%0 Journal Article
%T Scaling, growth and cyclicity in biology: a new computational approach
%A Pier Delsanto
%A Antonio S Gliozzi
%A Caterina Guiot
%J Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling
%D 2008
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1742-4682-5-5
%X The main goal of the present contribution is to extend the applicability of the new approach to the study of problems of growth with cyclicity, which are of particular relevance in the fields of biology and medicine.As an example of its implementation, the method is applied to the analysis of human growth curves. The excellent quality of the results (R2 = 0.988) demonstrates the usefulness and reliability of the approach.Scaling, growth and cyclicity are basic "properties" of all living organisms and of many other biological systems, such as tumors. The search for scaling laws and universal growth patterns has led G.B. West and collaborators to the discovery of remarkably elegant results, applicable to all living organisms [1-4], and extensible to, e.g., tumors [5-7]. Cyclicity seems to be an almost unavoidable consequence of the feedback of every active biosystem from its environment. In the context of the present contribution we wish to extend the applicability of the Phenomenological Universalities (PUN) approach [8,9], which allows the scaling invariance lost in nonlinear problems to be recovered, to growth phenomena that also involve cyclicities. The latter are particularly relevant in biology and medicine. We wish to make clear from the beginning that only mathematical universalities, as provided e.g. by partial differential equations, represent "true" universalities. As such, in a "top-down" approach, they have been used for centuries. However, we are often challenged, as in the present context, by observational or experimental datasets, from which we wish to "infer" some (more or less) general "laws" using a "bottom-up" approach. PUNs represent a paradigm for performing perform such a task on themost general level.In muchthe same way that integers are defined as the 'Inbegriff' of a group of objects, when their nature is completely disregarded, PUN's may be defined as the 'Inbegriff' of a given body of phenomenology when the field of application and the natu
%U http://www.tbiomed.com/content/5/1/5