A mathematical model of chronic myelogenous leukemia

Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) is one of the most common types of leukemia. It is characterized by a chronic, seemingly stable steady state, which gives rise to oscillatory instability in the hematapoietic stem cell count. There are also many cases of CML which involve oscillations about a steady state during the chronic period (called Periodic Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia). Though instabilities are found frequently in many biological systems, it is rather unusual for the stem cell count in a patient with leukemia to be nonmonotonic over time. As such, the instability in CML is of tremendous interest to mathematical biologists. A more clear understanding of the dynamics of this disease might not only help with the development of treatments or a cure to CML, but it might also be a useful aid in determining what causes instability in other oscillatory diseases such as Cyclical Neutropenia. This paper's aim is to create a mathematical model of CML which might aid us in understanding the mechanism by which the chronic phase of the disease becomes unstable and reaches the acute phase

Fashioning a Better Future: Why Educating Young People about the Impact of their Clothing Choices Matters

This thesis explores who and what is harmed by the production and consumption of clothing. The research investigates the roots of today\u27s slow fashion phenomenon. The evolution of anti-consumerism, do-it-yourself culture and upcycling is critically examined. In the twenty-first century, various options exist for individuals looking to shop and dress in a way that is reflective of their personal ideals about social justice, animal rights and environmental protection. Since young people are so receptive to fashion trends and spend their disposable income on clothing, educating them about the impact of their choices is imperative. The appendix contains a high school unit plan demonstrating how this information may be applied in the classroom through team-building exercises and group projects

Bringing Disciplines and People Together to Characterize the Plastic and Genetic Responses of Molluscs to Environmental Change

Molluscs are remarkably diverse and are found across nearly all ecosystems, meaning that members of this ancient animal phylum provide a powerful means to study genomic-phenotype connections in a climate change framework. Recent advances in genomic sequencing technologies and genome assembly approaches finally allow the relatively cheap and tractable assembly of high-quality mollusc genome resources. After a brief review of these issues and advances, we use a case-study approach to provide some concrete examples of phenotypic plasticity and genomic adaptation in molluscs in response to environmental factors expected to be influenced by climate change. Our goal is to use molluscs as a “common currency” to demonstrate how organismal and evolutionary biologists can use natural systems to make phenotype-genotype connections in the context of changing environments. In parallel, we emphasize the critical need to collaborate and integrate findings across taxa and disciplines in order to use new data and information to advance our understanding of mollusc biology in the context of global environmental change. We end with a brief synthetic summary of the papers inspired by the 2021 SICB Symposium “Genomic Perspectives in Comparative Physiology of Molluscs: Integration across Disciplines”

Self-tuning of threshold for a two-state system

A two-state system (TSS) under time-periodic perturbations (to be regarded as input signals) is studied in connection with self-tuning (ST) of threshold and stochastic resonance (SR). By ST, we observe the improvement of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in a weak noise region. Analytic approach to a tuning equation reveals that SNR improvement is possible also for a large noise region and this is demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulations of hopping processes in a TSS. ST and SR are discussed from a little more physical point of energy transfer (dissipation) rate, which behaves in a similar way as SNR. Finally ST is considered briefly for a double-well potential system (DWPS), which is closely related to the TSS