Faculty Advisor: David Skidmore, Professor Department of Politics and International Relations, College of Arts and Sciences Drake University. Student editorial board for the Spring 2006 issue include: Teresa Abbey, Brittany Buchholz, Brett Myrick and Jeff Scheiber.

Grand canonical Monte Carlo, histogram reweighting and finite-size scaling methods are used to determine the phase transitions of bulk (three-dimensional) and confined (quasi-two-dimensional) neutral colloid–polymer systems. The colloids are modeled as hard spheres and the polymer molecules as...

An interacting lattice gas model is used to study flow of immiscible components A and B (molecular weights MA and MB,MA<MB) by Monte Carlo simulations. Concentration gradients and hydrostatic pressure bias (H) drive these constituents from their source at the bottom against gravitational sedimentation in an effective medium. Response of their flux densities (jA,jB) to the hydrostatic bias H are examined. If both constituents are released with equal probabilities (a non-interacting source), their flux densities respond linearly to bias with jA>jB except at the extreme bias H→1 where jA→jB. Flow response becomes complex if the constituents from their source are released according to their current lattice...</mb)>

We have analyzed an effect of the Bak–Sneppen predator–prey food-chain self-organization on nucleotide content of evolving species. In our model, genomes of the species under consideration have been represented by their nucleotide genomic fraction and we have applied two-parameter Kimura...