@misc{10481/50139,
year = {2018},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10481/50139},
abstract = {Standing on the shoulders of giants such as Landau, Anderson, Mandelbrot or
Bak, emergent phenomena have meant a major step towards the comprehension
of macro-structures and patterns in Nature. In particular, the criticality hypothesis,
which proposes that –under some circumstances– living systems can
lie in the vicinity of a phase transition, i.e. at the borderline between their
ordered and disordered phases, has shed much light on the comprehension of
several natural phenomena that, until recently, were poorly understood.
This celebrated and provocative idea conjectures that living close to a critical
point may confer a large number of benefits such as maximal dynamical range,
maximal sensitivity to environmental changes, as well as an excellent trade-off
between stability and flexibility.
Based on this assumption, the aim of this thesis is to look into the criticality
hypothesis, extending its horizons through the analysis of phases and phase
transitions in Nature, developing a better understanding of certain empirical
findings and behaviors of biological systems. Thus, the development of models
trying to shed light –through numerical simulations and theoretical calculations–
on the emergent behavior of particular biological systems constitute the common
theme of this thesis.},
organization = {Tesis Univ. Granada.},
organization = {Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Física y Matemáticas},
publisher = {Universidad de Granada},
keywords = {Física},
keywords = {Materia},
keywords = {Neuronas},
keywords = {Cerebro},
title = {Phases and phase transitions in living matter},
author = {Villegas Góngora, Pablo},
}