Biology, Sociology, Geology by Computational Physicists

University Professor of Theoretical Physics since 1977, research mostly with computer simulations (Monte Carlo), biophysics since 1986, ageing since 1993, econophysics since 1998, sociophysics since 2000, linguistics since 2004. During and after my PhD thesis (1989), I worked on traditional Statistical Mechanics problems, mainly related to magnetic phase transitions. In 1984, during a visit of Professor D. Stauffer to our Institute, I was introduced into the subject of Biological Ageing, and since then I have been working on modeling interdisciplinary evolutionary systems. Using and adapting the computational Penna model described in the second chapter of this book I have studied and simulated the Catastrophic Senescence of Pacific Salmon, the advantages of sexual reproduction in comparison to the asexual one, why does menopause evolve, why are we diploids instead of triploids, etc. Presently I am mostly interested in speciation processes where no physical barrier prevents the gene flux between different subspecies. I was elected the Vice-Director of my Institute from 1995 to 1999 and the Vice-Coordinator of the PhD Course from 2001 to 2003. Since 2003 I am the Secretary for Development of the University. Interest in Computational Physics, in particular model simulations for complex dynamic systems. More than 100 research papers in international journals, cited more than 1000 times, according to ISI. Various invited talks in international conferences. Published 2 previous books. After my PhD, I spent 4 years as a visiting scientist at the Colorado Center for Chaos and Complexity, University of Colorado. During this period, I got involved in an active multi-institutional research group on the dynamics of seismic sources, under the direction of Professor J.B. Rundle. My main colaborators in this field are M. Anghel (LANL), E.F. Preston (Indiana State University) and K.F. Tiampo (University of Western Ontario), other than J.B. Rundle, now the Chair of the Center for Computational Science and Engineering at the University of California.

• Preface1. Introduction2. Evolution3. Biological Ageing4. Biological Speciation5. Languages6. Social Sciences7. Earthquakes8. Summary9. Appendix: ProgramsReferencesSubject Index