The Siberian wild apple, Malus baccata (L.) Borkh., is an additional contributor to the genomes of cultivated European and Chinese apples

It is crucial to understand domestication to unravel the evolutionary processes that shape the divergence of populations. Differences in life-history traits have probably led to marked differences in the mode and speed of evolution between trees and annuals, particularly the extent of crop-wild gene flow during domestication. Apple is an iconic tree and major fruit crop grown worldwide. The contribution of wild apple species to the genetic makeup of the cultivated apple genome remains a topic of intense investigations. We used population genomics in combination with SNPs to investigate the contributions of the two known wild apple relatives, Malus sylvestris and Malus sieversii, and a supposed contributor, Malus baccata, to European and Chinese rootstock and dessert genomes, with a focus on the extent of wild-crop gene flow during apple domestication. We showed that the European dessert and rootstock apples form a specific gene pool, whereas the Chinese dessert and rootstock apples were a mixture of three wild gene pools. Coalescent-based inferences and gene flow estimates indicated that M. baccata is an additional contributor to the genome of both European and Chinese cultivated apples through wild-to-crop introgressions. We also confirmed previous results on the contribution of M. sylvestris to the cultivated apple genome, and provided insights into the origin of the apple rootstock. This study further demonstrates the role of gene flow during apple domestication, as seen in other woody perennials, and show that domestication of the apple tree involved several wild apple species.

Prospects of Digital Currency in India - A Way Forward

The era of information and communication technologies has created many opportunities in every aspect. The field that has been benefitted the most from these recent developments in the financial and business sector. The scope and speed of evolution in technology, customer perception, and wide acceptance indicate that these technologies and disruptions will transform the finance and banking sector as we know it, providing both opportunities and challenges to financial institutions. Systems that have traditionally been used for savings, investments are not well suited given the scale and agility required for the digital age. Keeping in mind this array, financial institutions are responding with new digitization and innovation initiatives, using analytics, cloud technologies, and other new alternatives to respond to customer expectations. In a country like India, with a large economy and a despotic regime, the country shows decent economic growth even after having a complex system of arbitrary rules and regulations. Amidst all the growth, there is a huge scope of transforming the investment and lending patterns, with the help of technologies becoming more customer-centric and efficient. So, the technologies like blockchain are looking to drive innovation across various industries in India. In the era of blockchain, cryptocurrencies are the main part of it. They are said to be the most disruptive technologies in this area. This paper is an attempt to find the future of digital currency in India from the international experience.

Evolutionary Dynamics of Treatment-Induced Resistance in Cancer Informs Understanding of Rapid Evolution in Natural Systems

Rapid evolution is ubiquitous in nature. We briefly review some of this quite broadly, particularly in the context of response to anthropogenic disturbances. Nowhere is this more evident, replicated and accessible to study than in cancer. Curiously cancer has been late - relative to fisheries, antibiotic resistance, pest management and evolution in human dominated landscapes - in recognizing the need for evolutionarily informed management strategies. The speed of evolution matters. Here, we employ game-theoretic modeling to compare time to progression with continuous maximum tolerable dose to that of adaptive therapy where treatment is discontinued when the population of cancer cells gets below half of its initial size and re-administered when the cancer cells recover, forming cycles with and without treatment. We show that the success of adaptive therapy relative to continuous maximum tolerable dose therapy is much higher if the population of cancer cells is defined by two cell types (sensitive vs. resistant in a polymorphic population). Additionally, the relative increase in time to progression increases with the speed of evolution. These results hold with and without a cost of resistance in cancer cells. On the other hand, treatment-induced resistance can be modeled as a quantitative trait in a monomorphic population of cancer cells. In that case, when evolution is rapid, there is no advantage to adaptive therapy. Initial responses to therapy are blunted by the cancer cells evolving too quickly. Our study emphasizes how cancer provides a unique system for studying rapid evolutionary changes within tumor ecosystems in response to human interventions; and allows us to contrast and compare this system to other human managed or dominated systems in nature.

A critical stage, which accelerated the evolution of Metazoa

Статья основана на сопоставлении жизненной стратегии модульных и унитарных Metazoa. Усложнение строения особи, происходившее в ходе эволюции, снижало способность ее клеток к передифференциации. Из-за этого ее анцестральные свойства предотвращать старение и размножаться бесполо большинством существующих ныне видов утрачены. Эта утрата - переломный этап в эволюции. Она ускорила ее и этим повысила приспособляемость популяций к изменениям среды. In evolution, an increase in the integration of individual and differentiation of its cells occurred. It reduced the ability of cells to redifferentiate. At a certain stage of this decline, the individual lost the ancestral ability to rejuvenate and multiply. This loss is a turning point in evolution. It increased the speed of evolution and the adaptability of Metazoa to environmental changes.

External and internal factors of innovative development of the economy

The economy is formed under the influence of many objective factors for a given country that ensure the success of innovations. Long-term determinants of the direction and speed of evolution of innovative development of the economy are such factors as the size of the country, the availability of all types of resources, features of the historical development of state institutions and forms of entrepreneurial activity.

Research on the Complexity Mechanism of Decoy Strategies Based on Multiagent Simulation

Competition and diffusion of products are of great significance to companies. In this study, various true decoy strategies are constructed using different combinations of price and quality. This paper then analyzes the performance of strategies using different product competition and diffusion scenarios. The influences of neighbor nodes, reconnection probability, and herd mentality on decoy effects are explored. The results show that setting an appropriate true decoy can enhance the competitiveness of a target product to some extent. Conversely, an inappropriate decoy strategy will play a negative role, encroaching on market share. In terms of effects, changes in neighbor nodes, reconnection probability, and herd mentality will not influence the direction of the evolution of a product for the same true decoy strategies. However, the speed of evolution will be affected. These findings provide a theoretical basis for enterprises taking action to enhance product competitiveness in the market.

ANALYSIS OF LOWER BOUNDS FOR QUANTUM CONTROL TIMES AND THEIR RELATION TO THE QUANTUM SPEED LIMIT

Limitations to the speed of evolution of quantum systems, typically referred to as quantum speed limits (QSLs), have important consequences for quantum control problems. However, in its standard formulation, is not straightforward to obtain meaningful QSL bounds for time-dependent Hamiltonians with unknown control parameters. In this paper we present a short introductory overview of quantum speed limit for unitary dynamics and its connection to quantum control. We then analyze potential methods for obtaining new bounds on control times inspired by the QSL. We finally extend the work in [Poggi, Lombardo and WisniackiEPL104 40005 (2013)] by studying the properties and limitations of these new bounds in the context of a driven two-level quantum system.