Thermostats, configurational thermostats, ergodicity and thermostats beyond standard applications of the statistical mechanics

I will present thermostats in my conception and a general scheme for generating thermostat equations from dynamical systems. Then I introduce some new thermostats: virial, configurational (Smoluchowski) and Nose-Hoover-Langevin, and give some recent examples. Finally I will discuss applicability of configurational thermostat scheme to problems beyond standard applications of the statistical mechanics. In this context I will discuss relevance of the excitable dynamics to thermostats. This talk is based on work with Carl Dettmann (Bristol) and Mark Chaplain (Dundee).