Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only Newswise Maybe you dont usually read papers about microorganism motility in fluids. Or phylogenetics. Or cancer modeling. This November, however, youll want to. Three guest editorsElizabeth Allman (University of Alaska Fairbanks), Fred Adler (University of Utah), and Lisette de Pillis (Harvey Mudd College)have assembled for your edification a special November issue of the American Mathematical Monthly: seven articles on topics at the intersection of mathematics and biology. While mathematical biology is a rapidly growing research area, the Monthly receives few math-bio manuscripts. A special issue, thought Monthly editor Scott Chapman, would be an excellent means of introducing the journals readership to the burgeoning field. Allman, Adler, and de Pilliswho all taught at the Park City Mathematics Institutes 2005 summer school in mathematical biologycollected papers that reflect the excitement and diversity of a field that applies mathematical methods and curiosity to everything from finding control methods for AIDS to reconstructing the evolutionary relationships between species. Authors address computational neuroscience, animal territory pattern formation, gene regulatory networks, and synthetic biology. The editors have high expectations for their opus. "Whatever your area of mathematical expertise," they write in their introduction, "we hope that you find this … Continue reading →

This is a guest post by PhD student and science writer JakeBuehler. Heblogs over atSh*t You Didnt Know About Biology, which is full of hisunrepentantly celebratory insights into life on Earths under-appreciated, under-acknowledged, and utterlyamazing stories. Nature is a rough place. If you live your life skirting along the more vulnerable, fragile, tasty threads of the food web, the world is just a whirlwind of claws and fangs flung about by cruel scaffolds of bone and muscle. But just as predators have evolved an assemblage of tools useful in catching, killing, and dismembering prey, their quarries have evolved a staggering number of defenses aimed at keeping themselves from being shoveled down another animals maw. There are many ways to protect yourself. You can be face-meltingly fast, like a pronghorn or a gazelle. You can live in huge herds, and rely on communal vigilance and statistics to keep you safe. You can also be as unappealing a meal as possible, and the variation in approaches to this evolutionary strategy that results in nature is astounding. Porcupines and their grapple-deterrent spines. Turtles and their notably unbiteable shells. Skunks and their odoriferous chemical weaponry. And, if you want to get gross with it, … Continue reading →