Shining a tightly-focused but low-powered laser beam on an absorber dispersed in a biological fluid gives rise to spectacular growth of dendritic patterns. These result from localized drying of the fluid because of efficient absorption and conduction
of optical energy by the absorber. We have carried out experiments in several biologically relevant fluids and have analyzed patterns generated by different types of absorbers. We observe that the growth velocity of branches in the dendritic patterns can decrease below the value expected for natural drying.
We study the effect of learning dynamics on network topology. A network of discrete dynamical systems is considered for this purpose and the coupling strengths are made to evolve according to a temporal learning rule that is based on the paradigm of
spike-time-dependent plasticity. This incorporates necessary competition between different edges. The final network we obtain is robust and has a broad degree distribution.
