Festschrift for Drs. Wick and Santa Cruz

Life on Earth is carbon-based, as all macromolecules that make up living organisms contain carbon atoms. All organic compounds have a carbon backbone. Each carbon atom is tetravalent and can bond with four other atoms, making it an extraordinarily flexible component of biological molecules. Because carbon’s valence electrons are stable, it rarely becomes an ion. As the carbon chain increases in length, structural modifications such as ring structures, double bonds, and branching side chains...

Cells with similar structure and function are grouped into tissues. A group of tissues with a specialized function is called an organ. There are four main types of tissue in vertebrates: epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous.

Constrained by limited energy and resources, organisms must compromise between offspring quantity and parental investment. This trade-off is represented by two primary reproductive strategies; K-strategists produce few offspring but provide substantial parental support, whereas r-strategists produce much progeny that receives little care. These strategies are related to an organism’s survival likelihood across its lifespan, which is represented by a survivorship curve. Three general types of...

Cancers arise due to mutations in genes involved in the regulation of cell division, which leads to unrestricted cell proliferation. Modern science and medicine have made great strides in the understanding and treatment of cancer, including eradicating cancer in some patients. However, there is still no cure for cancer. This is largely due to the fact that cancer is a large group of many diseases.

Tissues are a group of cells that share a common embryonic origin. Microscopic observation reveals that the cells in a tissue share morphological features and are arranged in an orderly pattern to perform specific functions. From an evolutionary perspective, tissues appear in more complex organisms. Although there are many types of cells in the human body, they are organized into four broad categories of tissues: epithelial, connective, muscle, and nervous. Each of these categories is...

The divergence and Stokes' theorems are a variation of Green's theorem in a higher dimension. They are also a generalization of the fundamental theorem of calculus. The divergence theorem and Stokes' theorem are in a way similar to each other; The divergence theorem relates to the dot product of a vector, while Stokes' theorem relates to the curl of a vector. Many applications in physics and engineering make use of the divergence and Stokes' theorems, enabling us to write numerous physical laws...