Website review: ScienceDaily: The Numbers Behind Th...
Someone discovered this in Mathematics
•2 reviews since Mar 28, 2005
mathematics
•sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/05032313080...
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virtualbloodhoun rated 8 months ago- "When I was a kid, it used to be that if you got a television -- the first color television I ever had much to do with was my grandfather's -- it came with a big schematic," he said. "It had all the components... and what they did and all their specs." "We'd like to have that kind of picture, ultimately, for... the kidney," he said. The study of biological systems by mathematicians is no longer as unusual as it was when Layton was a student. According to Reed, eight of the 28 tenure-track faculty in Duke's mathematics department devote at least part of their time to problems from biology. Layton explained why the study of the kidney lends itself to mathematics, calling it "sort of like an accounting problem." Layton's "accounting" lies in balancing the biological equivalent of income and outgo -- keeping track of the various components of blood -- water, nitrogenous, sugars and salts -- as they enter and leave the kidney. About 90 liters of blood enter each day and about two liters of urine leave. Layton specifically looks at urine as it travels through a million tiny tubes in the kidney called nephrons -- how fast it flows, at what rate the concentrations of its components change and how those rates vary depending on the make up of blood. To build a model of these interrelated changes, Layton uses systems of differential equations. Although his work, based mostly on experiments on rat kidneys, is basic science, it could lead to a better understanding of hypertension in humans, Layton said, but such application is at least a decade away. Layton said he has learned to work with, and win the respect of, biologists and physiologists, even though he took only one biology course in college. "At first... we'd be collaborators on the papers; they would help write the description/scientific parts, and I would deal with the mathematical things," he said. "But more recently there's more give and take about `Can you measure this?' or... `Can you look at that?'" His principal scientific partners are Leon Moore, a professor of physiology and biophysics at Stony Brook University, andUniversity of Arizona physiologists William Dantzler and Thomas Pannabecker. In explaining how he communicates his mathematics to scientists, Layton said, "One has to put on the Isaac Asimov suit," referring to the late and renowned science popularizer. "What would he say? How would he explain it?" Layton found another research partner when he married his wife Anita in 2000.At first, the newlyweds did not plan to work together professionally. But that soon changed. Anita, a Canadian citizen, was wrapping up her dissertation on numerical methods for weather models at the University of Toronto, but due to visa complications, she was having difficulty returning to Canada to defend her thesis. Away from her own work, she began thumbing through books on the kidney and talking to Harold about his research. "I realized the method I was using to solve weather models can be applied to solve equations that arise in these [kidney] models," she said. "So I thought, `Let's give it a try, I have nothing else to do.' We worked on it. It worked well, so we started writing papers together." So far, they have published five papers, with four more in press. She brings a systematic approach to computer simulations to his mathematical models, says Layton. They work together in formulating investigations and interpreting the results. Asked what it is like to be partners in marriage and scholarship, both laughed. "It's less stressful than raising a kid," Anita said about publishing together. (The couple now has a daughter who is almost two.) "I don't want to carry the analogy too far," Harold said. "But there's some similarity here because the paper is something... you develop and it grows and it takes on a life of its own. Then you have to dress it up just right and send it off to school - send it off to be reviewed, send it off to the world." ### In 1992, a protein was discovered that facilitates the movement of water through cell membranes. The discovery of this aquaporin protein was a breakthrough for scientists and eventually led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for Dr. Peter C. Agre, who recently joined Duke as vice chancellor for science and technology.
- AndreaJoRush rated 9 months ago
- Mathematics is being applied to develop a model of the kidney.
