6,491 research outputs found
A Local Stochastic Algorithm for Separation in Heterogeneous Self-Organizing Particle Systems
We present and rigorously analyze the behavior of a distributed, stochastic algorithm for separation and integration in self-organizing particle systems, an abstraction of programmable matter. Such systems are composed of individual computational particles with limited memory, strictly local communication abilities, and modest computational power. We consider heterogeneous particle systems of two different colors and prove that these systems can collectively separate into different color classes or integrate, indifferent to color. We accomplish both behaviors with the same fully distributed, local, stochastic algorithm. Achieving separation or integration depends only on a single global parameter determining whether particles prefer to be next to other particles of the same color or not; this parameter is meant to represent external, environmental influences on the particle system. The algorithm is a generalization of a previous distributed, stochastic algorithm for compression (PODC \u2716) that can be viewed as a special case of separation where all particles have the same color. It is significantly more challenging to prove that the desired behavior is achieved in the heterogeneous setting, however, even in the bichromatic case we focus on. This requires combining several new techniques, including the cluster expansion from statistical physics, a new variant of the bridging argument of Miracle, Pascoe and Randall (RANDOM \u2711), the high-temperature expansion of the Ising model, and careful probabilistic arguments
A stochastic and dynamical view of pluripotency in mouse embryonic stem cells
Pluripotent embryonic stem cells are of paramount importance for biomedical
research thanks to their innate ability for self-renewal and differentiation
into all major cell lines. The fateful decision to exit or remain in the
pluripotent state is regulated by complex genetic regulatory network. Latest
advances in transcriptomics have made it possible to infer basic topologies of
pluripotency governing networks. The inferred network topologies, however, only
encode boolean information while remaining silent about the roles of dynamics
and molecular noise in gene expression. These features are widely considered
essential for functional decision making. Herein we developed a framework for
extending the boolean level networks into models accounting for individual
genetic switches and promoter architecture which allows mechanistic
interrogation of the roles of molecular noise, external signaling, and network
topology. We demonstrate the pluripotent state of the network to be a broad
attractor which is robust to variations of gene expression. Dynamics of exiting
the pluripotent state, on the other hand, is significantly influenced by the
molecular noise originating from genetic switching events which makes cells
more responsive to extracellular signals. Lastly we show that steady state
probability landscape can be significantly remodeled by global gene switching
rates alone which can be taken as a proxy for how global epigenetic
modifications exert control over stability of pluripotent states.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure
Sub-Nyquist Sampling: Bridging Theory and Practice
Sampling theory encompasses all aspects related to the conversion of
continuous-time signals to discrete streams of numbers. The famous
Shannon-Nyquist theorem has become a landmark in the development of digital
signal processing. In modern applications, an increasingly number of functions
is being pushed forward to sophisticated software algorithms, leaving only
those delicate finely-tuned tasks for the circuit level.
In this paper, we review sampling strategies which target reduction of the
ADC rate below Nyquist. Our survey covers classic works from the early 50's of
the previous century through recent publications from the past several years.
The prime focus is bridging theory and practice, that is to pinpoint the
potential of sub-Nyquist strategies to emerge from the math to the hardware. In
that spirit, we integrate contemporary theoretical viewpoints, which study
signal modeling in a union of subspaces, together with a taste of practical
aspects, namely how the avant-garde modalities boil down to concrete signal
processing systems. Our hope is that this presentation style will attract the
interest of both researchers and engineers in the hope of promoting the
sub-Nyquist premise into practical applications, and encouraging further
research into this exciting new frontier.Comment: 48 pages, 18 figures, to appear in IEEE Signal Processing Magazin
Chemotropic guidance facilitates axonal regeneration and synapse formation after spinal cord injury.
A principal objective of spinal cord injury (SCI) research is the restoration of axonal connectivity to denervated targets. We tested the hypothesis that chemotropic mechanisms would guide regenerating spinal cord axons to appropriate brainstem targets. We subjected rats to cervical level 1 (C1) lesions and combinatorial treatments to elicit axonal bridging into and beyond lesion sites. Lentiviral vectors expressing neurotrophin-3 (NT-3) were then injected into an appropriate brainstem target, the nucleus gracilis, and an inappropriate target, the reticular formation. NT-3 expression in the correct target led to reinnervation of the nucleus gracilis in a dose-related fashion, whereas NT-3 expression in the reticular formation led to mistargeting of regenerating axons. Axons regenerating into the nucleus gracilis formed axodendritic synapses containing rounded vesicles, reflective of pre-injury synaptic architecture. Thus, we report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the reinnervation of brainstem targets after SCI and an essential role for chemotropic axon guidance in target selection
From Relational Data to Graphs: Inferring Significant Links using Generalized Hypergeometric Ensembles
The inference of network topologies from relational data is an important
problem in data analysis. Exemplary applications include the reconstruction of
social ties from data on human interactions, the inference of gene
co-expression networks from DNA microarray data, or the learning of semantic
relationships based on co-occurrences of words in documents. Solving these
problems requires techniques to infer significant links in noisy relational
data. In this short paper, we propose a new statistical modeling framework to
address this challenge. It builds on generalized hypergeometric ensembles, a
class of generative stochastic models that give rise to analytically tractable
probability spaces of directed, multi-edge graphs. We show how this framework
can be used to assess the significance of links in noisy relational data. We
illustrate our method in two data sets capturing spatio-temporal proximity
relations between actors in a social system. The results show that our
analytical framework provides a new approach to infer significant links from
relational data, with interesting perspectives for the mining of data on social
systems.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figures, accepted at SocInfo201
Algorithmic and Statistical Perspectives on Large-Scale Data Analysis
In recent years, ideas from statistics and scientific computing have begun to
interact in increasingly sophisticated and fruitful ways with ideas from
computer science and the theory of algorithms to aid in the development of
improved worst-case algorithms that are useful for large-scale scientific and
Internet data analysis problems. In this chapter, I will describe two recent
examples---one having to do with selecting good columns or features from a (DNA
Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) data matrix, and the other having to do with
selecting good clusters or communities from a data graph (representing a social
or information network)---that drew on ideas from both areas and that may serve
as a model for exploiting complementary algorithmic and statistical
perspectives in order to solve applied large-scale data analysis problems.Comment: 33 pages. To appear in Uwe Naumann and Olaf Schenk, editors,
"Combinatorial Scientific Computing," Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, 201
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