Wolfgang Alt – författare

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.

" . . . behavior is not, what an organism does itself, but to what we point. Therefore, whether a type of behavior of an organism is adequate as a certain configuration of movements, will depend on the environment in which we de­ scribe it. " (Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela: El arbol del conocimiento, 1984) "A thorough analysis of behavior must result in a scheme, that shows all regularities that are to be found between the sensorical input and the motorical output of an animal. This scheme is an abstract representation of the brain. " (Valentin Braitenberg: Gehirngespinste, 1973) During the 70ies, when Biomathematics (beyond Biomedical Statistics and Com­ puting) became more popular at universities and research institutes, the problems dealt with came mainly from the general fields of 'Population Biology' and 'Complex Systems Analysis' such as epidemics, ecosystems analysis, morphogenesis, genetics, immunology and neurology (see the first series of Springer Lecture Notes in Biomathematics). Since then, the picture has not considerably changed, and it seems that "a thorough analysis of behavior" of single organisms and, moreover, of their mutual interactions, is far from being understood. On the contrary, mathematical modellers and analysts have been well­ advised to restrict their investigations to specific aspects of 'biological behavior', one of which is 'biological motion'. Until now, only a few Conference Proceedings or Lecture Notes have paid attention to this important aspect, some of the earlier examples being Vol. 24: 'The measurement of biological shape and shape changes' (1978) or Vol.

" . . . behavior is not, what an organism does itself, but to what we point. Therefore, whether a type of behavior of an organism is adequate as a certain configuration of movements, will depend on the environment in which we de­ scribe it. " (Humberto Maturana, Francisco Varela: El arbol del conocimiento, 1984) "A thorough analysis of behavior must result in a scheme, that shows all regularities that are to be found between the sensorical input and the motorical output of an animal. This scheme is an abstract representation of the brain. " (Valentin Braitenberg: Gehirngespinste, 1973) During the 70ies, when Biomathematics (beyond Biomedical Statistics and Com­ puting) became more popular at universities and research institutes, the problems dealt with came mainly from the general fields of ''Population Biology'' and ''Complex Systems Analysis'' such as epidemics, ecosystems analysis, morphogenesis, genetics, immunology and neurology (see the first series of Springer Lecture Notes in Biomathematics). Since then, the picture has not considerably changed, and it seems that "a thorough analysis of behavior" of single organisms and, moreover, of their mutual interactions, is far from being understood. On the contrary, mathematical modellers and analysts have been well­ advised to restrict their investigations to specific aspects of ''biological behavior'', one of which is ''biological motion''. Until now, only a few Conference Proceedings or Lecture Notes have paid attention to this important aspect, some of the earlier examples being Vol. 24: ''The measurement of biological shape and shape changes'' (1978) or Vol.

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.