Evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity

Multicellular organisms can potentially show a large degree of diversity in reproductive strategies, as they could reproduce offspring with varying sizes and compositions compared to their unicellular ancestors. In reality, only a few of these reproductive strategies are prevalent. To understand why this could be the case, we develop a stage-structured population model to probe the evolutionary growth advantages of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellular organisms. The performance of reproductive strategies is evaluated by the growth rates of corresponding populations. We identify the optimal reproductive strategy, which leads to the largest growth rate for a population. Considering the effects of organism size and cellular interaction, we found that distinct reproductive strategies could perform uniquely or equally well under different conditions. Only binary-splitting reproductive strategies can be uniquely optimal. Our results show that organism size and cellular interaction can play crucial roles in shaping reproductive strategies in nascent multicellularity. Our model sheds light on understanding the mechanism driving the evolution of reproductive strategies in incipient multicellularity. Meanwhile, beyond multicellularity, our results imply a crucial factor in the evolution of reproductive strategies of unicellular species - organism size.

Fractal Properties of a Falling Particle Curtain in Air

The formation of a gravity-driven falling particle curtain is important for many problems, including solar tower particle receivers and setting the correct initial conditions for modeling shock interaction with multiphase media. One important characteristic of the curtain is the time history of its fractal dimension that characterizes the evolutionary growth of perturbations along the curtain's extent. For multiphase flows, fractal dimension can be used to help predict the types of instabilities that will occur within the flow. Our experiment aimed to establish the transient and steady-state fractal dimension of a dense particle curtain containing particles with a density of 1.4416 gm/cm3 and nominal diameter ranging from 30 to 50 microns. High-speed video of the curtain was captured and analyzed. This data from this experiment, besides providing insights into the relevant physical processes, will be used to validate numerical models for multiphase flows.

METHODOLOGY FOR THE FORMATION OF INDICATORS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT DECISIONS IN INDUSTRIAL ENTERPRISES

Topicality. Industry, as one of the components of the national economy of any country, plays one of the leading roles in it due to the fact that it is industry that creates a large part of the GDP. In addition, the leading role of industry lies in the fact that the degree of satisfaction of society's needs for high-quality products, ensuring the technical re-equipment of production and its intensification depends on its success. Formed difficult financial and economic conditions in the country's economy have not yet made it possible to achieve significant changes in the direction of stabilizing industrial production, improving the sectoral structure and its social orientation. For the production of various forms of ownership, functioning in market conditions, it is essential, on the one hand, to develop principles and norms of strategic management, and on the other, to their practical use in order to increase the efficiency of industrial production. It is the isolation of these problems that made it possible to determine the direction of research on the methodology for the formation of indicators of the effectiveness of management decisions at industrial enterprises. Aim and tasks. The aim of the work is to develop and substantiate a methodology for indicators of the effectiveness of management decisions at industrial enterprises. Achievement of the set research goal led to the formation and resolution of the following tasks: to study the system of main indicators of the enterprise's performance; to form a methodological basis for management decisions. Research results. The work developed and substantiated a system of main indicators of the enterprise's performance, which provides for the calculation of the following profitability indicators: production, sales, assets, equity, production assets, personnel, invested capital, etc. It has been established that efficiency is the sum of two factors: the difference between results and costs, which indicates a positive balance (i.e., the benefits that are brought by human efforts), and the ability of this difference to meet the real vital needs of society (people). It is shown that the sources of strategic ideas in centralized decision-making are a high level of management (top management) due to the fact that it is there that information is concentrated, as well as central services and heads of production departments. Conclusion. The obtained results of the study make it possible to systematize the information obtained by calculating the indicators of the efficiency of enterprises and to formalize the process of making managerial decisions; to improve the scientific support of the process of implementation of strategic changes at the enterprise by using the four-stage model of "gradual (evolutionary) growth of changes".

Unique scales preserve self-similar integrate-and-fire functionality of neuronal clusters

Brains demonstrate varying spatial scales of nested hierarchical clustering. Identifying the brain’s neuronal cluster size to be presented as nodes in a network computation is critical to both neuroscience and artificial intelligence, as these define the cognitive blocks capable of building intelligent computation. Experiments support various forms and sizes of neural clustering, from handfuls of dendrites to thousands of neurons, and hint at their behavior. Here, we use computational simulations with a brain-derived fMRI network to show that not only do brain networks remain structurally self-similar across scales but also neuron-like signal integration functionality (“integrate and fire”) is preserved at particular clustering scales. As such, we propose a coarse-graining of neuronal networks to ensemble-nodes, with multiple spikes making up its ensemble-spike and time re-scaling factor defining its ensemble-time step. This fractal-like spatiotemporal property, observed in both structure and function, permits strategic choice in bridging across experimental scales for computational modeling while also suggesting regulatory constraints on developmental and evolutionary “growth spurts” in brain size, as per punctuated equilibrium theories in evolutionary biology.

The Table of Grammar: Lqr't as Test Case

Biblical Hebrew lqr't is situated at the intersection of grammatical categories as a content item and a function word. The analysis of any given token is confounded by this diversity and its variously encoded denotations: the infinitive construct “to meet” and the polysemous prepositions, the directional TOWARD and the adversative AGAINST. The usage in Exodus 14:27 (wmsrym nsym lqr'tw) prompts a number of different analyses. Interpretations include: hoi de aigyptioi ephygon hypo to hydor (LXX); wmsry' -'rqyn lqwblh (Peshitta); fugientibusque Ægyptiis occurrerunt aquæ (Vulgate); “the Egyptians fled at its approach” (NJPS); “the Egyptians fled before it” (NRSV); and “the Egyptians were fleeing toward it” (NIV). This study examines lqr't by comparing a range of grammatical methods. These approaches centre evolutionary growth (philology), syntagmatic and paradigmatic features (structuralism), functional usage (eclectic linguistics), and cross-linguistic development (grammaticalisation) in order to explore questions of the origin, development, and usage of lqr't. The combined approaches help to situate and construct an archaeology of linguistic knowledge and a genealogy of philological change of language and text.

EPCO-09. STEREOTACTIC IMAGE-GUIDED EPIGENOME PROFILING REVEALS DIVERSE EVOLUTIONARY GROWTH ROUTES IN DIFFUSE GLIOMAS

Intratumoral heterogeneity is a hallmark of diffuse gliomas and inhibits effective prediction of clinical outcome. To devise a three-dimensional reconstruction of tumor lineage, we used neuronavigation to acquire eight to twelve image-guided and spatially separated stereotactic biopsy samples from 16 adult patients with a diffuse glioma, which we characterized using DNA methylation arrays. A total of 133 samples were obtained from regions with and without imaging abnormalities. Methylation profiles were analyzed to construct phylogenetic trees and subsequently projected on image-derived tumor maps. Lineage analysis of these evolutionary trees indicated that the sampled gliomas largely evolved stochastically, suggesting that critical tumor drivers were acquired early in time. These results were further validated using 102 multi-region samples from 24 independent patients. Patristic (evolutionary) and cartesian (spatial) distances between pairs of tumor samples from the same patient demonstrated strong correlations, suggesting that this information could be used to determine trajectories of tumor evolution. Evolutionary and spatial distance metrics were combined with histologically obtained and computationally quantified cellularity and proliferation rates to infer vectors representing the direction and magnitude of tumor growth. Using the resulting vector field we determined the minimum and maximum rates of change in order infer the tumor’s evolutionary trajectory. Using this metric we identified three distinct growth patterns: (1) tumors with a trajectory oriented towards the tumor core, (2) outward growing tumors with a linear trajectory pointing outside tumor boundaries, and (3) outward growing tumors with a branching trajectory directed outside tumor boundaries. Association of evolutionary growth patterns with survival demonstrated distinct impacts on outcome, suggesting that growth patterns are an important determinant of tumor aggressiveness. Taken together, although our analyses indicated that the observed glioma heterogeneity is small and largely stochastic, when spatially mapped these changes can be used to track tumor lineage and identify clinically relevant growth patterns.

The mesoeconomic Odyssey: Between Scylla of macroeconomics and Charybdis of microeconomics (On the book “Mesoeconomics: Elements of a new paradigm” edited by V. I. Mayevsky and S. G. Kirdina-Chandler)

The monograph “Mesoeconomics: Elements of a new paradigm”, prepared by the collective of Russian and foreign scientists, reveals the stages and genesis’s internal logic of one of the most promising areas of modern economic science — mesoeconomics. This article identifies the empirical, managerial, theoretical, and system-wide foundations for the need for mesoeconomics to arise as an independent discipline. The importance of the economy’s mesolevel for the transition to the trajectory of the sustainable evolutionary growth of Russia is emphasized. It is proposed to institutionalize the belonging of economic objects to the economy’s mesolevel, introducing the status of a “mesoeconomic organization” for them. It is a prerequisite for separating mesoeconomic formations from microeconomic objects and macroeconomic systems. This status allows introducing special tax regimes, facilitating access to state orders, while strengthening the social responsibility of the mesoeconomic organization to the state, business, economy, and society. The role of the Center for Evolutionary Economics of the Institute of Economics, RAS as the “assembly point” of modern research in the field of mesoeconomics is emphasized.

Survival and Growth in Innovative Technology Entrepreneurship: A Mixed-Methods Investigation

Innovative technology enterprises are recognized internationally as an important pillar in modern economic activity. This paper presents the findings from a research combining qualitative and quantitative methods, with the specific goal of identifying and verifying the characteristics that affect their survival and growth. Results from an in-depth longitudinal qualitative case study, that examines a mature and constantly growing (in its 10-year operation) technologically innovative enterprise, reveal that a number of characteristics pertaining to both the profile of the entrepreneurial team, as well as of the employees, significantly affect company survival and growth in this context. Moreover, we recognize and analyze three stages in its evolution: an initial “evolutionary” growth (infancy and youth), followed by a “revolutionary” (crisis), and a second “evolutionary” (maturity) stage. Our findings are further corroborated and enriched through a survey with N = 27 entrepreneurs in innovative technology startups. We contribute to existing literature on innovative technology entrepreneurship, by identifying characteristics that entrepreneurs and employees should bear, towards its survival and growth. Moreover, a practical application of the life cycle approach is described for technologically innovative companies. Finally, a specific prescription that can help guide future theoretical and practical endeavors in innovative technology entrepreneurship is also provided accordingly.