Evolution of Cooperation in Public Goods Games with Stochastic Opting-Out

This paper investigates the evolution of strategic play where players drawn from a finite well-mixed population are offered the opportunity to play in a public goods game. All players accept the offer. However, due to the possibility of unforeseen circumstances, each player has a fixed probability of being unable to participate in the game, unlike similar models which assume voluntary participation. We first study how prescribed stochastic opting-out affects cooperation in finite populations. Moreover, in the model, cooperation is favored by natural selection over both neutral drift and defection if return on investment exceeds a threshold value defined solely by the population size, game size, and a player's probability of opting-out. Ultimately, increasing the probability that each player is unable to fulfill her promise of participating in the public goods game facilitates natural selection of cooperators. We also use adaptive dynamics to study the coevolution of cooperation and opting-out behavior. However, given rare mutations minutely different from the original population, an analysis based on adaptive dynamics suggests that the over time the population will tend towards complete defection and non-participation, and subsequently, from there, participating cooperators will stand a chance to emerge by neutral drift. Nevertheless, increasing the probability of non-participation decreases the rate at which the population tends towards defection when participating. Our work sheds light on understanding how stochastic opting-out emerges in the first place and its role in the evolution of cooperation.Comment: 30 pages, 4 figures. This is one of the student project papers arsing from the Mathematics REU program at Dartmouth 2017 Summer. See https://math.dartmouth.edu/~reu/ for more info. Comments are always welcom

Blocking neutrophil integrin activation prevents ischemia-reperfusion injury.

Neutrophil recruitment, mediated by β2 integrins, combats pyogenic infections but also plays a key role in ischemia-reperfusion injury and other inflammatory disorders. Talin induces allosteric rearrangements in integrins that increase affinity for ligands (activation). Talin also links integrins to actin and other proteins that enable formation of adhesions. Structural studies have identified a talin1 mutant (L325R) that perturbs activation without impairing talin's capacity to link integrins to actin and other proteins. Here, we found that mice engineered to express only talin1(L325R) in myeloid cells were protected from renal ischemia-reperfusion injury. Dissection of neutrophil function in vitro and in vivo revealed that talin1(L325R) neutrophils had markedly impaired chemokine-induced, β2 integrin-mediated arrest, spreading, and migration. Surprisingly, talin1(L325R) neutrophils exhibited normal selectin-induced, β2 integrin-mediated slow rolling, in sharp contrast to the defective slow rolling of neutrophils lacking talin1 or expressing a talin1 mutant (W359A) that blocks talin interaction with integrins. These studies reveal the importance of talin-mediated activation of integrins for renal ischemia-reperfusion injury. They further show that neutrophil arrest requires talin recruitment to and activation of integrins. However, although neutrophil slow rolling requires talin recruitment to integrins, talin-mediated integrin activation is dispensable

Non-invasive Diagnostic Measures of Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Chinchillas

According to the World Health Organization, disabling hearing loss affects nearly 466 million people worldwide. Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which is characterized as damage to the inner ear (e.g., cochlear hair cells) and/or to the neural pathways connecting the inner ear and brain, accounts for 90% of all disabling hearing loss. More concerning is that significant perceptual and physiological aspects of SNHL remain “hidden” from standard clinical diagnostics. Hidden hearing loss (HHL) manifests as the inability to understand speech in loud, noisy environments (e.g., listening in a noisy restaurant) despite a normal audiogram (i.e., normal detection of soft sounds). Recently, HHL has been suggested to result from cochlear synaptopathy, a significant loss of inner-hair-cell/ afferent-nerve synaptic terminals after an acoustic over-exposure causing “only” a temporary threshold shift (TTS), e.g., after a rock concert. In this study, three physiological non-invasive diagnostic measures of HHL will be evaluated in chinchillas: otoacoustic emissions, auditory brainstem responses, and middle-ear-muscle reflex strength. As a first step, the effect of anesthesia will be evaluated. Four animals will be tested twice while awake and then also twice while under anesthesia (xylazine and ketamine). The repeatability, accuracy, and precision of each measure will be examined. Future work will include collecting these measures before and after TTS-inducing noise exposure. The long-term goal of this study is to establish and characterize reliable and efficient HHL measures in the lab using our noise-induced synaptopathy chinchilla model, and then to translate the animal results into a plausible clinical HHL diagnostic for humans

Non-Additive Interactions Unlock Small-Particle Mobility in Binary Colloidal Monolayers

We examine the organization and dynamics of binary colloidal monolayers composed of micron-scale silica particles interspersed with smaller-diameter silica particles that serve as minority component impurities. These binary monolayers are prepared at the surface of ionic liquid droplets over a range of size ratios ($\sigma=0.16-0.66$) and are studied with low-dose minimally perturbative scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The high resolution of SEM imaging provides direct tracking of all particle coordinates over time, enabling a complete description of the microscopic state. In these bidisperse size mixtures, particle interactions are non-additive because interfacial pinning to the droplet surface causes the equators of differently sized particles to lie in separate planes. By varying the size ratio we control the extent of non-additivity in order to achieve phase behavior inaccessible to strictly 2D systems. Across the range of size ratios we tune the system from a mobile small-particle phase ($\sigma<0.24$), to an interstitial solid ($0.240.33$). These distinct phase regimes are classified through measurements of hexagonal ordering of the large-particle host lattice and the lattice's capacity for small-particle transport. Altogether, we explain these structural and dynamic trends by considering the combined influence of interparticle interactions and the colloidal packing geometry. Our measurements are reproduced in molecular dynamics simulations of 2D non-additive hard disks, suggesting an efficient method for describing confined systems with reduced dimensionality representations.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, also see supplementary ancillary fil

Updating DL-Lite ontologies through first-order queries

In this paper we study instance-level update in DL-LiteA, the description logic underlying the OWL 2 QL standard. In particular we focus on formula-based approaches to ABox insertion and deletion. We show that DL-LiteA, which is well-known for enjoying first-order rewritability of query answering, enjoys a first-order rewritability property also for updates. That is, every update can be reformulated into a set of insertion and deletion instructions computable through a nonrecursive datalog program. Such a program is readily translatable into a first-order query over the ABox considered as a database, and hence into SQL. By exploiting this result, we implement an update component for DLLiteA-based systems and perform some experiments showing that the approach works in practice.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Recreation of the terminal events in physiological integrin activation.

Increased affinity of integrins for the extracellular matrix (activation) regulates cell adhesion and migration, extracellular matrix assembly, and mechanotransduction. Major uncertainties concern the sufficiency of talin for activation, whether conformational change without clustering leads to activation, and whether mechanical force is required for molecular extension. Here, we reconstructed physiological integrin activation in vitro and used cellular, biochemical, biophysical, and ultrastructural analyses to show that talin binding is sufficient to activate integrin alphaIIbbeta3. Furthermore, we synthesized nanodiscs, each bearing a single lipid-embedded integrin, and used them to show that talin activates unclustered integrins leading to molecular extension in the absence of force or other membrane proteins. Thus, we provide the first proof that talin binding is sufficient to activate and extend membrane-embedded integrin alphaIIbbeta3, thereby resolving numerous controversies and enabling molecular analysis of reconstructed integrin signaling

Charging-driven coarsening and melting of a colloidal nanoparticle monolayer at an ionic liquid-vacuum interface

We induce and investigate the coarsening and melting dynamics of an initially static nanoparticle colloidal monolayer at an ionic liquid-vacuum interface, driven by a focused, scanning electron beam. Coarsening occurs through grain interface migration and larger-scale motions such as grain rotations, often facilitated by sliding dislocations. The progressive decrease in area fraction that drives melting of the monolayer is explained using an electrowetting model whereby particles at the interface are solvated once their accumulating charge recruits sufficient counterions to subsume the particle. Subject to stochastic particle removal from the monolayer, melting is recapitulated in simulations with a Lennard-Jones potential. This new driving mechanism for colloidal systems, whose dynamical timescales we show can be controlled with the accelerating voltage, opens the possibility to manipulate particle interactions dynamically without need to vary particle intrinsic properties or surface treatments. Furthermore, the decrease in particle size availed by electron imaging presents opportunities to observe force and time scales in a lesser-explored regime intermediate between typical colloidal and molecular systems.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, also see supplementary ancilliary fil

Collaboration and teamwork: immersion and presence in an online learning environment

In the world of OTIS, an online Internet School for occupational therapists, students from four European countries were encouraged to work collaboratively through problem-based learning by interacting with each other in a virtual semi-immersive environment. This paper describes, often in their own words, the experience of European occupational therapy students working together across national and cultural boundaries. Collaboration and teamwork were facilitated exclusively through an online environment, since the students never met each other physically during the OTIS pilot course. The aim of the paper is to explore the observations that here was little interaction between students from different tutorial groups and virtual teamwork developed in each of the cross-cultural tutorial groups. Synchronous data from the students was captured during tutorial sessions and peer-booked meetings and analysed using the qualitative constructs of ‘immersion’, ‘presence’ and ‘reflection in learning’. The findings indicate that ‘immersion’ was experienced only to a certain extent. However, both ‘presence’ and shared presence were found by the students, within their tutorial groups, to help collaboration and teamwork. Other evidence suggests that communities of interest were established. Further study is proposed to support group work in an online learning environment. It is possible to conclude that collaborative systems can be designed, which encourage students to build trust and teamwork in a cross cultural online learning environment.</p

Highly Variable Acquisition Rates of \u3ci\u3eIxodes scapularis\u3c/i\u3e (Acari: Ixodidae) by Birds on an Atlantic Barrier Island

Acquisition of ticks by bird hosts is a central process in the transmission cycles of many tick-borne zoonoses, but tick recruitment by birds has received little direct study. We documented acquisition of Ixodes scapularis Say on birds at Fire Island, NY, by removing ticks from mist-netted birds, and recording the number of ticks on birds recaptured within 4 d of release. Eight bird species acquired at least 0.8 ticks bird−1 day−1 during the seasonal peak for at least one age class of I. scapularis. Gray Catbirds, Eastern Towhees, Common Yellowthroats, and Northern Waterthrushes collectively accounted for 83% of all tick acquisitions; and six individuals apportioned among Black-billed Cuckoo, Gray Catbird, Eastern Towhee, and Common Yellowthroat were simultaneously infested with both larvae and nymphs. Bird species with the highest acquisition rates were generally ground foragers, whereas birds that did not acquire ticks in our samples generally foraged above the ground. Tick acquisition by birds did not differ between deciduous and coniferous forests. Among the 15 bird species with the highest recruitment rates, acquisition of nymphs was not correlated with acquisition of larvae. Tick acquisition rates by individual bird species were not correlated with the reservoir competence of those species for Lyme borreliae. However, birds with high tick acquisition rates can contribute large numbers of infected ticks, and thus help maintain the enzootic cycle, even if their levels of reservoir competence are relatively low