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From satellites to the London Olympics, all in one career

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Discover why the number 6174 is so mysterious.

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September 2008
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morphogenesis

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How does the uniform ball of cells that make up an embryo differentiate to create the dramatic patterns of a zebra or leopard? How come there are spotty animals with stripy tails, but no stripy animals with spotty tails? Lewis Dartnell solves these, and other, puzzles of animal patterning.

Tags: perturbation : reaction-diffusion equations : animal patterning : morphogenesis : partial differentiation : diffusion : saturation : threshold