While there has been a keen interest in studying computation at the edge of chaos for dynamical systems undergoing a phase transition, this has come under question for cellular automata. We show that for continuously deformed cellular automata there is an enhancement of computation capabilities as the system moves towards cellular automata with chaotic spatiotemporal behavior. The computation capabilities are followed by looking into the Shannon entropy rate and the excess entropy, which allows identifying the balance between unpredictability and complexity. Enhanced computation power shows as an increase of excess entropy while the system entropy density has a sudden jump to values near one. The analysis is extended to a system of non-linear locally coupled oscillators that have been reported to exhibit spatiotemporal diagrams similar to cellular automata.

A 2D cellular automata model, which allows a better understanding of the morphogenesis of the avascular tumor pattern formation, is presented. Using thermodynamics formalism of irreversible processes and results of complex systems theory, we propose markers to able to establish, in a quantitative way, the degree of aggressiveness and the malignancy of tumor patterns, such as a fractal dimension and the entropy production rate.