Analysis of cranial neural crest migratory pathways in axolotl using cell markers and transplantation

We have examined the ability of normal and heterotopically transplanted neural crest cells to migrate along cranial neural crest pathways in the axolotl using focal DiI injections and in situ hybridization with the neural crest marker, AP-2. DiI labeling demonstrates that cranial neural crest cells migrate as distinct streams along prescribed pathways to populate the maxillary and mandibular processes of the first branchial arch, the hyoid arch and gill arches 1-4, following migratory pathways similar to those observed in other vertebrates. Another neural crest marker, the transcription factor AP-2, is expressed by premigratory neural crest cells within the neural folds and migrating neural crest cells en route to and within the branchial arches. Rotations of the cranial neural folds suggest that premigratory neural crest cells are not committed to a specific branchial arch fate, but can compensate when displaced short distances from their targets by migrating to a new target arch. In contrast, when cells are displaced far from their original location, they appear unable to respond appropriately to their new milieu such that they fail to migrate or appear to migrate randomly. When trunk neural folds are grafted heterotopically into the head, trunk neural crest cells migrate in a highly disorganized fashion and fail to follow normal cranial neural crest pathways. Importantly, we find incorporation of some trunk cells into branchial arch cartilage despite the random nature of their migration. This is the first demonstration that trunk neural crest cells can form cartilage when transplanted to the head. Our results indicate that, although cranial and trunk neural crest cells have inherent differences in ability to recognize migratory pathways, trunk neural crest can differentiate into cranial cartilage when given proper instructive cues

Conjugacy of one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata is undecidable

Two cellular automata are strongly conjugate if there exists a shift-commuting conjugacy between them. We prove that the following two sets of pairs $(F,G)$ of one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata over a full shift are recursively inseparable: (i) pairs where $F$ has strictly larger topological entropy than $G$, and (ii) pairs that are strongly conjugate and have zero topological entropy. Because there is no factor map from a lower entropy system to a higher entropy one, and there is no embedding of a higher entropy system into a lower entropy system, we also get as corollaries that the following decision problems are undecidable: Given two one-dimensional one-sided cellular automata $F$ and $G$ over a full shift: Are $F$ and $G$ conjugate? Is $F$ a factor of $G$? Is $F$ a subsystem of $G$? All of these are undecidable in both strong and weak variants (whether the homomorphism is required to commute with the shift or not, respectively). It also immediately follows that these results hold for one-dimensional two-sided cellular automata.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figures, accepted for SOFSEM 201

Context and prediction matter for the interpretation of social interactions across species

Predictions about others’ future actions are crucial during social interactions, in order to react optimally. Another way to assess such interactions is to define the social context of the situations explicitly and categorize them according to their affective content. Here we investigate how humans assess aggressive, playful and neutral interactions between members of three species: human children, dogs and macaques. We presented human participants with short video clips of real-life interactions of dyads of the three species and asked them either to categorize the context of the situation or to predict the outcome of the observed interaction. Participants performed above chance level in assessing social situations in humans, in dogs and in monkeys. How accurately participants predicted and categorized the situations depended both on the species and on the context. Contrary to our hypothesis, participants were not better at assessing aggressive situations than playful or neutral situations. Importantly, participants performed particularly poorly when assessing aggressive behaviour for dogs. Also, participants were not better at assessing social interactions of humans compared to those of other species. We discuss what mechanism humans use to assess social situations and to what extent this skill can also be found in other social species.Introduction Methods - Subjects - Stimuli - Procedure - Design and coding - Statistical analyses Results - Context decisions - Outcome decisions - Comparison between context and outcome decisions Discussio

A non-invasive method for link upgrade planning using coarse-grained measurements

A basic problem faced by network operators concerns the provisioning of bandwidth to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements. In the network core, the preferred solution is simply to overprovision link bandwidth. We propose a new approach to making link upgrade decisions based only on readily available coarse SNMP measurements

Do interactions increase or reduce the conductance of disordered electrons? It depends!

We investigate the influence of electron-electron interactions on the conductance of two-dimensional disordered spinless electrons. By using an efficient numerical method which is based on exact diagonalization in a truncated basis of Hartree-Fock states we are able to determine the exact low-energy properties of comparatively large systems in the diffusive as well as in the localized regimes. We find that weak interactions increase the d.c. conductance in the localized regime while they decrease the d.c. conductance in the diffusive regime. Strong interactions always decrease the conductance. We also study the localization of single-particle excitations close to the Fermi energy which turns out to be only weakly influenced by the interactions.Comment: final version as publsihed, 4 pages REVTEX, 6 EPS figures include

Schonende Bodenbearbeitung – Systemlösungen für Profis

Livro sobre Mobilização de Conservação - Soluções para profissionais (em alemão, está prevista a edição em inglês

Topological stability criteria for networking dynamical systems with Hermitian Jacobian

The central theme of complex systems research is to understand the emergent macroscopic properties of a system from the interplay of its microscopic constituents. The emergence of macroscopic properties is often intimately related to the structure of the microscopic interactions. Here, we present an analytical approach for deriving necessary conditions that an interaction network has to obey in order to support a given type of macroscopic behaviour. The approach is based on a graphical notation, which allows rewriting Jacobi's signature criterion in an interpretable form and which can be applied to many systems of symmetrically coupled units. The derived conditions pertain to structures on all scales, ranging from individual nodes to the interaction network as a whole. For the purpose of illustration, we consider the example of synchronization, specifically the (heterogeneous) Kuramoto model and an adaptive variant. The results complete and extend the previous analysis of Do et al. (2012 Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 194102)

Quantum and frustration effects on fluctuations of the inverse compressibility in two-dimensional Coulomb glasses

We consider interacting electrons in a two-dimensional quantum Coulomb glass and investigate by means of the Hartree-Fock approximation the combined effects of the electron-electron interaction and the transverse magnetic field on fluctuations of the inverse compressibility. Preceding systematic study of the system in the absence of the magnetic field identifies the source of the fluctuations, interplay of disorder and interaction, and effects of hopping. Revealed in sufficiently clean samples with strong interactions is an unusual right-biased distribution of the inverse compressibility, which is neither of the Gaussian nor of the Wigner-Dyson type. While in most cases weak magnetic fields tend to suppress fluctuations, in relatively clean samples with weak interactions fluctuations are found to grow with the magnetic field. This is attributed to the localization properties of the electron states, which may be measured by the participation ratio and the inverse participation number. It is also observed that at the frustration where the Fermi level is degenerate, localization or modulation of electrons is enhanced, raising fluctuations. Strong frustration in general suppresses effects of the interaction on the inverse compressibility and on the configuration of electrons.Comment: 15 pages, 18 figures, To appear in Phys. Rev.

Coulomb gap in a model with finite charge transfer energy

The Coulomb gap in a donor-acceptor model with finite charge transfer energy $\Delta$ describing the electronic system on the dielectric side of the metal-insulator transition is investigated by means of computer simulations on two- and three-dimensional finite samples with a random distribution of equal amounts of donor and acceptor sites. Rigorous relations reflecting the symmetry of the model presented with respect to the exchange of donors and acceptors are derived. In the immediate neighborhood of the Fermi energy $\mu$ the the density of one-electron excitations $g(\epsilon)$ is determined solely by finite size effects and $g(\epsilon)$ further away from $\mu$ is described by an asymmetric power law with a non-universal exponent, depending on the parameter $\Delta$.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.