Metastable States in Cellular Automata for Traffic Flow

Measurements on real traffic have revealed the existence of metastable states with very high flow. Such states have not been observed in the Nagel-Schreckenberg (NaSch) model which is the basic cellular automaton for the description of traffic. Here we propose a simple generalization of the NaSch model by introducing a velocity-dependent randomization. We investigate a special case which belongs to the so-called slow-to-start rules. It is shown that this model exhibits metastable states, thus sheding some light on the prerequisites for the occurance of hysteresis effects in the flow-density relation.Comment: 15 pages, 8 ps-figures included; accepted for publication in EPJ

Cell fate reprogramming by control of intracellular network dynamics

Identifying control strategies for biological networks is paramount for practical applications that involve reprogramming a cell's fate, such as disease therapeutics and stem cell reprogramming. Here we develop a novel network control framework that integrates the structural and functional information available for intracellular networks to predict control targets. Formulated in a logical dynamic scheme, our approach drives any initial state to the target state with 100% effectiveness and needs to be applied only transiently for the network to reach and stay in the desired state. We illustrate our method's potential to find intervention targets for cancer treatment and cell differentiation by applying it to a leukemia signaling network and to the network controlling the differentiation of helper T cells. We find that the predicted control targets are effective in a broad dynamic framework. Moreover, several of the predicted interventions are supported by experiments.Comment: 61 pages (main text, 15 pages; supporting information, 46 pages) and 12 figures (main text, 6 figures; supporting information, 6 figures). In revie

Perspectives on Multi-Level Dynamics

As Physics did in previous centuries, there is currently a common dream of extracting generic laws of nature in economics, sociology, neuroscience, by focalising the description of phenomena to a minimal set of variables and parameters, linked together by causal equations of evolution whose structure may reveal hidden principles. This requires a huge reduction of dimensionality (number of degrees of freedom) and a change in the level of description. Beyond the mere necessity of developing accurate techniques affording this reduction, there is the question of the correspondence between the initial system and the reduced one. In this paper, we offer a perspective towards a common framework for discussing and understanding multi-level systems exhibiting structures at various spatial and temporal levels. We propose a common foundation and illustrate it with examples from different fields. We also point out the difficulties in constructing such a general setting and its limitations

Automating first-principles phase diagram calculations

Devising a computational tool that assesses the thermodynamic stability of materials is among the most important steps required to build a “virtual laboratory,” where materials could be designed from first principles without relying on experimental input. Although the formalism that allows the calculation of solid-state phase diagrams from first principles is well established, its practical implementation remains a tedious process. The development of a fully automated algorithm to perform such calculations serves two purposes. First, it will make this powerful tool available to a large number of researchers. Second, it frees the calculation process from arbitrary parameters, guaranteeing that the results obtained are truly derived from the underlying first-principles calculations. The proposed algorithm formalizes the most difficult step of phase diagram calculations, namely the determination of the “cluster expanison,” which is a compact representation of the configurational dependence of the alloy’s energy. This is traditionally achieved by a fit of the unknown interaction parameters of the cluster expansion to a set of structural energies calculated from first principles. We present a formal statistical basis for the selection of both the interaction parameters to include in the cluster expansion and the structures to use to determine them. The proposed method relies on the concepts of cross-validation and variance minimization. An application to the calculation of the phase diagram of the Si-Ge, CaO-MgO, Ti-Al, and Cu-Au systems is presented

12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012) : WST 2012, February 19–23, 2012, Obergurgl, Austria / ed. by Georg Moser

This volume contains the proceedings of the 12th International Workshop on Termination (WST 2012), to be held February 19–23, 2012 in Obergurgl, Austria. The goal of the Workshop on Termination is to be a venue for presentation and discussion of all topics in and around termination. In this way, the workshop tries to bridge the gaps between different communities interested and active in research in and around termination. The 12th International Workshop on Termination in Obergurgl continues the successful workshops held in St. Andrews (1993), La Bresse (1995), Ede (1997), Dagstuhl (1999), Utrecht (2001), Valencia (2003), Aachen (2004), Seattle (2006), Paris (2007), Leipzig (2009), and Edinburgh (2010). The 12th International Workshop on Termination did welcome contributions on all aspects of termination and complexity analysis. Contributions from the imperative, constraint, functional, and logic programming communities, and papers investigating applications of complexity or termination (for example in program transformation or theorem proving) were particularly welcome. We did receive 18 submissions which all were accepted. Each paper was assigned two reviewers. In addition to these 18 contributed talks, WST 2012, hosts three invited talks by Alexander Krauss, Martin Hofmann, and Fausto Spoto

To dd, or not to dd: Recent developments and comparisons of regularization schemes

We give an introduction to several regularization schemes that deal with ultraviolet and infrared singularities appearing in higher-order computations in quantum field theories. Comparing the computation of simple quantities in the various schemes, we point out similarities and differences between them.Comment: 61 pages, 12 figures; version sent to EPJC, references update