Protection of quantum correlations against decoherence

The protection of different quantum correlations, such as Bell nonlocality, quantum discord, and geometric quantum discord as trace distance against noise, is explored. By weak measurement and quantum measurement reversal, we show that the mentioned quantum correlations can be effectively preserved probabilistically from the decoherence due to amplitude damping. The results will play an important role in the experiments using the quantum correlations as resource.     

Quantum walk in terms of quantum Bernoulli noises

Quantum Bernoulli noises are the family of annihilation and creation operators acting on Bernoulli functionals, which satisfy a canonical anti-commutation relation in equal time. In this paper, we first present some new results concerning quantum Bernoulli noises, which themselves are interesting. Then, based on these new results, we construct a time-dependent quantum walk with infinitely many degrees of freedom. We prove that the walk has a unitary representation and hence belongs to the category of the so-called unitary quantum walks. We examine its distribution property at the vacuum initial state and some other initial states and find that it has the same limit distribution as the classical random walk, which contrasts sharply with the case of the usual quantum walks with finite degrees of freedom.     

Adaptive niche quantum-inspired immune clonal algorithm

The adaptive niche quantum-inspired immune clonal algorithm (ANQICA) is proposed by combining the quantum coding, immune clone and niche mechanism together to solve the multi-modal function optimization more effectively and make the function converge to as many as possible extreme value points. The quantum coding can better explore the solution space, the niche mechanism ensures the algorithm to converge to multi-extremum and the adaptive mechanism is introduced according to the characteristics of each procedure of the algorithm to improve the effect of the algorithm. Example analysis shows that the ANQICA is better in exploration and convergence. Therefore, the ANQICA can be used to solve the problem of multi-modal function optimization effectively.     

Pseudo-inversion: closure properties and decidability

We consider a pseudo-inversion operation inspired by biological events, such as DNA sequence transformations, where only parts of a string are reversed. We define the pseudo-inversion of a string \(w = uxv\) to be the set of all strings \(v^Rxu^R\), where \(uv \ne \lambda \) and consider the operation from a formal language theoretic viewpoint. We show that regular languages are closed under the pseudo-inversion operation whereas context-free languages are not. Furthermore, we study the iterated pseudo-inversion operation and show that the iterated pseudo-inversion of a context-free language is recognized by a nondeterministic reversal-bounded multicounter machine. Finally, we introduce the notion of pseudo-inversion-freeness and examine closure properties and decidability problems for regular and context-free languages. We demonstrate that pseudo-inversion-freeness is decidable in polynomial time for regular languages and undecidable for context-free languages.     

Minimal output unstable configurations in chemical reaction networks and deciders

We study the set of output stable configurations of chemical reaction deciders (CRDs). It turns out that CRDs with only bimolecular reactions (which are almost equivalent to population protocols) have a special structure that allows for an algorithm to efficiently compute their finite set of minimal output unstable configurations. As a consequence, a relatively large set of configurations may be efficiently checked for output stability. We also provide a number of observations regarding the semilinearity result of Angluin et al. (Distrib Comput 20(4):279–304, 2007) from the context of population protocols (which is a central result for output stable CRDs). In particular, we observe that the computation-friendly class of totally stable CRDs has equal expressive power as the larger class of output stable CRDs.     

Halting the hallmarks: a cellular automaton model of early cancer growth inhibition

Cancer treatment is a fragmented and varied process, as “cancer” is really hundreds of different diseases. The “hallmarks of cancer” proposed by Hanahan and Weinberg (Cell 100(1):57–70, 2000) are a framework for viewing cancer within a common set of underlying principles—ten properties that are common to almost all cancers, allowing them to grow uncontrollably and ravage the body. We used a cellular automaton model of tumour growth paired with lattice Boltzmann methods modelling oxygen flow to simulate combination drugs targeted at knocking out pairs of hallmarks. We found that knocking out some pairs of cancer-enabling hallmarks did not prevent tumour formation, while other pairs significantly prevent tumour growth (\(p=0.0004\) using Wilcoxon signed-rank adjusted with the Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons). This is not what would be expected from models of knocking out the hallmarks individually, as many pairs did not have an additive effect but had either no statistically significant effect or a multiplicative one. We propose that targeting certain pairs of cancer hallmarks, specifically cancers ability to induce blood vessel development paired with another cancer hallmark, could prove an effective cancer treatment option.     

Size-separable tile self-assembly: a tight bound for temperature-1 mismatch-free systems

We introduce a new property of tile self-assembly systems that we call size-separability. A system is size-separable if every terminal assembly is a constant factor larger than any intermediate assembly. Size-separability is motivated by the practical problem of filtering completed assemblies from a variety of incomplete “garbage” assemblies using gel electrophoresis or other mass-based filtering techniques. Here we prove that any system without cooperative bonding assembling a unique mismatch-free terminal assembly can be used to construct a size-separable system uniquely assembling the same shape. The proof achieves optimal scale factor, temperature, and tile types (within a factor of 2) for the size-separable system.     

Integrated Co-evolution Model of Land Use and Traffic Network Design

An integrated co-evolution model with the consideration of land use and traffic network design is proposed in this paper. In the suggested model, two kinds of economic agents are considered. On the one hand, the government makes the investment decision for the traffic network improvement based on the current traffic condition under the limited budget. On the other hand, households and companies will choose their locations according to the attraction of each traffic zone related to the road network accessibility and the housing price. Therefore, the land use is indicated by the population and employment distributions through the evolution process. Besides, the improvement of road capacity is modeled by a general bi-level programming of traffic network design. Simulation experiments show that the city will be more efficient and will have higher average accessibility for employment and population in the evolution process.     

The Cost of Environmental Constraints in Traffic Networks: Assessing the Loss of Optimality

Increasing numbers of hard environmental constraints are being imposed in urban traffic networks by authorities in an attempt to mitigate pollution caused by traffic. However, it is not trivial for authorities to assess the cost of imposing such hard environmental constraints. This leads to difficulties when setting the constraining values as well as implementing effective control measures. For that reason, quantifying the cost of imposing hard environmental constraints for a certain network becomes crucial. This paper first indicates that for a given network, such cost is not only related to the attribution of environmental constraints but also related to the considered control measures. Next, we present an assessment criterion that quantifies the loss of optimality under the control measures considered by introducing the environmental constraints. The criterion can be acquired by solving a bi-level programming problem with/without environmental constraints. A simple case study shows its practicability as well as the differences between this framework and other frameworks integrating the environmental aspects. This proposed framework is widely applicable when assessing the interaction of traffic and its environmental aspects.     

Parallel simulation of Population Dynamics P systems: updates and roadmap

Population Dynamics P systems are a type of multienvironment P systems that serve as a formal modeling framework for real ecosystems. The accurate simulation of these probabilistic models, e.g. with Direct distribution based on Consistent Blocks Algorithm, entails large run times. Hence, parallel platforms such as GPUs have been employed to speedup the simulation. In 2012, the first GPU simulator of PDP systems was presented. However, it was able to run only randomly generated PDP systems. In this paper, we present current updates made on this simulator, involving an input modu le for binary files and an output module for CSV files. Finally, the simulator has been experimentally validated with a real ecosystem model, and its performance has been tested with two high-end GPUs: Tesla C1060 and K40.