The application of methods drawn from nonlinear and stochastic dynamics to the analysis of cardiovascular time series is reviewed, with particular reference to the identification of changes associated with ageing. The natural variability of the heart rate (HRV) is considered in detail, including the respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) corresponding to modulation of the instantaneous cardiac frequency by the rhythm of respiration. HRV has been intensively studied using traditional spectral analyses, e.g. by Fourier transform or autoregressive methods, and, because of its complexity, has been used as a paradigm for testing several proposed new methods of complexity analysis. These methods are reviewed. The application of time–frequency methods to HRV is considered, including in particular the wavelet transform which can resolve the time-dependent spectral content of HRV. Attention is focused on the cardio-respiratory interaction by introduction of the respiratory frequency variability signal (RFV), which can be acquired simultaneously with HRV by use of a respiratory effort transducer. Current methods for the analysis of interacting oscillators are reviewed and applied to cardio-respiratory data, including those for the quantification of synchronization and direction of coupling. These reveal the effect of ageing on the cardio-respiratory interaction through changes in the mutual modulation of the instantaneous cardiac and respiratory frequencies. Analyses of blood flow signals recorded with laser Doppler flowmetry are reviewed and related to the current understanding of how endothelial-dependent oscillations evolve with age: the inner lining of the vessels (the endothelium) is shown to be of crucial importance to the emerging picture. It is concluded that analyses of the complex and nonlinear dynamics of the cardiovascular system can illuminate the mechanisms of blood circulation, and that the heart, the lungs and the vascular system function as a single entity in dynamical terms. Clear evidence is found for dynamical ageing.

The effect of a high-frequency force on the response of a bistable system to a lowfrequency signal is considered for both the overdamped and weakly damped cases. It is shown that the response can be optimized by an appropriate choice of vibration amplitude. This vibrational resonance displays many analogies to the well known phenomenon of stochastic resonance, but with the vibrational force filling the role usually played by noise. † We use the original definition of SR [4] in terms of signal amplification, rather the later definition [5] in terms of an enhancement of the signal-to-noise ratio.

ALTHOUGH the birth of the universe is inaccessible to human experimental investigation, aspects of cosmological theories can nonetheless be explored in the laboratory. Tiny inhomogeneities in the mix of particles and radiation produced in the Big Bang grew into the clusters of galaxies that we see today, but how those inhomogeneities arose and grew is still unclear. Cos

We report observation of an inverse energy cascade in second sound acoustic turbulence in He II. Its onset occurs above a critical driving energy and it is accompanied by giant waves that constitute an acoustic analogue of the rogue waves that occasionally appear on the surface of the ocean. The theory of the phenomenon is developed and shown to be in good agreement with the experiments. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.065303 PACS numbers: 67.25.dk, 47.20.Ky, 47.27.ÿi, 67.25.dt A highly excited state of a system with numerous degrees of freedom, characterized by a directional energy flux through frequency scales, is referred to as turbulent [1,2]. Like the familiar manifestations of vortex turbulence in fluids, turbulence can also occur in systems of waves, e.g., turbulence of sound waves in oceanic waveguides [3], magnetic turbulence in interstellar gases [4], shock waves in the solar wind and their coupling with Earth's magnetosphere [5], and phonon turbulence in solids [6]. Following the ideas of Kolmogorov, the universally accepted picture says that nonlinear wave interactions give rise to a cascade of wave energy towards shorter and shorter wavelengths until, eventually, it becomes possible for viscosity to dissipate the energy as heat. Experiments and calculations show that, most of the time, the Kolmogorov picture is correct [2,7,8].We demonstrate below that this picture is incomplete. Our experiments with second sound (temperature-entropy) waves in He II show that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, acoustic wave energy can sometimes flow in the opposite direction too. We note that inverse energy cascades are known in 2-dimensional incompressible liquids and Bose gases [9], and have been considered for quantized vortices [10].We find that energy backflow in our acoustic system is attributable to a decay instability (cf. the kinetic instability in turbulent systems [11]), controlled mainly by nonlinear decay of the wave into two waves of lower frequency governed by the energy (frequency) conservation law [2] ! 1 ! 2 ! 3 . Here ! i u 20 k i is the frequency of a linear wave of wave vector k i and u 20 is the second sound velocity at negligibly small amplitude. The instability manifests itself in the generation of subharmonics. A quite similar parametric process, due to 4-wave scattering (modulation instability), is thought to be responsible for the generation of large wind-driven ocean waves [12]. Decay instabilities (especially threshold and nearthreshold behavior) have been studied for, e.g., spin waves [13], magnetohydrodynamic waves in plasma [14], and interacting first and second sound waves in superfluid helium near the superfluid transition [15].We now discuss what happens to a system of acoustic waves far beyond the decay threshold. Modeling the resultant nonlinear wave transformations in the laboratory is a potentially fruitful approach that has already yielded important results for, e.g., the turbulent decay of capillary waves on the surface of liquid H 2 [16]. Here, we exploit the special pro...

The dynamical systems found in nature are rarely isolated. Instead they interact and influence each other. The coupling functions that connect them contain detailed information about the functional mechanisms underlying the interactions and prescribe the physical rule specifying how an interaction occurs. A coherent and comprehensive review is presented encompassing the rapid progress made recently in the analysis, understanding, and applications of coupling functions. The basic concepts and characteristics of coupling functions are presented through demonstrative examples of different domains, revealing the mechanisms and emphasizing their multivariate nature. The theory of coupling functions is discussed through gradually increasing complexity from strong and weak interactions to globally coupled systems and networks. A variety of methods that have been developed for the detection and reconstruction of coupling functions from measured data is described. These methods are based on different statistical techniques for dynamical inference. Stemming from physics, such methods are being applied in diverse areas of science and technology, including chemistry, biology, physiology, neuroscience, social sciences, mechanics, and secure communications. This breadth of application illustrates the universality of coupling functions for studying the interaction mechanisms of coupled dynamical systems.