Digital Commons Network^™

Border-Collision Bifurcations Of Cardiac Calcium Cycling, Jacob Michael Kahle

Masters Theses

In this thesis, we study the nonlinear dynamics of calcium cycling within a cardiac cell. We develop piecewise smooth mapping models to describe intracellular calcium cycling in cardiac myocyte. Then, border-collision bifurcations that arise in these piecewise maps are investigated. These studies are carried out using both one-dimensional and two-dimensional models. Studies in this work lead to interesting insights on the stability of cardiac dynamics, suggesting possible mechanisms for cardiac alternans. Alternans is the precursor of sudden cardiac arrests, a leading cause of death in the United States.

Transition Orbits Of Walking Droplets, Joshua Parker

Physics

It was recently discovered that millimeter-sized droplets bouncing on the surface of an oscillating bath of the same fluid can couple with the surface waves it produces and begin walking across the fluid bath. These walkers have been shown to behave similarly to quantum particles; a few examples include single-particle diffraction, tunneling, and quantized orbits. Such behavior occurs because the drop and surface waves depend on each other to exist, making this the first and only known macroscopic pilot-wave system. In this paper, the quantized orbits between two identical drops are explored. By sending a perturbation to a pair of …

Mathematical Notions Of Resilience: The Effects Of Disturbancei In One-Dimensional Nonlinear Systems, Stephen Ligtenberg

Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Mathematical Modeling And Optimal Control Of Alternative Pest Management For Alfalfa Agroecosystems, Cara Sulyok

Mathematics Honors Papers

This project develops mathematical models and computer simulations for cost-effective and environmentally-safe strategies to minimize plant damage from pests with optimal biodiversity levels. The desired goals are to identify tradeoffs between costs, impacts, and outcomes using the enemies hypothesis and polyculture in farming. A mathematical model including twelve size- and time-dependent parameters was created using a system of non-linear differential equations. It was shown to accurately fit results from open-field experiments and thus predict outcomes for scenarios not covered by these experiments.

The focus is on the application to alfalfa agroecosystems where field experiments and data were conducted and provided …

An Applied Mathematics Approach To Modeling Inflammation: Hematopoietic Bone Marrow Stem Cells, Systemic Estrogen And Wound Healing And Gas Exchange In The Lungs And Body, Racheal L. Cooper

Theses and Dissertations

Mathematical models apply to a multitude physiological processes and are used to make predictions and analyze outcomes of these processes. Specifically, in the medical field, a mathematical model uses a set of initial conditions that represents a physiological state as input and a set of parameter values are used to describe the interaction between variables being modeled. These models are used to analyze possible outcomes, and assist physicians in choosing the most appropriate treatment options for a particular situation. We aim to use mathematical modeling to analyze the dynamics of processes involved in the inflammatory process.

First, we create a …

An Examination Of Mathematical Models For Infectious Disease, David M. Jenkins

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Starting with the original 1926 formulation of the SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Removed) model for infectious diseases, mathematical epidemiology continued to grow. Many extensions such as the SEIR, MSIR, and MSEIR models were developed using SIR as a basis to model diseases in a variety of circumstances. By taking the original SIR model, and reducing the system of three first-order equations to a single first-order equation, analysis shows that the model predicts two possible situations. This analysis is followed by discussion of an alternative use of the SIR model which allows for one to track the amount of sustainable genetic variation in a …

Applications Of Stability Analysis To Nonlinear Discrete Dynamical Systems Modeling Interactions, Jonathan L. Hughes

Theses and Dissertations

Many of the phenomena studied in the natural and social sciences are governed by processes which are discrete and nonlinear in nature, while the most highly developed and commonly used mathematical models are linear and continuous. There are significant differences between the discrete and the continuous, the nonlinear and the linear cases, and the development of mathematical models which exhibit the discrete, nonlinear properties occurring in nature and society is critical to future scientific progress. This thesis presents the basic theory of discrete dynamical systems and stability analysis and explores several applications of this theory to nonlinear systems which model …

Discrete Nonlinear Planar Systems And Applications To Biological Population Models, Shushan Lazaryan, Nika Lazaryan, Nika Lazaryan

Theses and Dissertations

We study planar systems of difference equations and applications to biological models of species populations. Central to the analysis of this study is the idea of folding - the method of transforming systems of difference equations into higher order scalar difference equations. Two classes of second order equations are studied: quadratic fractional and exponential.

We investigate the boundedness and persistence of solutions, the global stability of the positive fixed point and the occurrence of periodic solutions of the quadratic rational equations. These results are applied to a class of linear/rational systems that can be transformed into a quadratic fractional equation …