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Physarum polycephalum is a unicellular slime mould that has been intensely studied owing to its ability to solve mazes, find shortest paths, generate Steiner trees, share knowledge and remember past events and the implied applications to unconventional computing. The CELL model is a cellular automaton introduced in Gunji et al . (Gunji et al. 2008 J. Theor. Biol. 253 , 659–667 ( doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2008.04.017 )) that models Physarum ’s amoeboid motion, tentacle formation, maze solving and network creation. In the present paper, we extend the CELL model by spawning multiple CELLs, allowing us to understand the interactions between multiple cells and, in particular, their mobility, merge speed and cytoplasm mixing. We conclude the paper with some notes about applications of our work to modelling the rise of present-day civilization from the early nomadic humans and the spread of trends and information around the world. Our study of the interactions of this unicellular organism should further the understanding of how P. polycephalum communicates and shares information.

Abstract We present a modified age-structured SIR model based on known patterns of social contact and distancing measures within Washington, USA. We find that population age-distribution has a significant effect on disease spread and mortality rate, and contribute to the efficacy of age-specific contact and treatment measures. We consider the effect of relaxing restrictions across less vulnerable age-brackets, comparing results across selected groups of varying population parameters. Moreover, we analyze the mitigating effects of vaccinations and examine the effectiveness of age-targeted distributions. Lastly, we explore how our model can applied to other states to reflect social-distancing policy based on different parameters and metrics.

Through the triality of SO(8,C), we study three interrelated homogeneous basis of the ring of invariant polynomials of Lie algebras, which give the basis of three Hitchin fibrations, and identify the explicit automorphisms that relate them.

Abstract We introduce the notion of generalized hyperpolygon, which arises as a representation, in the sense of Nakajima, of a comet-shaped quiver. We identify these representations with rigid geometric figures, namely pairs of polygons: one in the Lie algebra of a compact group and the other in its complexification. To such data, we associate an explicit meromorphic Higgs bundle on a genus-g Riemann surface, where g is the number of loops in the comet, thereby embedding the Nakajima quiver variety into a Hitchin system on a punctured genus-g Riemann surface (generally with positive codimension). We show that, under certain assumptions on flag types, the space of generalized hyperpolygons admits the structure of a completely integrable Hamiltonian system of Gelfand–Tsetlin type, inherited from the reduction of partial flag varieties. In the case where all flags are complete, we present the Hamiltonians explicitly. We also remark upon the discretization of the Hitchin equations given by hyperpolygons, the construction of triple branes (in the sense of Kapustin–Witten mirror symmetry), and dualities between tame and wild Hitchin systems (in the sense of Painlevé transcendents).

We present an overview of some recent applications of Higgs bundles and the Hitchin fibration.