Dynamics of Synthetic Membraneless Organelles in Microfluidic Droplets

Cells can form membraneless organelles by liquid–liquid phase separation. As these organelles are highly dynamic, it is crucial to understand the kinetics of these phase transitions. Here, we use droplet‐based microfluidics to mix reagents by chaotic advection and observe nucleation, growth, and coarsening in volumes comparable to cells (pL) and on timescales of seconds. We apply this platform to analyze the dynamics of synthetic organelles formed by the DEAD‐box ATPase Dhh1 and RNA, which are associated with the formation of processing bodies in yeast. We show that the timescale of phase separation decreases linearly as the volume of the compartment increases. Moreover, the synthetic organelles coarsen into one single droplet via gravity‐induced coalescence, which can be arrested by introducing a hydrogel matrix that mimics the cytoskeleton. This approach is an attractive platform to investigate the dynamics of compartmentalization in artificial cells.     

Nearly monotone spline approximation in

It is shown that the rate of -approximation of a non-decreasing function in , , by ``nearly non-decreasing" splines can be estimated in terms of the third classical modulus of smoothness (for uniformly spaced knots) and third Ditzian-Totik modulus (for Chebyshev knots), and that estimates in terms of higher moduli are impossible. It is known that these estimates are no longer true for ``purely" monotone spline approximation, and properties of intervals where the monotonicity restriction can be relaxed in order to achieve better approximation rate are investigated.

     

Reply to the Letter-to-the-editor written by J. J. Bevelacqua and S. M. J. Mortazavi on: “Radon survey in the kindergartens of three Visegrad countries (Hungary,Poland and Slovakia)” (DOI 10.1007/s10967-018-6374-3)

Journal of Radioanalytical and Nuclear Chemistry - An IAEA coordinated research project that began in 2012 and ended in 2016 was primarily dedicated to the compilation, evaluation and...     

Free-knot Splines Approximation of s-monotone Functions

Let I be a finite interval and r,sN. Given a set M, of functions defined on I, denote by ₊ ^s M the subset of all functions yM such that the s-difference ^s y() is nonnegative on I, >0. Further, denote by ₊ ^s W _p ^r , the class of functions x on I with the seminorm x ^(r)L _p 1, such that ^s x0, >0. Let M _n (h _k ):={ _i=1 ⁿ c _i h _k (w _i t– _i )c _i ,w _i , _i R, be a single hidden layer perceptron univariate model with n units in the hidden layer, and activation functions h _k (t)=t ₊ ^k , tR, kN ₀. We give two-sided estimates both of the best unconstrained approximation E( ₊ ^s W _p ^r ,M _n (h _k ))L _q , k=r–1,r, s=0,1,...,r+1, and of the best s-monotonicity preserving approximation E( ₊ ^s W _p ^r , ₊ ^s M _n (h _k ))L _q , k=r–1,r, s=0,1,...,r+1. The most significant results are contained in theorem 2.2.     

Kolmogorov and linear widths of weighted Sobolev-type classes on a finite interval

Let I be a finite interval, r N and p(t)=dist{t,I}, tI. Denote by W ^r _{p ,}, 0<<, the class of functions x on I with the seminorm x ^(r) p _Lp1. We obtain two-sided estimates of the Kolmogorov widths d _n(W^r _p, )_Lq and of the linear widths d _n(W^r _p,)_Lq ^lin     

PAT – a Reliable Path-Following Algorithm

This paper presents a new technique for the reliable computation of the -pseudospectrum defined by (A)={zC : _min(A–zI)} where _min is the smallest singular value. The proposed algorithm builds an orbit of adjacent equilateral triangles to capture the level curve (A)={zC : _min(A–zI)=} and uses a bisection procedure on specific triangle vertices to compute a numerical approximation to . The method is guaranteed to terminate, even in the presence of round-off errors.     

Thermal evolution and light curves of young bare strange stars

We study numerically the cooling of a young bare strange star and show that its thermal luminosity, mostly due to e(+)e(-) pair production from the quark surface, may be much higher than the Eddington limit. The mean energy of photons far from the strange star is approximately 10(2) keV or even more. This differs both qualitatively and quantitatively from the thermal emission from neutron stars and provides a definite observational signature for bare strange stars. It is shown that the energy gap of superconducting quark matter may be estimated from the light curves if it is in the range from approximately 0.5 MeV to a few MeV.