Wolfgang Alt - Böcker

Polymer and cell dynamics play an important role in processes like tumor growth, metastasis, embryogenesis, immune reactions and regeneration. This volume – based on an international workshop on numerical simulations of polymer and cell dynamics in Bad Honnef (Germany) in 2000 – provides an overview of the relevant mathematical and numerical methods, their applications and limits. The contributions are from the fields of applied and numerical mathematics, scientific computing, theoretical physics, molecular biophysics, cell and molecular biology as well as chemical and biomedical engineering. The volume will be of interest to scientists and advanced undergraduates in the fields of biotechnology, biomedicine, applied mathematics, biomathematics, biophysics and bioinformatics.

An interdisciplinary study explaining the dynamics underlying biological motion - one of the most obvious expressions of self-organization. Designed for a broad audience from bioscientists to applied mathematicians, this book considers possible synergetic mechanisms of interaction and cooperation on different microscopic levels.

The diverse aspects of biological motion are a central feature of this volume, which covers the proceedings of a workshop on modelling, analysis and simulation. The contributors discuss movement paths and searching behaviour, kinesis and/or taxis, cellular motion and shape changing, microtubuli and cilia motion, neuromotoric aspects of animal movement, collective behaviour and swarming. The resulting papers contained in this volume have been complemented by section overviews as well as "boxes" describing the basic mathematical methods. The book is intended as a practical reference for bio-mathematicians as well as biologists, in their attempts to quantify motions of cells or organisms.