Understanding Marvelous Patterns in Complex Systems

This book explores the fascinating and ubiquitous occurrence of spatial patterns and forms, generated in nature by the interplay of chemical and biological reactions with transport processes, as there are diffusion, convection, chemotaxis, or others.  Their role in our perception and in scientific investigations is immanent in the concepts of natural laws. They have the capacity to explain phenomena like self-organization in systems far away from thermodynamic equilibrium or to formulate the influence of nonlinear interactions on complexity. Just take the omnipresent waves, as they propagate in liquids with or without reactivity, act inside biological cells or become apparent in a biomedical context, as in the heart during arrhythmias or in the visual cortex, when a migraine aura is noticed. Such phenomena are prominent topics of future-oriented, and hopefully beneficial research. Our colleagues and friends contribute to this book in presentations on the origins, mechanisms, and dynamics relevant for their special research endeavors, from earlier to actual, more complex topics. These comprise numerous scientific fields in theory, mathematics, physics and chemistry laboratories, field studies on morphogenesis and the course of biological evolution, or analysis of specific medical data, including epidemiological studies. On the whole, the book provides a valuable source of information, while also taking the reader on an aesthetic journey through an attractive world full of color and “visual adventures.”