The Soviet Conceptual Framework for the Application of Military Power

Soviet Military doctrine consdmces that element of political strategy that concerns itself with those specific principles1 methods, and forms of preparing for and waging war, 1 While the Soviets have made no secret of the continuing theoretical elaboration of their military doctrine, there is an apparent lack of Western appreciation of the effect of Soviet military doctrine and its components upon practical problem solving. It is hoped that the following exposition will contribute to the eradication of this liability by examining the integrated nature of Soviet war planning

Information-based autonomous reconfiguration in systems of interacting DNA nanostructures

The dynamic interactions between complex molecular structures underlie a wide range of sophisticated behaviors in biological systems. In building artificial molecular machines out of DNA, an outstanding challenge is to develop mechanisms that can control the kinetics of interacting DNA nanostructures and that can compose the interactions together to carry out system-level functions. Here we show a mechanism of DNA tile displacement that follows the principles of toehold binding and branch migration similar to DNA strand displacement, but occurs at a larger scale between interacting DNA origami structures. Utilizing this mechanism, we show controlled reaction kinetics over five orders of magnitude and programmed cascades of reactions in multi-structure systems. Furthermore, we demonstrate the generality of tile displacement for occurring at any location in an array in any order, illustrated as a tic-tac-toe game. Our results suggest that tile displacement is a simple-yet-powerful mechanism that opens up the possibility for complex structural components in artificial molecular machines to undergo information-based reconfiguration in response to their environments

Triangular DNA Origami Tilings

DNA origami tilings provide methods for creating complex molecular patterns and shapes using flat DNA origami structures as building blocks. Square tiles have been developed to construct micrometer-scale arrays and to generate patterns using stochastic or deterministic strategies. Here we show triangular tiles as a complementary approach for enriching the design space of DNA tilings and for extending the shape of the self-assembled arrays from 2D to 3D. We introduce a computational approach for maximizing binding specificity in a fully symmetric tile design, with which we construct a 20-tile structure resembling a rhombic triacontahedron. We demonstrate controlled transition between 3D and 2D structures using simple methods including tile concentration, magnesium, and fold symmetry in tile edge design. Using these approaches, we construct 2D arrays with unbounded and designed sizes. The programmability of the edge design and the flexibility of the structure make the triangular DNA origami tile an ideal building block for complex self-assembly and reconfiguration in artificial molecular machines and fabricated nanodevices

Species diversity and dispersal traits alter biodiversity spillover in reconstructed grasslands

1.Grasslands are among the planet\u27s most imperiled ecosystems, largely because habitat conversion has caused extreme biodiversity loss. In response, managers and scientists aim to recreate grassland habitat, yet these reconstructed grasslands are often species poor and lose diversity through time. One potential mechanism to promote biodiversity in grasslands is spillover, or the targeted dispersal of species across habitat boundaries from areas of high to low biodiversity. There is potential for native species to disperse via spillover from high quality remnant habitat and establish in reconstructions, thus increasing biodiversity. However, plant dispersal and establishment are often context dependent, and the conditions that promote spillover in grasslands are largely unknown. 2.Here we examine the contexts under which spillover can enhance biodiversity in grasslands. Specifically, we investigate whether the species richness of reconstructions and individual plant dispersal traits alter spillover. To do so, we surveyed plant species richness at reconstructed grasslands of varying diversity adjacent to remnant grasslands. 3.We found that spillover from remnants supplies reconstructions with rare species that would otherwise not be present, but only in reconstructions with lower overall richness. Further, spillover was more likely to occur for species with wind dispersed seeds than species with unassisted seed dispersal. 4.Synthesis and applications. Our results show that the context dependency of both dispersal and establishment processes are critical to understanding when and where spillover can promote biodiversity in reconstructed systems. Understanding these contexts will help land managers leverage natural dispersal to mitigate biodiversity loss by anticipating which species are likely to arrive in reconstructions without assistance and when they are likely to establish

Engineering Molecular Self-assembly and Reconfiguration in DNA Nanostructures

Smart electronics have developed ubiquitously to assist people in everything from navigation to health monitoring. The rise of complex electronics relied on rational design of platforms to build ever larger and more complex circuit networks and for frameworks to test those electronics. Biochemical circuits have also seen dramatic advancement in the last two decades within the field of DNA nanotechnology. As with electronics, DNA nanotechnology applied rational design to DNA molecules to build ever more complex biochemical networks that, beyond current electronics, also retain a significant measure of biological compatibility and plasticity akin to many networks of biological origin. Well situated for promising applications in diagnostics and therapeutics, advancing DNA nanotechnology devices will also rely upon larger platforms and testing frameworks. In roughly the last decade, researchers have been building upon the invention of DNA origami, a technique allowing the robust construction of biomolecular nano-structures capable of precise nanometer positioning of proteins, nanoparticles, and other molecules. DNA circuits have computed on the nanostructures; DNA robots have moved nanoparticles, made choices, and have even sorted cargo on the surface of a nanostructure. The complexity of circuits and devices continues to rise. In this thesis, we will discuss our contributions to the field of DNA nanotechnology by developing design rules and systematic approaches to controlling nanostructure complex assembly. These rules and approaches allow for the construction of molecular structures with a tunable diversity, large systems approaching the size of bacteria yet retaining nanometer precision, and biological plasticity inspired dynamic systems for arbitrary reconfiguration. Using a DNA origami tile tailored for array formation with a high continuous surface area, we create a framework inspired from molecular stochasticity for programming DNA array formation and gaining control over diversity of global properties through simple local rules. Three general forms of planar networks, random loops, mazes, and trees, were manipulated on the micron scale upon the self-assembled DNA arrays. We demonstrate control of several properties of the networks, such as branching rules, growth directions, the proximity between adjacent networks, and size distributions. The large diversity, in principle, allows for a wide, but tunable, testing environment for molecular circuits. By further applying these principles to subunits of finite assemblies, variable components may be mixed with fixed components potentially opening additional applications in high throughput device or drug screening. Next we turned to expanding the platform size biochemical circuits may be built upon. While DNA origami allows nanometer precise placement, the size remains roughly below 0.05 um2. Toward making large arbitrarily complex structures with only a set of simple tiles, multi-stage self-assembly has been explored in theory and for small DNA tiles. None were successful experimentally with DNA origami. We developed a strategy for DNA origami: a simple rule set applied recursively in each stage of a hierarchical self-assembly process, and to significantly reduce costs, a constant set of unique DNA strands regardless of size. We also developed a software tool to automatically compile a designed surface pattern into experimental protocols. We experimentally demonstrated DNA origami arrays approaching the size of small bacteria, 0.5 um2, with several arbitrary patterns, each consisting of 8,704 specifically chosen pixel locations with nanometer precision, including a bacteria sized portrait of a bacteria. The large platform opens the door to more advanced molecular circuits for applications such as diagnostics. Finally we demonstrated control over the dynamics of DNA origami reconfiguration in tile arrays. In an approach we call DNA tile displacement, we showed that a DNA origami array may have tiles arbitrarily replaced by another tile, including tiles of another shape or surface pattern. We also demonstrated control over the kinetics of tile displacement and performed several general purpose reconfigurations of DNA nanostructures. Examples include sequential reconfiguration, competitive reconfiguration, cooperative reconfiguration, and finally the scalability of multi-step reconfiguration as demonstrated through a fully playable nano-scale biomolecular tic-tac-toe game. The major ramifications are a plasticity more common to biology than to electronics—molecular platforms with arbitrary patterning that can reconfigure an arbitrary part of the nanostructure in an arbitrary order based on environmental signals. In principle, such reconfiguration can allow advanced circuits with the capacity to adapt to environmental needs or heal damaged components.</p

A new neurosurgical tool incorporating differential geometry and cellular automata techniques

Using optical coherence imaging, it is possible to visualize seizure progression intraoperatively. However, it is difficult to pinpoint an exact epileptic focus. This is crucial in attempts to minimize the amount of resection necessary during surgical therapeutic interventions for epilepsy and is typically done approximately from visual inspection of optical coherence imaging stills. In this paper, we create an algorithm with the potential to pinpoint the source of a seizure from an optical coherence imaging still. To accomplish this, a grid is overlaid on optical coherence imaging stills. This then serves as a grid for a two-dimensional cellular automation. Each cell is associated with a Riemannian curvature tensor representing the curvature of the brain's surface in all directions for a cell. Cells which overlay portions of the image which show neurons that are firing are considered "depolarized"