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Turing Equation Explains how Leopard Spots Develop
BilZ0r writes "A slight modification of an equation developed by Alan Turing in 1952 has been used to show how the patterns of big cats change from kitten to adult markings. Sy-Sang Liaw of National Chung-Hsing University in Taichung, Taiwan, and colleagues set out to replicate these patterns using Turing's equations. But they found they had to do more than just tweak the parameters of the reaction-diffusion equation. Instead they had to assume two stages of spot growth with different rules: the first to get the baby cats their spots, and the second to create the final configurations. It took them a year to find a final solution."
Damn, i thought "Spots" was some sweet new feature in OS X Leopard.
So how many questions were the leopard spots able to answer?
Ohwait...
And this one day before Apple reveals features of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard? What are the odds?
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
Using Turing equations to model the growth of leopard spots reminds me of 2 other types of research. They are (1) analyzing the human navel and (2) extracting sunlight from cucumbers.
Awesome work guys ! Now on to the applications of this important discovery ! ...
Lunch ?
... no more than a Leopard can change his Turing Equations
Letter To Iran
[quote]
The rouge state of Taiwan is part of Peoples Republic of CHINA.
[/quote]
Yes, Taiwan is a nice shade of pink, unlike the red commie bastards in China.
I really hope you don't think freckles on, or redheads in general are boring. They're nothing like leopards either.
You read a scroll titled BOOBIE FLETCH. --More--
This is a scroll of pr0n. Read? [y/n] y
You think impure thoughts, and start fapping. --More--
Suddenly, a bolt of lightning hits the kitten! The kitten is killed!
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
My thoughts exactly. I also bet they scraped penicillin off the aliens found at Roswell too.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Apparently, old Jeremiah was teaching Turing's mathematics to homeless Israelites when he told one
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil."
If one of the grad students working on this paper is an Ethiopian who's spent the year in a Taiwanese office rather than in the equatorial sun, we might have all the proof we need to test this ancient riddle.
--
make install -not war
Well if leopards are anything like lions (they're both big cats, one just seems to have put more points into strength over agility than the other), I'd rather not bother with them. I know one famous lion researcher personally: his first name is Token (but he has been called multiple last names), and he said that "lions are totally gay."
But now with this research, we can perhaps someday take a baby human child and determine if they will grow up to be the Messiah or Antichrist. We map all their freckles and exactly calculate their resultant pattern. If the final morphology is some sort of hyper-religious symbol (a cross drawn over a Superman symbol with a star and sparklies all over it, a skull-and-cross-bones with burning flames and a dirty joke sealing it, the symbol for the Republic party, etc.).
The problem with this idea is if we have to skin every human baby, we will have another Moses-mom on our hands that would rather float her baby down the Nile river in a basket than give 'em over to the professionals. There's also the problem of celebrities running off to Africa to have their babies.
So our two biggest threats to this new classification system working are both with Africa. If giant dinosaurs and monsters like Kong still inhabit those lands, no wonder the people there are still primal. You never hear anybody saying "Peace in the African Congo!" as I'm sure that is even more impossible than would be for the middle-east... I'm sure Africa isn't THAT big of a country, maybe we could get Bush or some other world leader like Kim Yong Wong something, that funny Chinese man on the Team America F-Yeah show, to send in a bunch of troops. Russia is another good choice for sending in a lot of troops. India is another good choice, population-wise, but I can't imagine their people doing much more than teaching Physics 101 or doing my colonoscopies.
Wait, what were we talking about?