The short answer is: Ptolemy II doesn't do that kind of modeling... The longer answer is: What about the cell-division process are you trying to model? Are you just trying to get an idea of the population after a certain time? This can be written down as a differential equation, given average birth rates and death rates... Are you trying to get an idea of lifetime of one cell? Then the question is, how does that cell differ from all the other cells and what does keeping track of individual cells give you that can't be represented as a differential equation? i.e. (statistically you might not need to model each cell, but only the statisical average of similar cells) There are some complex processes that arise when there are local effects on the life an death of a particular cell, where you actually have to keep track of individual cells... The simplest way to model these processes is using some sort of Cellular Automata (one of the simplest and best known is Conway's Life... http://www.entropymine.com/jason/life/)
Steve At 08:42 AM 1/25/2002 -0800, Christopher Hylands wrote: >Below is message that appeard on comp.soft-sys.ptolemy. >If you respond, be sure to cc >[EMAIL PROTECTED] > >-Christopher >------- Forwarded Message > > >From: Marco Antoniotti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Keeping track of different "instances". >Date: 21 Jan 2002 17:28:36 -0500 > > >Hi, > >I am investigating the use of Ptolemy to simulate biological systems. > >Of course there are several question regarding MoC's which I am >sweeping under the carpet, but, apart from that, I have one >question I'd like to ask. > >Suppose I want to simulate the process of cell division (nothing >fancy, just have some internal timer that eventually causes the cell >to either divide or die - this is a good enough approximation). > >I'd like a suggestion about what would be the best way to go ahead and >put this into Ptolemy II. > >I am asking this because it is fairly obvious to me to write down a >set of equations that do model the process at hand, yet from a "low >level computer scientist view", it'd be nice to actually model a cell >division as a > > newCell = new Cell(); > >My (so far very superficial) understanding is that this is not >something that you can easily achieve in Ptolemy II, especially using >the Virgil GUI. > >Is that the case? Do I have other alternatives? > >Thanks > >Cheers > >- -- >Marco Antoniotti ======================================================== >NYU Courant Bioinformatics Group tel. +1 - 212 - 998 3488 >719 Broadway 12th Floor fax +1 - 212 - 995 4122 >New York, NY 10003, USA http://bioinformatics.cat.nyu.edu > "Hello New York! We'll do what we can!" > Bill Murray in `Ghostbusters'. > >------- End of Forwarded Message > >_______________________________________________ >Ptolemy maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] >http://www.gigascale.org/ptolemy/listinfo/ptolemy ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted to the ptolemy-hackers mailing list. Please send administrative mail for this list to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
