Knowing one's place: a free-energy approach to pattern regulation.

Understanding how organisms establish their form during embryogenesis and regeneration represents a major knowledge gap in biological pattern formation. It has been recently suggested that morphogenesis could be understood in terms of cellular information processing and the ability of cell groups to model shape. Here, we offer a proof of principle that self-assembly is an emergent property of cells that share a common (genetic and epigenetic) model of organismal form. This behaviour is formulated in terms of variational free-energy minimization-of the sort that has been used to explain action and perception in neuroscience. In brief, casting the minimization of thermodynamic free energy in terms of variational free energy allows one to interpret (the dynamics of) a system as inferring the causes of its inputs-and acting to resolve uncertainty about those causes. This novel perspective on the coordination of migration and differentiation of cells suggests an interpretation of genetic codes as parametrizing a generative model-predicting the signals sensed by cells in the target morphology-and epigenetic processes as the subsequent inversion of that model. This theoretical formulation may complement bottom-up strategies-that currently focus on molecular pathways-with (constructivist) top-down approaches that have proved themselves in neuroscience and cybernetics

Gluon density in nuclei

In this talk we present our detail study ( theory and numbers) [1] on the shadowing corrections to the gluon structure functions for nuclei. Starting from rather contraversial information on the nucleon structure function which is originated by the recent HERA data, we develop the Glauber approach for the gluon density in a nucleus based on Mueller formula [2] and estimate the value of the shadowing corrections in this case. Than we calculate the first corrections to the Glauber approach and show that these corrections are big. Based on this practical observation we suggest the new evolution equation which takes into account the shadowing corrections and solve it. We hope to convince you that the new evolution equation gives a good theoretical tool to treat the shadowing corrections for the gluons density in a nucleus and, therefore, it is able to provide the theoretically reliable initial conditions for the time evolution of the nucleus - nucleus cascade.Comment: Talk at RHIC'96, 43 pages, 23 figure

Refractory porcelain enamel passive-thermal-control coating for high-temperature superalloys

Study was conducted to match thermal expansion coefficients thereby preventing enamels from cracking. Report discusses various enamel coatings that are applied to two different high-temperature superalloys. Study may be of interest to manufacturers of chemical equipment, furnaces, and metal components intended for high-temperature applications

Coulomb Glasses: A Comparison Between Mean Field and Monte Carlo Results

Recently a local mean field theory for both eqilibrium and transport properties of the Coulomb glass was proposed [A. Amir et al., Phys. Rev. B 77, 165207 (2008); 80, 245214 (2009)]. We compare the predictions of this theory to the results of dynamic Monte Carlo simulations. In a thermal equilibrium state we compare the density of states and the occupation probabilities. We also study the transition rates between different states and find that the mean field rates underestimate a certain class of important transitions. We propose modified rates to be used in the mean field approach which take into account correlations at the minimal level in the sense that transitions are only to take place from an occupied to an empty site. We show that this modification accounts for most of the difference between the mean field and Monte Carlo rates. The linear response conductance is shown to exhibit the Efros-Shklovskii behaviour in both the mean field and Monte Carlo approaches, but the mean field method strongly underestimates the current at low temperatures. When using the modified rates better agreement is achieved