A Short History Of Mathematical Population Dynamics

As Eugene Wigner stressed, mathematics has proven unreasonably effective in the physical sciences and their technological applications. The role of mathematics in the biological, medical and social sciences has been much more modest but has recently grown thanks to the simulation capacity offered by modern computers. This book traces the history of population dynamics---a theoretical subject closely connected to genetics, ecology, epidemiology and demography---where mathematics has brought significant insights. It presents an overview of the genesis of several important themes: exponential growth, from Euler and Malthus to the Chinese one-child policy; the development of stochastic models, from Mendel's laws and the question of extinction of family names to percolation theory for the spread of epidemics, and chaotic populations, where determinism and randomness intertwine. The reader of this book will see, from a different perspective, the problems that scientists face when governments ask for reliable predictions to help control epidemics (AIDS, SARS, swine flu), manage renewable resources (fishing quotas, spread of genetically modified organisms) or anticipate demographic evolutions such as aging.

This book is an outcome of the Second International Conference on Mathematical Population Dynamics. It is intended for mathematicians, statisticians, biologists, and medical researchers who are interested in recent advances in analyzing changes in populations of genes, cells, and tumors.

Mankind now faces even more challenging environment- and health-related problems than ever before. Readily available transportation systems facilitate the swift spread of diseases as large populations migrate from one part of the world to another. Studies on the spread of the communicable diseases are very important. This book, Mathematical Population Dynamics and Epidemiology in Temporal and Spatio-Temporal Domains, provides a useful experimental tool for making practical predictions, building and testing theories, answering specific questions, determining sensitivities of the parameters, forming control strategies, and much more. This volume focuses on the study of population dynamics with special emphasis on the migration of populations and the spreading of epidemics among human and animal populations. It also provides the background needed to interpret, construct, and analyze a wide variety of mathematical models. Most of the techniques presented in the book can be readily applied to model other phenomena, in biology as well as in other disciplines.

This textbook provides an introduction to the mathematical models of population dynamics in mathematical biology. The focus of this book is on the biological meaning/translation of mathematical structures in mathematical models, rather than simply explaining mathematical details and literacies to analyze a model. In some recent usages of the mathematical model simply with computer numerical calculations, the model includes some inappropriate mathematical structure concerning the reasonability of modeling for the biological problem under investigation. For students and researchers who study or use mathematical models, it is important and helpful to understand what mathematical setup could be regarded as reasonable for the model with respect to the relation between the biological factors involved in the assumptions and the mathematical structure of the model. Topics covered in this book are; modeling with geometric progression, density effect in population dynamics, deriving continuous time models from discrete time models, basic modeling for birth-death stochastic processes, continuous time models, modeling interspecific reaction for the continuous time population dynamics model, competition and prey-predator dynamics, modeling for population dynamics with a heterogeneous structure of population, qualitative analysis on the discrete time dynamical system, necessary knowledge about fundamental mathematical theories to understand the dynamical nature of continuous time models. The book includes popular topics in ecology and mathematical biology, as well as classic theoretical topics. By understanding the biological meaning of modeling for simple models, readers will be able to derive a specific mathematical model for a biological problem by reasonable modeling. The contents of this book is made accessible for readers without strong Mathematical background.

A population is a summation of all the organisms of the same group or species, which live in a particular geographical area, and have the capability of interbreeding. The main mathematical problem for a given population is to carefully examine the evolution (time dependent dynamics) of the population. The mathematical methods used in the study of this problem are based on probability theory, stochastic processes, dynamical systems, nonlinear differential and difference equations, and (non-)associative algebras.A state of a population is a distribution of probabilities of the different types of organisms in every generation. Type partition is called differentiation (for example, sex differentiation which defines a bisexual population). This book systematically describes the recently developed theory of (bisexual) population, and mainly contains results obtained since 2010.The book presents algebraic and probabilistic approaches in the theory of population dynamics. It also includes several dynamical systems of biological models such as dynamics generated by Markov processes of cubic stochastic matrices; dynamics of sex-linked population; dynamical systems generated by a gonosomal evolution operator; dynamical system and an evolution algebra of mosquito population; and ocean ecosystems.The main aim of this book is to facilitate the reader's in-depth understanding by giving a systematic review of the theory of population dynamics which has wide applications in biology, mathematics, medicine, and physics.

Interest in the temporal fluctuations of biological populations can be traced to the dawn of civilization. How can mathematics be used to gain an understanding of population dynamics? This monograph introduces the theory of structured population dynamics and its applications, focusing on the asymptotic dynamics of deterministic models. This theory bridges the gap between the characteristics of individual organisms in a population and the dynamics of the total population as a whole. In this monograph, many applications that illustrate both the theory and a wide variety of biological issues are given, along with an interdisciplinary case study that illustrates the connection of models with the data and the experimental documentation of model predictions. The author also discusses the use of discrete and continuous models and presents a general modeling theory for structured population dynamics. Cushing begins with an obvious point: individuals in biological populations differ with regard to their physical and behavioral characteristics and therefore in the way they interact with their environment. Studying this point effectively requires the use of structured models. Specific examples cited throughout support the valuable use of structured models. Included among these are important applications chosen to illustrate both the mathematical theories and biological problems that have received attention in recent literature.

"Public health is concerned with the process of mobilizing local, state/provincial, national, and international resources to assure the conditions in which all people can be healthy (Detels and Breslow 2002). To successfully implement this process and to make health for all achievable, public health must perform the functions listed in Box 1.1.1"--

Infectious diseases have been with us for millennia and continue to pose a threat, from the irritation of flu season to the potential extinction of our species. We instinctively fear them and alter our behaviour as a result. The reason we bury bodies six feet deep is because that was the depth that stopped plague transmission from the dead in the Middle Ages. Many religious practices, such as avoiding certain meats, were established because of foodborne disease transmission. In The Top Ten Diseases of All Time, Stacey Smith? presents the top ten deadliest diseases and their effects on society, providing a wealth of information about the trajectory and terrible impact of each disease, and humanity’s reaction to these diseases throughout the millennia. Did you know, for example, that: -The medical symbol evolved from the worms wrapped around a stick, because that was the only way to remove Guinea worms from the body, so having a stick meant you were a doctor. -Smallpox is the third-worst disease ever, yet it remains the only successfully eradicated human disease (but not for long!), thanks in part to a successful vaccine, in part to photographic recognition cards and in part due to helicopter-led forced vaccinations of whole villages in the former Yugoslavia. This brings up issues of individual rights versus public good that remain relevant today. -Four diseases were targeted for eradication in the 20th century; the failure to do so led directly to the creation of the environmental movement. -The inability of priests to explain how to stop the plague in the Middle Ages broke the back of the church as an all-powerful and all-knowing institution and led to colonialism and slavery. The Top Ten Diseases of All Time offers a fascinating overview of the deadliest diseases to spread throughout the world, including HIV/AIDS, Spanish Flu, Measles, The Black Death, Smallpox and others.