Complex systems as a research area focuses on studying systems composed of many interacting components whose collective behavior exhibits nonlinearity, emergence, adaptation, and self-organization. It integrates methods from statistical physics, dynamical systems, information theory, network science, and computational modeling to characterize structure–dynamics relationships across domains such as biology, ecology, social systems, and technological networks. Research emphasizes multiscale interactions, feedback loops, critical phenomena, robustness, and phase transitions, often using agent-based models, coupled differential equations, or stochastic processes to understand how macroscopic patterns arise from microscopic rules and how these systems respond to perturbations or control interventions.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the contours of life as we know it. In agriculture, the world market for AI is expected to reach almost US$47 billion by 2034. AI enables higher farm yields with fewer ...
Biotechnology
Jun 9, 2026
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It's tricky to make an exact copy of yourself. Or at least it is for cells undergoing mitosis, where cells replicate everything inside of them, including their neatly packaged DNA, then split in half. Rice University professor ...
Cell & Microbiology
May 29, 2026
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Complexity may seem subjective, but a quantitative measure of the complexity of nanomaterials was recently developed by a team of researchers from the University of Michigan Engineering, the University of Southern California ...
Nanomaterials
May 21, 2026
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Look up at the clouds. What do you see? A sailboat? A seahorse? Your great-aunt Rosemary? As humans, we're prone to seeing patterns where they don't actually exist. This behavior is so common there's a name for it: apophenia. ...
Plants & Animals
May 12, 2026
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Individual environmental laws, such as those related to the climate or nature conservation, are not sufficient on their own to resolve environmental crises. A new international study led by the University of Eastern Finland ...
Environment
May 6, 2026
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A new model to predict how language changes over time has been developed by a statistical physicist at the University of Portsmouth. The model is a step towards understanding the "statistical physics of language," a scientific ...
General Physics
May 5, 2026
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Isolating the first spark of life on Earth is a matter of biology, geology, and chemistry—but it's also an amazing math problem. At least, that's how Varun Varanasi viewed it when he was a Yale undergraduate. The question, ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Apr 13, 2026
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Cities are often described as living archives of human memory. Walk through an old neighborhood in an Islamic city like Fez in Morocco or Cairo in Egypt, and you can see layers of history in its streets and buildings. Traces ...
Environment
Apr 9, 2026
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An understanding of community resilience and risk analysis is vital when it comes to protecting civilians and infrastructure from natural hazards, such as hurricanes or earthquakes. Artificial intelligence is an efficient ...
Environment
Apr 6, 2026
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9
In dryland ecosystems, increased environmental stress often triggers a change from a uniform vegetation cover to patchy vegetation patterns. Some theoretical studies suggest that this spatial self-organization of vegetation ...
Plants & Animals
Apr 1, 2026
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