Includes bibliographical references and index.

Complex systems : challenges, tools, and successes / Luis A. Nunes Amaral, Marc Barthélémy -- Multiplicative noise in non-equilibrium phase transitions : a tutorial / Miguel A. Muñoz -- Self organized criticality as a phase transition / Mikko Alava -- Paradoxical games, ratchets, and related phenomena / Juan M.R. Parrondo ... [et al.] -- Stochastic population dynamics of spiking neurons / Paolo Del Giudice, Maurizio Mattia -- Random walks in physiologic dynamics / Plamen Ch. Ivanov -- Anomalous velocity distributions in inelastic Maxwell gases / R. Brito, M.H. Ernst -- Phase-field models in interfacial pattern formation out of equilibrium / Ricard González-Cinca ... [et al.] -- Universality issues in surface kinetic roughening of thin solid films / Rodolfo Cuerno, Luis Vázquez -- The minority game : an introductory guide / Esteban Moro / Low temperature properties of finite dimensional Ising spin glasses : some numerical simulations / Juan J. Ruiz-Lorenzo -- Multi-state neural networks based upon spin-glasses : a biased overview / D. Bollé -- Statistical mechanics of the Blume-Emery-Griffiths neural network model / David Dominguez, Elka Korutcheva -- Complexity transitions and statistical physics algorithms for hard random combinatorial problems / Riccardo Zecchina.