Exotic statistical physics: Applications to biology, medicine, and economics

This manuscript is based on four opening lectures, which were designed to o ffer a brief and somewhat parochial overview of some "exotic" statistical p hysics puzzles of possible interest to biophysicists, medical physicists, a nd econophysicists. These include the statistical properties of DNA sequenc es, heartbeat intervals, brain plaques in Alzheimer brains, and fluctuation s in economics. These problems have the common feature that the guiding pri nciples of scale invariance and universality appear to be relevant. (C) 200 0 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.