Neural Representations of Courtship Song in the Drosophila Brain

Acoustic communication in drosophilid flies is based on the production and perception of courtship songs, which facilitate mating. Despite decades of research on courtship songs and behavior in Drosophila, central auditory responses have remained uncharacterized. In this study, we report on intracellular recordings from central neurons that innervate the Drosophila antennal mechanosensory and motor center (AMMC), the first relay for auditory information in the fly brain. These neurons produce graded-potential (nonspiking) responses to sound; we compare recordings from AMMC neurons to extracellular recordings of the receptor neuron population [Johnston's organ neurons (JONs)]. We discover that, while steady-state response profiles for tonal and broadband stimuli are significantly transformed between the JON population in the antenna and AMMC neurons in the brain, transient responses to pulses present in natural stimuli (courtship song) are not. For pulse stimuli in particular, AMMC neurons simply low-pass filter the receptor population response, thus preserving low-frequency temporal features (such as the spacing of song pulses) for analysis by postsynaptic neurons. We also compare responses in two closely related Drosophila species, Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila simulans, and find that pulse song responses are largely similar, despite differences in the spectral content of their songs. Our recordings inform how downstream circuits may read out behaviorally relevant information from central neurons in the AMMC

Optimal fabrication processes for unidirectional metal-matrix composites: A computational simulation

A method is proposed for optimizing the fabrication process of unidirectional metal matrix composites. The temperature and pressure histories are optimized such that the residual microstresses of the composite at the end of the fabrication process are minimized and the material integrity throughout the process is ensured. The response of the composite during the fabrication is simulated based on a nonlinear micromechanics theory. The optimal fabrication problem is formulated and solved with non-linear programming. Application cases regarding the optimization of the fabrication cool-down phases of unidirectional ultra-high modulus graphite/copper and silicon carbide/titanium composites are presented

A growth walk model for estimating the canonical partition function of Interacting Self Avoiding Walk

We have explained in detail why the canonical partition function of Interacting Self Avoiding Walk (ISAW), is exactly equivalent to the configurational average of the weights associated with growth walks, such as the Interacting Growth Walk (IGW), if the average is taken over the entire genealogical tree of the walk. In this context, we have shown that it is not always possible to factor the the density of states out of the canonical partition function if the local growth rule is temperature-dependent. We have presented Monte Carlo results for IGWs on a diamond lattice in order to demonstrate that the actual set of IGW configurations available for study is temperature-dependent even though the weighted averages lead to the expected thermodynamic behavior of Interacting Self Avoiding Walk (ISAW).Comment: Revised version consisting of 12 pages (RevTeX manuscript, plus three .eps figure files); A few sentences in the second paragraph on Page 4 are rewritten so as to make the definition of the genealogical tree, ${\cal Z}_N$, clearer. Also, the second equality of Eq.(1) on Page 4, and its corresponding statement below have been remove