Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

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 …

A New Undergraduate Curriculum On Mathematical Biology At University Of Dayton, Muhammad Usman, Amit Singh

Amit Singh

The beginning of modern science is marked by efforts of pioneers to understand the natural world using a quantitative approach. As Galileo wrote, "the book of nature is written in the language of mathematics". The traditional undergraduate course curriculum is heavily focused on individual disciplines like biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics rather than interdisciplinary courses. This fragmented teaching of sciences in majority of universities leave biology outside the quantitative and mathematical approaches. The landscape of biomedical science has transformed dramatically with advances in high throughput experimental approaches, which led to the huge amount of data. The best possible approach to generate …