This finding about leopard spots has nothing to do with Turing machines. It is less well known among computer scientists that Turing has also done fundamental research in the field of chemical pattern formation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Pattern_ formation_and_mathematical_biology).
BTW this is no news. It is well known that spotted patterns can be reproduced by reaction diffusion equations. These mechanisms have been thoroughly studied using computer simulations since the '80s. A really interesting result would be to find the actual chemical processes in the leopard that produce the spots, but no experimental evidence yet...
Turing's research on pattern formation has nothing to do with celullar automata. He described reaction-diffusion systems using partial differential equations, which is a completeley different thing.
The concept of cellular automata was introduced by John von Neumann.
Slashdot Mirror
This finding about leopard spots has nothing to do with Turing machines. It is less well known among computer scientists that Turing has also done fundamental research in the field of chemical pattern formation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Pattern_ formation_and_mathematical_biology).
BTW this is no news. It is well known that spotted patterns can be reproduced by reaction diffusion equations. These mechanisms have been thoroughly studied using computer simulations since the '80s. A really interesting result would be to find the actual chemical processes in the leopard that produce the spots, but no experimental evidence yet ...
Turing's research on pattern formation has nothing to do with celullar automata. He described reaction-diffusion systems using partial differential equations, which is a completeley different thing. The concept of cellular automata was introduced by John von Neumann.