In Caenorhabditis elegans, the recent advances in high-throughput quantitative analyses of natural genetic and phenotypic variation have led to a wealth of data on genotype phenotype relations. This data has resulted in the discovery of genes with major allelic effects and insights in the effect of natural genetic variation on a whole range of complex traits as well as how this variation is dis...

The dominance of proteins over nucleic acids in biological receptors and catalysts is generally explained by the presence of 20 amino acids as compared to the four bases found in DNA and RNA. But what if the chemical diversity of nucleic acids was increased through the addition of large numbers of protein-like side chains? Would the synthesis of highly functionalized DNA libraries enable the ev...

We study alternative types of Steiner points (to circumcenters) for computing quality guaranteed Delaunay triangulations in three dimensions. We show through experiments that their effective use results in smaller (in the number of tetrahedra) triangulations than the output of the traditional circumcenter refinement methods.

We present a very simple, cryptographic, Byzantine-agreement protocol that, with n = 3t + 1 players, t of which are malicious, halts in expected 9 rounds.

Lewbel and Pendakur (2008) develop the idea of implicit Marshallian demands. Implicit Marshallian demand systems allow the incorporation of both unobserved preference heterogeneity and complex Engel curves into consumer demand analysis, circumventing the standard problems associated with combining rationality with either (or both) unobserved heterogeneity and high rank in demand. They also deve...

The infinite matrices in Witten’s vertex are easy to diagonalize. It just requires some SL(2,R) lore plus a Watson-Sommerfeld transformation. We calculate the eigenvalues of all Neumann matrices for all scale dimensions s, both for matter and ghosts, including fractional s which we use to regulate the difficult s = 0 limit. We find that s = 1 eigenfunctions just acquire a p term, and x gets rep...

'What Manchester thinks today, London thinks tomorrow' (19th century saying) This issue is dedicated to Manchester and its celebration of 60 years of academic occupational medicine. As a Mancunian myself I am particularly proud to be writing this editorial and introducing you to a special issue that has seen the people of Manchester respond to another challenge. Whether it is industry, art, mus...