Physics of Risk meets new year with some significant improvements.

Firstly all of the texts on models were converted from page to post format. This small improvement will enable flexible handling of main topics. Now such models as Kirman's unidirectional model will appear in all relevant topics covered by Physics of Risk - in the given case you'll see the model under both agent-based modeling and business processes main topics. Some general models will find their place under the new "General models" topic.

A year has passed since the opening of the renew Physics of Risk website. This year was highly productive for us, the contributors. We have published 7 new econophysical, 1 fractal + 3 stochastic + 3 agent-based, models and 18 models of varying business processes. Some of the models belonging to these two groups are very similar (we have found that most similar are Bass diffusion model and Unidirectional Kirman's model) thus serving as a proof for the potential applicability of the ideas developed in the econophysical sections.

Slides from the closure conference were made available at mokslasplius.lt portal's science news website. Though note that slides are only available in Lithuanian (see here). We would like to remind you that Physics of Risk was represented by V. Gontis and V. Daniūnas, thus their slides might be the most useful for visitors of Physics of Risk website.

One of the conclusions of fractal geometry is a fact that fractals unlike traditional Euclidean shapes lack characteristic scale. Those "fractured" objects are self-similar - defining geometry is clearly visible on multitude of scales. It is known that self-similarity is observed not only in formally defined geometric objects, such as Sierpinski triangle or Koch snowflake, but also in the surrounding nature. One of my most favorite examples is a comparison of tree, its branches and a leaf (for more inspiring examples see introduction of Fractals section) - they all have branching structure and something green filling the extra space in between.

The interesting thing, in context of the topic in focus, is that one can extend fractal formalism beyond formal or natural geometric shapes. It is also noticed that some of the natural processes exhibit fractal features in their time series! It is known that geoelectrical processes [1], heartbeat [2] and even human gait [3] time series posses this feature. While financial market, frequently analyzed on Physics of Risk website, time series are also no exception [4, 5]. Though the aforementioned time series are much more complex - they exhibit not monofractality (single manner self-similar behavior as the aforementioned formal geometric fractals do), but multifractality!

On the 25th of October, 2011 conference dedicated to the project Science for business and society will be held at hall in the Vilnius University, Institute of Theoretical Physics and Astronomy (A. Goštauto g. 12 - 432, Vilnius). This conference will mark ending of the currently ongoing project behind the Physics of Risk website. Main focus of this conference will be presentation of achieved results and discussion between business and scientists.