2,225 research outputs found
Cooperative protein transport in cellular organelles
Compartmentalization into biochemically distinct organelles constantly
exchanging material is one of the hallmarks of eukaryotic cells. In the most
naive picture of inter-organelle transport driven by concentration gradients,
concentration differences between organelles should relax. We determine the
conditions under which cooperative transport, i.e. based on molecular
recognition, allows for the existence and maintenance of distinct organelle
identities. Cooperative transport is also shown to control the flux of material
transiting through a compartmentalized system, dramatically increasing the
transit time under high incoming flux. By including chemical processing of the
transported species, we show that this property provides a strong functional
advantage to a system responsible for protein maturation and sorting.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figure
Macho Men: Male Body Image in 21st Century America
There is a myriad of research on women’s body image, and discourse on this subject has become virtually normal; however, research on male body image is sparse, and is not openly discussed. The current study looks at factors that influence men’s body image and body image pathology, such as body distortion, steroid use, eating disorders and depression. Prior literature has identified gender, sexuality, race, and media exposure as key factors that influence men\u27s perceptions and behaviors. This study found partial support that these factors play a role in men\u27s body image. Specifically, gender, media images of the ideal men’s body, and peer influence impacted men’s patterns of perceptions, behaviors, and treatment. There was an overall perception among respondents that men should be muscular, which was influenced by peer groups. This masculine ideal can lead to other behaviors, such as dietary supplement use, as well as eating disorders and body dysmorphic disorder. Yet, these negative behaviors are difficult to address when men are reluctant to seek treatment because doing so would violate masculine ideals. Based on these findings, more federal regulation and warning labels on dietary supplements is needed, as well as awareness among the general public. Regulating dietary supplements would acknowledge the danger they pose, and putting warning labels on them would provide awareness of potential risk factors that may influence men’s decision to consume them. When the general public is educated on the body image pathology that men face, then perhaps the stigma that surrounds male body image and the overall cultural value for men\u27s stoicism where men must not be anything less than macho would be minimized
Non-equilibrium dynamics of gene expression and the Jarzynski equality
In order to express specific genes at the right time, the transcription of
genes is regulated by the presence and absence of transcription factor
molecules. With transcription factor concentrations undergoing constant
changes, gene transcription takes place out of equilibrium. In this paper we
discuss a simple mapping between dynamic models of gene expression and
stochastic systems driven out of equilibrium. Using this mapping, results of
nonequilibrium statistical mechanics such as the Jarzynski equality and the
fluctuation theorem are demonstrated for gene expression dynamics. Applications
of this approach include the determination of regulatory interactions between
genes from experimental gene expression data
Living on the edge of chaos: minimally nonlinear models of genetic regulatory dynamics
Linearized catalytic reaction equations modeling e.g. the dynamics of genetic
regulatory networks under the constraint that expression levels, i.e. molecular
concentrations of nucleic material are positive, exhibit nontrivial dynamical
properties, which depend on the average connectivity of the reaction network.
In these systems the inflation of the edge of chaos and multi-stability have
been demonstrated to exist. The positivity constraint introduces a nonlinearity
which makes chaotic dynamics possible. Despite the simplicity of such minimally
nonlinear systems, their basic properties allow to understand fundamental
dynamical properties of complex biological reaction networks. We analyze the
Lyapunov spectrum, determine the probability to find stationary oscillating
solutions, demonstrate the effect of the nonlinearity on the effective in- and
out-degree of the active interaction network and study how the frequency
distributions of oscillatory modes of such system depend on the average
connectivity.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figure
Explanation in typology: Diachronic sources, functional motivations and the nature of the evidence
An Information-Centric Platform for Social- and Location-Aware IoT Applications in Smart Cities
Recent advances in Smart City infrastructures and the Internet of Things represent a significant opportunity to improve people's quality of life. Corresponding research often focuses on Cloud-centric network architectures where sensor devices transfer collected data to the Cloud for processing. However, the formidable traffic generated by countless IoT devices and the need for low-latency services raise the need to move away from centralized architectures and bring the computation closer to the data sources. To this end, this paper discusses SPF, a middleware solution that supports IoT application development, deployment, and management. SPF runs IoT services on capable devices located at the network edge and proposes an information-centric programming model that takes advantage of decentralized computation resources located in the proximity of application users and data sources. SPF also adopts Value-of-Information based methods to prioritize the transmission of essential information
Geometric Universality of Currents
We discuss a non-equilibrium statistical system on a graph or network.
Identical particles are injected, interact with each other, traverse, and leave
the graph in a stochastic manner described in terms of Poisson rates, possibly
dependent on time and instantaneous occupation numbers at the nodes of the
graph. We show that under the assumption of constancy of the relative rates,
the system demonstrates a profound statistical symmetry, resulting in geometric
universality of the statistics of the particle currents. This phenomenon
applies broadly to many man-made and natural open stochastic systems, such as
queuing of packages over the internet, transport of electrons and
quasi-particles in mesoscopic systems, and chains of reactions in bio-chemical
networks. We illustrate the utility of our general approach using two enabling
examples from the two latter disciplines.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure
Patterns and localized structures in bistable semiconductor resonators
We report experiments on spatial switching dynamics and steady state
structures of passive nonlinear semiconductor resonators of large Fresnel
number. Extended patterns and switching front dynamics are observed and
investigated. Evidence of localization of structures is given.Comment: 5 pages with 9 figure
Is the Bombali virus pathogenic in humans?
Motivation: The potential of the Bombali virus, a novel Ebolavirus, to cause disease in humans remains unknown. We have previously identified potential determinants of Ebolavirus pathogenicity in humans by analysing the amino acid positions that are differentially conserved (specificity 15 determining positions; SDPs) between human pathogenic Ebolaviruses and the non-pathogenic Reston virus. Here, we include the many Ebolavirus genome sequences that have since become available into our analysis and investigate the amino acid sequence of the Bombali virus proteins at the SDPs that discriminate between human pathogenic and non-human pathogenic Ebolaviruses. 20 Results: The use of 1408 Ebolavirus genomes (196 in the original analysis) resulted in a set of 166 SDPs (reduced from 180), 146 (88%) of which were retained from the original analysis. This indicates the robustness of our approach and refines the set of SDPs that distinguish human pathogenic Ebolaviruses from Reston virus. At SDPs, Bombali virus shared the majority of amino acids with the human pathogenic Ebolaviruses (63.25%). However, for two SDPs in VP24 (M136L, R139S) 25 that have been proposed to be critical for the lack of Reston virus human pathogenicity because they alter the VP24-karyopherin interaction, the Bombali virus amino acids match those of Reston virus. Thus, Bombali virus may not be pathogenic in humans. Supporting this, no Bombali virusassociated disease outbreaks have been reported, although Bombali virus was isolated from fruit bats cohabitating in close contact with humans, and anti-Ebolavirus antibodies that may indicate 30 contact with Bombali virus have been detected in humans
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