Mathematical Techniques For Biology And Medicine

Mathematical Techniques For Physiology and Medicine

Suitable for both graduate and undergraduate courses, this text recalls basic concepts of calculus and shows how problems can be formulated in terms of differential equations. Fully worked-out solutions to selected problems. Fourth edition.

This volume highlights problems from a range of biological and medical applications that can be interpreted as questions about system behavior or control. Topics include drug resistance in cancer and malaria, biological fluid dynamics, auto-regulation in the kidney, anti-coagulation therapy, evolutionary diversification and photo-transduction. Mathematical techniques used to describe and investigate these biological and medical problems include ordinary, partial and stochastic differentiation equations, hybrid discrete-continuous approaches, as well as 2 and 3D numerical simulation.

A one-of-a-kind guide to using deterministic and probabilistic methods for solving problems in the biological sciences Highlighting the growing relevance of quantitative techniques in scientific research, Mathematical Methods in Biology provides an accessible presentation of the broad range of important mathematical methods for solving problems in the biological sciences. The book reveals the growing connections between mathematics and biology through clear explanations and specific, interesting problems from areas such as population dynamics, foraging theory, and life history theory. The authors begin with an introduction and review of mathematical tools that are employed in subsequent chapters, including biological modeling, calculus, differential equations, dimensionless variables, and descriptive statistics. The following chapters examine standard discrete and continuous models using matrix algebra as well as difference and differential equations. Finally, the book outlines probability, statistics, and stochastic methods as well as material on bootstrapping and stochastic differential equations, which is a unique approach that is not offered in other literature on the topic. In order to demonstrate the application of mathematical methods to the biological sciences, the authors provide focused examples from the field of theoretical ecology, which serve as an accessible context for study while also demonstrating mathematical skills that are applicable to many other areas in the life sciences. The book's algorithms are illustrated using MATLAB®, but can also be replicated using other software packages, including R, Mathematica®, and Maple; however, the text does not require any single computer algebra package. Each chapter contains numerous exercises and problems that range in difficulty, from the basic to more challenging, to assist readers with building their problem-solving skills. Selected solutions are included at the back of the book, and a related Web site features supplemental material for further study. Extensively class-tested to ensure an easy-to-follow format, Mathematical Methods in Biology is an excellent book for mathematics and biology courses at the upper-undergraduate and graduate levels. It also serves as a valuable reference for researchers and professionals working in the fields of biology, ecology, and biomathematics.

This volume presents a wide range of medical applications that can utilize mathematical computing. This work grew out of a workshop on optimization which was held during the 2005 CIM Thematic Term on Optimization in Coimbra, Portugal. It provides an overview of the state-of-the-art in optimization in medicine and will serve as an excellent reference for researchers in the medical computing community and for those working in applied mathematics and optimization.

The aim of this book is to introduce the subject of mathematical modeling in the life sciences. It is intended for students of mathematics, the physical sciences, and engineering who are curious about biology. Additionally, it will be useful to students of the life sciences and medicine who are unsatisfied with mere description and who seek an understanding of biological mechanism and dynamics through the use of mathematics. The book will be particularly useful to premedical students, because it will introduce them not only to a collection of mathematical methods but also to an assortment of phenomena involving genetics, epidemics, and the physiology of the heart, lung, and kidney. Because of its introductory character, mathematical prerequisites are kept to a minimum; they involve only what is usually covered in the first semester of a calculus sequence. The authors have drawn on their extensive experience as modelers to select examples which are simple enough to be understood at this elementary level and yet realistic enough to capture the essence of significant biological phenomena drawn from the areas of population dynamics and physiology. Because the models presented are realistic, the book can serve not only as an introduction to mathematical methods but also as a mathematical introduction to the biological material itself. For the student, who enjoys mathematics, such an introduction will be far more stimulating and satisfying than the purely descriptive approach that is traditional in the biological sciences.