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Cultures of dissociated neurons are an invaluable experimental tool in studying neuronal networks at an intermediate scale in an in vitro controlled physico-chemical environment. Moreover, current micro-fabrication techniques allow the design of a custom connectivity between subpopulations, which could make it possible to carry out computations with devices involving living cells. The quorum percolation (QP) model has been designed in the context of neurobiology to describe bursts of activity occurring in neuronal cultures from the point of view of collective phenomena rather than from a dynamical synchronization approach. Such a model is well suited to describe triggered activity in neuronal devices, and its generic character points at the necessity of heavily structured devices to go beyond collective bursting. We derive a continuous extension of the QP model, seen as information propagation on a non-metric directed graph, and discuss how its critical behavior might give insight on the connectivity of neuronal networks. The link with metric graphs, embedded in a two-dimensional space, is tackled by the introduction of a geometrical model based upon a random walk, where axon growth is constrained by obstacles such as walls and channels. This provides a starting point for the construction of neuronal devices in vitro capable of more complex behaviors. Lastly, we show how simulations of bursts with a dynamical adaptive integrate-and-fire model can be interpreted in terms of QP, confirming the robustness of this synchronized behavior.

We investigate the selection of structures generated by diffusive instabilities in asymmetric bistable systems. It is shown that the nonlinear coupling between the zero mode and the different spatial modes emanating from the two homogeneous states can give rise to self-parametric instabilities favoring the occurrence of stable resonant rhombic and superlattice patterns.

Attractive Bose-Einstein condensates are investigated with numerical continuation methods capturing stationary solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The branches of stable (elliptic) and unstable (hyperbolic) solutions are found to meet at a critical particle number through a generic Hamiltonian saddle node bifurcation. The condensate decay rates corresponding to macroscopic quantum tunneling, two and three body inelastic collisions, and thermally induced collapse are computed from the exact numerical solutions. These rates show experimentally significant differences with previously published rates. Universal scaling laws stemming from the bifurcation are derived. [S0031-9007(99)08550-6]

Physico-chemical systems driven away from thermal equilibrium usually undergo various types of instabilities leading to the formation of spatio-temporal patterns on macroscopic time and space scales. In two-dimensional geometries, patterns of different symmetries may be simultaneously stable. We study here the phase stability of hexagonal planforms in the framework of amplitude equations and reduced dynamical models close to the instability points.

The concentration profiles along the feeding direction of a one side fed gel reactor are analyzed for the iodate-arsenous acid reaction. Multiplicity of inhomogeneous stationary solutions is derived. It is also shown that such profiles may undergo oscillatory bifurcations under long range activation conditions. The bifurcation diagram is analyzed using a Galerkin approximation, the asymptotic validity of which is discussed.