Landforms affected by hydraulic erosion exhibit emergent features, such as channels that organize into networks through tributary capture. Our procedural modeling method attempts to simulate these features realistically by using a variant of a principle followed by many physical self-organized systems. The general nature of the approach makes it applicable to modeling river-like channels on top...

Artificial spin-ice systems consisting of nanolithographic arrays of isolated nanomagnets are model systems for the study of frustration-induced phenomena. We have recently demonstrated that monopoles and Dirac strings can be directly observed via synchrotron-based photoemission electron microscopy, where the magnetic state of individual nanoislands can be imaged in real space. These experiment...

Neuronal avalanches measured as consecutive bouts of thresholded field potentials represent a statistical signature that the brain operates near a critical point. In theory, criticality optimizes stimulus sensitivity, information transmission, computational capability and mnemonic repertoires size. Field potential avalanches recorded via multielectrode arrays from cortical slice cultures are re...

We characterize the distributions of size and duration of avalanches propagating in complex networks. By an avalanche we mean the sequence of events initiated by the externally stimulated excitation of a network node, which may, with some probability, then stimulate subsequent excitations of the nodes to which it is connected, resulting in a cascade of excitations. This type of process is relev...

Record-breaking avalanches generated by the dynamics of several driven nonlinear threshold models are studied. Such systems are characterized by intermittent behavior, where a slow buildup of energy is punctuated by an abrupt release of energy through avalanche events, which usually follow scale-invariant statistics. From the simulations of these systems it is possible to extract sequences of r...

Background: Strong earthquakes are among the prime triggering factors of landslides, which may block rivers, forming landslide dams. Some of these dams may pose serious threats to people and property due to upstream inundation and downstream dam-breach flooding. Evaluating the stability and potential hazard of landslide dams is significant for the mitigation measures, but remains challenging. T...

Spontaneous activity of cortex in vitro and in vivo has been shown to organize as neuronal avalanches. Avalanches are cascades of neuronal activity that exhibit a power law in their size and duration distribution, typical features of balanced systems in a critical state. Recently it has been shown that the distribution of quiet times between consecutive avalanches in rat cortex slice cultures d...

Snow avalanches are among the most important disturbances that affect mountain ecosystems, influencing forest dynamics, establishment and mortality processes. At the same time, forests can affect the likelihood of avalanche release and can thus protect human settlements and infrastructures. The forest protective role is largely a function of forest stand structure, snow characteristics and topo...

Self-organized criticality (SOC) is widely observed in systems ranging from creep deformation of single crystal ice to the movement of glacier. -The behavior of these SOC systems follows a power law distribution, which is timeand space-scale invariant. Previous phase field simulation of single crystal nickel has shown that plastic flow is characterized by intermittent dislocation avalanches, wh...

By means of a finite elements technique we solve numerically the dynamics of an amorphous solid under deformation in the quasistatic driving limit. We study the noise statistics of the stress-strain signal in the steady-state plastic flow, focusing on systems with low internal dissipation. We analyze the distributions of avalanche sizes and durations and the density of shear transformations whe...