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Spots and Stripes
How do leopards get their spots? Mathematics gives us a better answer than the one offered by Rudyard Kipling in Just So Stories. This is the topic of That’s Maths this week ( TM019 ). Turing’s...
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Predator-Prey Models
Next week’s post will be about a model of the future of civilization! It is based on the classical predator-prey model, which is reviewed here. The Lotka-Volterra Model Many ecological process can be...
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Sunflowers and Fibonacci: Models of Efficiency
The article in this week’s That’s Maths column in The Irish Times ( TM046 ) is about the maths behind the efficient packing of sunflowers and many other plants Strolling along Baggot Street in Dublin...
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Biomathematics: the New Frontier
Mathematics is coming to Life in a Big Way. This week’s That’s Maths in The Irish Times (TM051, or Search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com) is about the increasing importance of mathematics in the...
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The Inexorable Rise in Life Expectancy
Life expectancy has increased in a spectacular fashion over the past 150 years. There has been a four-decade increase in average length of life over the period since 1850. World life expectancy has...
View ArticleThe Heart of Mathematics
At five litres per minute the average human heart pumps nearly 200 megalitres of blood through the body in a lifetime. Heart disease causes 40 percent of deaths in the EU and costs hundreds of billions...
View ArticleThe Miraculous Spiral on Booterstown Strand
We all know what a spiral looks like. Or do we? Ask your friends to describe one and they will probably trace out the form of a winding staircase. But that is actually a helix, a curve in...
View ArticleEmergence of Complex Behaviour from Simple Roots
It is exhilarating to watch a large flock of birds swarming in ever-changing patterns. Swarming is an emergent behaviour, resulting from a set of simple rules followed by each individual animal, bird...
View ArticleThe knotty problem of packing DNA
Soon it will be time to pack away the fairy lights. If you wish to avoid the knotty task of disentangling them next December, don’t just throw them in a box; roll them carefully around a stout stick or...
View ArticleThe Geography of Europe is Mapped in our Genes
It may seem too much to expect that a person’s geographic origin can be determined from a DNA sample. But, thanks to a mathematical technique called principal component analysis, this can be done with...
View ArticleEarth System Models simulate the changing climate
The climate is changing, and we need to know what changes to expect and how soon to expect them. Earth system models, which simulate all relevant components of the Earth system, are the primary means...
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