@article{824, abstract = {In shear flows at transitional Reynolds numbers, localized patches of turbulence, known as puffs, coexist with the laminar flow. Recently, Avila et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 110, 2013, 224502) discovered two spatially localized relative periodic solutions for pipe flow, which appeared in a saddle-node bifurcation at low Reynolds number. Combining slicing methods for continuous symmetry reduction with Poincaré sections for the first time in a shear flow setting, we compute and visualize the unstable manifold of the lower-branch solution and show that it extends towards the neighbourhood of the upper-branch solution. Surprisingly, this connection even persists far above the bifurcation point and appears to mediate the first stage of the puff generation: amplification of streamwise localized fluctuations. When the state-space trajectories on the unstable manifold reach the vicinity of the upper branch, corresponding fluctuations expand in space and eventually take the usual shape of a puff.}, author = {Budanur, Nazmi B and Hof, Björn}, issn = {0022-1120}, journal = {Journal of Fluid Mechanics}, publisher = {Cambridge University Press}, title = {{Heteroclinic path to spatially localized chaos in pipe flow}}, doi = {10.1017/jfm.2017.516}, volume = {827}, year = {2017}, } @article{825, abstract = {What data is needed about data? Describing the process to answer this question for the institutional data repository IST DataRep.}, author = {Petritsch, Barbara}, issn = {1022-2588}, journal = {Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen & Bibliothekare}, number = {2}, pages = {200 -- 207}, publisher = {VÖB}, title = {{Metadata for research data in practice}}, doi = {10.31263/voebm.v70i2.1678}, volume = {70}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{833, abstract = {We present an efficient algorithm to compute Euler characteristic curves of gray scale images of arbitrary dimension. In various applications the Euler characteristic curve is used as a descriptor of an image. Our algorithm is the first streaming algorithm for Euler characteristic curves. The usage of streaming removes the necessity to store the entire image in RAM. Experiments show that our implementation handles terabyte scale images on commodity hardware. Due to lock-free parallelism, it scales well with the number of processor cores. Additionally, we put the concept of the Euler characteristic curve in the wider context of computational topology. In particular, we explain the connection with persistence diagrams.}, author = {Heiss, Teresa and Wagner, Hubert}, editor = {Felsberg, Michael and Heyden, Anders and Krüger, Norbert}, issn = {0302-9743}, location = {Ystad, Sweden}, pages = {397 -- 409}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Streaming algorithm for Euler characteristic curves of multidimensional images}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-64689-3_32}, volume = {10424}, year = {2017}, } @article{834, abstract = {Thermal and many-body localized phases are separated by a dynamical phase transition of a new kind. We analyze the distribution of off-diagonal matrix elements of local operators across this transition in two different models of disordered spin chains. We show that the behavior of matrix elements can be used to characterize the breakdown of thermalization and to extract the many-body Thouless energy. We find that upon increasing the disorder strength the system enters a critical region around the many-body localization transition. The properties of the system in this region are: (i) the Thouless energy becomes smaller than the level spacing, (ii) the matrix elements show critical dependence on the energy difference, and (iii) the matrix elements, viewed as amplitudes of a fictitious wave function, exhibit strong multifractality. This critical region decreases with the system size, which we interpret as evidence for a diverging correlation length at the many-body localization transition. Our findings show that the correlation length becomes larger than the accessible system sizes in a broad range of disorder strength values and shed light on the critical behavior near the many-body localization transition.}, author = {Serbyn, Maksym and Zlatko, Papic and Abanin, Dmitry}, issn = {2469-9950}, journal = {Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics}, number = {10}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Thouless energy and multifractality across the many-body localization transition}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevB.96.104201}, volume = {96}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{836, abstract = {Recent research has examined how to study the topological features of a continuous self-map by means of the persistence of the eigenspaces, for given eigenvalues, of the endomorphism induced in homology over a field. This raised the question of how to select dynamically significant eigenvalues. The present paper aims to answer this question, giving an algorithm that computes the persistence of eigenspaces for every eigenvalue simultaneously, also expressing said eigenspaces as direct sums of “finite” and “singular” subspaces.}, author = {Ethier, Marc and Jablonski, Grzegorz and Mrozek, Marian}, booktitle = {Special Sessions in Applications of Computer Algebra}, isbn = {978-331956930-7}, location = {Kalamata, Greece}, pages = {119 -- 136}, publisher = {Springer}, title = {{Finding eigenvalues of self-maps with the Kronecker canonical form}}, doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-56932-1_8}, volume = {198}, year = {2017}, } @phdthesis{837, abstract = {The hippocampus is a key brain region for memory and notably for spatial memory, and is needed for both spatial working and reference memories. Hippocampal place cells selectively discharge in specific locations of the environment to form mnemonic represen tations of space. Several behavioral protocols have been designed to test spatial memory which requires the experimental subject to utilize working memory and reference memory. However, less is known about how these memory traces are presented in the hippo campus, especially considering tasks that require both spatial working and long -term reference memory demand. The aim of my thesis was to elucidate how spatial working memory, reference memory, and the combination of both are represented in the hippocampus. In this thesis, using a radial eight -arm maze, I examined how the combined demand on these memories influenced place cell assemblies while reference memories were partially updated by changing some of the reward- arms. This was contrasted with task varian ts requiring working or reference memories only. Reference memory update led to gradual place field shifts towards the rewards on the switched arms. Cells developed enhanced firing in passes between newly -rewarded arms as compared to those containing an unchanged reward. The working memory task did not show such gradual changes. Place assemblies on occasions replayed trajectories of the maze; at decision points the next arm choice was preferentially replayed in tasks needing reference memory while in the pure working memory task the previously visited arm was replayed. Hence trajectory replay only reflected the decision of the animal in tasks needing reference memory update. At the reward locations, in all three tasks outbound trajectories of the current arm were preferentially replayed, showing the animals’ next path to the center. At reward locations trajectories were replayed preferentially in reverse temporal order. Moreover, in the center reverse replay was seen in the working memory task but in the other tasks forward replay was seen. Hence, the direction of reactivation was determined by the goal locations so that part of the trajectory which was closer to the goal was reactivated later in an HSE while places further away from the goal were reactivated earlier. Altogether my work demonstrated that reference memory update triggers several levels of reorganization of the hippocampal cognitive map which are not seen in simpler working memory demand s. Moreover, hippocampus is likely to be involved in spatial decisions through reactivating planned trajectories when reference memory recall is required for such a decision. }, author = {Xu, Haibing}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {93}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{Reactivation of the hippocampal cognitive map in goal-directed spatial tasks}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:ISTA:th_858}, year = {2017}, } @phdthesis{838, abstract = {In this thesis we discuss the exact security of message authentications codes HMAC , NMAC , and PMAC . NMAC is a mode of operation which turns a fixed input-length keyed hash function f into a variable input-length function. A practical single-key variant of NMAC called HMAC is a very popular and widely deployed message authentication code (MAC). PMAC is a block-cipher based mode of operation, which also happens to be the most famous fully parallel MAC. NMAC was introduced by Bellare, Canetti and Krawczyk Crypto’96, who proved it to be a secure pseudorandom function (PRF), and thus also a MAC, under two assumptions. Unfortunately, for many instantiations of HMAC one of them has been found to be wrong. To restore the provable guarantees for NMAC , Bellare [Crypto’06] showed its security without this assumption. PMAC was introduced by Black and Rogaway at Eurocrypt 2002. If instantiated with a pseudorandom permutation over n -bit strings, PMAC constitutes a provably secure variable input-length PRF. For adversaries making q queries, each of length at most ` (in n -bit blocks), and of total length σ ≤ q` , the original paper proves an upper bound on the distinguishing advantage of O ( σ 2 / 2 n ), while the currently best bound is O ( qσ/ 2 n ). In this work we show that this bound is tight by giving an attack with advantage Ω( q 2 `/ 2 n ). In the PMAC construction one initially XORs a mask to every message block, where the mask for the i th block is computed as τ i := γ i · L , where L is a (secret) random value, and γ i is the i -th codeword of the Gray code. Our attack applies more generally to any sequence of γ i ’s which contains a large coset of a subgroup of GF (2 n ). As for NMAC , our first contribution is a simpler and uniform proof: If f is an ε -secure PRF (against q queries) and a δ - non-adaptively secure PRF (against q queries), then NMAC f is an ( ε + `qδ )-secure PRF against q queries of length at most ` blocks each. We also show that this ε + `qδ bound is basically tight by constructing an f for which an attack with advantage `qδ exists. Moreover, we analyze the PRF-security of a modification of NMAC called NI by An and Bellare that avoids the constant rekeying on multi-block messages in NMAC and allows for an information-theoretic analysis. We carry out such an analysis, obtaining a tight `q 2 / 2 c bound for this step, improving over the trivial bound of ` 2 q 2 / 2 c . Finally, we investigate, if the security of PMAC can be further improved by using τ i ’s that are k -wise independent, for k > 1 (the original has k = 1). We observe that the security of PMAC will not increase in general if k = 2, and then prove that the security increases to O ( q 2 / 2 n ), if the k = 4. Due to simple extension attacks, this is the best bound one can hope for, using any distribution on the masks. Whether k = 3 is already sufficient to get this level of security is left as an open problem. Keywords: Message authentication codes, Pseudorandom functions, HMAC, PMAC. }, author = {Rybar, Michal}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {86}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{(The exact security of) Message authentication codes}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:ISTA:th_828}, year = {2017}, } @phdthesis{839, abstract = {This thesis describes a brittle fracture simulation method for visual effects applications. Building upon a symmetric Galerkin boundary element method, we first compute stress intensity factors following the theory of linear elastic fracture mechanics. We then use these stress intensities to simulate the motion of a propagating crack front at a significantly higher resolution than the overall deformation of the breaking object. Allowing for spatial variations of the material's toughness during crack propagation produces visually realistic, highly-detailed fracture surfaces. Furthermore, we introduce approximations for stress intensities and crack opening displacements, resulting in both practical speed-up and theoretically superior runtime complexity compared to previous methods. While we choose a quasi-static approach to fracture mechanics, ignoring dynamic deformations, we also couple our fracture simulation framework to a standard rigid-body dynamics solver, enabling visual effects artists to simulate both large scale motion, as well as fracturing due to collision forces in a combined system. As fractures inside of an object grow, their geometry must be represented both in the coarse boundary element mesh, as well as at the desired fine output resolution. Using a boundary element method, we avoid complicated volumetric meshing operations. Instead we describe a simple set of surface meshing operations that allow us to progressively add cracks to the mesh of an object and still re-use all previously computed entries of the linear boundary element system matrix. On the high resolution level, we opt for an implicit surface representation. We then describe how to capture fracture surfaces during crack propagation, as well as separate the individual fragments resulting from the fracture process, based on this implicit representation. We show results obtained with our method, either solving the full boundary element system in every time step, or alternatively using our fast approximations. These results demonstrate that both of these methods perform well in basic test cases and produce realistic fracture surfaces. Furthermore we show that our fast approximations substantially out-perform the standard approach in more demanding scenarios. Finally, these two methods naturally combine, using the full solution while the problem size is manageably small and switching to the fast approximations later on. The resulting hybrid method gives the user a direct way to choose between speed and accuracy of the simulation. }, author = {Hahn, David}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {124}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{Brittle fracture simulation with boundary elements for computer graphics}}, doi = {10.15479/AT:ISTA:th_855}, year = {2017}, } @inbook{84, abstract = {The advent of high-throughput technologies and the concurrent advances in information sciences have led to a data revolution in biology. This revolution is most significant in molecular biology, with an increase in the number and scale of the “omics” projects over the last decade. Genomics projects, for example, have produced impressive advances in our knowledge of the information concealed into genomes, from the many genes that encode for the proteins that are responsible for most if not all cellular functions, to the noncoding regions that are now known to provide regulatory functions. Proteomics initiatives help to decipher the role of post-translation modifications on the protein structures and provide maps of protein-protein interactions, while functional genomics is the field that attempts to make use of the data produced by these projects to understand protein functions. The biggest challenge today is to assimilate the wealth of information provided by these initiatives into a conceptual framework that will help us decipher life. For example, the current views of the relationship between protein structure and function remain fragmented. We know of their sequences, more and more about their structures, we have information on their biological activities, but we have difficulties connecting this dotted line into an informed whole. We lack the experimental and computational tools for directly studying protein structure, function, and dynamics at the molecular and supra-molecular levels. In this chapter, we review some of the current developments in building the computational tools that are needed, focusing on the role that geometry and topology play in these efforts. One of our goals is to raise the general awareness about the importance of geometric methods in elucidating the mysterious foundations of our very existence. Another goal is the broadening of what we consider a geometric algorithm. There is plenty of valuable no-man’s-land between combinatorial and numerical algorithms, and it seems opportune to explore this land with a computational-geometric frame of mind.}, author = {Edelsbrunner, Herbert and Koehl, Patrice}, booktitle = {Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry, Third Edition}, editor = {Toth, Csaba and O'Rourke, Joseph and Goodman, Jacob}, pages = {1709 -- 1735}, publisher = {Taylor & Francis}, title = {{Computational topology for structural molecular biology}}, doi = {10.1201/9781315119601}, year = {2017}, } @article{840, abstract = {Heavy holes confined in quantum dots are predicted to be promising candidates for the realization of spin qubits with long coherence times. Here we focus on such heavy-hole states confined in germanium hut wires. By tuning the growth density of the latter we can realize a T-like structure between two neighboring wires. Such a structure allows the realization of a charge sensor, which is electrostatically and tunnel coupled to a quantum dot, with charge-transfer signals as high as 0.3 e. By integrating the T-like structure into a radiofrequency reflectometry setup, single-shot measurements allowing the extraction of hole tunneling times are performed. The extracted tunneling times of less than 10 μs are attributed to the small effective mass of Ge heavy-hole states and pave the way toward projective spin readout measurements.}, author = {Vukusic, Lada and Kukucka, Josip and Watzinger, Hannes and Katsaros, Georgios}, issn = {1530-6984}, journal = {Nano Letters}, number = {9}, pages = {5706 -- 5710}, publisher = {American Chemical Society}, title = {{Fast hole tunneling times in germanium hut wires probed by single-shot reflectometry}}, doi = {10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b02627}, volume = {17}, year = {2017}, } @article{909, abstract = {We study the lengths of curves passing through a fixed number of points on the boundary of a convex shape in the plane. We show that, for any convex shape K, there exist four points on the boundary of K such that the length of any curve passing through these points is at least half of the perimeter of K. It is also shown that the same statement does not remain valid with the additional constraint that the points are extreme points of K. Moreover, the factor ½ cannot be achieved with any fixed number of extreme points. We conclude the paper with a few other inequalities related to the perimeter of a convex shape.}, author = {Akopyan, Arseniy and Vysotsky, Vladislav}, issn = {0002-9890}, journal = {The American Mathematical Monthly}, number = {7}, pages = {588 -- 596}, publisher = {Mathematical Association of America}, title = {{On the lengths of curves passing through boundary points of a planar convex shape}}, doi = {10.4169/amer.math.monthly.124.7.588}, volume = {124}, year = {2017}, } @article{910, abstract = {Frequency-independent selection is generally considered as a force that acts to reduce the genetic variation in evolving populations, yet rigorous arguments for this idea are scarce. When selection fluctuates in time, it is unclear whether frequency-independent selection may maintain genetic polymorphism without invoking additional mechanisms. We show that constant frequency-independent selection with arbitrary epistasis on a well-mixed haploid population eliminates genetic variation if we assume linkage equilibrium between alleles. To this end, we introduce the notion of frequency-independent selection at the level of alleles, which is sufficient to prove our claim and contains the notion of frequency-independent selection on haploids. When selection and recombination are weak but of the same order, there may be strong linkage disequilibrium; numerical calculations show that stable equilibria are highly unlikely. Using the example of a diallelic two-locus model, we then demonstrate that frequency-independent selection that fluctuates in time can maintain stable polymorphism if linkage disequilibrium changes its sign periodically. We put our findings in the context of results from the existing literature and point out those scenarios in which the possible role of frequency-independent selection in maintaining genetic variation remains unclear. }, author = {Novak, Sebastian and Barton, Nicholas H}, journal = {Genetics}, number = {2}, pages = {653 -- 668}, publisher = {Genetics Society of America}, title = {{When does frequency-independent selection maintain genetic variation?}}, doi = {10.1534/genetics.117.300129}, volume = {207}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{911, abstract = {We develop a probabilistic technique for colorizing grayscale natural images. In light of the intrinsic uncertainty of this task, the proposed probabilistic framework has numerous desirable properties. In particular, our model is able to produce multiple plausible and vivid colorizations for a given grayscale image and is one of the first colorization models to provide a proper stochastic sampling scheme. Moreover, our training procedure is supported by a rigorous theoretical framework that does not require any ad hoc heuristics and allows for efficient modeling and learning of the joint pixel color distribution.We demonstrate strong quantitative and qualitative experimental results on the CIFAR-10 dataset and the challenging ILSVRC 2012 dataset.}, author = {Royer, Amélie and Kolesnikov, Alexander and Lampert, Christoph}, location = {London, United Kingdom}, pages = {85.1--85.12}, publisher = {BMVA Press}, title = {{Probabilistic image colorization}}, doi = {10.5244/c.31.85}, year = {2017}, } @article{912, abstract = {We consider a many-body system of fermionic atoms interacting via a local pair potential and subject to an external potential within the framework of Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory. We measure the free energy of the whole sample with respect to the free energy of a reference state which allows us to define a BCS functional with boundary conditions at infinity. Our main result is a lower bound for this energy functional in terms of expressions that typically appear in Ginzburg-Landau functionals. }, author = {Deuchert, Andreas}, issn = {0022-2488}, journal = { Journal of Mathematical Physics}, number = {8}, publisher = {AIP Publishing}, title = {{A lower bound for the BCS functional with boundary conditions at infinity}}, doi = {10.1063/1.4996580}, volume = {58}, year = {2017}, } @article{914, abstract = {Infections with potentially lethal pathogens may negatively affect an individual’s lifespan and decrease its reproductive value. The terminal investment hypothesis predicts that individuals faced with a reduced survival should invest more into reproduction instead of maintenance and growth. Several studies suggest that individuals are indeed able to estimate their body condition and to increase their reproductive effort with approaching death, while other studies gave ambiguous results. We investigate whether queens of a perennial social insect (ant) are able to boost their reproduction following infection with an obligate killing pathogen. Social insect queens are special with regard to reproduction and aging, as they outlive conspecific non-reproductive workers. Moreover, in the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior, fecundity increases with queen age. However, it remained unclear whether this reflects negative reproductive senescence or terminal investment in response to approaching death. Here, we test whether queens of C. obscurior react to infection with the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum by an increased egg-laying rate. We show that a fungal infection triggers a reinforced investment in reproduction in queens. This adjustment of the reproductive rate by ant queens is consistent with predictions of the terminal investment hypothesis and is reported for the first time in a social insect.}, author = {Giehr, Julia and Grasse, Anna V and Cremer, Sylvia and Heinze, Jürgen and Schrempf, Alexandra}, issn = {2054-5703}, journal = {Royal Society Open Science}, number = {7}, publisher = {Royal Society, The}, title = {{Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection}}, doi = {10.1098/rsos.170547}, volume = {4}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{915, abstract = {We propose a dual decomposition and linear program relaxation of the NP-hard minimum cost multicut problem. Unlike other polyhedral relaxations of the multicut polytope, it is amenable to efficient optimization by message passing. Like other polyhedral relaxations, it can be tightened efficiently by cutting planes. We define an algorithm that alternates between message passing and efficient separation of cycle- and odd-wheel inequalities. This algorithm is more efficient than state-of-the-art algorithms based on linear programming, including algorithms written in the framework of leading commercial software, as we show in experiments with large instances of the problem from applications in computer vision, biomedical image analysis and data mining.}, author = {Swoboda, Paul and Andres, Bjoern}, isbn = {978-153860457-1}, location = {Honolulu, HA, United States}, pages = {4990--4999}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{A message passing algorithm for the minimum cost multicut problem}}, doi = {10.1109/CVPR.2017.530}, volume = {2017}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{916, abstract = {We study the quadratic assignment problem, in computer vision also known as graph matching. Two leading solvers for this problem optimize the Lagrange decomposition duals with sub-gradient and dual ascent (also known as message passing) updates. We explore this direction further and propose several additional Lagrangean relaxations of the graph matching problem along with corresponding algorithms, which are all based on a common dual ascent framework. Our extensive empirical evaluation gives several theoretical insights and suggests a new state-of-the-art anytime solver for the considered problem. Our improvement over state-of-the-art is particularly visible on a new dataset with large-scale sparse problem instances containing more than 500 graph nodes each.}, author = {Swoboda, Paul and Rother, Carsten and Abu Alhaija, Carsten and Kainmueller, Dagmar and Savchynskyy, Bogdan}, isbn = {978-153860457-1}, location = {Honolulu, HA, United States}, pages = {7062--7071}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{A study of lagrangean decompositions and dual ascent solvers for graph matching}}, doi = {10.1109/CVPR.2017.747}, volume = {2017}, year = {2017}, } @inproceedings{917, abstract = {We propose a general dual ascent framework for Lagrangean decomposition of combinatorial problems. Although methods of this type have shown their efficiency for a number of problems, so far there was no general algorithm applicable to multiple problem types. In this work, we propose such a general algorithm. It depends on several parameters, which can be used to optimize its performance in each particular setting. We demonstrate efficacy of our method on graph matching and multicut problems, where it outperforms state-of-the-art solvers including those based on subgradient optimization and off-the-shelf linear programming solvers.}, author = {Swoboda, Paul and Kuske, Jan and Savchynskyy, Bogdan}, isbn = {978-153860457-1}, location = {Honolulu, HA, United States}, pages = {4950--4960}, publisher = {IEEE}, title = {{A dual ascent framework for Lagrangean decomposition of combinatorial problems}}, doi = {10.1109/CVPR.2017.526}, volume = {2017}, year = {2017}, } @phdthesis{938, abstract = {The thesis encompasses several topics of plant cell biology which were studied in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Chapter 1 concerns the plant hormone auxin and its polar transport through cells and tissues. The highly controlled, directional transport of auxin is facilitated by plasma membrane-localized transporters. Transporters from the PIN family direct auxin transport due to their polarized localizations at cell membranes. Substantial effort has been put into research on cellular trafficking of PIN proteins, which is thought to underlie their polar distribution. I participated in a forward genetic screen aimed at identifying novel regulators of PIN polarity. The screen yielded several genes which may be involved in PIN polarity regulation or participate in polar auxin transport by other means. Chapter 2 focuses on the endomembrane system, with particular attention to clathrin-mediated endocytosis. The project started with identification of several proteins that interact with clathrin light chains. Among them, I focused on two putative homologues of auxilin, which in non-plant systems is an endocytotic factor known for uncoating clathrin-coated vesicles in the final step of endocytosis. The body of my work consisted of an in-depth characterization of transgenic A. thaliana lines overexpressing these putative auxilins in an inducible manner. Overexpression of these proteins leads to an inhibition of endocytosis, as documented by imaging of cargoes and clathrin-related endocytic machinery. An extension of this work is an investigation into a concept of homeostatic regulation acting between distinct transport processes in the endomembrane system. With auxilin overexpressing lines, where endocytosis is blocked specifically, I made observations on the mutual relationship between two opposite trafficking processes of secretion and endocytosis. In Chapter 3, I analyze cortical microtubule arrays and their relationship to auxin signaling and polarized growth in elongating cells. In plants, microtubules are organized into arrays just below the plasma membrane, and it is thought that their function is to guide membrane-docked cellulose synthase complexes. These, in turn, influence cell wall structure and cell shape by directed deposition of cellulose fibres. In elongating cells, cortical microtubule arrays are able to reorient in relation to long cell axis, and these reorientations have been linked to cell growth and to signaling of growth-regulating factors such as auxin or light. In this chapter, I am addressing the causal relationship between microtubule array reorientation, growth, and auxin signaling. I arrive at a model where array reorientation is not guided by auxin directly, but instead is only controlled by growth, which, in turn, is regulated by auxin.}, author = {Adamowski, Maciek}, issn = {2663-337X}, pages = {117}, publisher = {Institute of Science and Technology Austria}, title = {{Investigations into cell polarity and trafficking in the plant model Arabidopsis thaliana }}, doi = {10.15479/AT:ISTA:th_842}, year = {2017}, } @article{939, abstract = {We reveal the existence of continuous families of guided single-mode solitons in planar waveguides with weakly nonlinear active core and absorbing boundaries. Stable propagation of TE and TM-polarized solitons is accompanied by attenuation of all other modes, i.e., the waveguide features properties of conservative and dissipative systems. If the linear spectrum of the waveguide possesses exceptional points, which occurs in the case of TM polarization, an originally focusing (defocusing) material nonlinearity may become effectively defocusing (focusing). This occurs due to the geometric phase of the carried eigenmode when the surface impedance encircles the exceptional point. In its turn, the change of the effective nonlinearity ensures the existence of dark (bright) solitons in spite of focusing (defocusing) Kerr nonlinearity of the core. The existence of an exceptional point can also result in anomalous enhancement of the effective nonlinearity. In terms of practical applications, the nonlinearity of the reported waveguide can be manipulated by controlling the properties of the absorbing cladding.}, author = {Midya, Bikashkali and Konotop, Vladimir}, issn = {0031-9007}, journal = {Physical Review Letters}, number = {3}, publisher = {American Physical Society}, title = {{Waveguides with absorbing boundaries: Nonlinearity controlled by an exceptional point and solitons}}, doi = {10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.033905}, volume = {119}, year = {2017}, }