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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Recent work from Marten Scheffer and colleagues has made bold claims.
"Complex dynamical systems, ranging from ecosystems to financial markets and the climate, can have tipping points at which a sudden shift to a contrasting dynamical regime may occur [1]. Although predicting such critical points before they are reached is extremely difficult, work in different scientific fields is now suggesting the existence of generic early-warning signals that may indicate for a wide class of systems if a critical threshold is approaching." In a paper, now in Press in Critical Care Medicine, Scheffer and colleagues (including me) argue that these results may be applicable in medicine [2]. I will discuss this work from the context of my own interest in bifurcations, problems associated with alternans rhythms [3], and transition to and risk stratification for sudden cardiac death.
[1] "Early-warning signals for critical transitions" Nature 461, 53 (2009) by Marten Scheffer et al.
[2] "Slowing down of recovery as generic risk marker for acute transitions in chronic diseases" by Olde-Rikkert et al. Critical Care Medicine (2016)
[3] "Predicting the onset of period-doubling bifurcations in noisy cardiac systems" T. Quail, A. Shrier, L. Glass, PNAS 112, 9358-9363 (2015)
