Hariharan, Ramesh (2014) Turing and animal coat patterns. In: CURRENT SCIENCE, 106 (12). pp. 1681-1686.
|
PDF
CUR_SCI_106-12_1681-1686.pdf - Published Version Download (835kB) | Preview |
Abstract
The present article describes a beautiful contribution of Alan Turing to our understanding of how animal coat patterns form. The question that Turing posed was the following. A collection of identical cells (or processors for that matter), all running the exact same program, and all communicating with each other in the exact same way, should always be in the same state. Yet they produce nonhomogeneous periodic patterns, like those seen on animal coats. How does this happen? Turing gave an elegant explanation for this phenomenon, namely that differences between the cells due to small amounts of random noise can actually be amplified into structured periodic patterns. We attempt to describe his core conceptual contribution below.
| Item Type: | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Publication: | CURRENT SCIENCE |
| Publisher: | AMER PHYSICAL SOC |
| Additional Information: | copyright for this article belongs to INDIAN ACAD SCIENCES,B'lore |
| Department/Centre: | Division of Electrical Sciences > Computer Science & Automation |
| Date Deposited: | 19 Aug 2014 10:53 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Aug 2014 10:53 |
| URI: | http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/49593 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
