Self-Replicating Strands that Self-Assemble into User-Specified Meshes

It has been argued that a central objective of nanotechnology is to make products inexpensively, and that self-replication is an effective approach to very low-cost manufacturing. The research presented here is intended to be a step towards this vision. In previous work (JohnnyVon 1.0), we simulated machines that bonded together to form self-replicating strands. There were two types of machines (called types 0 and 1), which enabled strands to encode arbitrary bit strings. However, the information encoded in the strands had no functional role in the simulation. The information was replicated without being interpreted, which was a significant limitation for potential manufacturing applications. In the current work (JohnnyVon 2.0), the information in a strand is interpreted as instructions for assembling a polygonal mesh. There are now four types of machines and the information encoded in a strand determines how it folds. A strand may be in an unfolded state, in which the bonds are straight (although they flex slightly due to virtual forces acting on the machines), or in a folded state, in which the bond angles depend on the types of machines. By choosing the sequence of machine types in a strand, the user can specify a variety of polygonal shapes. A simulation typically begins with an initial unfolded seed strand in a soup of unbonded machines. The seed strand replicates by bonding with free machines in the soup. The child strands fold into the encoded polygonal shape, and then the polygons drift together and bond to form a mesh. We demonstrate that a variety of polygonal meshes can be manufactured in the simulation, by simply changing the sequence of machine types in the seed

Bouncing Cosmologies: Progress and Problems

We review the status of bouncing cosmologies as alternatives to cosmological inflation for providing a description of the very early universe, and a source for the cosmological perturbations which are observed today. We focus on the motivation for considering bouncing cosmologies, the origin of fluctuations in these models, and the challenges which various implementations face.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures; references adde

A Falsification View of Success Typing

Dynamic languages are praised for their flexibility and expressiveness, but static analysis often yields many false positives and verification is cumbersome for lack of structure. Hence, unit testing is the prevalent incomplete method for validating programs in such languages. Falsification is an alternative approach that uncovers definite errors in programs. A falsifier computes a set of inputs that definitely crash a program. Success typing is a type-based approach to document programs in dynamic languages. We demonstrate that success typing is, in fact, an instance of falsification by mapping success (input) types into suitable logic formulae. Output types are represented by recursive types. We prove the correctness of our mapping (which establishes that success typing is falsification) and we report some experiences with a prototype implementation.Comment: extended versio

The coarsening of folds in hanging drapes

We consider the elastic energy of a hanging drape -- a thin elastic sheet, pulled down by the force of gravity, with fine-scale folding at the top that achieves approximately uniform confinement. This example of energy-driven pattern formation in a thin elastic sheet is of particular interest because the length scale of folding varies with height. We focus on how the minimum elastic energy depends on the physical parameters. As the sheet thickness vanishes, the limiting energy is due to the gravitational force and is relatively easy to understand. Our main accomplishment is to identify the "scaling law" of the correction due to positive thickness. We do this by (i) proving an upper bound, by considering the energies of several constructions and taking the best; (ii) proving an ansatz-free lower bound, which agrees with the upper bound up to a parameter-independent prefactor. The coarsening of folds in hanging drapes has also been considered in the recent physics literature, using a self-similar construction whose basic cell has been called a "wrinklon." Our results complement and extend that work, by showing that self-similar coarsening achieves the optimal scaling law in a certain parameter regime, and by showing that other constructions (involving lateral spreading of the sheet) do better in other regions of parameter space. Our analysis uses a geometrically linear F\"{o}ppl-von K\'{a}rm\'{a}n model for the elastic energy, and is restricted to the case when Poisson's ratio is zero.Comment: 34 page

Self-Replication and Self-Assembly for Manufacturing

It has been argued that a central objective of nanotechnology is to make products inexpensively, and that self-replication is an effective approach to very low-cost manufacturing. The research presented here is intended to be a step towards this vision. We describe a computational simulation of nanoscale machines floating in a virtual liquid. The machines can bond together to form strands (chains) that self-replicate and self-assemble into user-specified meshes. There are four types of machines and the sequence of machine types in a strand determines the shape of the mesh they will build. A strand may be in an unfolded state, in which the bonds are straight, or in a folded state, in which the bond angles depend on the types of machines. By choosing the sequence of machine types in a strand, the user can specify a variety of polygonal shapes. A simulation typically begins with an initial unfolded seed strand in a soup of unbonded machines. The seed strand replicates by bonding with free machines in the soup. The child strands fold into the encoded polygonal shape, and then the polygons drift together and bond to form a mesh. We demonstrate that a variety of polygonal meshes can be manufactured in the simulation, by simply changing the sequence of machine types in the seed

Large deviations and ensembles of trajectories in stochastic models

We consider ensembles of trajectories associated with large deviations of time-integrated quantities in stochastic models. Motivated by proposals that these ensembles are relevant for physical processes such as shearing and glassy relaxation, we show how they can be generated directly using auxiliary stochastic processes. We illustrate our results using the Glauber-Ising chain, for which biased ensembles of trajectories can exhibit ferromagnetic ordering. We discuss the relation between such biased ensembles and quantum phase transitions.Comment: 14 pages, 1 fi