Fluctuation analysis with cell deaths

The classical Luria-Delbr\"uck model for fluctuation analysis is extended to the case where cells can either divide or die at the end of their generation time. This leads to a family of probability distributions generalizing the Luria-Delbr\"uck family, and depending on three parameters: the expected number of mutations, the relative fitness of normal cells compared to mutants, and the death probability of mutants. The probabilistic treatment is similar to that of the classical case; simulation and computing algorithms are provided. The estimation problem is discussed: if the death probability is known, the two other parameters can be reliably estimated. If the death probability is unknown, the model can be identified only for large samples

Birth, survival and death of languages by Monte Carlo simulation

Simulations of physicists for the competition between adult languages since 2003 are reviewed. How many languages are spoken by how many people? How many languages are contained in various language families? How do language similarities decay with geographical distance, and what effects do natural boundaries have? New simulations of bilinguality are given in an appendix.Comment: 24 pages review, draft for Comm.Comput.Phys., plus appendix on bilingualit

Random death process for the regularization of subdiffusive anomalous equations

Subdiffusive fractional equations are not structurally stable with respect to spatial perturbations to the anomalous exponent (Phys. Rev. E 85, 031132 (2012)). The question arises of applicability of these fractional equations to model real world phenomena. To rectify this problem we propose the inclusion of the random death process into the random walk scheme from which we arrive at the modified fractional master equation. We analyze the asymptotic behavior of this equation, both analytically and by Monte Carlo simulation, and show that this equation is structurally stable against spatial variations of anomalous exponent. Additionally, in the continuous and long time limit we arrived at an unusual advection-diffusion equation, where advection and diffusion coefficients depend on both the death rate and anomalous exponent. We apply the regularized fractional master equation to the problem of morphogen gradient formation.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Spatial birth-and-death processes in random environment

We consider birth-and-death processes of objects (animals) defined in ${\bf Z}^d$ having unit death rates and random birth rates. For animals with uniformly bounded diameter we establish conditions on the rate distribution under which the following holds for almost all realizations of the birth rates: (i) the process is ergodic with at worst power-law time mixing; (ii) the unique invariant measure has exponential decay of (spatial) correlations; (iii) there exists a perfect-simulation algorithm for the invariant measure. The results are obtained by first dominating the process by a backwards oriented percolation model, and then using a multiscale analysis due to Klein to establish conditions for the absence of percolation.Comment: 48 page