Dynamic Labyrinthine Pattern in an Active Liquid Film

We report the generation of a dynamic labyrinthine pattern in an active alcohol film. A dynamic labyrinthine pattern is formed along the contact line of air/pentanol/aqueous three phases. The contact line shows a clear time-dependent change with regard to both perimeter and area of a domain. An autocorrelation analysis of time-development of the dynamics of the perimeter and area revealed a strong geometric correlation between neighboring patterns. The pattern showed autoregressive behavior. The behavior of the dynamic pattern is strikingly different from those of stationary labyrinthine patterns. The essential aspects of the observed dynamic pattern are reproduced by a diffusion-controlled geometric model

Self-Propelled Motion of a Droplet Induced by Marangoni-driven Spreading

We report the generation of directed self-propelled motion of a droplet of aniline oil with a velocity on the order of centimeters per second on an aqueous phase. It is found that, depending on the initial conditions, the droplet shows either circular or beeline motion in a circular Petri dish. The motion of a droplet depends on volume of the droplet and concentration of solution. The velocity decreases when volume of the droplet and concentration of solution increase. Such unique motion is discussed in terms of Marangoni-driven spreading under chemical nonequilibrium. The simulation reproduces the mode of motion in a circular Petri dish

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Contribution of convection to spatiotemporal stripe patterns formed by Ag and Sb coelectrodeposition.

Various spatiotemporal patterns of dark and light stripes are formed on the surface of an electrode put in an electrolyte solution in a Ag and Sb coelectrodeposition system. In this study, we investigate the effect of natural convection of the solution on these spatiotemporal patterns. When the electrode is placed vertically, natural convection generally emerges in the electrolyte solution in the vicinity of the electrode surface during electrodeposition and flows upward along the electrode surface. When convective flow along the electrode surface was eliminated by placing the electrode horizontally, the configuration of the one-directional traveling waves (anisotropic shape) changed to an isotropic shape. This indicates that the formation of an anisotropic shape for one-directional traveling waves is due to upward convective flow along the electrode surface