Interacting cells driving the evolution of multicellular life cycles

Author summary Multicellular organisms are ubiquitous. But how did the first multicellular organisms arise? It is typically argued that this occurred due to benefits coming from interactions between cells. One example of such interactions is the division of labour. For instance, colonial cyanobacteria delegate photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation to different cells within the colony. In this way, the colony gains a growth advantage over unicellular cyanobacteria. However, not all cell interactions favour multicellular life. Cheater cells residing in a colony without any contribution will outgrow other cells. Then, the growing burden of cheaters may eventually destroy the colony. Here, we ask what kinds of interactions promote the evolution of multicellularity? We investigated all interactions captured by pairwise games and for each of them, we look for the evolutionarily optimal life cycle: How big should the colony grow and how should it split into offspring cells or colonies? We found that multicellularity can evolve with interactions far beyond cooperation or division of labour scenarios. More surprisingly, most of the life cycles found fall into either of two categories: A parent colony splits into two multicellular parts, or it splits into multiple independent cells

On the Triality Theory for a Quartic Polynomial Optimization Problem

This paper presents a detailed proof of the triality theorem for a class of fourth-order polynomial optimization problems. The method is based on linear algebra but it solves an open problem on the double-min duality left in 2003. Results show that the triality theory holds strongly in a tri-duality form if the primal problem and its canonical dual have the same dimension; otherwise, both the canonical min-max duality and the double-max duality still hold strongly, but the double-min duality holds weakly in a symmetrical form. Four numerical examples are presented to illustrate that this theory can be used to identify not only the global minimum, but also the largest local minimum and local maximum.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure; J. Industrial and Management Optimization, 2011. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1104.297

Modelling of chromatic contrast for retrieval of wallpaper images

Colour remains one of the key factors in presenting an object and consequently has been widely applied in retrieval of images based on their visual contents. However, a colour appearance changes with the change of viewing surroundings, the phenomenon that has not been paid attention yet while performing colour-based image retrieval. To comprehend this effect, in this paper, a chromatic contrast model, CAMcc, is developed for the application of retrieval of colour intensive images, cementing the gap that most of existing colour models lack to fill by taking simultaneous colour contrast into account. Subsequently, the model is applied to the retrieval task on a collection of museum wallpapers of colour-rich images. In comparison with current popular colour models including CIECAM02, HSI, and RGB, with respect to both foreground and background colours, CAMcc appears to outperform the others with retrieved results being closer to query images. In addition, CAMcc focuses more on foreground colours, especially by maintaining the balance between both foreground and background colours, while the rest of existing models take on dominant colours that are perceived the most, usually background tones. Significantly, the contribution of the investigation lies in not only the improvement of the accuracy of colour-based image retrieval, but also the development of colour contrast model that warrants an important place in colour and computer vision theory, leading to deciphering the insight of this age-old topic of chromatic contrast in colour science

Description of Charged Particle Pseudorapidity Distributions in Pb+Pb Collisions with Tsallis Thermodynamics

The centrality dependence of pseudorapidity distributions for charged particles produced in Au+Au collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=130$ GeV and 200 GeV at RHIC, and in Pb+Pb collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=2.76$ TeV at LHC are investigated in the fireball model, assuming that the rapidity axis is populated with fireballs following one distribution function. We assume that the particles in the fireball fulfill the Tsallis distribution. The theoretical results are compared with the experimental measurements and a good agreement is found. Using these results, the pseudorapidity distributions of charged particles produced in Pb+Pb central collisions at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV and 10 TeV are predicted.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Low temperature terahertz spectroscopy of n-InSb through a magnetic field driven metal-insulator transition

We use fiber-coupled photoconductive emitters and detectors to perform terahertz (THz) spectroscopy of lightly-doped n-InSb directly in the cryogenic (1.5 K) bore of a high-field superconducting magnet. We measure transmission spectra from 0.1-1.1 THz as the sample is driven through a metal-insulator transition (MIT) by applied magnetic field. In the low-field metallic state, the data directly reveal the plasma edge and magneto-plasmon modes. With increasing field, a surprisingly broad band (0.3-0.8 THz) of low transmission appears at the onset of the MIT. This band subsequently collapses and evolves into the sharp 1s -> 2p- transition of electrons `frozen' onto isolated donors in the insulating state.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure