A model for phenotype change in a stochastic framework

some species, an inducible secondary phenotype will develop some time after the environmental change that evokes it. Nishimura (2006) [4] showed how an individual organism should optimize the time it takes to respond to an environmental change ("waiting time''). If the optimal waiting time is considered to act over the population, there are implications for the expected value of the mean fitness in that population. A stochastic predator-prey model is proposed in which the prey have a fixed initial energy budget. Fitness is the product of survival probability and the energy remaining for non-defensive purposes. The model is placed in the stochastic domain by assuming that the waiting time in the population is a normally distributed random variable because of biological variance inherent in mounting the response. It is found that the value of the mean waiting time that maximises fitness depends linearly on the variance of the waiting time

Collective patterns arising out of spatio-temporal chaos

We present a simple mathematical model in which a time averaged pattern emerges out of spatio-temporal chaos as a result of the collective action of chaotic fluctuations. Our evolution equation possesses spatial translational symmetry under a periodic boundary condition. Thus the spatial inhomogeneity of the statistical state arises through a spontaneous symmetry breaking. The transition from a state of homogeneous spatio-temporal chaos to one exhibiting spatial order is explained by introducing a collective viscosity which relates the averaged pattern with a correlation of the fluctuations.Comment: 11 pages (Revtex) + 5 figures (postscript

How the UK came to adore branded wine Le Piat d'Or

It was 1974. The UK market for wine was beginning to move. Branded contenders were making swift headway amongst unsophisticated UK wine drinkers. Key contenders were German, Blue Nun and Black Tower. And Mateus Rose from Portugal was also courting UK consumers. Despite these incursions, the market was still predominantly French with wines from across the channel in widest distribution throughout the UK. But they were beginning to lose ground

Lucy Faulkner and the 'ghastly grin': Reworking the title page illustration to Goblin Market

An article that recovers the work of the craftswoman Lucy Faulkner Orrinsmith. It demonstrates her role in the re-cutting of the title page illustration to Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’ designed by D. G. Rossetti in 1862-5

The digital economy and society: a preliminary commentary

Virtually all technologies that humans have invented or will invent present both benefits and risks. The history of humankind is that of invention, development and exploitation of technologies while managing their downsides. However, it is the speed, scope and pervasiveness of digital technological change across virtually every aspect of human endeavour that generate an enormous array of possible implications. Such characteristics undoubtedly set the digital revolution (sometimes called the fourth industrial revolution) apart from past technological revolutions in the way they challenge aspects of human behaviour and social institutions