1,301 research outputs found
Density regulation in strictly metric-free swarms
There is now experimental evidence that nearest-neighbour interactions in
flocks of birds are metric free, i.e. they have no characteristic interaction
length scale. However, models that involve interactions between neighbours that
are assigned topologically are naturally invariant under spatial expansion,
supporting a continuous reduction in density towards zero, unless additional
cohesive interactions are introduced or the density is artificially controlled,
e.g. via a finite system size. We propose a solution that involves a
metric-free motional bias on those individuals that are topologically
identified to be on an edge of the swarm. This model has only two primary
control parameters, one controlling the relative strength of stochastic noise
to the degree of co-alignment and another controlling the degree of the
motional bias for those on the edge, relative to the tendency to co-align. We
find a novel power-law scaling of the real-space density with the number of
individuals N as well as a familiar order-to-disorder transition
Geometry and mechanics of microdomains in growing bacterial colonies
Bacterial colonies are abundant on living and nonliving surfaces and are
known to mediate a broad range of processes in ecology, medicine, and industry.
Although extensively researched, from single cells to demographic scales, a
comprehensive biomechanical picture, highlighting the cell-to-colony dynamics,
is still lacking. Here, using molecular dynamics simulations and continuous
modeling, we investigate the geometrical and mechanical properties of a
bacterial colony growing on a substrate with a free boundary and demonstrate
that such an expanding colony self-organizes into a "mosaic" of microdomains
consisting of highly aligned cells. The emergence of microdomains is mediated
by two competing forces: the steric forces between neighboring cells, which
favor cell alignment, and the extensile stresses due to cell growth that tend
to reduce the local orientational order and thereby distort the system. This
interplay results in an exponential distribution of the domain areas and sets a
characteristic length scale proportional to the square root of the ratio
between the system orientational stiffness and the magnitude of the extensile
active stress. Our theoretical predictions are finally compared with
experiments with freely growing E. coli microcolonies, finding quantitative
agreement.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
The Role of Projection in the Control of Bird Flocks
Swarming is a conspicuous behavioural trait observed in bird flocks, fish
shoals, insect swarms and mammal herds. It is thought to improve collective
awareness and offer protection from predators. Many current models involve the
hypothesis that information coordinating motion is exchanged between neighbors.
We argue that such local interactions alone are insufficient to explain the
organization of large flocks of birds and that the mechanism for the exchange
of long-ranged information necessary to control their density remains unknown.
We show that large flocks self-organize to the maximum density at which a
typical individual is still just able to see out of the flock in many
directions. Such flocks are marginally opaque - an external observer can also
just still see a substantial fraction of sky through the flock. Although
seemingly intuitive we show that this need not be the case; flocks could easily
be highly diffuse or entirely opaque. The emergence of marginal opacity
strongly constrains how individuals interact with each other within large
swarms. It also provides a mechanism for global interactions: An individual can
respond to the projection of the flock that it sees. This provides for faster
information transfer and hence rapid flock dynamics, another advantage over
local models. From a behavioural perspective it optimizes the information
available to each bird while maintaining the protection of a dense, coherent
flock.Comment: PNAS early edition published online at
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.140220211
Impacts of climate change on upland birds: complex interactions, compensatory mechanisms and the need for long-term data.
Emergent behavioural phenotypes of swarming models revealed by mimicking a frustrated anti-ferromagnet
Self-propelled particle (SPP) models are often compared with animal swarms. However, the collective animal behaviour observed in experiments often leaves considerable unconstrained freedom in the structure of a proposed model. Essentially, multiple models can describe the observed behaviour of animal swarms in simple environments. To tackle this degeneracy, we study swarms of SPPs in non-trivial environments as a new approach to distinguish between candidate models. We restrict swarms of SPPs to circular (periodic) channels where they polarize in one of two directions (like spins) and permit information to pass through windows between neighbouring channels. Co-alignment between particles then couples the channels (anti-ferromagnetically) so that they tend to counter-rotate. We study channels arranged to mimic a geometrically frustrated anti-ferromagnet and show how the effects of this frustration allow us to better distinguish between SPP models. Similar experiments could therefore improve our understanding of collective motion in animals. Finally, we discuss how the spin analogy can be exploited to construct universal logic gates, and therefore swarming systems that can function as Turing machines
Confinement-induced self-organization in growing bacterial colonies
We investigate the emergence of global alignment in colonies of dividing
rod-shaped cells under confinement. Using molecular dynamics simulations and
continuous modeling, we demonstrate that geometrical anisotropies in the
confining environment give rise to imbalance in the normal stresses, which, in
turn, drives a collective rearrangement of the cells. This behavior crucially
relies on the colony's solid-like mechanical response at short time scales and
can be recovered within the framework of active hydrodynamics upon modeling
bacterial colonies as growing viscoelastic gels characterized by Maxwell-like
stress relaxation.Comment: 10 pages, 8 figure
Geodynamic setting and origin of the Oman/UAE ophiolite
The ~500km-long mid-Cretaceous Semail nappe of the Sultanate of Oman and UAE (henceforth referred to as the Oman ophiolite) is the largest and best-preserved ophiolite complex known. It is of particular importance because it is generally believed to have an internal structure and composition closely comparable to that of crust formed at the present-day East Pacific Rise (EPR), making it our only known on-land analogue for ocean lithosphere formed at a fast spreading rate. On the basis of this assumption Oman has long played a pivotal role in guiding our conceptual understanding of fast-spreading ridge processes, as modern fast-spread ocean crust is largely inaccessible
Corticomotor responses to attentionally demanding motor performance: a mini-review
Increased attentional demand has been shown to reduce motor performance, leading to increases in accidents, particularly in elderly populations. While these deficits have been well documented behaviorally, their cortical correlates are less well known. Increased attention has been shown to affect activity in prefrontal regions of the cortex. However there have been varying results within past research investigating corticomotor regions, mediating motor performance. This mini-review initially discusses past behavioral research, before moving to studies investigating corticomotor areas in response to changes in attention. Recent dual task studies have revealed a possible decline in the ability of older, but not younger, adults to activate inhibitory processes within the motor cortex, which may be correlated with poor motor performance, and thus accidents. A reduction in cortical inhibition may be caused by neurodegeneration within prefrontal regions of the cortex with age, rendering older adults less able to allocate attention to corticomotor regions
Mono-to-multilayer transition in growing bacterial colonies
The transition from monolayers to multilayered structures in bacterial colonies is a fundamental step in biofilm development. Observed across different morphotypes and species, this transition is triggered within freely growing bacterial microcolonies comprising a few hundred cells. Using a combination of numerical simulations and analytical modeling, here we demonstrate that this transition originates from the competition between growth-induced in-plane active stresses and vertical restoring forces, due to the cell-substrate interactions. Using a simple chainlike colony of laterally confined cells, we show that the transition sets when individual cells become unstable to rotations; thus it is localized and mechanically deterministic. Asynchronous cell division renders the process stochastic, so that all the critical parameters that control the onset of the transition are continuously distributed random variables. Here we demonstrate that the occurrence of the first division in the colony can be approximated as a Poisson process in the limit of large cell numbers. This allows us to approximately calculate the probability distribution function of the position and time associated with the first extrusion. The rate of such a Poisson process can be identified as the order parameter of the transition, thus highlighting its mixed deterministic-stochastic nature
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