Phase diagram in a one-dimensional civil disorder model.

Epstein's model for a civil disorder is an agent-based model that simulates a social protest process where the central authority uses the police force to dissuade it. The interactions of police officers and citizens produce dynamics that do not yet have any analysis from the sociophysics approach. We present numerical simulations to characterize the properties of the one-dimensional civil disorder model on stationary state. To do this, we consider interactions on a Moore neighborhood and a random neighborhood with two different visions. We introduce a Potts-like energy function and construct the phase diagram using the agent state concentration. We find order-disorder phases and reveal the principle of minimum grievance as the underlying principle of the model's dynamics. Besides, we identify when the system can reach stable or an instability conditions based on the agents' interactions. Finally, we identified the most relevant role of the police based on their capacity to dissuade a protest and their effect on facilitating a stable scenario.

Comparing the structures of storytelling and magic for science communication with an agent-based model.

When scientists engage in Public Understanding of Science to communicate their research to lay audiences, a common suggestion is to structure their talk around storytelling. Thus, it is crucial to know the actual effectiveness of storytelling in science communication compared to other structures. For instance, a structure almost unexplored is the one of magic or illusionism. As storytelling, it has been evolving and improving over humanity's history to become ever more effective, granting magicians a prominent place in the entertainment and art industry. In the present work, we compared various storytelling structures and the structure of magic, through an agent-based computational model. The results open the questioning of story architectures; propose a new way to test ideas in science communication; and show that double-blind control studies are very much needed for further testing the structures of Public Understanding of Science and further developing agent-based models.

The Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin-2 is a molecular host-associated cue for the salmon louse (Lepeophtheirus salmonis).

Chemical signals are a key element of host-parasite interactions. In marine ecosystems, obligate ectoparasites, such as sea lice, use chemical cues and other sensory signals to increase the probability of encountering a host and to identify appropriate hosts on which they depend to complete their life cycle. The chemical compounds that underlie host identification by the sea lice are not fully described or characterized. Here, we report a novel compound - the Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) antimicrobial peptide cathelicidin-2 (Cath-2) - that acts as an activation cue for the marine parasitic copepod Lepeophtheirus salmonis. L. salmonis were exposed to 0, 7, 70 and 700 ppb of Cath-2 and neural activity, swimming behaviour and gene expression profiles of animals in response to the peptide were evaluated. The neurophysiological, behavioural and transcriptomic results were consistent: L. salmonis detects Cath-2 as a water-soluble peptide released from the skin of salmon, triggering chemosensory neural activity associated with altered swimming behaviour of copepodids exposed to the peptide, and chemosensory-related genes were up-regulated in copepodids exposed to the peptide. L. salmonis are activated by Cath-2, indicating a tight link between this peptide and the salmon louse chemosensory system.