Multiphase smoothed-particle hydrodynamics

We adapt the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) technique to allow a multiphase fluid in which SPH particles of widely differing density may be freely intermixed. Applications include modelling of galaxy formation and cooling flows

Capacity of a Simple Intercellular Signal Transduction Channel

We model the ligand-receptor molecular communication channel with a discrete-time Markov model, and show how to obtain the capacity of this channel. We show that the capacity-achieving input distribution is iid; further, unusually for a channel with memory, we show that feedback does not increase the capacity of this channel.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. To appear in the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theor

A note on higher-dimensional magic matrices

We provide exact and asymptotic formulae for the number of unrestricted, respectively indecomposable, $d$-dimensional matrices where the sum of all matrix entries with one coordinate fixed equals 2.Comment: AmS-LaTeX, 9 page

Finite-State Channel Models for Signal Transduction in Neural Systems

Information theory provides powerful tools for understanding communication systems. This analysis can be applied to intercellular signal transduction, which is a means of chemical communication among cells and microbes. We discuss how to apply information-theoretic analysis to ligand-receptor systems, which form the signal carrier and receiver in intercellular signal transduction channels. We also discuss the applications of these results to neuroscience.Comment: Accepted for publication in 2016 IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Shanghai, Chin

Quark-gluon vertex dressing and meson masses beyond ladder-rainbow truncation

We include a generalized infinite class of quark-gluon vertex dressing diagrams in a study of how dynamics beyond the ladder-rainbow truncation influences the Bethe-Salpeter description of light quark pseudoscalar and vector mesons. The diagrammatic specification of the vertex is mapped into a corresponding specification of the Bethe-Salpeter kernel, which preserves chiral symmetry. This study adopts the algebraic format afforded by the simple interaction kernel used in previous work on this topic. The new feature of the present work is that in every diagram summed for the vertex and the corresponding Bethe-Salpeter kernel, each quark-gluon vertex is required to be the self-consistent vertex solution. We also adopt from previous work the effective accounting for the role of the explicitly non-Abelian three gluon coupling in a global manner through one parameter determined from recent lattice-QCD data for the vertex. With the more consistent vertex used here, the error in ladder-rainbow truncation for vector mesons is never more than 10% as the current quark mass is varied from the u/d region to the b region.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figure

Cytokines of Birds: Conserved Functions

Targeted disruptions of the mouse genes for cytokines, cytokine receptors, or components of cytokine signaling cascades convincingly revealed the important roles of these molecules in immunologic processes. Cytokines are used at present as drugs to fight chronic microbial infections and cancer in humans, and they are being evaluated as immune response modifiers to improve vaccines. Until recently, only a few avian cytokines have been characterized, and potential applications thus have remained limited to mammals. Classic approaches to identify cytokine genes in birds proved difficult because sequence conservation is generally low. As new technology and high throughput sequencing became available, this situation changed quickly. We review here recent work that led to the identification of genes for the avian homologs of interferon-a/b (IFNa/b) and IFN-g, various interleukins (IL), and several chemokines. From the initial data on the biochemical properties of these molecules, a picture is emerging that shows that avian and mammalian cytokines may perform similar tasks, although their primary structures in most cases are remarkably different