It took quite a long time to complete this book. More than 20 years had elapsed since I wrote
my last volume as an author, not just as an editor. And I felt it important to find again the …

The identification of critical states is a major task in complex systems, and the availability of
measures to detect such conditions is of utmost importance. In general, criticality refers to the …

The conditions that allow for the sustained growth of a protocell population are investigated
in the case of asymmetrical division. The results are compared to those of previous studies …

In this paper a new model of growing and dividing protocells is described, whose main
features are (i) an autocatalytic set of “genetic memory molecules”(GMMs) whose reactions …