Many biological and cognitive systems do not operate deep within one or other regime of activity. Instead, they are poised at critical points located at transitions of their parameter space. The pervasiveness of criticality suggests that there may be general principles inducing this behaviour, yet there is no well-founded theory for understanding how criticality is found at a wide range of leve...

Emerging technologies such as information and communication-, photovoltaic- or battery technologies are expected to increase significantly the demand for scarce metals in the near future. The recently developed methods to evaluate the criticality of mineral raw materials typically provide a 'snapshot' of the criticality of a certain material at one point in time by using static indicators both ...

According to the Canadian Urban Transit Association (CUTA), 140 Billion CAD is required to maintain, rehabilitate, and replace subway infrastructure between 2010 and 2014. The current practice adopted by transit authorities for prioritizing subway stations for rehabilitation is based on the station structural needs. While this classification is reflective of station condition, other factors, su...

Many adaptive evolutionary systems display spatial and temporal features, such as long-range correlations, typically associated with the critical point of a phase transition in statistical physics. Empirical and theoretical studies suggest that operating near criticality enhances the functionality of biological networks, such as brain and gene networks, in terms for instance of information proc...

Mixed Criticality Systems (MCSs) have been the focus of considerable study over the last six years. This work has lead to the definition of a standard model that allows processors to be shared efficiently between tasks of different criticality levels. This model, however, often assumes that the tasks are independent of each other; which is an unrealistic restriction. In this paper tasks of the ...