BACKGROUND A cryptosporidiosis epidemic occurred among residents and visitors to Collingwood, Ontario, during March 1996. Fifty-five per cent of 36 confirmed cases were Collingwood visitors and 57% of Collingwood resident cases were under 10 years of age. The low level of reported diarrhoeal illness among adult Collingwood residents caused government officials and physicians to question whether...

We study the control of modulational instability and pattern formation in a nonlinear dissipative feedback system with a periodic modulation of the material refractive index. We use a one-dimensional photonic lattice in a single-mirror feedback configuration and identify three mechanisms for pattern control: bandgap suppression of instability modes, periodicity induced pattern modes, and orient...

In 1990, one of us (Jackson) offered a hypothesis as an attempt to explain simultaneously all observations regarding the Shroud image (Ref 1). This hypothesis was ventured only after a systematic study of alternatives had failed to account for various image characteristics (Ref 2) and, though unconventional, this hypothesis makes a variety of testable predictions that are a-priori falsifiable b...

We present some numerical results obtained from a simple individual-based model that describes clustering of organisms caused by competition. Our aim is to show that, even when a deterministic description developed for continuum models predicts no pattern formation, an individual-based model displays well-defined patterns, as a consequence of fluctuation effects caused by the discrete nature of...

Cooperators that refuse to participate in sanctioning defectors create the second-order free-rider problem. Such cooperators will not be punished because they contribute to the public good, but they also eschew the costs associated with punishing defectors. Altruistic punishers — those that cooperate and punish — are at a disadvantage, and it is puzzling how such behaviour has evolved. We show ...

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Pattern recognition is at the heart of clinical dermatology and dermatopathology. Yet, while every practitioner of the art of dermatological diagnosis recognizes the supreme value of diagnostic cues provided by defined patterns of 'efflorescences', few contemplate on the biological basis of pattern formation in and of skin lesions. Vice versa, developmental and theoretical biologists, who would...

Drosophila, Wnt, FGF, Jak/Stat, Rho, Rac, RhoGEF, Pebble, Naked Cuticle The site for the latest installment of the Fly Meeting (March 7–11) was downtown Philadelphia. The conference offered an illustration of all that is great about the Drosophila field bringing together evolutionary biologists, immunologists and everyone in between. Here I will provide a small sample of several advances from t...