Nonlinear chimeras

Controlled/living polymerization techniques in combination with living ROP of NCAs can lead not only to linear but also to nonlinear chimeras. In this section we will describe the materials synthesized according to their structure star, comb, brush-block, and dendritic-like chimeras. 

---

In this chapter, we present our recent findings related to synchronization in coupled nonlinear oscillator systems with and without time delay as specific representation of certain neuronal behaviors. In the following section, we discuss about the ubiquitous nature of synchronization in dynamical systems. In Section 3, we explain the structure of neurons and how neurons function as a collective system. Section 4 is dedicated to the discussion of the occurrence of oscillations and synchronization in neuronal networks. In Section 5, we demonstrate the occurrence of event related desynchronization in a system of coupled nonlinear oscillators in the presence of an external field. In Section 6, we discuss the effect of time delay in coupled populations of nonlinear oscillators and demonstrate the occurrence of globally clustered chimera (GCC) states. In Section 7, we present a demand controlled delayed feedback mechanism for controlling the occurrence of mass pathological synchronization in the brain. Finally, in Section 8, we present our conclusions and summarize the chapter. 

The variety of the nanostructures could become even richer and more complex in multiblock copolymers, multiblock multicomponent (e.g. terpolymers) or in nonlinear (e.g. miktoarm stars) (Lodge, 2003) chimeras, approaching that found in nature. Therefore, the synthesis of well defined complex chimeras adds another dimension to the suprastructural hierarchy of the block copolymers with potential biomedical applications (Deming, 2007). 

Although, there are many reviews on linear diblock chimeras, only a very few have addressed the synthesis of polypeptide-based materials with different macromolecular architectures (Hadjichristidis et al., 2009 Deming, 2006 Deming, 2000). In this chapter our discussion on the synthesis of well-defined complex chimeras, including linear multiblock co/ terpolymer, as well as nonlinear copolymer chimeras (e.g. star, graft, block-graft, dendritic), will hopefully enrich the current literature on macromolecular chimeras. This chapter will not address the self-assembly of these complex chimeras since this issue is discussed in another chapter of this volume. 

---