SEMINAIRE MERCREDI 19 MAI 2004 14 heures Salle Séminaire 5 Centre de Physique Théorique Marseille-Luminy Antonello Provenzale ISAC-CNR, Torino and CIMA, Savona, Italy Title: On-off intermittency in forced and coupled systems On-off intermittency is a phase-space mechanism that generates bursting behavior. Here I shall discuss some of the basic properties of this type of dynamical behavior, and will address the characteristics of time series generated by on-off systems. I shall also show how this mechanims can be distinguished from other forms of intermittency, and how it can be confused with simpler forms of intermittency such as a nonlinearly-filtered linear autoregressive signal.