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The paper investigates the features of group dynamics of individuals-agents in the computer model of the animal population interacting with each other and with a renewable resource. This type of dynamics was previously found in [Belotelov, Konovalenko, 2016]. The model population consists of a set of individuals. Each individual is characterized by its mass, which is identified with energy. It describes in detail the dynamics of the energy balance of the individual. The habitat of the simulated population is a rectangular area where the resource grows evenly (grass).

Various computer experiments carried out with the model under different parameter values and initial conditions are described. The main purpose of these computational experiments was to study the group (herd) dynamics of individuals. It was found that in a fairly wide range of parameter values and with the introduction of spatial inhomogeneities of the area, the group type of behavior is preserved. The values of the model population parameters under which the regime of spatial oscillations of the population occurs were found numerically. Namely, in the model population periodically group (herd) behavior of animals is replaced by a uniform distribution over space, which after a certain number of bars again becomes a group. Numerical experiments on the preliminary analysis of the factors influencing the period of these solutions are carried out. It turned out that the leading parameters affecting the frequency and amplitude, as well as the number of groups are the mobility of individuals and the rate of recovery of the resource. Numerical experiments are carried out to study the influence of parameters determining the nonlocal interaction between individuals of the population on the group behavior. It was found that the modes of group behavior persist for a long time with the exclusion of fertility factors of individuals. It is confirmed that the nonlocality of interaction between individuals is leading in the formation of group behavior.

The problem has been considered, to what extent the kinetic models of cellular metabolism fit the matter which they describe. Foundations of stoichiometry of the whole metabolism and its large regions have been stated. A bioenergetic representation of stoichiometry based on a universal unit of chemical compound reductivity, viz., redoxon, has been described. Equations of mass-energy balance (bioenergetic variant of stoichiometry) have been derived for metabolic flows including those of protons possessing high electrochemical potential μ_H⁺, and high-energy compounds. Interrelations have been obtained which determine the biomass yield, rate of uptake of energy source for cell growth and other important physiological quantities as functions of biochemical characteristics of cellular energetics. The maximum biomass energy yield values have been calculated for different energy sources utilized by cells. These values coincide with those measured experimentally.

Bioenergetic regularities determining the maximal biomass yield in aerobic microbial growth on various substrates have been considered. The approach is based on the method of mass-energy balance and application of GenMetPath computer program package. An equation system describing the balances of quantities of 1) metabolite reductivity and 2) high-energy bonds formed and expended has been formulated. In order to formulate the system, the whole metabolism is subdivided into constructive and energetic partial metabolisms. The constructive metabolism is, in turn, subdivided into two parts: forward and standard. The latter subdivision is based on the choice of nodal metabolites. The forward constructive metabolism is substantially dependent on growth substrate: it converts the substrate into the standard set of nodal metabolites. The latter is, then, converted into biomass macromolecules by the standard constructive metabolism which is the same on various substrates. Variations of flows via nodal metabolites are shown to exert minor effects on the standard constructive metabolism. As a separate case, the growth on substrates requiring the participation of oxygenases and/or oxidase is considered. The bioenergetic characteristics of the standard constructive metabolism are found from a large amount of data for the growth of various organisms on glucose. The described approach can be used for prediction of biomass growth yield on substrates with known reactions of their primary metabolization. As an example, the growth of a yeast culture on ethanol has been considered. The value of maximal growth yield predicted by the method described here showed very good consistency with the value found experimentally.

The biomass growth yield is the ratio of the newly synthesized substance of growing cells to the amount of the consumed substrate, the source of matter and energy for cell growth. The yield is a characteristic of the efficiency of substrate conversion to cell biomass. The conversion is carried out by the cell metabolism, which is a complete aggregate of biochemical reactions occurring in the cells.

This work newly considers the problem of maximal cell growth yield prediction basing on balances of the whole living cell metabolism and its fragments called as partial metabolisms (PM). The following PM’s are used for the present consideration. During growth on any substrate we consider i) the standard constructive metabolism (SCM) which consists of identical pathways during growth of various organisms on any substrate. SCM starts from several standard compounds (nodal metabolites): glucose, acetyl-CoA 2-oxoglutarate, erythrose-4-phosphate, oxaloacetate, ribose-5- phosphate, 3-phosphoglycerate, phosphoenolpyruvate, and pyruvate, and ii) the full forward metabolism (FM) — the remaining part of the whole metabolism. The first one consumes high-energy bonds (HEB) formed by the second one. In this work we examine a generalized variant of the FM, when the possible presence of extracellular products, as well as the possibilities of both aerobic and anaerobic growth are taken into account. Instead of separate balances of each nodal metabolite formation as it was made in our previous work, this work deals at once with the whole aggregate of these metabolites. This makes the problem solution more compact and requiring a smaller number of biochemical quantities and substantially less computational time. An equation expressing the maximal biomass yield via specific amounts of HEB formed and consumed by the partial metabolisms has been derived. It includes the specific HEB consumption by SCM which is a universal biochemical parameter applicable to the wide range of organisms and growth substrates. To correctly determine this parameter, the full constructive metabolism and its forward part are considered for the growth of cells on glucose as the mostly studied substrate. We used here the found earlier properties of the elemental composition of lipid and lipid-free fractions of cell biomass. Numerical study of the effect of various interrelations between flows via different nodal metabolites has been made. It showed that the requirements of the SCM in high-energy bonds and NAD(P)H are practically constants. The found HEB-to-formed-biomass coefficient is an efficient tool for finding estimates of maximal biomass yield from substrates for which the primary metabolism is known. Calculation of ATP-to-substrate ratio necessary for the yield estimation has been made using the special computer program package, GenMetPath.

Modern big science projects are becoming highly data intensive to the point where offline processing of stored data is infeasible. High data throughput computing, or Data Stream Computing, for future projects is required to deal with terabytes of data per second which cannot be stored in long-term storage elements. Conventional data-centres based on typical server-grade hardware are expensive and are biased towards processing power. The overall I/O bandwidth can be increased with massive parallelism, usually at the expense of excessive processing power and high energy consumption. An ARM System on Chip (SoC) based processing unit may address the issue of system I/O and CPU balance, affordability and energy efficiency since ARM SoCs are mass produced and designed to be energy efficient for use in mobile devices. Such a processing unit is currently in development, with a design goal of 20 Gb/s I/O throughput and significant processing power. The I/O capabilities of consumer ARM System on Chips are discussed along with to-date performance and I/O throughput tests.