@article{14938,
  abstract     = {High elevation headwater catchments are complex hydrological systems that seasonally buffer water and release it in the form of snow and ice melt, modulating downstream runoff regimes and water availability. In High Mountain Asia (HMA), where a wide range of climates from semi-arid to monsoonal exist, the importance of the cryospheric contributions to the water budget varies with the amount and seasonal distribution of precipitation. Losses due to evapotranspiration and sublimation are to date largely unquantified components of the water budget in such catchments, although they can be comparable in magnitude to glacier melt contributions to streamflow. &amp;#xD;Here, we simulate the hydrology of three high elevation headwater catchments in distinct climates in HMA over 10 years using an ecohydrological model geared towards high-mountain areas including snow and glaciers, forced with reanalysis data. &amp;#xD;Our results show that evapotranspiration and sublimation together are most important at the semi-arid site, Kyzylsu, on the northernmost slopes of the Pamir mountain range. Here, the evaporative loss amounts to 28% of the water throughput, which we define as the total water added to, or removed from the water balance within a year. In comparison, evaporative losses are 19% at the Central Himalayan site Langtang and 13% at the wettest site, 24K, on the Southeastern Tibetan Plateau. At the three sites, respectively, sublimation removes 15%, 13% and 6% of snowfall, while evapotranspiration removes the equivalent of 76%, 28% and 19% of rainfall. In absolute terms, and across a comparable elevation range, the highest ET flux is 413 mm yr-1 at 24K, while the highest sublimation flux is 91 mm yr-1 at Kyzylsu. During warm and dry years, glacier melt was found to only partially compensate for the annual supply deficit.},
  author       = {Fugger, Stefan and Shaw, Thomas and Jouberton, Achille and Miles, Evan and Buri, Pascal and McCarthy, Michael and Fyffe, Catriona Louise and Fatichi, Simone and Kneib, Marin and Molnar, Peter and Pellicciotti, Francesca},
  issn         = {1748-9326},
  journal      = {Environmental Research Letters},
  keywords     = {Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health, General Environmental Science, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment},
  publisher    = {IOP Publishing},
  title        = {{Hydrological regimes and evaporative flux partitioning at the climatic ends of High Mountain Asia}},
  doi          = {10.1088/1748-9326/ad25a0},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{14979,
  abstract     = {Poxviruses are among the largest double-stranded DNA viruses, with members such as variola virus, monkeypox virus and the vaccination strain vaccinia virus (VACV). Knowledge about the structural proteins that form the viral core has remained sparse. While major core proteins have been annotated via indirect experimental evidence, their structures have remained elusive and they could not be assigned to individual core features. Hence, which proteins constitute which layers of the core, such as the palisade layer and the inner core wall, has remained enigmatic. Here we show, using a multi-modal cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) approach in combination with AlphaFold molecular modeling, that trimers formed by the cleavage product of VACV protein A10 are the key component of the palisade layer. This allows us to place previously obtained descriptions of protein interactions within the core wall into perspective and to provide a detailed model of poxvirus core architecture. Importantly, we show that interactions within A10 trimers are likely generalizable over members of orthopox- and parapoxviruses.},
  author       = {Datler, Julia and Hansen, Jesse and Thader, Andreas and Schlögl, Alois and Bauer, Lukas W and Hodirnau, Victor-Valentin and Schur, Florian KM},
  issn         = {1545-9985},
  journal      = {Nature Structural & Molecular Biology},
  keywords     = {Molecular Biology, Structural Biology},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Multi-modal cryo-EM reveals trimers of protein A10 to form the palisade layer in poxvirus cores}},
  doi          = {10.1038/s41594-023-01201-6},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{14980,
  abstract     = {Precision sensing and manipulation of milligram-scale mechanical oscillators has attracted growing interest in the fields of table-top explorations of gravity and tests of quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales. Torsional oscillators present an opportunity in this regard due to their remarked isolation from environmental noise. For torsional motion, an effective employment of optical cavities to enhance optomechanical interactions—as already established for linear oscillators—so far faced certain challenges. Here, we propose a concept for sensing and manipulating torsional motion, where exclusively the torsional rotations of a pendulum are mapped onto the path length of a single two-mirror optical cavity. The concept inherently alleviates many limitations of previous approaches. A proof-of-principle experiment is conducted with a rigidly controlled pendulum to explore the sensing aspects of the concept and to identify practical limitations in a potential state-of-the art setup. Based on this study, we anticipate development of precision torque sensors utilizing torsional pendulums that can support sensitivities below 10−19Nm/√Hz, while the motion of the pendulums are dominated by quantum radiation pressure noise at sub-microwatts of incoming laser power. These developments will provide horizons for experiments at the interface of quantum mechanics and gravity.},
  author       = {Agafonova, Sofya and Mishra, Umang and Diorico, Fritz R and Hosten, Onur},
  issn         = {2643-1564},
  journal      = {Physical Review Research},
  number       = {1},
  publisher    = {American Physical Society},
  title        = {{Zigzag optical cavity for sensing and controlling torsional motion}},
  doi          = {10.1103/physrevresearch.6.013141},
  volume       = {6},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{14986,
  abstract     = {We prove a version of the tamely ramified geometric Langlands correspondence in positive characteristic for GLn(k). Let k be an algebraically closed field of characteristic p>n. Let X be a smooth projective curve over k with marked points, and fix a parabolic subgroup of GLn(k) at each marked point. We denote by Bunn,P the moduli stack of (quasi-)parabolic vector bundles on X, and by Locn,P the moduli stack of parabolic flat connections such that the residue is nilpotent with respect to the parabolic reduction at each marked point. We construct an equivalence between the bounded derived category Db(Qcoh(Loc0n,P)) of quasi-coherent sheaves on an open substack Loc0n,P⊂Locn,P, and the bounded derived category Db(D0Bunn,P-mod) of D0Bunn,P-modules, where D0Bunn,P is a localization of DBunn,P the sheaf of crystalline differential operators on Bunn,P. Thus we extend the work of Bezrukavnikov-Braverman to the tamely ramified case. We also prove a correspondence between flat connections on X with regular singularities and meromorphic Higgs bundles on the Frobenius twist X(1) of X with first order poles .},
  author       = {Shen, Shiyu},
  issn         = {1687-0247},
  journal      = {International Mathematics Research Notices},
  keywords     = {General Mathematics},
  publisher    = {Oxford University Press},
  title        = {{Tamely ramified geometric Langlands correspondence in positive characteristic}},
  doi          = {10.1093/imrn/rnae005},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15001,
  abstract     = {Self-replication of amyloid fibrils via secondary nucleation is an intriguing physicochemical phenomenon in which existing fibrils catalyze the formation of their own copies. The molecular events behind this fibril surface-mediated process remain largely inaccessible to current structural and imaging techniques. Using statistical mechanics, computer modeling, and chemical kinetics, we show that the catalytic structure of the fibril surface can be inferred from the aggregation behavior in the presence and absence of a fibril-binding inhibitor. We apply our approach to the case of Alzheimer’s A
 amyloid fibrils formed in the presence of proSP-C Brichos inhibitors. We find that self-replication of A
 fibrils occurs on small catalytic sites on the fibril surface, which are far apart from each other, and each of which can be covered by a single Brichos inhibitor.},
  author       = {Curk, Samo and Krausser, Johannes and Meisl, Georg and Frenkel, Daan and Linse, Sara and Michaels, Thomas C.T. and Knowles, Tuomas P.J. and Šarić, Anđela},
  issn         = {1091-6490},
  journal      = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  number       = {7},
  publisher    = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences},
  title        = {{Self-replication of Aβ42 aggregates occurs on small and isolated fibril sites}},
  doi          = {10.1073/pnas.2220075121},
  volume       = {121},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15002,
  abstract     = {The lattice Schwinger model, the discrete version of QED in 
1
+
1
 dimensions, is a well-studied test bench for lattice gauge theories. Here, we study the fractal properties of this model. We reveal the self-similarity of the ground state, which allows us to develop a recurrent procedure for finding the ground-state wave functions and predicting ground-state energies. We present the results of recurrently calculating ground-state wave functions using the fractal Ansatz and automized software package for fractal image processing. In certain parameter regimes, just a few terms are enough for our recurrent procedure to predict ground-state energies close to the exact ones for several hundreds of sites. Our findings pave the way to understanding the complexity of calculating many-body wave functions in terms of their fractal properties as well as finding new links between condensed matter and high-energy lattice models.},
  author       = {Petrova, Elena and Tiunov, Egor S. and Bañuls, Mari Carmen and Fedorov, Aleksey K.},
  issn         = {1079-7114},
  journal      = {Physical Review Letters},
  number       = {5},
  publisher    = {American Physical Society},
  title        = {{Fractal states of the Schwinger model}},
  doi          = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.132.050401},
  volume       = {132},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15003,
  abstract     = {Magnetic frustration allows to access novel and intriguing properties of magnetic systems and has been explored mainly in planar triangular-like arrays of magnetic ions. In this work, we describe the phosphide Ce6Ni6P17, where the Ce+3 ions accommodate in a body-centered cubic lattice of Ce6 regular octahedra. From measurements of magnetization, specific heat, and resistivity, we determine a rich phase diagram as a function of temperature and magnetic field in which different magnetic phases are found. Besides clear evidence of magnetic frustration is obtained from entropy analysis. At zero field, a second-order antiferromagnetic transition occurs at TN1≈1 K followed by a first-order transition at TN2≈0.45 K. With magnetic field new magnetic phases appear, including a weakly first-order transition which ends in a classical critical point and a third magnetic phase. We also study the exact solution of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model in an octahedron which allows us a qualitative understanding of the phase diagram and compare with the experimental results.},
  author       = {Franco, D. G. and Avalos, R. and Hafner, D. and Modic, Kimberly A and Prots, Yu and Stockert, O. and Hoser, A. and Moll, P. J.W. and Brando, M. and Aligia, A. A. and Geibel, C.},
  issn         = {2469-9969},
  journal      = {Physical Review B},
  number       = {5},
  publisher    = {American Physical Society},
  title        = {{Frustrated magnetism in octahedra-based Ce6 Ni6 P17}},
  doi          = {10.1103/PhysRevB.109.054405},
  volume       = {109},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15004,
  abstract     = {The impulsive limit (the “sudden approximation”) has been widely employed to describe the interaction between molecules and short, far-off-resonant laser pulses. This approximation assumes that the timescale of the laser-molecule interaction is significantly shorter than the internal rotational period of the molecule, resulting in the rotational motion being instantaneously “frozen” during the interaction. This simplified description of the laser-molecule interaction is incorporated in various theoretical models predicting rotational dynamics of molecules driven by short laser pulses. In this theoretical work, we develop an effective theory for ultrashort laser pulses by examining the full time-evolution operator and solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation at the operator level. Our findings reveal a critical angular momentum, lcrit, at which the impulsive limit breaks down. In other words, the validity of the sudden approximation depends not only on the pulse duration but also on its intensity, since the latter determines how many angular momentum states are populated. We explore both ultrashort multicycle (Gaussian) pulses and the somewhat less studied half-cycle pulses, which produce distinct effective potentials. We discuss the limitations of the impulsive limit and propose a method that rescales the effective matrix elements, enabling an improved and more accurate description of laser-molecule interactions.},
  author       = {Karle, Volker and Lemeshko, Mikhail},
  issn         = {2469-9934},
  journal      = {Physical Review A},
  number       = {2},
  publisher    = {American Physical Society},
  title        = {{Modeling laser pulses as δ kicks: Reevaluating the impulsive limit in molecular rotational dynamics}},
  doi          = {10.1103/PhysRevA.109.023101},
  volume       = {109},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{15006,
  abstract     = {Graphical games are a useful framework for modeling the interactions of (selfish) agents who are connected via an underlying topology and whose behaviors influence each other. They have wide applications ranging from computer science to economics and biology. Yet, even though an agent’s payoff only depends on the actions of their direct neighbors in graphical games, computing the Nash equilibria and making statements about the convergence time of "natural" local dynamics in particular can be highly challenging. In this work, we present a novel approach for classifying complexity of Nash equilibria in graphical games by establishing a connection to local graph algorithms, a subfield of distributed computing. In particular, we make the observation that the equilibria of graphical games are equivalent to locally verifiable labelings (LVL) in graphs; vertex labelings which are verifiable with constant-round local algorithms. This connection allows us to derive novel lower bounds on the convergence time to equilibrium of best-response dynamics in graphical games. Since we establish that distributed convergence can sometimes be provably slow, we also introduce and give bounds on an intuitive notion of "time-constrained" inefficiency of best responses. We exemplify how our results can be used in the implementation of mechanisms that ensure convergence of best responses to a Nash equilibrium. Our results thus also give insight into the convergence of strategy-proof algorithms for graphical games, which is still not well understood.},
  author       = {Hirvonen, Juho and Schmid, Laura and Chatterjee, Krishnendu and Schmid, Stefan},
  booktitle    = {27th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems},
  isbn         = {9783959773089},
  issn         = {18688969},
  location     = {Tokyo, Japan},
  publisher    = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  title        = {{On the convergence time in graphical games: A locality-sensitive approach}},
  doi          = {10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.11},
  volume       = {286},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{15007,
  abstract     = {Traditional blockchains grant the miner of a block full control not only over which transactions but also their order. This constitutes a major flaw discovered with the introduction of decentralized finance and allows miners to perform MEV attacks. In this paper, we address the issue of sandwich attacks by providing a construction that takes as input a blockchain protocol and outputs a new blockchain protocol with the same security but in which sandwich attacks are not profitable. Furthermore, our protocol is fully decentralized with no trusted third parties or heavy cryptography primitives and carries a linear increase in latency and minimum computation overhead.},
  author       = {Alpos, Orestis and Amores-Sesar, Ignacio and Cachin, Christian and Yeo, Michelle X},
  booktitle    = {27th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems},
  isbn         = {9783959773089},
  issn         = {1868-8969},
  location     = {Tokyo, Japan},
  publisher    = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  title        = {{Eating sandwiches: Modular and lightweight elimination of transaction reordering attacks}},
  doi          = {10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2023.12},
  volume       = {286},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{15008,
  abstract     = {Oblivious routing is a well-studied paradigm that uses static precomputed routing tables for selecting routing paths within a network. Existing oblivious routing schemes with polylogarithmic competitive ratio for general networks are tree-based, in the sense that routing is performed according to a convex combination of trees. However, this restriction to trees leads to a construction that has time quadratic in the size of the network and does not parallelize well. 
In this paper we study oblivious routing schemes based on electrical routing. In particular, we show that general networks with n vertices and m edges admit a routing scheme that has competitive ratio O(log² n) and consists of a convex combination of only O(√m) electrical routings. This immediately leads to an improved construction algorithm with time Õ(m^{3/2}) that can also be implemented in parallel with Õ(√m) depth.},
  author       = {Goranci, Gramoz and Henzinger, Monika H and Räcke, Harald and Sachdeva, Sushant and Sricharan, A. R.},
  booktitle    = {15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference},
  isbn         = {9783959773096},
  issn         = {1868-8969},
  location     = {Berkeley, CA, United States},
  publisher    = {Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik},
  title        = {{Electrical flows for polylogarithmic competitive oblivious routing}},
  doi          = {10.4230/LIPIcs.ITCS.2024.55},
  volume       = {287},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15009,
  abstract     = {Since the commercialization of brine shrimp (genus Artemia) in the 1950s, this lineage, and in particular the model species Artemia franciscana, has been the subject of extensive research. However, our understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying various aspects of their reproductive biology, including sex determination, is still lacking. This is partly due to the scarcity of genomic resources for Artemia species and crustaceans in general. Here, we present a chromosome-level genome assembly of A. franciscana (Kellogg 1906), from the Great Salt Lake, United States. The genome is 1 GB, and the majority of the genome (81%) is scaffolded into 21 linkage groups using a previously published high-density linkage map. We performed coverage and FST analyses using male and female genomic and transcriptomic reads to quantify the extent of differentiation between the Z and W chromosomes. Additionally, we quantified the expression levels in male and female heads and gonads and found further evidence for dosage compensation in this species.},
  author       = {Bett, Vincent K and Macon, Ariana and Vicoso, Beatriz and Elkrewi, Marwan N},
  issn         = {1759-6653},
  journal      = {Genome Biology and Evolution},
  number       = {1},
  publisher    = {Oxford University Press},
  title        = {{Chromosome-level assembly of Artemia franciscana sheds light on sex chromosome differentiation}},
  doi          = {10.1093/gbe/evae006},
  volume       = {16},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{15011,
  abstract     = {Pruning large language models (LLMs) from the BERT family has emerged as a standard compression benchmark, and several pruning methods have been proposed for this task. The recent “Sparsity May Cry” (SMC) benchmark put into question the validity of all existing methods, exhibiting a more complex setup where many known pruning methods appear to fail. We revisit the question of accurate BERT-pruning during fine-tuning on downstream datasets, and propose a set of general guidelines for successful pruning, even on the challenging SMC benchmark. First, we perform a cost-vs-benefits analysis of pruning model components, such as the embeddings and the classification head; second, we provide a simple-yet-general way of scaling training, sparsification and learning rate schedules relative to the desired target sparsity; finally, we investigate the importance of proper parametrization for Knowledge Distillation in the context of LLMs. Our simple insights lead to state-of-the-art results, both on classic BERT-pruning benchmarks, as well as on the SMC benchmark, showing that even classic gradual magnitude pruning (GMP) can yield competitive results, with the right approach.},
  author       = {Kurtic, Eldar and Hoefler, Torsten and Alistarh, Dan-Adrian},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research},
  issn         = {2640-3498},
  location     = {Hongkong, China},
  pages        = {542--553},
  publisher    = {ML Research Press},
  title        = {{How to prune your language model: Recovering accuracy on the "Sparsity May Cry" benchmark}},
  volume       = {234},
  year         = {2024},
}

@inproceedings{15012,
  abstract     = {We solve a problem of Dujmović and Wood (2007) by showing that a complete convex geometric graph on n vertices cannot be decomposed into fewer than n-1 star-forests, each consisting of noncrossing edges. This bound is clearly tight. We also discuss similar questions for abstract graphs.},
  author       = {Pach, János and Saghafian, Morteza and Schnider, Patrick},
  booktitle    = {31st International Symposium on Graph Drawing and Network Visualization},
  isbn         = {9783031492716},
  issn         = {16113349},
  location     = {Isola delle Femmine, Palermo, Italy},
  pages        = {339--346},
  publisher    = {Springer Nature},
  title        = {{Decomposition of geometric graphs into star-forests}},
  doi          = {10.1007/978-3-031-49272-3_23},
  volume       = {14465},
  year         = {2024},
}

@unpublished{15016,
  abstract     = {The development, evolution, and function of the vertebrate central nervous system (CNS) can be best studied using diverse model organisms. Amphibians, with their unique phylogenetic position at the transition between aquatic and terrestrial lifestyles, are valuable for understanding the origin and evolution of the tetrapod brain and spinal cord. Their metamorphic developmental transitions and unique regenerative abilities also facilitate the discovery of mechanisms for neural circuit remodeling and replacement. The genetic toolkit for amphibians, however, remains limited, with only a few species having sequenced genomes and a small number of transgenic lines available. In mammals, recombinant adeno-associated viral vectors (AAVs) have become a powerful alternative to genome modification for visualizing and perturbing the nervous system. AAVs are DNA viruses that enable neuronal transduction in both developing and adult animals with low toxicity and spatial, temporal, and cell-type specificity. However, AAVs have never been shown to transduce amphibian cells efficiently. To bridge this gap, we established a simple, scalable, and robust strategy to screen AAV serotypes in three distantly-related amphibian species: the frogs Xenopus laevis and Pelophylax bedriagae, and the salamander Pleurodeles waltl, in both developing larval tadpoles and post-metamorphic animals. For each species, we successfully identified at least two AAV serotypes capable of infecting the CNS; however, no pan-amphibian serotype was identified, indicating rapid evolution of AAV tropism. In addition, we developed an AAV-based strategy that targets isochronic cohorts of developing neurons – a critical tool for parsing neural circuit assembly. Finally, to enable visualization and manipulation of neural circuits, we identified AAV variants for retrograde tracing of neuronal projections in adult animals. Our findings expand the toolkit for amphibians to include AAVs, establish a generalizable workflow for AAV screening in non-canonical research organisms, generate testable hypotheses for the evolution of AAV tropism, and lay the foundation for modern cross-species comparisons of vertebrate CNS development, function, and evolution. },
  author       = {Jaeger, Eliza C.B. and Vijatovic, David and Deryckere, Astrid and Zorin, Nikol and Nguyen, Akemi L. and Ivanian, Georgiy and Woych, Jamie and Arnold, Rebecca C and Ortega Gurrola, Alonso and Shvartsman, Arik and Barbieri, Francesca and Toma, Florina-Alexandra and Gorbsky, Gary J. and Horb, Marko E. and Cline, Hollis T. and Shay, Timothy F. and Kelley, Darcy B. and Yamaguchi, Ayako and Shein-Idelson, Mark and Tosches, Maria Antonietta and Sweeney, Lora Beatrice Jaeger},
  booktitle    = {bioRxiv},
  title        = {{Adeno-associated viral tools to trace neural development and connectivity across amphibians}},
  doi          = {10.1101/2024.02.15.580289},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15018,
  abstract     = {The epitaxial growth of a strained Ge layer, which is a promising candidate for the channel material of a hole spin qubit, has been demonstrated on 300 mm Si wafers using commercially available Si0.3Ge0.7 strain relaxed buffer (SRB) layers. The assessment of the layer and the interface qualities for a buried strained Ge layer embedded in Si0.3Ge0.7 layers is reported. The XRD reciprocal space mapping confirmed that the reduction of the growth temperature enables the 2-dimensional growth of the Ge layer fully strained with respect to the Si0.3Ge0.7. Nevertheless, dislocations at the top and/or bottom interface of the Ge layer were observed by means of electron channeling contrast imaging, suggesting the importance of the careful dislocation assessment. The interface abruptness does not depend on the selection of the precursor gases, but it is strongly influenced by the growth temperature which affects the coverage of the surface H-passivation. The mobility of 2.7 × 105 cm2/Vs is promising, while the low percolation density of 3 × 1010 /cm2 measured with a Hall-bar device at 7 K illustrates the high quality of the heterostructure thanks to the high Si0.3Ge0.7 SRB quality.},
  author       = {Shimura, Yosuke and Godfrin, Clement and Hikavyy, Andriy and Li, Roy and Aguilera Servin, Juan L and Katsaros, Georgios and Favia, Paola and Han, Han and Wan, Danny and de Greve, Kristiaan and Loo, Roger},
  issn         = {1369-8001},
  journal      = {Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing},
  keywords     = {Mechanical Engineering, Mechanics of Materials, Condensed Matter Physics, General Materials Science},
  number       = {5},
  publisher    = {Elsevier},
  title        = {{Compressively strained epitaxial Ge layers for quantum computing applications}},
  doi          = {10.1016/j.mssp.2024.108231},
  volume       = {174},
  year         = {2024},
}

@phdthesis{15020,
  abstract     = {This thesis consists of four distinct pieces of work within theoretical biology, with two themes in common: the concept of optimization in biological systems, and the use of information-theoretic tools to quantify biological stochasticity and statistical uncertainty.
Chapter 2 develops a statistical framework for studying biological systems which we believe to be optimized for a particular utility function, such as retinal neurons conveying information about visual stimuli. We formalize such beliefs as maximum-entropy Bayesian priors, constrained by the expected utility. We explore how such priors aid inference of system parameters with limited data and enable optimality hypothesis testing: is the utility higher than by chance?
Chapter 3 examines the ultimate biological optimization process: evolution by natural selection. As some individuals survive and reproduce more successfully than others, populations evolve towards fitter genotypes and phenotypes. We formalize this as accumulation of genetic information, and use population genetics theory to study how much such information can be accumulated per generation and maintained in the face of random mutation and genetic drift. We identify the population size and fitness variance as the key quantities that control information accumulation and maintenance.
Chapter 4 reuses the concept of genetic information from Chapter 3, but from a different perspective: we ask how much genetic information organisms actually need, in particular in the context of gene regulation. For example, how much information is needed to bind transcription factors at correct locations within the genome? Population genetics provides us with a refined answer: with an increasing population size, populations achieve higher fitness by maintaining more genetic information. Moreover, regulatory parameters experience selection pressure to optimize the fitness-information trade-off, i.e. minimize the information needed for a given fitness. This provides an evolutionary derivation of the optimization priors introduced in Chapter 2.
Chapter 5 proves an upper bound on mutual information between a signal and a communication channel output (such as neural activity). Mutual information is an important utility measure for biological systems, but its practical use can be difficult due to the large dimensionality of many biological channels. Sometimes, a lower bound on mutual information is computed by replacing the high-dimensional channel outputs with decodes (signal estimates). Our result provides a corresponding upper bound, provided that the decodes are the maximum posterior estimates of the signal.},
  author       = {Hledik, Michal},
  issn         = {2663 - 337X},
  keywords     = {Theoretical biology, Optimality, Evolution, Information},
  pages        = {158},
  publisher    = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria},
  title        = {{Genetic information and biological optimization}},
  doi          = {10.15479/at:ista:15020},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15024,
  abstract     = {Electrostatic correlations between ions dissolved in water are known to impact their transport properties in numerous ways, from conductivity to ion selectivity. The effects of these correlations on the solvent itself remain, however, much less clear. In particular, the addition of salt has been consistently reported to affect the solution’s viscosity, but most modeling attempts fail to reproduce experimental data even at moderate salt concentrations. Here, we use an approach based on stochastic density functional theory, which accurately captures charge fluctuations and correlations. We derive a simple analytical expression for the viscosity correction in concentrated electrolytes, by directly linking it to the liquid’s structure factor. Our prediction compares quantitatively to experimental data at all temperatures and all salt concentrations up to the saturation limit. This universal link between the microscopic structure and viscosity allows us to shed light on the nanoscale dynamics of water and ions under highly concentrated and correlated conditions.},
  author       = {Robin, Paul},
  issn         = {1089-7690},
  journal      = {Journal of Chemical Physics},
  number       = {6},
  publisher    = {AIP Publishing},
  title        = {{Correlation-induced viscous dissipation in concentrated electrolytes}},
  doi          = {10.1063/5.0188215},
  volume       = {160},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15025,
  abstract     = {We consider quadratic forms of deterministic matrices A evaluated at the random eigenvectors of a large N×N GOE or GUE matrix, or equivalently evaluated at the columns of a Haar-orthogonal or Haar-unitary random matrix. We prove that, as long as the deterministic matrix has rank much smaller than √N, the distributions of the extrema of these quadratic forms are asymptotically the same as if the eigenvectors were independent Gaussians. This reduces the problem to Gaussian computations, which we carry out in several cases to illustrate our result, finding Gumbel or Weibull limiting distributions depending on the signature of A. Our result also naturally applies to the eigenvectors of any invariant ensemble.},
  author       = {Erdös, László and McKenna, Benjamin},
  issn         = {1050-5164},
  journal      = {Annals of Applied Probability},
  number       = {1B},
  pages        = {1623--1662},
  publisher    = {Institute of Mathematical Statistics},
  title        = {{Extremal statistics of quadratic forms of GOE/GUE eigenvectors}},
  doi          = {10.1214/23-AAP2000},
  volume       = {34},
  year         = {2024},
}

@article{15033,
  abstract     = {The GNOM (GN) Guanine nucleotide Exchange Factor for ARF small GTPases (ARF-GEF) is among the best studied trafficking regulators in plants, playing crucial and unique developmental roles in patterning and polarity. The current models place GN at the Golgi apparatus (GA), where it mediates secretion/recycling, and at the plasma membrane (PM) presumably contributing to clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME). The mechanistic basis of the developmental function of GN, distinct from the other ARF-GEFs including its closest homologue GNOM-LIKE1 (GNL1), remains elusive. Insights from this study largely extend the current notions of GN function. We show that GN, but not GNL1, localizes to the cell periphery at long-lived structures distinct from clathrin-coated pits, while CME and secretion proceed normally in <jats:italic>gn</jats:italic> knockouts. The functional GN mutant variant GN<jats:sup>fewerroots</jats:sup>, absent from the GA, suggests that the cell periphery is the major site of GN action responsible for its developmental function. Following inhibition by Brefeldin A, GN, but not GNL1, relocates to the PM likely on exocytic vesicles, suggesting selective molecular associations en route to the cell periphery. A study of GN-GNL1 chimeric ARF-GEFs indicates that all GN domains contribute to the specific GN function in a partially redundant manner. Together, this study offers significant steps toward the elucidation of the mechanism underlying unique cellular and development functions of GNOM.},
  author       = {Adamowski, Maciek and Matijevic, Ivana and Friml, Jiří},
  issn         = {2050-084X},
  journal      = {eLife},
  keywords     = {General Immunology and Microbiology, General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Medicine, General Neuroscience},
  publisher    = {eLife Sciences Publications},
  title        = {{Developmental patterning function of GNOM ARF-GEF mediated from the cell periphery}},
  doi          = {10.7554/elife.68993},
  volume       = {13},
  year         = {2024},
}

