In pattern-forming developmental systems, cells commonly interpret graded input signals, known as morphogens. Morphogens often pattern tissues through cascades of sequential gene expression steps. Such a multi-tiered structure appears to constitute suboptimal use of the positional information provided by the input morphogen because noise is added at each tier. However, the conventional theory neglects the role of the format in which information is encoded. We argue that the relevant performance measure is not solely the amount of information carried by the morphogen, but the amount of information that can be accessed by the downstream network. We demonstrate that quantifying the information that is accessible to the system naturally explains the prevalence of multi-tiered network architectures as a consequence of the noise inherent to the control of gene expression. We support our argument with empirical observations from patterning along the major body axis of the fruit fly embryo.

In biological transport mechanisms such as insect respiration and renal filtration, fluid travels along a leaky channel allowing material exchange with systems exterior to the channel. The channels in these systems may undergo peristaltic pumping which is thought to enhance the material exchange. To date, little analytic work has been done to study the effect of pumping on material extraction across the channel walls. In this paper, we examine a fluid extraction model in which fluid flowing through a leaky channel is exchanged with fluid in a reservoir. The channel walls are allowed to contract and expand uniformly, simulating a pumping mechanism. In order to efficiently determine solutions of the model, we derive a formal power series solution for the Stokes equations in a finite channel with uniformly contracting/expanding permeable walls. This flow has been well studied in the case in which the normal velocity at the channel walls is proportional to the wall velocity. In contrast we do not assume flow that is proportional to the wall velocity, but flow that is driven by hydrostatic pressure, and we use Darcy’s law to close our system for normal wall velocity. We incorporate our flow solution into a model that tracks the material pressure exterior to the channel. We use this model to examine flux across the channel-reservoir barrier and demonstrate that pumping can either enhance or impede fluid extraction across channel walls. We find that associated with each set of physical flow and pumping parameters, there are optimal reservoir conditions that maximize the amount of material flowing from the channel into the reservoir.

We classify three fold isolated quotient Gorenstein singularity C3=G. These singularities are rigid, i.e. there is no non-trivial deformation, and we conjecture that they dene 4d N = 2 SCFTs which do not have a Coulomb branch.

In this paper, using the concept of attractive points of a nonlinear mapping, we obtain a strong convergence theorem of Halperns type [<i>Bull. Amer. Math. Soc</i>. <b>73</b> (1967), 957961] for a wide class of nonlinear mappings which contains nonexpansive mappings, nonspreading mappings and hybrid mappings in a Hilbert space. Using this result, we obtain well-known and new strong convergence theorems of Halperns type in a Hilbert space. In particular, we solve a problem posed by Kurokawa and Takahashi [<i>Nonlinear Anal</i>. <b>73</b> (2010, 15621568].

Abstract Let T: V W be a surjective real linear isometry between full real Hilbert C-modules over real C-algebras A and B, respectively. We show that the following conditions are equivalent:(a) T is a 2-isometry;(b) T is a complete isometry;(c) T preserves ternary products;(d) T preserves inner products;(e) T is a module map. When A and B are commutative, we give a full description of the structure of T.