervals (IBI) and beat-to-beat systolic blood pressure (SBP) variability of patients during supine, standing and controlled breathing tests were analyzed in the time domain. Simultaneous noninvasive measurements of IBI and SBP for 30 recently diagnosed and 15 long-standing DM patients were compared with the results for 30 rigorously screened healthy subjects (control). A statistically significant distinction between control and diabetic subjects was provided by the standard deviation and the higher moments of the distributions (skewness, and kurtosis) with respect to the median. To compare IBI and SBP for different populations, we define a parameter, α, that combines the variability of the heart rate and the blood pressure, as the ratio of the radius of the moments for IBI and the same radius for SBP. As diabetes evolves, α decreases, standard deviation of the IBI detrended signal diminishes (heart rate signal becomes more "rigid"), skewness with respect to the median approaches zero (signal fluctuations gain symmetry), and kurtosis increases (fluctuations concentrate around the median). Diabetes produces not only a rigid heart rate, but also increases symmetry and has leptokurtic distributions. SBP time series exhibit the most variable behavior for recently diagnosed DM with platykurtic distributions. Under controlled breathing, SBP has symmetric distributions for DM patients, while control subjects have non-zero skewness. This may be due to a progressive decrease of parasympathetic and sympathetic activity to the heart and blood vessels as diabetes evolves.

Microscopic description of low-lying properties in 168≤A≤170 Yb nuclei by the pseudo-SU(3) shell model / Descripción microscópica de las propiedades de baja energía de los núcleos 168≤A≤170 Yb usando el modelo pseudo-SU(3)

Abstract The rare-earth nuclei have well-known collective properties. The theoretical description of these nuclei represents a challenge to nuclear models, due to the enormous dimensions of the valence space, making the problem unmanageable. This leads us to use symmetry-based models, where it is possible to calculate in a free-truncation environment. In this work we present results for the energy spectrum and the electromagnetic properties in even-even Yb isotopes using the pseudo-SU(3) shell model. The model considers a Nilsson Hamiltonian that additionally includes the quadrupole-quadrupole and pairing interactions, systematically parameterized. The results show that the model considered is a powerful theoretical tool, allowing us to describe the normal parity sector of deformed rare earth nuclei.

Resumen Las propiedades colectivas de los núcleos de las tierras raras están muy bien determinadas. La descripción teórica de estos núcleos representa un desafío para cualquier modelo nuclear debido a las dimensiones excesivas del espacio de valencia, lo que vuelve el problema inmanejable. Esto nos lleva a emplear modelos basados en simetrías, donde es posible realizar cálculos sin truncamiento del espacio. En este trabajo se presentan resultados para el espectro energético y las propiedades electromagnéticas en isótopos para-par de iterbio, utilizando el modelo de capas pseudo-SU(3). El modelo considera el hamiltoniano de Nilsson, al que adicionalmente se le han incluido las interacciones cuadrupolo-cuadrupolo y de apareamiento, parametrizadas de forma sistemática. El resultado muestra que el modelo utilizado es una herramienta poderosa que permite describir el sector de paridad normal del espectro de núcleos deformados de las tierras raras.