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Many cells can sense and respond to time-varying stimuli, selectively triggering changes in cell fate only in response to inputs of a particular duration or frequency. A common motif in dynamically controlled cells is a dual-timescale regulatory network: although long-term fate decisions are ultimately controlled by a slow-timescale switch (e.g., gene expression), input signals are first processed by a fast-timescale signaling layer, which is hypothesized to filter what dynamic information is efficiently relayed downstream. Directly testing the design principles of how dual-timescale circuits control dynamic sensing, however, has been challenging, because most synthetic biology methods have focused solely on rewiring transcriptional circuits, which operate at a single slow timescale. Here, we report the development of a modular approach for flexibly engineering phosphorylation circuits using designed phospho-regulon motifs. By then linking rapid phospho-feedback with slower downstream transcription-based bistable switches, we can construct synthetic dual-timescale circuits in yeast in which the triggering dynamics and the end-state properties of the ON state can be selectively tuned. These phospho-regulon tools thus open up the possibility to engineer cells with customized dynamical control.

Cancer’s cellular behavior is driven by alterations in the processes that cells use to sense and respond to diverse stimuli. Underlying these processes are a series of chemical processes (enzyme-substrate, protein-protein, etc.). Here we introduce a set of mathematical techniques for describing and characterizing these processes.

Operational agility has increasingly become essential for survival and prosperity for contemporary organizations. Given its significant role in a turbulent business environment, this concept has garnered considerable research attention over the past ten years. However, due to the complex nature of operational agility, how to achieve this important organizaitonal capability is still not clearly understood. Thus the present study attempts to open this black box through examing a case study of Haier, the largest household appliances producer in China. The findings of this case highlight the significant role played by IT leveraging competence in achieving operational agility. It shows that IT leveraging competence helps enhance firm's ability to process information in a turbulent business environment, which results in information processing efficiency and information processing effectiveness. With the enhancement in the ability to process information, the focal firm is capable to sense and respond to market changes more readily.

Bacteria sense and respond to environmental cues to control important developmental processes. Two widely conserved and important strategies that bacteria employ to sense changes in population density and local environmental conditions are quorum sensing (QS) and cyclic di-GMP (c-di-GMP) signaling, respectively. The importance of these pathways in controlling a broad variety of functions, including virulence, biofilm formation, and motility, has been recognized in many species. Recent research has shown that these pathways are intricately intertwined. Here we review the regulatory connections between QS and c-di-GMP signaling. We propose that the integration of QS with c-di-GMP allows bacteria to assimilate information about the local bacterial population density with other physicochemical environmental signals within the broader c-di-GMP signaling network.

In today's hypercompetitive environment, firms that are agile tend to be more successful. However, despite the widely accepted importance of agility, there is limited research on this construct. In this study we aim to conceptually define and operationalize firm's customer agility. We propose that agility comprises two distinct capabilities, sensing and responding, and we address the issue of alignment between these capabilities and its impact on performance. Using a dynamic capabilities framework, we formulate both matching and mediating perspectives on customer agility. Based on data collected from marketing managers, we tested hypotheses pertaining to the two methods of alignment. The results indicate significant support for the role of both forms of alignment on performance. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

This paper investigates how information technology IT facilitates a firm's customer agility and, in turn, competitive activity. Customer agility captures the extent to which a firm is able to sense and respond quickly to customer-based opportunities for innovation and competitive action. Drawing from the dynamic capability and IT business value research streams, we propose that IT plays an important role in facilitating a "knowledge creating" synergy derived from the interaction between a firm's Web-based customer infrastructure and its analytical ability. This will enhance the firm's ability to sense customer-based opportunities. IT also plays an important role in "process enhancing" synergy obtained from the interaction between a firm's coordination efforts and its level of information systems integration, which facilitates the firm's ability to respond to those opportunities. We also leverage the competitive dynamics and strategic alignment literature to propose that the alignment between customer-sensing capability and customer-responding capability will impact the firm's competitive activity. We test our model with a two-stage research design in which we survey marketing executives of high-tech firms. Our results show that a Web-based customer infrastructure facilitates a firm's customer-sensing capability; furthermore, analytical ability positively moderates this relationship. We also find that internal systems integration positively moderates the relationship between interfunctional coordination and a firm's customer-responding capability. Finally, our results show that agility alignment affects the efficacy of a firm's competitive actions. In particular, action efficacy is higher when sensing and responding capabilities are both high.

The ability to sense and respond appropriately to low PO2 (hypoxia) is critical for the survival of aerobic organisms. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

This research aims to empirically determine which factors best explain business to business adoption of a radical, high-tech innovation early in the diffusion process. Early lifecycle data collection provides insights about the differences in determinants of adoption at different times in the product diffusion process. The results indicate that differences do exist between the determinants of early adoption, intent to adopt later, and unawareness of the innovation. The influencers of earliest adopters appear to be innovation-focused: the perceived benefits of the innovation as well as the strength of the producer network positively relate to early adoption; early adopters also tend to perceive the technology in the innovation as less different than previous technology than do those who intend to adopt later. The influence of a champion within the adopting firm, the ability of the firm to sense and respond to new technology, and the depth of technology knowledge within the adopting firm are significant influencers across multiple stages of diffusion, showing that firm-internal traits are particularly important influencers of adoption. Laggard firms are missing the critical firm traits that lead to information gathering and understanding of innovations. In addition to contributing to adoption research theory and methodology, this research has implications for innovation-marketing and innovation-adopting firms.

Faced with the challenge of increasing global food production, there is the need to exploit all approaches to increasing crop yields. A major obstacle to boosting yields of wheat (an important staple in many parts of the world) is the availability and efficient use of water, since there is increasing stress on water resources used for agriculture globally, and also in parts of the UK. Improved soil and crop management and the development of new genotypes may increase wheat yields when water is limiting. Technical and scientific issues concerning management options such as irrigation and the use of growth-promoting rhizobacteria are explored, since these may allow the more efficient use of irrigation. Fundamental understanding of how crops sense and respond to multiple abiotic stresses can help improve the effective use of irrigation water. Experiments are needed to test the hypothesis that modifying wheat root system architecture (by increasing root proliferation deep in the soil profile) will allow greater soil water extraction thereby benefiting productivity and yield stability. Furthermore, better knowledge of plant and soil interactions and how below-ground and above-ground processes communicate within the plant can help identify traits and ultimately genes (or alleles) that will define genotypes that yield better under dry conditions. Developing new genotypes will take time and, therefore, these challenges need to be addressed now.

The capability of firms to sense and respond to changes in technologies, called technological opportunism, is of growing importance to managers as a source of competitive advantage. However, exactly how technological opportunism impacts firm performance is still not clearly understood. Furthermore, the role of marketing in this relationship, if any, has yet to be examined. Understanding this relationship is critical for marketing managers not only for determining strategic investments of resources but also for demonstrating marketing return on activities. This paper explores the links between technological opportunism and firm performance. The results show that technological opportunism has a strong positive impact on key measures of performance such as firm sales, profits and market value. Importantly, marketing emphasis is the mechanism through which the technological opportunism–performance relationship is achieved. Finally, the impact of marketing emphasis on B2B firms is different than that for B2C firms, highlighting the importance of these activities for B2B marketing managers.

Journal homepage: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science Artikkelen oppsummerer 20 års forskning på atferd og miljø i merder. Salmon may sense and respond to a range of environmental variables within sea-cages, including light, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, water currents and certain chemical treatments used during production. Environments within sea-cages are typically highly variable in both space and time, with the greatest variation occurring with depth. Preferred swimming depths and densities of salmon are the result of active trade-offs among environmental influences and an array of internal motivational factors such as feed and perceived threats. When preferred levels of multiple environmental cues exist at different depths, behavioural responses to temperature, light, the entry of feed, oxygen levels or the presence of treatment chemicals may dominate and override behavioural responses to all other drivers and determine swimming depths. Behavioural trade-offs in response to environmental drivers typically result in schooling at specific depths within sea-cages at densities 1.5 to 5 times their stocked density, and up to 20 times in extreme cases. Understanding the spatial and temporal variability of key environmental variables within sea-cages and how salmon respond to them may enable modifications to sea-cage environments to improve welfare outcomes, feeding regimes, artificial light management strategies and the efficacy of sea-lice treatments.

Recent advances in the field of distributed sensing and actuation have led to the development of new ‘smart structures’. A smart (or intelligent) structure is able to sense and respond, and control its own characteristics and state. Piezoelectric smart materials have gained popularity as both sensors and actuators. In the present work a new experimental set-up is described that was designed to carry out static and dynamic experimentation on piezoelectric smart structures. Four types of experiment were carried out; results were also determined using analytical methods. The comparison of the analytical and experimental results showed good agreement.

This research identifies how the IT function can create agility in existing information systems. Agility is the capability to quickly sense and respond to environmental perturbations. We con-trasted perspectives on agility from a widely used industry framework and that of the IS re-search literature. Beer’s Viable System Model was a useful meta-level theory to house agility elements from IS research and it introduced cybernetic principles to identify the processes re-quired of the IT function. Indeed, our surveys of 70 organizations confirmed that the applied theory better correlates with reported agility than does existing industry best practice. The research conducted two quantitative surveys to test the applied theory. The first survey mailed a Likert-type questionnaire to the clients of an Australian IT consultancy. The second survey invited international members of professional interest groups to complete a web-based questionnaire. The responses from the surveys were analyzed using partial-least-squares mod-eling. The data analysis positively correlated the maturity of IT function processes prescribed by the VSM and the likelihood of agility in existing information systems. We claim our findings ge-neralize to other large organizations in OECD member countries. The research offers an agility-capability model of the IT function to explain and predict agility in existing information systems. A further contribution is to improve industry ‘best practice’ frame-works by prescribing processes of the IT function to develop in maturity.

Advances in medical treatments of a wide variety of pathophysiological conditions require the development of better therapeutic agents, as well as a combination of the required therapeutic agents with device-integrated biomaterials that can serve as sensors and carriers. Combination of micro- and nano-fabricated systems with intelligent biomaterials that have the ability to sense and respond is a promising avenue for the development of better diagnostic and therapeutic medical systems. Micro- and nano-electromechanical systems (MEMs and NEMs) are now becoming a family of potentially powerful new technologies for drug delivery, diagnostic tools, and tissue engineering. Improvements in micro- and nano-fabrication technologies have enhanced the ability to create better performing therapeutic systems for numerous pathophysiological applications. More importantly, MEMS- and NEMS-based tissue regeneration scaffolds, biosensors, and drug delivery devices provide new opportunities to mimic the natural intelligence and response of biological systems.

While it has long been understood that cells can sense and respond to a variety of stimuli, including soluble and insoluble factors, light, and externally applied mechanical stresses, the extent to which cells can sense and respond to the mechanical properties of their environment has only recently begun to be studied. Cell response to substrate stiffness has been suggested to play an important role in processes ranging from developmental morphogenesis to the pathogenesis of disease states and may have profound implications for cell and tissue culture and tissue engineering. Given the importance of this phenomenon, there is a clear need for systems for cell study in which substrate mechanics can be carefully defined and varied independently of biochemical and other signals. This review will highlight past work in the field of cell response to substrate rigidity as well as areas for future study.

Recently big-sized hospitals showed their interest in medical information event monitoring system based on Sense and Respond in order to give patients in emergency a safer medical treatment. In this paper we implemented medical information event monitoring system based on Sense and Respond which stand on event and monitoring process. This system consists of event definition, event extraction, event delivery, and monitoring. It ensures real-time response by grasping and delivering medical information in real-time, and well-balanced understanding of information for hospital management by real-time tracking. Also early confrontation case by case by, event delivery make the safety of patients be secured, the efficiency of hospital can be maximized by early grasping the problems in hospital management problems.

The root system is essential for the growth and development of plants. In addition to anchoring the plant in the ground, it is the site of uptake of water and minerals from the soil. Plant root systems show an astonishing plasticity in their architecture, which allows for optimal exploitation of diverse soil structures and conditions. The signalling pathways that enable plants to sense and respond to changes in soil conditions, in particular nutrient supply, are a topic of intensive research, and root system architecture (RSA) is an important and obvious phenotypic output. At present, the quantitative description of RSA is labour intensive and time consuming, even using the currently available software, and the lack of a fast RSA measuring tool hampers forward and quantitative genetics studies. Here, we describe EZ-Rhizo: a Windows-integrated and semi-automated computer program designed to detect and quantify multiple RSA parameters from plants growing on a solid support medium. The method is non-invasive, enabling the user to follow RSA development over time. We have successfully applied EZ-Rhizo to evaluate natural variation in RSA across 23 Arabidopsis thaliana accessions, and have identified new RSA determinants as a basis for future quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis.

In the mission of plant husbandry, light is a critical yet passive entity. The potential to actively implement dynamic lighting strategies to control plant growth and development holds great promise in the future of plant cultivation. In other words, rather than simply using a single stable light condition to maintain photosynthesis, might it be possible to continually adjust fluence rate, wavelength combinations, and photoperiods to actively manipulate plant morphology and production? Research over the past 100 years suggests that it is so, and today's solid-state, narrow bandwidth lighting platforms offer a unique opportunity to test this hypothesis. The goal of this report is to describe the potential use of light as a growth regulator. Here light-emitting diode technology is well suited for the application, because light quantity, quality, photoperiod, and combinations thereof can be controlled with great precision. Specific light combinations may be adjusted throughout the life of a plant to potentially optimize traits of interest such as synchronization of flowering, maintenance of vegetative growth programs, control of plant stature, or acceleration of juvenility. This report describes the plant photosensory networks and how they sense and respond to light. The connection between light and internal hormone stasis is explored and then extended to questions of designing specific regimes to control plant growth and development. The concept of static signaling states is presented as a means to tightly control plant habits, in essence, using light to stabilize plant signal transduction pathways and their associated outcomes. Finally, the concepts presented are applied to the diploid strawberry Fragaria vesca to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach. These experiments provide proof-of-concept and lay a foundation for further studies.

Systems biology seeks to understand how the behavior of cells and organisms arises from the collective interactions of their component molecules. I will discuss how signal transduction- the process by which cells sense and respond to external signals - is being reconsidered from a systems perspective. This relies on ideas and concepts from the physical sciences coupled to new experimental strategies. I will outline some of the challenges through work in our laboratory on epidermal growth factor signalling.

The fact that cellular development and fate is very dependent, not just of the biochemical signals of the environment and of their own genetic background, but also of the mechanical properties and mechanical stimuli acting within the extra cellular matrix, has promoted the birth of a new field of science and technology at the interface of biology and engineering, that of mechanobiology. Such novel field focuses on the way that physical forces, stresses and strains, and changes in cell or tissue mechanics contribute to tissue development, to the success of physiological interactions and even to the appearance of disease. A major challenge in the field is linked to understanding the complex mechanisms by which cells sense and respond to mechanical signals: the mechanotransduction properties of cells. Although completely understanding how cells respond to mechanical stimuli and learning about their mechano-sensitive properties and about the mechanical forces they can develop is a complex task, the use of biomedical microdevices with controlled microstructures and microtextures can be a useful strategy for the progressive comprehension of single and collective cell behavior. This chapter provides some introductory examples of microsystems developed for generating knowledge for the field of mechanobiology. The cases of study include cell culture platforms for obtaining different types of cell aggregations, biomedical microsystems for studying the impact of surface texture on cell behavior and some final textured surfaces with details reaching nanometric details.

Cells and therefore tissues ordinarily experience some form of mechanical stimulation as they are often in mechanically diverse and dynamic environments. As a result we have learned that cells have the astounding ability to sense and respond to their environment. This seemingly innate behavior of cells has intrigued many researchers in the field of cell mechanics for decades and compelled efforts aimed at characterizing its behaviors and underlying mechanisms. While many techniques exist, in the context of this chapter, novel techniques we have developed and implemented will be examined as well as new emergent behaviors we have discovered. The behaviors that will be discussed have relevance in various areas of pathology and physiology including collective cell migration and cancer metastasis.

The membrane transport apparatus is the most fundamental eukaryotic positioning system by which one-third of the mammalian proteome is processed and transported to the appropriate cellular destination or secreted. Over the last few years, secretory transport has been shown to be regulated by a network of signaling devices that sense and respond to both endogenous states and exogenous signals or perturbations in a harmonic and complex fashion, while robustly maintaining the homeostasis and optimality of the transport function. The design of this regulatory network can be best understood within the conceptual framework of the control theory.

The term Smart Home typically refers to dwellings augmented with high-tech responsive systems such that heating, air conditioning, lighting, appliances, entertainment outlets, and architectural components are computerized and managed, often via a remote control. Smart homes promise comfort, convenience, and resource conservation in the near future. Yet the notion of increased dependency on technology for comfort and efficiency (and hence, sustainably) needs to be revised. While we (justifi- ably) expect our dwellings to use technological advances to sense and respond to our needs, a growing body of literature (1-5) warns against increased dependencies and amplified complexifi- cation, given the resource depletion anticipated in the future. Through examples and discussions drawn primarily from ver- nacular architecture discourse, this paper addresses this dichot- omy. We investigate how smart homes can be re-defined to better fit sustainability goals while anticipating technology limitations. We introduce members of the ICT4S community to the sustaina- bility potentials of vernacular domestic architecture and inspire them by its smart responses to human needs and harsh condi- tions. And finally, we argue that re-employing tried-and-true vernacular techniques in conjunction with ICT systems can offer smart yet simple and feasible solutions to future housing needs while being inherently more sustainable from an environmental and operational stance.

Smart textiles can be defined as textiles that are able to sense and respond to changes in their environment. They may be divided into two classes: passive and active smart textiles. The scope of this book is focused on smart textiles that are classified according to their main fields of application: (1) medical, (2) transportation and energy and (3) protection, security communication and textile electronics. The objective is to present the latest research results together with basic concepts related to the most promising applications. This book highlights, for the first time, all the main fields of applications of smart textiles. The scientific issues and proposed solutions regarding various results, prototypes and achievements obtained in the best academic and industrial laboratories worldwide are presented in a rigorous scientific way. At the same time, practical solutions and their realization, believed to be of the interest to industrial partners, are presented and explained in the second part of chapters. The book should be useful for researchers and students in academia, as well as for companies and start-ups that are developing products using the concept of smart textiles.

The utility of any model species cannot be judged solely in terms of the tools and approaches it provides for genetic analysis. A fundamental consideration is also how its biology has been shaped by the environment and the ecological niche which it occupies. By comparing different species occupying very different habitats we can learn how molecular and cellular mechanisms change during evolution in order to optimally adapt to their environment. Such knowledge is as important as understanding how these mechanisms work. This is illustrated by the use of fish models for studying the function and evolution of the circadian clock. In this review we outline our current understanding of how fish clocks sense and respond to light and explain how this differs fundamentally from the situation with mammalian clocks. In addition, we present results from comparative studies involving two species of blind cavefish, Astyanax mexicanus and Phreatichthys andruzzii. This work reveals the consequences of evolution in perpetual darkness for the circadian clock and its regulation by light as well as for other mechanisms such as DNA repair, sleep, and metabolism which directly or indirectly are affected by regular exposure to sunlight. Major differences in the cave habitats inhabited by these two cavefish species have a clear impact on shaping the molecular and cellular adaptations to life in complete darkness.

Advances in biotechnology have led to an accelerated discovery of macromolecular therapeutics such as peptides, proteins and polynucleotides. These macromolecules can be targeted against a variety of diseases, each requiring delivery to a well-defined compartment of the body. As such therapeutics are often prone to degradation before reaching their target site, or do not reach their target site at all, they often require a special formulation. This review focuses on several types of materials that are currently under investigation for the delivery of nucleic acid therapeutics and aims to pinpoint the limitations of these materials with the ultimate goal to identify the material challenges which, in our opinion, will constitute a new generation of ‘intelligent’ materials for nucleic acid delivery. Such ‘intelligent’ materials should be able to sense and respond to environmental changes. The generated response to these environmental changes should give the material new properties that favor the intracellular delivery of their payload. Besides dealing with material properties, we especially aim to focus on the biological barriers such intelligent materials will have to deal with when used for the delivery of nucleic acids. Furthermore, we briefly discuss the advanced light microscopy techniques that are often used to visualize and quantify the steps of the delivery process of nucleic acids.

Commercial airlines face an extremely challenging operating and competitive environment. To remain in business they must comply with ever-changing regulatory requirements while, at the same time, minimizing their operational costs without sacrificing customer expectations of service levels. Increasingly, airlines are realizing that a “plan-execute” mode of operation must give way to a “sense-respond” mode of operation; in other words they must become a real-time (agile) organization, capable of sensing the occurrence of unforeseen events such as the placement of a last-minute shipping order, flight delays, and cancellations, and respond effectively in real-time to such events. To enable enterprises in general, and the airline industry in particular, to improve their sense-and-respond capabilities and ensure better resource utilization, a number of software vendors are offering event stream processing and Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) solutions. This case examines a longitudinal set of real-world implementation projects using such a solution at a major US airline (referred to as Southern International Airlines) and the results and lessons gained from this deployment.

Effective strategic planning demands that organizations develop an understanding of the forces shaping the situation by engaging the collective efforts and interpretive capabilities of various representatives of the organization. This study investigates the mechanisms by which such an understanding develops and, subsequently, shapes marketing strategy. Specifically, organizations are examined as sensemaking units stimulated by perceived environmental turbulence, cultural open-mindedness, and team functional diversity. These factors are modeled as determinants of an organization's sensemaking capability, which is comprised of communicative, interpretive, and analytical dimensions. This study argues that a developed sensemaking capability increases the potential range of strategic responses and, ultimately, enhances customer-based performance. The results from a sample of wholesale distributors suggest that organizations that maintain greater internal variety are better able to sense and respond to the environment.

Agility at the individual business unit and organizational levels presents a challenge for many information system (IS) departments. Business unit agility demands the ability to sense and respond to changes in local competitive environments, whereas organizational agility demands the ability to sense broader market opportunities and respond with changes that are organization-wide. The former requires experimentation and customization of system designs, while the latter demands uniformity and standardization. Although flexible and customizable software might assist organizations in adapting systems to meet these challenges simultaneously, coordination across multiple business units also demands effective organization and governance of system design and development. This paper presents a longitudinal case study of an insurance company that was effective at sensing and responding to changes in the environment at the business unit level, but less effective at sensing and responding at the organizational level. Using the platform logic as a theoretical lens, we analyze this case and offer insights into how multi-unit organizations can manage system design at the organizational and business unit levels, thereby supporting agility through the development of effective organizing and governance mechanisms. Our analysis outlines relational and integration mechanisms and explains how these arrangements helped the organization to attain greater enterprise agility and support its overall strategy.

The ability to sense and respond to the environment is a hallmark of living systems. These processes occur at the levels of the organism, cells and individual molecules. Sensing of extracellular changes could result in a structural or chemical alteration in a molecule, which could in turn trigger a cascade of intracellular signals or regulated trafficking of molecules at the cell surface. These and other such processes allow cells to sense and respond to environmental changes. Often, these changes and the responses to them are spatially and/or temporally localized, and visualization of such events necessitates the use of high-resolution imaging approaches. Here we discuss optical imaging approaches and tools for imaging individual events at the cell surface with improved speed and resolution.

The results of an effort to build a sense-and-respond solution for a supply chain by Using a model-driven development framework are described in this paper. One of the components of the framework is the IBM Research-developed model-driven business-transformation (MDBT) toolkit, a set of formal models, methods, and tools. The inventory optimization analytics used to improve supply chain performance are also described. This approach is illustrated through a case study involving the IBM System x™ supply chain.

Many animal groups exhibit rapid, coordinated collective motion. Yet, the evolutionary forces that cause such collective responses to evolve are poorly understood. Here, we develop analytical methods and evolutionary simulations based on experimental data from schooling fish. We use these methods to investigate how populations evolve within unpredictable, time-varying resource environments. We show that populations evolve toward a distinctive regime in behavioral phenotype space, where small responses of individuals to local environmental cues cause spontaneous changes in the collective state of groups. These changes resemble phase transitions in physical systems. Through these transitions, individuals evolve the emergent capacity to sense and respond to resource gradients (i.e. individuals perceive gradients via social interactions, rather than sensing gradients directly), and to allocate themselves among distinct, distant resource patches. Our results yield new insight into how natural selection, acting on selfish individuals, results in the highly effective collective responses evident in nature. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10955.001, eLife digest In nature, we see many examples of highly coordinated movements of groups of individuals; think of a flock of birds turning swiftly in unison or a crowd of people filing through the exit of a building. A common feature of these behaviors is that they occur without any centralized control, and that they involve sudden and often dramatic changes in the 'collective state' of the group (i.e. speed, or the distances between individuals). In the past, researchers have likened these transitions in collective behavior to phase transitions in physical systems, for example, the transition between liquid water and water vapor. However, it is not clear how such collective responses could have evolved. Natural selection is an evolutionary process whereby individuals with particularly 'fit' traits produce more offspring than others. Over many generations, these beneficial traits tend to become more common in the population. Hein, Rosenthal, Hagstrom et al. developed a mathematical model to investigate whether the capacity of a population to perform collective motions could evolve through natural selection. The model shows that over many generations, populations consistently evolve a unique collective trait whereby small responses of individuals to an environmental cue can cause spontaneous changes in the collective state of the local population. These transitions in collective state greatly enhance the ability of individuals to locate and exploit resources. Hein, Rosenthal, Hagstrom et al.’s findings suggest that natural selection acting on the behavior of individuals can cause a population to evolve a distinctive, collective behavior. The next challenge will be to identify a biological system in which the evolution of collective motion can be studied experimentally to test these predictions. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10955.002

Although a few of the earliest naturalists, such as Theophrastus, made concrete observations regarding the sophisticated ways by which plants sense and respond to their environments, the prevailing attitude toward plants has been based on the Aristotelian paradigm, that at their low rank, slightly above minerals on Scala Naturae, plants are mere non-sentient soil-eating blobs. However, accumulating evidence demonstrates that plants are able to not only precisely gauge and respond to their immediate environments but can also perceive, integrate and adaptively respond to myriad internal and external signals and cues that are correlated with their future environments, in ways that maximize their life-time performance.

Henri Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis (2004) articulates space as an embodied experience of rhythms. His theory asserts the importance of the instant of ‘lived’ practice (Lefebvre, 1991). Following a practice-as-research methodology, this chapter explores findings from a series of performances that have taken place in the UK built environment. This practice of free, improvised play is understood as a critique of dominant and normative rhythms in this setting. This chapter asserts the bodily capacity to sense and respond to rhythm from external entities within close spatial proximity, and is a development of knowledge produced through the act of playing.

Lightweight, deformable materials that can sense and respond to human touch and motion can be the basis of future wearable computers, where the material itself will be capable of performing computations. To facilitate the creation of “materials that compute”, we draw from two emerging modalities for computation: chemical computing, which relies on reaction-diffusion mechanisms to perform operations and oscillatory computing, which performs pattern recognition through synchronization of coupled oscillators. Chemical computing systems, however, suffer from the fact that the reacting species are coupled only locally; the coupling is limited by diffusion as the chemical waves propagate throughout the system. Additionally, oscillatory computing systems have not utilized a potentially wearable material. To address both these limitations, we develop the first model for coupling self-oscillating polymer gels to a piezoelectric (PZ) micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS). The resulting transduction between chemo-mechanical and electrical energy creates signals that can be propagated quickly over long distances and thus, permits remote, non-diffusively coupled oscillators to communicate and synchronize. Moreover, the oscillators can be organized into arbitrary topologies because the electrical connections lift the limitations of diffusive coupling. Using our model, we predict the synchronization behavior that can be used for computational tasks, ultimately enabling “materials that compute”.

Quorum-sensing networks enable bacteria to sense and respond to chemical signals produced by neighboring bacteria. They are widespread: over one hundred morphologically and genetically distinct species of eubacteria are known to use quorum sensing to control gene expression. This diversity suggests the potential to use natural protein variants to engineer parallel, input-specific, cell-cell communication pathways. However, only three distinct signaling pathways, Lux, Las, and Rhl, have been adapted for and broadly used in engineered systems. The paucity of unique quorum-sensing systems and their propensity for crosstalk limits the usefulness of our current quorum-sensing toolkit. This review discusses the need for more signaling pathways, roadblocks to using multiple pathways in parallel, and strategies for expanding the quorum-sensing toolbox for synthetic biology.

Living cells possess an exquisite ability to sense and respond to physical information in their microenvironment. This ability plays a key role in many fundamentally important physiological and pathological processes. We will describe our work utilizing a variety of biophysical tools to investigate the dynamic responses of cells to mechanical stimuli and how physical cues can be employed to re-purpose and manipulate biological processes. These responses to physical cues are not simply a side-product of biology but are key components of biological and physical feedback loops that govern the life of a cell.

Information System Development (ISD) agility is concerned with why and how ISD organizations sense and respond swiftly as they develop and maintain Information System applications. We outline a theory of ISD agility that draws upon a model of IT innovation and organizational learning. The theory adopts March's concepts of exploration and exploitation to investigate agility in the context of ISD organizations. Depending on their learning focus, ISD organizations make choices as to what sensing and responding swiftly means. This is reflected in how they value speed in relation to other ISD process goals, including quality, cost, risk and innovative content. The paper examines two specific Research Propositions: (1) ISD organizations locate themselves into different innovation regimes with respect to their need for exploration and exploitation, and (2) their perceptions of agility differ in those regimes as reflected in their process goal priorities. We validate these propositions through an empirical investigation of changes in ISD organizations' process goals and innovation practices over a period of over 4 years (1999-2003), during which time they shied away from exploration to exploitation while innovating with Internet computing. These ISD organizations viewed agility differently during the studied time periods as reflected in how they traded innovative content or speed vis-a-vis the other process goals of cost, risk, and product quality. In conclusion, this paper discusses implications for future research on agility in ISD organizations.

This paper examines a business and IS/IT initiative at Volvo that involves managing the development and implementation of an agile aftermarket supply chain. The case is based on Volvo's global initiative to create a platform, Web services, and a Web portal for selling spare parts over the Internet. Creating and integrating a new platform is difficult, and establishing new relations in global aftermarket logistics is even more challenging. Agility relates to an organisation's ability to sense and respond rapidly to unpredictable events in order to satisfy changing customer demands. Volvo's effort illustrates agility as achieved by working continuously with scenario development and keeping implementation projects to a comprehendible size in order to nurture learning. The effort involved direct actions to manage both the technology and the relations among supply chain actors. As this case shows, continuous implementation projects can deliver innovation in new relations and through new channels - particularly if projects address agility from the start.

In today's competitive climate, enterprises must strive for maximum responsiveness and adaptive capability to stay abreast of complex interactions among customers, suppliers, manufacturers, markets, and other elements of their businesses. For several years, firms have used the sense-and-respond paradigm for monitoring and managing business solutions. Called S&R for short, this method, as popularized by Stephan Haeckel, is a way to institutionalize the virtue of adaptivity (1999). A new breed of platforms and tools that use the S&R paradigm to enhance business performance management are making it possible to build an effective decision-making process into an enterprise's software and equipment.

Modern businesses are increasingly dynamic in nature, which creates a need for computer systems that can sense and respond to rapid changes in the environment, or “context,” of the enterprise. This article presents the authors' vision of a context “ecosystem” that helps enterprises, applications, and developers respond to these dynamic changes and derive long-term value from context information. the ecosystem includes providers of raw context information, components that derive more abstract context information from lower level sources, middleware that provides systematic context services to applications, development tools, and contextaware applications.

City governments face difficult challenges in serving their increasingly Net-connected constituencies in an environment of change, uncertain demand, and reduced budgets. These conditions require their IT departments to enable governments to adapt to citizen requests in a sense-and-respond (S-R) manner. In this article, the application of S-R concepts is demonstrated by the approaches used in developing an IT strategic plan for Columbus, Ohio. The fractal-based, request-focused strategy used here creates a unified organizational and IT context for connecting the Department of Technology and city government departments to their customers by utilizing an incremental, lean portfolio-management-based action plan and architecture.

In this paper we present a technical framework that supports sense and respond (SaR), the approach that enables an enterprise to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment. To implement the SaR approach, an enterprise proactively monitors trends and uses effective decision-support tools to help it act in a timely manner. We describe two pilot projects in which we implemented SaR prototypes and applied them to solve business problems. In the first pilot project we helped the IBM Microelectronics Division deploy an automated inventory management system based on our inventory optimization model. In the second pilot project, we helped the IBM Personal Computing Division deploy a SaR system in support of demand/supply conditioning. One of the components of this SaR system is an order trend model that provides early warning of constraints and excesses in the supply chain and helps make demand/supply conditioning more effective. Early results from these projects are encouraging and show that significant gains in profitability are possible.

Microfabrication and materials-science-based approaches provide a powerful new set of tools to control the spatial organization and temporal presentation of cellular cues. In this progress report, we highlight recent advances in the technological development and application of these tools to study how cells sense and respond to their microenvironment.

Understanding of the roles that HIGH EXPRESSION OF OSMOTICALLY RESPONSIVE GENE 1 (HOS1) plays in the plant's ability to sense and respond to environmental signals has grown dramatically. Mechanisms through which HOS1 affects plant development have been uncovered, and the broader consequences of hos1 on the plant's ability to perceive and respond to its environment have been investigated. As such, it has been possible to place HOS1 as a key integrator of temperature information in response to both acute signals and cues that indicate time of year into developmental processes that are essential for plant survival. This review summarizes knowledge of HOS1's form and function, and contextualizes this information so that it is relevant for better understanding the processes of cold signalling, flowering time, and nuclear pore complex function more broadly.

Water is fundamental to plant life, but the mechanisms by which plant roots sense and respond to variations in water availability in the soil are poorly understood. Many studies of responses to water deficit have focused on large-scale effects of this stress, but have overlooked responses at the sub-organ or cellular level that give rise to emergent whole-plant phenotypes. We have recently discovered hydropatterning, an adaptive environmental response in which roots position new lateral branches according to the spatial distribution of available water across the circumferential axis. This discovery illustrates that roots are capable of sensing and responding to water availability at spatial scales far lower than those normally studied for such processes. This review will explore how roots respond to water availability with an emphasis on what is currently known at different spatial scales. Beginning at the micro-scale, there is a discussion of water physiology at the cellular level and proposed sensory mechanisms cells use to detect osmotic status. The implications of these principles are then explored in the context of cell and organ growth under non-stress and water-deficit conditions. Following this, several adaptive responses employed by roots to tailor their functionality to the local moisture environment are discussed, including patterning of lateral root development and generation of hydraulic barriers to limit water loss. We speculate that these micro-scale responses are necessary for optimal functionality of the root system in a heterogeneous moisture environment, allowing for efficient water uptake with minimal water loss during periods of drought.

To exploit ecogeographical niches of the temperate zone, trees and other perennial plant species optimize the timing of floral and vegetative bud break within the dynamic nature of the annual environmental cycle. This insures successful reproduction and continued growth over their lifespan. Adapting to the annual environmental cycle as well as more long-term environmental fluctuations, such as, global warming is critical to insuring survival of the species. Thus, the tree must utilize physiological systems to sense and respond in time and space to the appropriate environmental cues. Historically, many of the physiological players such as phytohormones and their actions have been well characterized, however, the underlying regulation of the genes and gene networks controlling these physiological systems remains relatively unknown. With advances in molecular genetics and genomics technologies, we are beginning to understand the genetic basis for a number of important phenological traits. It is the intent of this review to highlight our current state of knowledge for the genetics of the timing of bud-break in trees focusing on both fruit and forest trees to provide a framework to guide future efforts to understand how the tree coordinates annual growth, development and reproduction with the environmental cycle.