Scaling, growth and cyclicity in biology: a new computational approach

Pier Paolo Delsanto¹ , Antonio S Gliozzi¹ and Caterina Guiot²

¹Dept. Physics, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino, Italy

²Dept. Neuroscience, Università di Torino, Corso Raffaello 30, 10125 Torino, Italy

author email corresponding author email

Theoretical Biology and Medical Modelling 2008, 5:5doi:10.1186/1742-4682-5-5


Published:	29 February 2008

Abstract

Background

The Phenomenological Universalities approach has been developed by P.P. Delsanto and collaborators during the past 2–3 years. It represents a new tool for the analysis of experimental datasets and cross-fertilization among different fields, from physics/engineering to medicine and social sciences. In fact, it allows similarities to be detected among datasets in totally different fields and acts upon them as a magnifying glass, enabling all the available information to be extracted in a simple way. In nonlinear problems it allows the nonscaling invariance to be retrieved by means of suitable redefined fractal-dimensioned variables.

Results

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.

Conclusion

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.