In this work, we examine how volume exclusion caused by regions of high chromatin density might influence the time required for proteins to find specific DNA binding sites. The spatial variation of chromatin density within mouse olfactory sensory neurons is determined from soft X-ray tomography reconstructions of five nuclei. We show that there is a division of the nuclear space into regions of...

The Poggendorff illusion refers to the phenomenon that the human brain misperceives a diagonal line as being apparently misaligned once the diagonal line is interrupted by two parallel edges, and the size of illusion is negatively correlated with the angle of interception of the oblique, i.e. the sharper the oblique angle, the larger the illusion. This optical illusion can be produced by both r...

The words that children learn can be characterized as a semantic network, with links connecting related words. Recent analyses have shown these networks to have smallworld structure, with a few highly-connected hub words facilitating short paths between otherwise distant words. This structure contributes to network robustness, and differences in structure can predict differences in language lea...