Zenta's expertise and collaboration with prestigious national and international universities is once again present in academic research, thanks to the publication of the paper "Traveling Chimeras in Continuous Media" in the scientific journal Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulation.

The work was developed by our Project Leader and Senior Data Scientist, PhD candidate in Physics Alejandro Álvarez, in conjunction with academics Marcel Clerc from the Department of Physics and the Millennium Institute for Optics Research MIRO of the University of Chile and Nicolás Verschueren from the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom.

“The central idea of ​​the work was to present a new type of wave, which is part of what are called chimera states. According to the researchers, the study of these signals could help to characterize certain phenomena that occur at the brain level and, in practice, also other systems that exhibit similar behaviors, ranging from coupled electrical circuits to social networks.”

To better understand this article, it's necessary to know what a chimera state is. “When we look at the activity of neurons in our brain, we find areas where they behave coherently and similarly, but at the same time, there are other areas where their activity is disordered and incoherent. This is precisely what characterizes chimera states. These patterns of neuronal activity could help us understand diseases like epilepsy or the processes of learning and sleep,” explains Alejandro Álvarez.

Project Leader and Senior Data Scientist, PhD candidate in Physics Alejandro Álvarez

Given this context, the research proposed the existence of a type of wave that propagates in a disordered manner, which they called a traveling chimera. And what is its importance? Primarily that “the results provide new perspectives for understanding complex behaviors that occur in natural and technological systems, and also enhance potential applications in the development of new technologies for transmitting encrypted information, as well as in data-driven predictions,” he explains.

We can see this on social media, where the study's results can help us understand how followers' opinions evolve. Facebook, Instagram, and similar networks are characterized by clusters (subnetworks) of people with very similar and consistent opinions about an event or brand, as well as other clusters with diverse or misaligned opinions.

“Often, clients want to predict consumer behavior. Some people give their opinions, which are often aligned in that something is positive and good, but suddenly there is a group with varied opinions. This ‘island of people’ can be understood as a state of illusion. Therefore, predicting would imply adjusting advertising campaigns to reach these potential customers and convince them,” he emphasizes.

With the publication of this new text, Zenta now has six research and outreach papers on prestigious platforms in Data Science and Nonlinear Science, where researchers and academics from around the world converge. Through this type of work, we hope to continue contributing to research and knowledge, both in our country and internationally.

More information about “Traveling Chimeras in Continuous Media” can be accessed via this link.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1007570420303890?dgcid=author