This book contains the courses given at the Fifth School on Complex Systems held at Santiago, Chile, from 9th .to 13th December 1996. At this school met researchers working on areas related with recent trends in Complex Systems, which include dynamical systems, cellular automata, symbolic dynamics, spatial systems, statistical physics and thermodynamics. Scientists working in these subjects come from several areas: pure and applied mathematics, physics, biology, computer science and electrical engineering. Each contribution is devoted to one of the above subjects. In most cases they are...