“Wind Avalanches”

Snow Avalanches, Ice Avalanches and Glacier Surges

Neuronal Avalanches

It has recently been suggested that, in order to provide the richness of behavior which is seen empirically, the brain must operate in a critical regime between a phase of order and disorder [1]. In particular, such critical behavior is exhibited in what is termed neuronal avalanches. These cascades of synaptic activity have been seen both in vitro and in vivo [6]. Several models have been put ...

Mechanics of snow avalanches

The main problems of mechanics of snow avalanches are those of: (1) predicting avalanches, (2) avalanche motion, (3) the action of an avalanche upon obstacles, (4) the air wave, (5) the slow moving snow cover and its interaction with protective constructions and (6) the problem of artificial release of avalanches. This paper surveys the modern state of scientific knowledge about the nature of p...

Granular avalanches in fluids.

Three regimes of granular avalanches in fluids are put in light depending on the Stokes number St which prescribes the relative importance of grain inertia and fluid viscous effects and on the grain/fluid density ratio r. In gas (r>>1 and St>1, e.g., the dry case), the amplitude and time duration of avalanches do not depend on any fluid effect. In liquids (r approximately 1), for decreasing St,...

Hysteresis , Avalanches , and Noise

systems, especially when the time needed to implement the algorithm is included, the scaling of time and memory with system size becomes crucial for larger simulations. In our studies of hysteresis and avalanches in the zerotemperature random-field Ising model, a simple model of magnetism, we often have had to do very large simulations. Previous simulations were usually limited to relatively sm...