This review presents the fundamentals of Flicker-Noise Spectroscopy (FNS), a general phenomenological methodology in which the dynamics and structure of complex systems, characterized by nonlinear interactions, dissipation, and inertia, are analyzed by extracting information from various signals with stochastically varying components generated by the systems. The basic idea of FNS is to treat the correlation links present in sequences of different irregularities, such as spikes, jumps, and discontinuities in derivatives of different orders, on all levels of the spatiotemporal hierarchy of the system under study as main information carriers. The tools to extract and analyze the information are power spectra and difference moments (structural functions) of various orders. Presently, FNS can be applied to three types of problems: (1) determination of parameters or patterns that characterize the dynamics or structural features of complex systems; (2) finding precursors of abrupt changes in the state of various complex systems based on a priori information about the dynamics of the systems; and (3) determination of flow dynamics in distributed systems based on the analysis of dynamic correlations in stochastic signals that are simultaneously measured at different points in space. Examples of FNS applications to such problems as parameterization of the images produced with atomic force microscopy (AFM), determination of precursors for electric breakdowns and major earthquakes, and analysis of electric potential fluctuations in electromembrane systems, as well as to some other problems in electrochemistry and medicine are discussed.
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