Transportation networks represent essential structures for the functioning of systems as diverse as cities and living beings, ensuring, for example, the movement of people between different regions of the map and the flow of nutrients through different parts of the cell. After studying the dynamics of several real systems, such as car traffic on highways and data flow on the Internet, we found common signatures, or universality, in the relationship between average activity and activity fluctuations in different regions of the system. The presence of common signatures in such different systems suggests that their dynamics must derive from a common fundamental principle. We will show what this principle is and its consequences for the dynamics of cars on highways and cellular metabolism.

Speaker: Professor Márcio Argollo de Menezes, Fluminense Federal University.
Discussant: Professor Bruno Reis, School of Philosophy and Human Sciences, UFMG.