We show that the generalized slow-roll approach for calculating the power spectrum where the inflationary slow roll parameters are neither small nor slowly varying can be readily extended to models with non-canonical kinetic terms in the inflaton action. For example, rapid sound speed variations can arise in DBI models with features in the warp factor leading to features in the power spectrum. ...

The cochlea provides a biological information-processing paradigm that we are only beginning to understand in its full complexity. Our work reveals an interacting network of strongly nonlinear dynamical nodes, on which even a simple sound input triggers subnetworks of activated elements that follow power-law size statistics ("avalanches"). From dynamical systems theory, power-law size distribut...