Differential Equations and Applications in Ecology, Epidemics, and Population Problems is composed of papers and abstracts presented at the 1981 research conference on Differential Equations and Applications to Ecology, Epidemics, and Population Problems held at Harvey Mudd College. The reported researches consist of mathematics that is either a direct outgrowth from questions in population biology and biomathematics, or applicable to such questions. The content of this volume are collected in four groups. The first group addresses aspects of population dynamics that involve the interaction between spatial and temporal effects. The second group covers other questions in population dynamics and some other areas of biomathematics. The third group deals with topics in differential and functional differential equations that are continuing to find important applications in mathematical biology. The last group comprises of work on various aspects of differential equations and dynamical systems, not essentially motivated by biological applications. This book is valuable to students and researchers in theoretical biology and biomathematics, as well as to those interested in modern applications of differential equations.

The past forty years have been the stage for the maturation of mathematical biolõ as a scientific field. The foundations laid by the pioneers of the field during the first half of this century have been combined with advances in ap plied mathematics and the computational sciences to create a vibrant area of scientific research with established research journals, professional societies, deep subspecialty areas, and graduate education programs. Mathematical biology is by its very nature cross-disciplinary, and research papers appear in mathemat ics, biology and other scientific journals, as well as in the specialty journals devoted to mathematical and theoretical biology. Multiple author papers are common, and so are collaborations between individuals who have academic bases in different traditional departments. Those who seek to keep abreast of current trends and problems need to interact with research workers from a much broader spectrum of fields than is common in the traditional mono-culture disciplines. Consequently, it is beneficial to have occasions which bring together significant numbers of workers in this field in a forum that encourages the exchange of ideas and which leads to a timely publication of the work that is presented. Such an occasion occurred during January 13 to 16, 1990 when almost two hun dred research workers participated in an international conference on Differential Equations and Applications to Biology and Population Dynamics which was held in Claremont.

This volume is dedicated to the memory of Professor Stavros Busenberg of Harvey Mudd College, who contributed so greatly to this field during 25 years prior to his untimely death. It contains about 60 invited papers by leading researchers in the areas of dynamical systems, mathematical studies in ecology, epidemics, and physiology, and industrial mathematics. Anyone interested in these areas will find much of value in these contributions.

This book focuses the solutions of differential equations with MATLAB. Analytical solutions of differential equations are explored first, followed by the numerical solutions of different types of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), as well as the universal block diagram based schemes for ODEs. Boundary value ODEs, fractional-order ODEs and partial differential equations are also discussed.