Scope

The title of of the XXIII Sitges Conference was Understanding and Managing Randomness in Physics, Chemistry and Biology. In this science meeting, our aim was to stimulate the discussion of fluctuation phenomena in small-scale systems in interdisciplinary science. The Conference Program included the following topics: fluctuations in small-scale systems, nanomachines, artificial nanodevices and nanostructures; fluctuations in intracellular transport and in biological systems; forces induced by fluctuations and the Casimir effect; heat radiation at the nanoscale; aggregation and self-assembly of structures; stochasticity in materials, and in granular and active matter; fluctuations in confined systems and in systems with few molecules; mechanisms of generation and conversion of energy based on the presence of fluctuations; modeling of non-linear noisy systems. With the organization of this Conference, we provided a unique opportunity to exchange points of view, to promote contacts and new collaborations, and to create a forum for debate that can help us to give answers to the many open questions in this vast domain of interdisciplinary research.

Plenary Speaker

Bedeaux, D. (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway). "Time correlation functions for fluids in mesoscopic systems"

Bezrukov, S. (NIH, USA). "Kinetics and thermodynamics of binding reactions: A case study of ion channel blockage"

Bittner, A. (CIC nanoGUNE, Spain). "Confinement and Assembly in a 4 nm wide Natural Channel"

Bonilla, L. (University Carlos III, Spain). "Defects and ripples in graphene"

Cesàro, A. (University of Trieste, Italy). "Water Diffusion as a Reference for Biomolecular Entrapment and Release in Soft-Condensed Matter"

Dawson, K. A. (University College Dublin, Ireland). "Foundation principles of interactions of nanoparticles with cells and biological barriers; towards a model of nanoparticle cell interactions"

Golestanian, R. (University of Oxford, UK). "Active and noisy hydrodynamics: self-propulsion, coordination, and anomalous diffusion"

Gudowska-Nowak, E. (Jagiellonian University, Poland). "Response to Lévy noise and fluctuation-dissipation relation"

Hänggi, P. (University of Augsburg, Germany). "Quantum Fluctuation Relations and the Arrow of Time"

Hansen, A. (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway). "Steady-State Two-Phase Flow in Porous Media: An Almost Overlooked Problem"

Hu, C.-K. (Institute of Physics of Academia Sinica, Taiwan). "Effects of noises in some complex nonlinear and biological systems"

Karttunen, M. (University of Waterloo, Canada). "Water water everywhere and but ne'er a drop to drink"

Kjelstrup, S. (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway). "Connections Between Small and Large Systems' Thermodynamics"

Metzler, R. (University of Potsdam, Germany). "Ageing and Ergodicity Breaking in Anomalous Diffusion"

Park, H. (Korea Institute for Advanced Study, Seoul, Korea). "Dynamic phase transitions in large work production of linear diffusion systems"

Platero, G. (ICMM, Spain). "Bipolar Spin Blockade in Triple Quantum Dots"

Procaccia, I. (Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel). "Statistical Physics of Plasticity in Amorphous Solids: Scaling Concepts and Universality, with implications to the glass transition"

Schimansky-Geier, L. (Humboldt-University at Berlin, Germany). "Fluctuations in Models of Self-Propelled Particles"

Sokolov, I. (Humboldt-University at Berlin, Germany). "What and how much can we learn from single trajectories"

Van den Broeck, C. (University of Hasselt, Belgium). "On the efficiency of (small) machines"

Vilar, J. M. G. (University of the Basque Country, Spain). "Submicron-scale statistical thermodynamics in living systems"

Wang, E. (Peking University, China). "Computer simulation of island self-assembly on surface"

Invited Speakers

Abad, E. (University of Extremadura, Spain). "Subdiffusive Reactants and Associated Fractional Equations"

Brito, R. (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain). "Casimir Forces from Langevin Equations"

Bruni, F. (Roma Tre University, Italy). "Glutathione in water: a State of the Art Neutron Diffraction study"

Cordero, P. (Universidad de Chile, Chile). "Clusterization and rigidity in a vibrated shallow granular system"

Fiasconaro, A. (CSIC - Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain). "A dynamical model for the full stretching curve of DNA"

Goychuk, I. (University of Augsburg, Germany). "Subdiffusive Brownian motors operating in viscoelastic environments"

Mecke, K. (Universität Erlangen-Nürnber, Germany). "Shape dependence of thermal fluctuations and non-equilibrium processes"

Melnik, R. (Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada). "Nonlocal models for low dimensional nanostructures and quantum-mechanical-kinetic coupling in semiconductor superlattices"

Prados, A. (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain). "Fluctuating hydrodynamics and large deviation function for driven dissipative systems"

Sánchez, R. (ICMM-CSIC, Spain). "Rectification of thermal fluctuations in electrical conductors"

Soto, R. (Universidad de Chile, Chile). "Fluctuations and Criticality of a Granular Solid-Liquid-like Phase Transition"

Spagnolo, B. (Università di Palermo and CNISM, Italy). "Regularity of Spike Trains and Harmony Perception in a Model of the Auditory System"

Tierno, P. (University of Barcelona, Spain). "Antipersistent Random Walk in a Two State Flashing Magnetic Potential"

Tuval, I. (CSIC-UIB, Spain). "Noise and Synchronization in Pairs of Beating Eukaryotic Flagella"

Contributed Talks

Ahufinger, V. (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain). "Disorder in spin 1 ultracold bosons in optical lattices"

Alemany, A. (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain). "Transition State Susceptibility in Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy"

Calero, C. (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain). "A First Passage Time Analysis of Atomic-Resolution Simulations of Biological Ionic Nanochannels"

Cao, F. J. (Universidad Complutense, Spain). "Stochastic dynamics of a molecular motor"

De Michele, C. (Università di Roma La Sapienza, Italy). "Liquid Crystal Ordering by Short DNA Duplexes Self-Assembly"

Di Michele, L. (University of Cambridge, UK). "Understanding and modeling colloidal interactions mediated by polymer networks"

Metzger, J. (Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Germany). "Intensity statistics of branched flow"

Montero, M. (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain). Parrondo-like behavior in continuous-time random walks with memory

Oliveira, F. (Universidade de Brasília, Brazil). "Analytical results for long time behavior in anomalous diffusion"

Perelló, J. (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain). "First-passage-time probabilities in very large financial data-sets: An ideal frame to study extreme events of non-Gaussian dynamics"

Rogers, T. (University of Manchester, UK). "Noise-induced metastability in biochemical reactions"

Suárez, A. (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain). "Analysis of the phase transition in the Jarzynski estimator of free energy differences"

Tadic, B. (Jozef Stefan Institute, Slovenia). "Evaluation of Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy Data: New Theoretical Concept & Application"

Posters

Francisco Alarcón and Ignacio Pagonabarraga. "Collective motion and self-assembly of squirmer suspensions"

M. Alvaro, M. Carretero and L. L. Bonilla. "Coexistence of inhomogeneous Bloch and Gunn type oscillations in semiconductor superlattices"

María Aznar Palenzuela and David Reguera. "Physical ingredients controlling viral polymorphism"

Jordi Baró and Eduard Vives. "Interocurrence times in the crackling noise of a pourous material"

Valentino Bianco and Giancarlo Franzese. "Strong confinement of a water monolayer induces 3D-like behavior"

Joan Camuñas. "Compaction of single DNA molecules induced by self-aggregating peptides"

M. Carretero, E. Cebrian, M. Alvaro and L. L. Bonilla. "Numerical solutions of the kinetic equation for semiconductor superlattices with self-sustained current oscillation"

Benedetta Cerruti, Alberto Puliafito, Annette M. Shewan, Wei Yu, Keith E. Mostov, Luca Primo, Guido Serini, Antonio Celani and Andrea Gamba. "Geometry, topology and out-of-equilibrium dynamics in epithelial morphogenesis"

Hsin-Lin Chiang, Hisashi Okumura, Chun-Jung Chen and Chin-Kun Hu. "All-atom molecular dynamics simulations indicate that polyglu- tamine dimer prefer anti-parallel conformations"

Olga Chichigina, Alexander Dubkov, Bernardo Spagnolo and Davide Valenti. "Simple stochastic model to describe non-stationary nonlinear phenomena"

Rıza Erdem, Mehmet Ağartıoğlu, Gül Gülpınar. "Critical and multicritical behaviors of dynamic susceptibility for a spin–1 Ising model with a random crystal field"

Iacyel G. da Silva, Marcelo L. Lyra, and Marcos V. Días Vermelho. "Ghost resonance in the chaotic Chua's circuit"

Viktor Holubec and Artem Ryabov. "Work fluctuations in systems with stochastic driving"

Nagi Khalil, J. Javier Brey and James W. Dufty. "Thermal segregation of intruders in the Fourier state of a granular gas"

Anders Lervik, Fernando Bresme, Signe Kjelstrup and J. Miguel Rubi. "On the thermodynamic efficiency of Ca2+-ATPase molecular motors: a non-equilibrium thermodynamics analysis"

Alexey Klyuev, Evgeny Shmelev, Arkady Yakimov. "1/f noise in nanoscale Schottky diodes with delta-doping"

L. Kusmierz, W. Ebeling, E. Gudowska-Nowak. "Linear response for the nonequlibrium system driven by convoluted Gauss-Cauchy white noise"

Antonio Lasanta, Antonio Prados and Pablo I. Hurtado. "Large Fluctuations of the Dissipated Energy in a Simple Model System"

Fabio Leoni and Giancarlo Franzese. "Influence of the nanostructure of prefunctionalized walls on the dynamics and the thermodynamics of a solution of globular proteins"

Rosa López, Jong Soo Lim and David Sánchez. "Fluctuation Relations for Spintronics"

Rui Ma, Ouyang Zhongcan, Frank Jülicher. "A ratchet model for two-headed molecular motors"

Paolo Malgaretti, Ignacio Pagonabarraga and Miguel Rubi. "Rectification by mean of geometrical constraints"

I. Pastor, E. Vilaseca, A. Isvoran, S. Madurga, J.L. Garcés, M. Cascante and F. Mas. "Diffusion in Macromolecular Crowded Media: Monte Carlo Simulation of Obstructed Diffusion vs. Frap Experiments"

Angelina Peñaranda, Enric Alvarez, Inma R.Cantalapiedra, Leif Hove-Madsen, and Blas Echebarría. "RyR Refractoriness Effect on Calcium Alternans Mechanisms"

A. Pérez Madrid. "Mean-Field “Temperature” in Far From Equilibrium Systems. Application to Chemical Reactions"

Frank Raischel. "Decoupling stochastic sources in multivariate data: an application to NO2 stations"

Martin Reichelsdorfer, Susan Nachtrab, Christian Goll and Klaus Mecke. "Asymmetric Brownian Particles and Motion by Stopping"

Martin Reichelsdorfer and Klaus Mecke. "Stress Tensor Correlations in Small Scale Fluctuating Hydrodynamics"

Jared López Alamilla, Iván Santamaría-Holek. "Reconstructing the free-energy landscape associated to molecular motors processivity. Application to intracellular transport"

J.-M. Simon, P. Krüger, S. Lequin, T. Karboviak and J.P. Bellat. "How does the statistical distribution function of the diffusion coefficient scale with system size?"

J. Sparacino, P. W. Lamberti, and C.M. Arizmendi. "Shock detection in KIF1A dynamics via Jensen-Shannon divergence"

Bartosz Lisowski, Michał Światek, Michał Żabicki, Ewa Gudowska-Nowak. "Motor-Cargo systems: Different approaches to modeling energetics of the kinesin"

Pietro Tierno, Oriol Güell, Francesc Sagués and Rosa Albalat. "Paramagnetic microellipsoids: from catalytic motors to Janus composites"

Jaegon Um, Haye Hinrichsen and Hyunggyu Park. "Inequality between the mutual information and the entanglement"

Oriol Vilanova and Giancarlo Franzese. "Crystal Formation in a Hydrophobically Nanoconfined Water Monolayer"

Hector Zenil. "What randomness for what biological process?"

Program

The book of abstracts and detailed program of the conference can be downloaded here.

Organizing Committee

• I. Latella, Secretary (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

• G. Franzese (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

• I. Pagonabarraga (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

• A. Pérez-Madrid (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

• D. Reguera (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

• J. M. Rubi (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

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