RESUMO
The mathematical and computational modelling of the spread of infectious diseases is a research field in applied mathematics that in the same time was both able to give an impetum to various areas of the dynamical systems theory and mathematical analysis, and to give an important contribution to the biological and epidemiological understanding of the spread of these diseases. National as well as Inter-National health authorities adopt routinely in the practice methodologies and concept that were born in the field of Mathematical and Computational Epidemiology (MCE) for assisting public Health decisions and policies. A major example is provided by the huge advancement in modelling and prediction on pandemic threats, and related preparedness plans for disease containment/mitigation. This operative influence in biomedicine is unparalleled in any other fields of mathematical and computational biology, with the possible exception of intra-host virus dynamics, whose models partly derive from those of MCE.
Assuntos
Doenças Transmissíveis/epidemiologia , Doenças Transmissíveis/transmissão , Saúde Pública/métodos , Animais , Simulação por Computador , Surtos de Doenças , Vetores de Doenças , Epidemiologia , Feminino , Saúde Global , Humanos , Itália , Masculino , Matemática , Modelos Teóricos , Pandemias , Software , ZoonosesRESUMO
Artificial life is a tool which is used for simulation of peculiar cases of evolutionary events. The main characteristic of artificial life is that with this technique it is possible to simulate for a high number of generations the evolution of a population of individuals. Each individual is characterised by a small number of parameters, but each individual has its own evolutive story. So far it is possible to simulate the evolution of a population of some thousands specimens, for a high number of generations. The realistic aspect of the simulation is that each specimen is taken individually. In our opinion this instrument is very useful to simulate the evolution of the hybrids barrier during speciation. For this reason it is applied to a peculiar case of speciation, that of the Savi pine vole (Microtus savii) whose experimental data were recently investigated.
Assuntos
Evolução Biológica , Simulação por Computador , Modelos Biológicos , Animais , Arvicolinae/classificação , Arvicolinae/fisiologia , Cruzamentos Genéticos , Feminino , Fertilidade , Hibridização Genética , Masculino , Dinâmica Populacional , Software , Especificidade da Espécie , Cromossomo X/ultraestrutura , Cromossomo Y/ultraestruturaRESUMO
Living organisms evolve within ecological associations (from ecosystems to the biosphere) that are constituted by a biological component and a physico-chemical component. It is generally supposed that interactions such as competition and predation between the biological components of ecosystems are the main cause for the observed organization of ecosystems. We believe that in the search for a more comprehensive theory of evolution a much greater attention should be paid to the ways in which living organisms interact with the physico-chemical environment. To test our ideas, we develop a mathematical model to study the evolution of ecosystems, and we apply it to the study of hydrothermal vents. The model proposed is still a qualitative model. It tries to study, in a first approximation, the behaviours of the biological and chemical components. In the following we hope to develop and to improve it so to give a more realistic model.