Here we present a network model in which self-sustaining recurrent activation emerges from simple cascades of activation. It is demonstrated that the ability to support such self-sustaining activation in our model depends on network connectivity as well as the ability to grow new links over time. Additionally, we explore how the probability of emergence of self-sustaining activity can be modula...

Molecular biology is an established interdisciplinary field within biology that deals fundamentally with the function of any nucleic acid in the cellular context. The molecular biology section in Chemistry Central Journal focusses on the genetically determined chemistry and biochemistry occuring in the cell. How can thousands of chemical reactions interact smoothly to maintain the life of cells...

We perform a numerical study of emergent spiral wave activity in a two-dimensional reaction-diffusion-mechanics medium with a regional inhomogeneity in active and passive mechanical properties. We find that self-sustaining spiral wave activity emerges for a wide range of mechanical parameters of the inhomogeneity via five mechanisms. We classify these mechanisms, relate them to parameters of th...

In response to everyday life stress, some individuals readily develop reproductive dysfunction (i.e., they are stress sensitive), whereas others are more stress resilient. When exposed to mild combined psychosocial plus metabolic stress (change in social environment plus reduced diet), female cynomolgus monkeys can be categorized as stress sensitive (SS; they rapidly become anovulatory in respo...

We analyze the dynamics of a reaction propagating along a two-dimensional medium of nonuniform composition. We consider the context of a self-sustaining reaction front that converts a monomer-initiator mixture into an inhomogeneous polymeric material. We model the system with one-step effective kinetics, assuming large activation energy. Using asymptotic methods, we find the analytical expressi...

BACKGROUND Manual slide review (MSR) is usually triggered by the results of automated hematology analyzers, but each laboratory has different criteria for MSR. This study was carried out to investigate the current status of MSR criteria of automated complete blood cell count (CBC) and white blood cell (WBC) differential results and to propose a basic guideline for MSR. METHODS Total 111 labor...

Given two genomic maps G and H represented by a sequence of n gene markers, a strip (syntenic block) is a sequence of distinct markers of length at least two which appear as subsequences in the input maps, either directly or in reversed and negated form. The problem Maximal Strip Recovery (MSR) is to find two subsequences G' and H' of G and H, respectively, such that the total length of disjoin...